There was no such thing as overpopulation and birth control for the most part for a long time. Suddenly we, as a species, had weeded out a good deal of the weeker members of our species. Eventually some religions come along and say," Wait a minute, there's too many people starting to come along and we need it to stop." So they think of this brilliant plan, you shouldn't have sex unless you intend to have a child. Regular Joe/Jane thinks sure, their still having sex all the time but now claim," I MEANT to do that." All this time, we devleop better and better technology and as a result life expectancy goes up and infant mortality rates go down. But now we have this taboo against birth control that is not only causing problems among individuals but is also inforced by people in control. One example of this is in Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes" where a certain widely read magazine comes in and Frank and other boys are sent out to tear out all the pages on birth control. In some places in the world, birth contorl is illegal. So areas start becoming overpopulated, and the resources can't keep up. If you live in an area where everyone has 500 sandwiches, and there's only ten people, you'd be ok, but if you had the same 500 sandwiches in a place with 5000 inhabitants, then you're going to see poverty. Now only 500 people are going to eat today and everyone else is going to go hungry, so now I need to take my mind of my stomach. No TV, no radio, no 'puter, what does that leave me. Sex. The store won't carry condoms and there is no doctor, I'm just going to have to take my chances.

Just food for thought.

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(Myself, I'm a Malthusian and a non believer).

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I also!

However my Ex (Bible teacher) made a simplistic point to me as a child:

He said as far as 'God' commanding that man go forth, multiply & fill the Earth, -it is up to reasoning beings to know when to stop!
As an illustration;
He said if my dad were to set a glass on the dinner table, and asked me to fill it...
..there would be a reasonable expectation that I wouldn't fill it to the point that it overflows onto the table and ultimately the floor.

Made sense to me even at 10 years old.

The bigger question is that what makes us think that human kind is an evolutionary dead end?

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Back to my thoughts about tchnology... While many people don't want to become a "clog in the system," the advancements are already starting. The electronic coclear implants are a good exsample, now were able to restore the hearing of the deaf (in a lot of cases, and soon, I dare, all). The next improvment is the implants will pick up radio signals, so that the person with the implants can listen to music without affecting those around him and without having any "odd looking head peice" (as our kids will say when they look at our photos and see our head phones). They are working on a optical scanner to replace the retina, which would restore sight to quite a number of blind people. The next stage is that theyinclude night vission or the ability to use it as a recording device for photos and video. People who don't need these things will begin to go "hey, I want to night vission" or whatever, and then there is a craze much like the fad that is going on with cossmettic surgery (which was originally to repair the damage done by accidents and such). They have a mind controled pointing device that interfaces to the human brain and allows people who physically can type and use a mouse to access the computer. And the article posted earlier about the monkeys controlling the computer with their mind. This will lead to a new form of communication and new wireless internet surfing.

Meanwhile in other labs at MIT, they are working on making emotional models more and more human. Trying to build a robot that functionally feels (mind you at this point these emotional models are far from a "feeling robot" but just a few brak throughs away) and reacts to it's enviroment. The man in charge is facing moral and philisophical questions and finding at least the most functional answers.

I don't see a "cog in the machine" comming I see people able to download information in a second and acess information like recalling a memory. Granted it'll still take time to read the pages (at least for a while), we'll be extended into machines (become a robot to do a dangerous task, so that if the bomb goes off, no one is hurt or killed) and we'll be able to send equations that we can't solve into a calculator program and have the answer as fast as fast as if we could type as fast as we can think "4*(pi^2/2)". Eventually, I think it will be possibe to be able to download knowledge, thoughts and emotions.

This idea is one that I've had since early childhood (back in the 80s... Don't know what prompted it, but seeing Tron fueled a few more and Robo Cop a few more) and I had this huge story written that I thought was so original and here peices of it have been the center of a great number of diffrent movies, books and shows. Granted it was a child hood game I'd play, but it all seemed so fantastic and never thouht anyone except me would buy into that stuff. If only I had written it down copyrighted it and sold it, before a number of the movies were made. I still plan to write it all down and publish it to my site, but the ideas are far from new now and might eve happen in real life in the years to come.

Ah well... I'm done ranting and babbling about what I think we'll evolve into and what my silly game was.... so, I digress.