New Matt Damon Movie Reveals Mankind’s Transhumanist Destiny

*Source: InfoWars

Elysium: The super elite centralizes technological progress to achieve utopia

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
June 19, 2013

Elysium, a new movie starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, depicts what many futurists have long predicted is mankind’s ultimate destiny – the division of the human race into two new class systems – a transhumanist elite that centralizes technological progress to achieve utopia, and a massive underclass left to rot on a dying planet ruled by robotic drones.

The trailer for the movie, set to be released on August 9 in the US, begins by depicting an army of robot drones in control of policing that shake down and beat citizens for trivial “violations”. The year is 2154. 

When Damon’s character expresses anger at his treatment, he is offered a pill to calm him by a robotic bureaucrat. Any form of dissent is treated as “abusive”.

“Humanity is divided between two worlds,” reads the caption, explaining that most of humanity is left to reside on an overpopulated, collapsing earth while the super elite have developed a gargantuan and luxurious off-planet space habitat called Elysium where war, poverty, hunger and disease are non-existent.

Damon’s character is forced to undergo cybernetic enhancements before he can lead a mission to Elysium in order to find a cure for a cancer virus he has contracted. The movie is also clearly designed to be a political jibe at anti-immigration activists.

However, many of the themes of Elysium are clearly lifted from the work of futurists like Ray Kurzweil, who in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines predicted the body scanner depicted in the trailer which eliminates cancer cells.

Kurzweil’s 1999 book, which successfully foresaw the invention of the iPhone, the iPad, Google Glass, iTunes, You Tube and on demand services like Netflix as well as the Kindle, predicts that by 2029 the vast majority of humans will have augmented their bodies with cybernetic implants and those who refuse or are unable to do so will form a “human underclass” that is not productively engaged in the economy.

The wider trend of the elite seeing humans as completely expendable as their roles are taken up by machines unfolds after 2029 when, “There is almost no human employment in production, agriculture, and transportation,” writes Kurzweil.

By 2099, the entire planet is run by artificially intelligent computer systems which are smarter than the entire human race combined – similar to the Skynet system fictionalized in the Terminator franchise.

Humans who resist the pressure to alter their bodies by becoming part-cyborg will be ostracized from society.

“Even among those human intelligences still using carbon-based neurons, there is ubiquitous use of neural implant technology, which provides enormous augmentation of human perceptual and cognitive abilities. Humans who do not utilize such implants are unable to meaningfully participate in dialogues with those who do,” writes Kurzweil.

One of the most prescient voices of dissent against this future – despite his murderous actions – was Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who is widely quoted by futurists like Kurzweil and Bill Joy as sagely outlining the dangers posed to the general public by the elite’s drive for technological singularity, as depicted in the Elysium movie.

“Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite,” wrote Kaczynski in his manifesto.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

"US Army: ‘Super Soldier’ Genetically Modified Humans Won’t Need Food, Sleep"

*Source: Natural Society

Anthony Gucciardi
NaturalSociety
August 13, 2012

The next frontier of genetic modification is not centered around a certain fruit or vegetable, but humans. More specifically, military personnel. Genetically modified humans is the next venture for biotechnology companies working with the United States military, with the admitted goal of producing a ‘super soldier’ that does not require food or sleep to perform Olympic-style physical feats.

The genetically modified humans, or ‘super soldiers’, will even be able to regrow limbs that were destroyed by enemy fire and live off of their fat stores for extreme lengths of time.

Backed by $2 billion a year in funding, the Pentagon’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently unleashed the news after years of secret experimentation and study. The organization did not say whether or not genetically modified humans currently exist to such an extent, however it is known based on previous reports that human chimeras have already been created outside of the public spotlight. Such scientific experiments have drawn fire from scientists and activists alike, who are demanding for laws to forbid the creation of ‘monsters’.

As of right now, DARPA has a functioning exoskeleton that enables soldiers to run far faster and handle heavy weights. This is but a step in the direct of full modification of the genetic coding of soldiers.

DARPA, of course, has earned the nickname of the ‘mad scientist’ wing for its rampant experiments in modifying life and fusing biology and technology. In working with killer drones, DARPA earlier this year was developing research into contact lens-mounted displays that could transport information from drones into the eyeballs of soldiers. Furthermore, the agency is also developing helmets in which the soldiers could communicate ‘telepathically’ with the kill drones.

