De-Evolution
Environmental factors have always played a major role for evolution in any species; but what happens when survival of the fittest no longer applies to an entire race. In the winter animals grow heavier fur to prepare for the cold months ahead, what do humans do? We turn up the heat and put on a jacket. Technological advances relieve humans of many duties they once needed to perform on their own means. Calculators have caused us to avoid using mental math to figure numbers out. Due to natural selection, this decline in using a specific trait causes that trait to de-evolve out of our genetics, hence making us slightly less intelligent in a particular field. Now it is no longer necessary to be able to push our intellect to accomplish tasks, we need only know how to operate what ever device the generations before us have created to help us with these tasks. In China for instance, the students are not aloud to use calculators to solve simple calculations all throughout schooling. Americans no longer are on a level playing field with China and a lot of other nations such as Bulgaria and Japan when it comes to mathematics. We as Americans would just as easily rather use the calculators for every math equation we are faced with. “The process of evolution is very strongly guided by de-evolutional aspects. In the future if machines would be serving us and relieving the burden of our creativity due to their superior intellects, there would be no survival and economic pressures for us to use our brains and we would begin a rapid de-evolution process in our intelligence.” SOURCES: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/The_Race_of_the_Future http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/neur-sci/2000-September/044501.html http://www.rustylime.com/show_article.php?id=3425