 Well I follow my confusions. That's my I've learned a long time ago that the world doesn't always work in ways that make sense Tom Clancy said the difference between fiction and nonfiction is that fiction has to make sense Well, you know as a journalist I'm in the world in the real world and frequently it just seems like what is going on here and I've learned that following my confusions can frequently be useful because Sometimes if I don't get it, maybe that means that there are other people around the world who don't get it either and I've learned over time that you know if you look into it often Often enough and hard enough you can discover that the problem with the question is that you're you're holding it upside down That basically it makes perfect sense, you know as long as you just look at it in a different way and This radical evolution stuff is a classic example of that I was looking at this burst of creativity and technology that has been the hallmark of the last 10 or 20 years and The question was well, what does this mean to what it means to be human? Does this have is this all about transistors or how can this not have an impact on society and As I drill down into this I began to realize that I was on top of one of the five or six biggest Holy cow stories of the last 10,000 years depending on how you count the birth of Jesus Christ and It's a it's this extraordinary moment that we're in where we're at an inflection point in history Where for the first time in hundreds of thousands of years our technologies are not so much aimed outward at modifying our environment in the fashion of fire clothes cities agriculture or space travel Instead our technologies now are increasingly aimed inward at modifying our minds our memories our Metabolisms our personalities and our kids And if you can do all that you're at the stunning moment Where you realize that we're becoming the first species to really take control of our own evolution Not in some distant science fiction future, but right now on our watch And what radical evolution is about is kind of a road map to the next two three five ten twenty years of this Incredible change that we're seeing that will profoundly affect what it means to be human. I Mean the significance of this is that someday soon You know you're gonna have a kid or a grand kid who's going to come home from school again in tears and He's gonna say that he just can't compete with the other kids who are smarter than he is better behave than he is More athletic than he is more beautiful than he is better able to get into the most prestigious schools and The difference is that their parents have invested in all the human enhancement technologies That are increasingly coming on the market and you have it and the question becomes well What do you do when that day comes you know? There's a limited number of possibilities one is hey, we don't care what other parents do with their kids minds and bodies We love you just the way you are go wipe your nose go play in traffic. That's one possibility another possibility is that you go out and remortgage the house again to Invest in all of these technologies that are increasingly coming on the market to to improve memory cognition and everything else and the third possibility is that you try to get these enhanced kids thrown out of your school and The problem with that of course is that you just be that just causes a wider and wider gap Between the people who are embracing these enhancement technologies and those who don't and that's that's a scenario with with big Challenges in it, but what you can't do is ignore this Because this world is one that we're seeing coming at us Ever faster all you have to do is watch the sports channels and you can see that you know enhancement technologies are being embraced By everyone who's in any kind of competitive Situation the military is embracing it. It's especially obvious when you see people who are involved in In competitions like in in Hollywood where for sex appeal basically that's a very big use of these enhancement technologies