The announcement ties in with the 2045 project, which I’ve covered in the past. The project offers ‘immortality’ to the wealthy elite who financially back it, and touts artificial bodies and brains for humans to achieve ‘immortality’. This entire system, of course, ties into a larger ‘singularity’ project as outlined by the creator of the 2045 plan and others like Ray Kurzweil. In a nut shell, ‘consciousness singularity’ can be defined by a merging of all ‘transhuman’ bodies into one ‘hive mind’ of sorts. Likely a massive super computer of some sorts that has full control over the minds of those ‘hooked in’.

It truly sounds insane, yet it is plainly stated out in the open. A number of issues arise from this singularity plan (not to even mention the fact that ‘soldiers’ are slowly becoming more of DARPA creations than human), such as the serious threat to humanity’s very integrity. We’ve seen the many issues regarding traditional GMOs on public health and the environment, now what about human modification?

The Singularity: Science’s Quest For Immortality And Satan’s Deception.

*Source: Beginning And End

This is not the way to eternal life. Jesus Christ is.

In Russia in March of 2012, the Global Future: 2045 Conference or ‘GF2045′ held to focus on the Singularity – the moment when humanity will physically combine with machines to allow for humans to live outside of the physical body, with robot “avatar” bodies and overcome disease, pain and even death. While it sounds like the stuff of a science fiction movie, it is a very real movement and field of study for scientists who believe that humanity is on the cusp of its next stage of evolution. And it once again reveals an attempt to reach immortality without the God of the Bible.

As the conference states on its own website:

The Global Future 2045 Congress is a nonprofit organization with the goal of creating a network community with the world’s leading scientists in the field of life extension and to support them as an investment hub, contributing to various projects.

The Congress objectives included:

• Presenting the newest developments in the fields of cognitive sciences, robotics, and modeling of living systems

• Evaluating the potential for transforming planetary civilization in light of the rapid pace of technological development

• Analyzing possible scenarios for the development of civilization in the context of new concepts regarding universal history, or “Big History”

• Discussing strategic problems arising in a dynamically changing world and the potential for the appearance of a global or cosmic mode of thinking. (source)

Ray Kurzweil, the father of Singularity Theory.

The conference, premised on the ideas of Ray Kurzweil, a scientist and entrepreneur who has been called “the rightful heir to Thomas Edison” for his innovations, which include CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition. Additionally, he also selected 2045 as the year the Singularity would become a reality.

GF2045 thus focused on “life-extension” technologies that would give a person the ability to keep living well past the time of death for their physical bodies. To give an idea of some of the credentials of the people involved here is a sample:

Eric Chaisson -Professor of Astrophysics Harvard University, Board Member, IBHA.

David Christian – President of the International Big History Association (D.Phil. Oxford, 1974)
Alexander Bolonkin – Astrophysicist, NASA Senior Research Fellow

Vladimir Pavlovsky – Chief scientific officer at the M.V. Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences

And many other academics, scientists, astronauts and investors comprise the main membership of this conference. This is not an assembly of fringe lunatics but serious academics and those dedicated to genuinely advancing humanity.

The video below, produced by the conference, outlines their goals of reaching the Singularity (we strongly recommend watching this to fully understand the goals of the conference and Singularity Theory):

The video describes current society on the brink of disaster and basically wasting time on useless issues. And the answer is using robot/cyborg technology to “transfer one’s personality to an artificial carrier.” All for the “race for immortality.”And once achieved through cybernetic and nanotechnology, humanity can create “new ethics”, “new society” and a “new mankind” that, thanks to their own abilities and achievement, can live forever. And clearly this new civilization will not be doing any of this with the Bible or the God of the Bible.

“Ye Shall Not Surely Die” – Satan’s Original Deception

The social movement Russia 2045 was conceived of as a means of promoting the idea of humanity attaining cybernetic immortality. As the founders of the movement, we believe that these technologies in particular will provide the impulse that is so necessary right now to accelerate technological progress. It is cybernetic immortality in particular that will be able to grant people real freedom, including freedom from influence by the environment and the opportunity to explore the far reaches of space. Moreover, it’s possible that this scenario will become a reality sooner than other such possibilities for extending life span all the way to immortality. (source)

The promise of immortality originated in the Bible with God. The Creator of humanity, told his first 2 children, Adam and Eve that they could live in the paradise of Eden with the only threat being eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Satan, who entered the Garden to lure the two first humans into sin, enticed Eve by contradicting God’s Word and offering his version of “immortality”:

Now the serpent was more [subtle] than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. — Genesis 3:1-5.

