As We Begin Inventing Our Evolution. Some Well Thought Out Near Future Scenarios from the Washington Post

Well written article about some of the technologies just arriving: Pain vaccines. Computers that enable us to move things with thought. Personal Gene sequencing for $10. Enhancements to our memories, metabolisms, personalities and offspring. It will all be adopted as avidly as Viagara for the same reasons. Here's the Link

A Few Quotes from the Article

"No one really has the guts to say it, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we?"
James Watson, co-winner of the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA

"We have spent billions to unravel our biology, not out of idle curiosity, but in the hope of bettering our lives. We are not about to turn away from this."
Gregory Stock of UCLA on the decoding of the human genome.

"All the political energy that has gone into this issue -- it is not even slowing down the most narrow approach." It is simply being pursued outside the United States -- in China, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Scandinavia and Great Britain, where scientists will probably achieve success first.
Ray Kurzweil, on the controversy over the use of stem cells from human embryos.

More on emerging technologies here.