August 16th, 2019

How Different Will Humans Be in a Century?

A little or a lot, depending where you’re coming from

When confronted with my own future in five or 10 years, I’m overwhelmed with trying to picture where I’ll be or what I’ll look like (after all, I just randomly shaved my head last week). When confronted with the question of what humanity will look like in 100 years, I go completely blank. That’s why we asked several artists last week, and several more this week, to dream up their idea of a Future Human for Medium’s latest monthly magazine.
Their lively and imaginative portraits pushed the boundaries of transportation, fashion, and technology. We’ll be publishing more entries over the next two weeks of July. You can find the first entry right here.
Suit up for a wild ride.

With overpopulation, our bodies evolve to be smaller and more compact to accommodate that. We’re elongated and streamlined yet we aren’t much taller. In fact, we’re shorter.
For work, we’ll continue down the path of influencers, except everyone is one, just different levels of influence and different markets.
We’d likely have functional implants and accessories to replace phones, credit cards, and screens. We’d also have a lot of free time in this world, so we’d likely develop and market an aesthetic that people would try to emulate, a kind of Kim Kardashian 4.0 aesthetic people would go under the knife for. Our clothing is streamlined and functional, but also very natural and neutral. I’m picturing Kanye’s Yeezy line. But at the same time, shimmering and iridescent makeup and contacts are a big thing.
If robots take over everything, we’d spend our free time just centering, re-parenting, and self-actualizing.


It would be difficult for the human body to change in only 100 years, but humans will surely use gene manipulation to enhance our eyes, skin, and lungs, especially for extraterrestrial activities in the short term. Surely, humans will be more focused on the search for resources off planet considering our current environment.
Even when humans do leave Earth, leisurely activities will not change very much. We’ll listen to music, watch TV and movies, play sports, take walks outside (albeit in spacesuits), etc. Speaking of spacesuits, I think we’ll embed nanotechnologies in our clothing so that we can change color and form freely.

After an environmental crisis, which is surely coming, humans will have to reconnect with nature to rebuild Earth’s forests. New jobs will open in modern agriculture and artificial bees, which are like drones, will feed the plants and take care of them.
Humans themselves are stronger because they implant machines into their bodies, so they are not limited physically. They use smart masks to connect with other humans and the cloud simultaneously.

Writer
Alex Vikmanis