Satan first had to convince Eve that God’s Word was not true and then he could entice her with his false offer of that “ye shall not surely die.” And beyond that he told her by disobeying God and choosing her own way “ye shall be as gods.”

Humanity, in pride in its own power and ability will attempt to achieve what only God offers. Similar to the Tower of Babel, the Singularity movement, despite its intentions, relies solely on human ability to “reach Heaven.” Notice that all of the ills of society: war, violence And that is at the root of the evolutionary movement, which now goes by the name of transhumanism (which the video references). The term “transhumanism” was coined by Julian Huxley who was the first Director of UNESCO and a member of the English Eugenics Society. Our article on the ‘X-Men: First Class’ movie, detailed the Eugenics movement of the early 20th century.

Eugenics was most notably led by Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin. Eugenics was the study and science of improving humanity through “good breeding” — in other words, promoting the reproduction among racial superiors, while trying to get “inferior races” to stop reproducing through forced sterilization. Thus programs such as forced sterilization and abortions were promoted to increase the quality of race in society. Galton defined eugenics as:“Eugenics is the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, whether physically or mentally.”

By 1935, 27 American States had enacted eugenics laws. But while social programs to control reproduction among the poor and non-White races were effective, Galton wanted Eugenics to eventually become a religion. Julian Huxley voiced the same sentiment with regards to transhumanism. But Galton was so passionate about the spiritual aspect of what he was doing that he named his publication on Eugenics: Lucifer the Light Bearer (the name was later changed to much more scientific sounding The American Journal of Eugenics).

The Lucifer Light-Bearer Journal whose name was later changed to the more acceptable ‘Journal of Eugenics.’

Again, the connection between evolution, rebellion against God and Satan could not be clearer as the main scientific journal on eugenics was named after the Devil himself. Julian Huxley was also linked to satanist Aleister Crowley during his time living in Great Britain.

The Bible states that no race or group of people are superior to any other:

And [God] hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: (Acts 17:26-27).

The present futurist movement it is not so much about race as it is about going beyond being a human:

The timeline to move humanity from physical bodies to “avatars” and thus becoming “neo-human.”

The world is on the verge of global change. The rate of globally significant events, and that of discoveries and crises, is growing exponentially. We are facing the choice: To fall into a new Dark Age — into affliction and degradation – or to find a new model for human development and create not simply a new civilization, but a new mankind. (source)

This falls right in line with the Illuminati’s agenda of “eternal life” and eolution through man’s own knowledge. As the Cutting Edge news site wrote on the New World Order’s goals regarding this:

The number ’33′ is his highest number, and the number representing the spiritual path to perfection and physically immortality! ..Since the reign of Sir Francis Bacon and Queen Elizabeth I (1590 – 1603), Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry have ruled England and Europe with an increasingly iron hand. Once Adam Weishaupt established the Masters of the Illuminati on May 1, 1776, Freemasonry has been gradually moving the entire world into the Kingdom of Antichrist — New World Order. This is the society where the ultimate goal is that from “The Christ” on downward, all the peoples of the world still living after the “Cleansing Cycle” will so spiritually evolve, along the paths described above, that they will attain immortality on earth. The numeric symbol of this high degree of spiritual attainment will be ’33′, and the physical symbol will be the Third Eye that will open up physically between the eyes. This is the ultimate goal; unfortunately, to achieve it, a lot of people are going to have to die. (source)

Morals and Dogma, written by 33rd Degree Freemason and Luciferian Albert Pike, details many of the inner secrets of Freemasonic doctrine. On its cover it has the symbol of the double headed Phoenix:

Manly P. Hall, one of the most celebrated Freemasons of all time wrote of this mythical bird: “The Phoenix, it is said, lives for 500 years, and at its death its body opens and the new-born Phoenix emerges. Because of this symbolism, the Phoenix is generally regarded as representing immortality and resurrection.” (Manly P. Hall, The Secret Destiny of America , 1958, p. 176-77; Emphasis added)

The Illuminati Card Game, a role-playing game created in the early 1990′s there are a number of eerie predictions about future society under the Illuminati that have now actually happened (for example, it’s predictions of terror attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. For more on this game, see here). Interestingly, one of the cards is on Immortality (special thanks to our reader Excalibur for pointing this out):

Once again, the Illuminati card game seems to be prophetic.

