The future of races:

[Tha_Pig]

Science fiction always tries to extrapolate and guess what the future will be. I wonder how human races will evolve in the future.
Just a few years ago most people only dated within their own race. Today I see more and more interracial couples around. I'm sure human races as we know will change in the future.


I guess is a result of advances of communication and transportation. In the past, most people rarely ventured far from their own tribe, group or community. Today technology allows us to interact with others across the globe and everyone becomes familiar with people of all races and colors, slowly accepting similarities and bypassing differences. New generations have grown watching movies where heroes and role models come in any possible color. People all over the world enjoys of music genres that used to be exclusive of a particular ethnic group.


So I guess (unless tomorrow the internet crashes forever) mankind’s cultures and languages will slowly intermix and blend into a global one.

My question is, would this also happen at a physical level? Would races slowly intermix until we have one homogenous group of human “mutts”? (note that all of us with the possible exception of Australian Aborigines are already mutts, "pure races" don't exist)


Here are the possibilities I have thought could occur in the next centuries. Feel free to ad your own predictions.


1-Most people continue to feel attracted on others with similar looks, so races will remain mostly the same as today.

2-People will increasingly intermix, resulting in one race that combine traits of all today’s races.

3-Races in multicultural countries and zones will mix, but those in places with large homogenous populations (like China and India) will mostly remain unchanged because of the low mathematical chances of people finding different race spouse.

4-Gene technology would allow people to willingly change their bodies into any shape and color possible, resulting on the disappearance of “natural races” and the advent of a world where everyone can design his own custom-made race-of-one choosing from an infinite selection of skin, eye and hair color.

What do you think?

(Note: I would like to leave racism, and the social and political consequences of racial intolerance out of this discussion. I want to talk about different kinds of people from the pure biological and aesthetical point of view)

[BIos_Reaper]

Your theoretical ideas about how humanity might change in the future piqued my interest greatly. Gene-engineering is something I would openly support myself, that way I could eliminate this baldness I inherited from my fathers side of the family... But advanced communication has proven to eliminate differences and also people are more open when they aren't speaking face-to-face it would seem, I have noticed this with myself as before the internet I was an increasingly closed-off personality.

The intermingling of races is something of note as well, seeing as how, at some point, in order to progress as a species and as a civilization, there will come a time where a global community must emerge, and flags and nationalities and boarders must fade away. People might argue against this, but it is fact that nothing remains unchanged by time except time itself, or rather, peoples perception of the metaphysical thing that is time, that changes, but not the essence of time itself, it's passage.

I don't imagine humans will attempt to remain "pure", so to speak. Americans most have native american blood in them now, Icelanders come from all over, Japan is a bit racist but that will fade away with time, or it will go isolationist on us again. Either way, I don't think "races" as a term will continue to exist for much longer, though they might, who am I to tell? I'm no expert on human sillyness :Þ