Any claims about our "self-directed evolution" seem to either: define it so loosely as to include purely social conventions or uses of technology (we keep our information in the twitterspheres!, or to assume some magic breakthrough in bioengineering that overnight allows us to start jailbreaking our genome.
The sad, sorry fact of the matter is that in the time it takes to accomplish that, we could blow ourselves up.
Or, we could blow enough of ourselves up to render that future unachievable. The nations that are capable of carrying out this research, and supporting the societies that can support this sort of thing logistically and culturally, are very precarious in their positioning. As a thought exercise, consider how far food on your table had to travel, how many things had to work correctly for that to happen, and how fucked you are if they don't (and how tricky it is to find a replacement, and how many other people would be doing the same).
It would not be unreasonable to believe that a collapse of civilization could set back your scheme several hundred years--for example, consider how difficult it would be to get back to a point where you could use existing machines, much less make new ones. A semiconductor foundry--required for computers, in turn required for any meaningful engineering these days--would be practically unattainable in dire times, even if you find people alive who still knew how to run it!
Or, even more likely, nothing goes wrong, and simple social forces render stagnation even with advanced bioengineering. Read "The Calorie Man" by Paolo Bacigalupi for a recent take on this. There is no reason to expect that we're going to fare any better.
So, no, this isn't an unreasonable pessimism on the rest of our parts.
Any claims about our "self-directed evolution" seem to either: define it so loosely as to include purely social conventions or uses of technology (we keep our information in the twitterspheres!, or to assume some magic breakthrough in bioengineering that overnight allows us to start jailbreaking our genome.
The sad, sorry fact of the matter is that in the time it takes to accomplish that, we could blow ourselves up.
Or, we could blow enough of ourselves up to render that future unachievable. The nations that are capable of carrying out this research, and supporting the societies that can support this sort of thing logistically and culturally, are very precarious in their positioning. As a thought exercise, consider how far food on your table had to travel, how many things had to work correctly for that to happen, and how fucked you are if they don't (and how tricky it is to find a replacement, and how many other people would be doing the same).
It would not be unreasonable to believe that a collapse of civilization could set back your scheme several hundred years--for example, consider how difficult it would be to get back to a point where you could use existing machines, much less make new ones. A semiconductor foundry--required for computers, in turn required for any meaningful engineering these days--would be practically unattainable in dire times, even if you find people alive who still knew how to run it!
Or, even more likely, nothing goes wrong, and simple social forces render stagnation even with advanced bioengineering. Read "The Calorie Man" by Paolo Bacigalupi for a recent take on this. There is no reason to expect that we're going to fare any better.
So, no, this isn't an unreasonable pessimism on the rest of our parts.