Illuminati Predictive Programming

The 2009 Film “Surrogates” features a society living after the Singularity.

With a development with so much potential, it is no surprise that Hollywood has done its part to implant the idea in the mind of the public psyche beforehand. Here is the trailer for the 2009 movie “Surrogates” that seems to embody many of the same ideas of the GF2045 conference:

Humanity: Made In The Image of God

There’s nothing wrong with our natural, God-given bodies.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. – Genesis 1:26-27

Rather than being a product of evolution from germs in a pile of sludge, humans were made as they appear today, based on the image of God. Evolutionary thought seeks to refute the Bible by saying man evolved over millions of years from a tiny germ to a fish, to a monkey and then to humans today. And thus the logical conclusion is that if we have come this far in our evolution, then naturally we should keep working to evolve into something other than human. This is very important to Satan’s agenda.

The GF2045 Singularity Conference video ends with an image of an open eye.

From the days of the Flood, Satan has attempted to corrupt the human gene pool first by leading the first child of Adam and Eve, the wicked Cain, into sin, then by sending his fallen angels to interact with humanity as “gods” and take human women as wives having angelic-human hybrid offspring, the Nephilim. The aim of genetic manipulation was to prevent the birth of the Messiah that was prophesied to defeat Satan by corrupting humanity with the DNA of cursed, satanic beings (for more on this see our article here). The Devil failed to do this but has not quit on trying to alter humanity. Because even though Jesus Christ has already come to Earth and won victory by His death on the cross and resurrection, He was a savior of human beings. So by turning people into something other than human, Satan can try to prevent people in the future from being saved.

Daniel Chapter 2: Prophesied Genetic Manipulation

In Daniel Chapter 2, the prophet Daniel interprets a dream of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. The King could not even recall his dream, but only remembered that it frightened him to death. Daniel prayed to God and was not only given the vision of the dream, he also received the interpretation. The dream centered on a statue whose head was gold, torso was of silver, midsection of bronze, legs of iron and feet of iron and clay, with each element representing successive global empires until the final empire to rule before the end of the world. This is the relevant aspect for this discussion:

And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. 42 And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. 43 And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. — Daniel 2:41-43

The final Kingdom on Earth will involve two different sets of “people” represented as iron and clay. As shown in the X-Men article, iron is repeatedly used in the Bible to symbolize the angelic realm, while clay represents humanity (in fact God made the first man, from clay). So this final Kingdom appears to be a hybrid Kingdom. This is further confirmed in verse 43 where the Bible states: “they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men.” To understand the word “seed” here are other uses of it in Scripture:

• And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew. – Genesis 4:25

• And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir. – Genesis 15:3.

Throughout the book of Genesis, the word “seed” is a genetic reference to DNA of one’s progeny. And thus in the end times, Satan’s Kingdom will attempt one more time to “mingle” or alter humanity.

The Antichrist – Will He Offer Immortality?

The Antichrist, the False Messiah, empowered by Satan who will rule the Earth during the Day of The Lord or Great Tribulation (the final years before the Second Coming of Christ), will secure his power by amazing the world when suffers a moral wound and comes back to life. Is it possible that the Antichrist offers this same ability to society as well? The Bible does not state this specifically but it does speak of a time during the Great Tribulation when those who do not believe in God will not be able to die:

And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. – Revelation 9:1-6

The same evil angels and demons who were punished for fathering the Nephilim hybrids will be released from their prison to torment all people who do not have God’s seal that He puts on His followers on Earth. And men will be in so much agony that will try to kill themselves but will not be able to. Could it be that those who follow the Antichrist are offered “immortality” but then it turns out to be a curse as they are suffering to the point they want to die? (B&E: This is offered as pure speculation and just something for the reader to consider and research).

Jesus Christ – The Way to True Immortality

“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” – Romans 6:23

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? — John 11:25-26

Jesus Christ came to Earth to solve the real crisis facing society today: sin and death. All people are going to die and because we have chosen to sin, we have chosen to violate God’s laws, we stand guilty in His eyes. And the punishment for that is Hell. This is the sad reality for all people. We are not “gods” and never will be. We are not perfect, but are in fact far from perfection. And no matter what type of esoteric ritual or scientific advancement we achieve, we can never evolve and “elevate” into godhood, nor can we escape our sin and guilt. But fortunately, God in His love for all people, lowered Himself and became human. In order to suffer among us, live with us and most importantly, live the perfect moral human life and offer Himself as a sacrifice to take the punishment all people have earned for their sins. God made things right for us – so that we could have true immortality.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. – John 3:16.

There is eternal life. There is true immortality. And it comes through faith in Jesus Christ. The new believer first receives a born-again spirit and eventually, once the human body (which still has sinful lusts in it) perishes, a new Heavenly body, that will never die. Rather than trying to achieve eternal life aside from God and in rebellion against Him, the Lord welcomes us to simply believe in Him and receive immortality as a gift. The fear of death is natural. And it should worry humanity. But the fate of our souls is a much greater worry. Thanks to God, the ultimate solution already exists.

Mass Media Promoting Transhumanism: the “Mind-Blowing Benefits of Merging Human Brains and Computers”

*Source: Vigilant Citizen

Ray Kurzweil in Time Magazine

We’ve seen in previous articles (notably in The Transhumanist and Police State Agenda in Pop Music) that the concept of transhumanism, which can be defined as the merging of humans and robots, is being abundantly promoted in music videos, movies and video games. On top of this “indirect” kind of promotion, transhumanism is being sold through more direct channels such as documentaries, television features and news reports. The main face of the movement is the American inventor Ray Kurzweil who has recently been on a massive PR campaign to promote what he calls “Singularity” (a term that is probably less threatening than “transhumanism”).

Kurzweil is however not a lone nut with a crazy futuristic dream. He works in collaboration with the world’s most powerful people in business and politics. For example, in February 2009, Kurzweil collaborated with Google and the NASA Ames Research Center, to create the Singularity University training center for corporate executives and government officials. The University’s self-described mission is to “assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges”. It is safe to say that transhumanism is not only the goal of one man but of the entire global elite. For this reason, the merging of humans and robots is not only promoted as something “cool” and positive in mass media, it is announced, despite its potential pitfalls, as an inevitability.

Here’s an article from the Daily Mail about Singularity. It bares the typical “overwhelmingly-positive-but-with-a-hint-of-obligatory-criticism-to-appear-objective” tone most mainstream news sources use when covering the issue.

Hitler would have loved The Singularity: Mind-blowing benefits of merging human brains and computers

Of all the tall tales in the science-fiction TV series Star Trek, what impressed me most when I was a little boy was the Vulcan mind meld.

Laying his hands on the head of a human (or, in one of the films, a humpback whale), Mr Spock could, for a moment, dissolve the distance between two living things.

Each experienced everything the other felt, thought, knew and saw.

Now it seems scientists are about to make the Vulcan mind meld a reality – and go far beyond it.

Ten years ago, the US National Science Foundation predicted ‘network-enhanced telepathy’ – sending thoughts over the internet – would be practical by the 2020s.

Man and machine: Computers could soon be hardwired into the human brain and unlock amazing powers

And thanks to neuroscientists at the University of California, we seem to be on schedule.

Last September, they asked volunteers to watch Hollywood film trailers and then reconstructed the clips by scanning their subjects’ brain activity.

‘We’re opening a window into the movies in our minds,’ Professor Jack Gallant announced.

Last week, the scientists boldly went further still. They charted the electrical activity in the brains of volunteers who were listening to human speech and then they fed the results into computers which translated the signals back into language.

The technique remains crude, and has so far made out only five distinct words, but humanity has crossed a threshold.

We can now read people’s minds. On Star Trek, the Vulcan mind meld had medical benefits, curing a nasty imaginary infection called Pa’nar syndrome.

Science fact?: Harnessing the power of the mind was a favourite of science fiction, including Star Trek's Vulcan mind meld

But the new breakthroughs promise to deliver much greater – and real – benefits.

No longer need strokes and neurodegenerative diseases rob people of speech because we can turn their brainwaves directly into words.

But this is only the beginning. Neuroscientists are going to make the mind meld look like child’s play. Mankind is merging with its machines.

The process began centuries ago with simple devices such as eyeglasses and ear trumpets that could dramatically improve human lives.

Then came better machines, such as hearing aids; and then machines that could save lives, including pacemakers and dialysis machines.

By the second decade of the 21st Century, we have become used to organs grown in laboratories, genetic surgery and designer babies.

In 2002, medical researchers used enzymes and DNA to build the first molecular computers, and in 2004 improved versions were being injected into people’s veins to fight cancer.

By 2020 we may be able to put even cleverer nanocomputers into our brains to speed up synaptic links, give ourselves perfect memory and perhaps cure dementia.

But inserting technology into human brains is not the only thing going on. Some scientists also want to insert human brains into technology.

Since the Sixties, computer chips have been doubling their speed and halving their cost every 18 months or so.

If the trend continues, the inventor and predictor Ray Kurzweil has pointed out that by 2029 we will have computers powerful enough to run programs reproducing the 10,000 trillion electrical signals that flash around your skull every second.

They will also have enough memory to store the ten trillion recollections that make you who you are.

Dangerous technology: The huge potential unlocked by the technology raises frightening prospects if it were to be used by evil dictators like Adolf Hitler

And they will also be powerful enough to scan, neuron by neuron, every contour and wrinkle of your brain.

What this means is that if the trends of the past 50 years continue, in 17 years’ time we will be able to upload an electronic replica of your mind on to a machine.

There will be two of you – one a flesh-and-blood animal, the other inside a computer’s circuits.

And if the trends hold fast beyond that, Kurzweil adds, by 2045 we will have a computer that is powerful enough to host every one of the eight billion minds on Earth.

Carbon and silicon-based intelligence will merge to form a single global consciousness.

Kurzweil calls this ‘The Singularity’, a moment when ‘the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep . . . that technology appears to be expanding at infinite speed’.

At that point, we will have left the Vulcan mind meld far behind. But even this may not be the end of the story.

Much of the research behind last week’s breakthrough in brain science was funded not by universities but by DARPA, the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency.

It was DARPA that brought us the internet (then called the Arpanet) in the Seventies, and DARPA’s Brain Interface Project was a pioneer in molecular computing.

More recently, DARPA’s Silent Talk programme has been exploring mind-reading technology with devices that can pick up the electrical signals inside soldiers’ brains and send them over the internet.

With these implants, entire armies will be able to talk without radios. Orders will leap instantly into soldiers’ heads and commanders’ wishes will become the wishes of their men. Hitler would have loved it.

Thing of the past: Advances in technology could revolutionise the way armies communicate

Cyborg-soldier: The defence industry could soon try implanting computer technology into the brain of soldiers

Some of the clearest thinking about the new technologies has been done in the world’s departments of defence, and the conclusions the soldiers draw are alarming.

For example, US Army Colonel Thomas Adams thinks that military technology is already moving beyond what he calls ‘human space’, as robotic weapons become ‘too fast, too small, too numerous, and . . . create an environment too complex for humans to direct’.

Technology, Col Adams suspects, is ‘rapidly taking us to a place where we may not want to go, but probably are unable to avoid’.

As goes war, so, perhaps, goes everything else. The merging of mankind and its machines that Kurzweil predicts for the mid-21st Century may, in fact, turn out just to be a lay-by on the way to a very different destination.

Later in the century, what we condescendingly call ‘artificial’ intelligence might replace us humans just as thoroughly as we humans once replaced all our evolutionary ancestors.

All this will come to pass . . .  unless, of course, it doesn’t. Maybe the trends Kurzweil and Col Adams identify will slow down, or even stall altogether.

And maybe the critics who mockingly call the Singularity ‘the Rapture for Nerds’ will be proved right.

But on the other hand, maybe the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Richard Smalley is closer to the truth when he points out: ‘When a scientist says something is possible, they’re probably underestimating how long it will take.

But if they say it’s impossible, they’re probably wrong.’

The University of California’s neuroscientists have taken us one more step towards a final frontier far beyond anything dreamed of in Star Trek.

l Ian Morris is the author of Why The West Rules – For Now, published by Profile Books.