All language subtitles for Through the Wormhole s03e02 Is There A Superior Race.eng

It is an idea

that has spawned hatred,
war, and genocide.

It is one of
the most polarizing questions

we could ever ask.

Do different races
not just look different?

Are they fundamentally
different?

Will a future race
of advanced humans look back

and see all of us
as a vastly inferior breed?

Could there be a superior race?

Space, time, life itself.

The secrets of the cosmos
lie through the wormhole.

== sync, corrected by elderman ==

Speak of racial differences,

and you're bound
to inflame passions.

Bosnian and Serb.

Japanese and Korean.

Black and White.

The belief
that one group's germ line

is superior to another's

has haunted history
for thousands of years.

But now we're in the age
of DNA technology.

We can track down
minute differences

in these chemical strands

and perhaps discover
whether they make Africans

not just look different
from Indians,

but also think differently.

Science has long been misused
to try and prop up bigotry,

but daring to ask
how we might be different

is important.

Because the answers
could tell us

where the entire human species
is headed.

I grew up in an all-black
neighborhood in Mississippi.

I never thought of myself
as better or worse than anyone.

But all around town,

there were signs
that other people did.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
had a dream of racial equality.

And in the last 50 years,

we've taken some steps

toward the colorblind world
he imagined.

But scientists are still trying
to understand what race means,

or if it has any
scientific meaning at all.

Is race only skin deep?

Or is there something internal,
invisible,

that sets the races apart?

Evolutionary biologist
Andy Brower

thinks we can understand
what the word "race" means

by looking at another species,

one he feels
he was born to study.

Both my parents worked on
butterflies for their PhDs

back in the '50s.

So I just became fascinated
by that at 5 years old,

and I've had a little
butterfly collection as a kid.

Definitely in my DNA,
right from the start.

Andy studies Heliconius butterflies.

He has followed
their fluttering wings

all over the Western Hemisphere.

As much as he is enchanted
by their elaborate wing markings,

he knows that their beauty
is only superficial.

They're poisonous butterflies,

and they have
mimetic wing patterns

so that they are advertising
the fact that they taste bad

to potential predators,
birds, usually.

So that the more butterflies
exhibit a common color pattern,

the easier it is for the birds
to recognize that,

"Okay, there's one of those
red and yellow things.

They taste bad.
I'm leaving those alone."

But Heliconius butterflies

do not look the same everywhere.

A group in one region
of South America

has completely different
wing patterns

from another group
that lives just across a river

or another on the other side
of a mountain.

This is a box of butterflies
that are all the same species.

In French Guiana,
a red band is on the fore wing

and the hind wing
is basically black.

And then, further south,

you have red rays
and the yellow areas.

These two rows
in the middle here,

the colors are different.

The wing pattern differences

are probably driven by
which colors and patterns

stand out most clearly
to the local bird population.

But these
different-looking varieties --

you could call them races.

Appear to have
identical inner biologies.

They smell the same,

they recognize each other
as being potential mates.

And so they produce
hybrid offspring.

Hybrid offspring
are perfectly fine.

There, there viable and healthy.

They can, their fertile, so they
can lay their own eggs.

These butterflies
all have the same life-span

and the same adaptive poison
to ward off predators.

The differences appear
to be only skin deep.

It is the same for humans.

Race poses no biological
barriers to mating,

and our life-spans
are all very similar,

no matter what
our ethnic background.

Are people,
like Heliconius butterflies,

all the same beneath
our different-colored skins?

In the year 2000,

when President Clinton
announced the completion

of the Human Genome Project,

the answer appeared to be yes.

And in genetic terms,

all human beings,
regardless of race,

are more than 99.9% the same.

Another decade of genetic study

has lowered that number somewhat
to 99.5%.

No matter who you are
or where you come from,

a mere 0.5% of your genetic code
is unique to you.

What kinds of racial differences
could like in that 0.5%?

Perhaps plenty.

Human and chimpanzee genomes
only differ by about 3%.

That difference is enough

to make our brains
radically bigger and smarter.

John Hawks is
a leading paleoanthropologist

at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison.

He studies
the bones of ancient humans,

tracking how we have changed

since our evolutionary line
split off

from that of the chimp's
about 6 million years ago.

When we look at a real brief
thumbnail of our evolution,

we started out as apes

and became
upright-walking people

and then evolved
stone-tool manufacture

and bigger brains.

And those are big events
that took millions of years.

But most of my work
in the last few years

has been focused on the very
recent part of our evolution --

our time since we left Africa

and evolved into
the people we are today.

Scientists now agree

the development
of separate races

began around 50,000 years ago,

when modern humans
migrated out of Africa.

There dark-skinned pigmentation
was and remains

a protective force
against ultraviolet rays.

But as humans
moved further north,

dark skin
blocked too much sunlight

and reduced the natural
production of vitamin D

in our deep skin layers.

Lighter-skinned people fared
better in Europe and China.

For those who migrated

to South America
and Southern India,

darker skin once again
protected them from the sun.

But John's research is showing

that these
now-isolated ethnicities

continued to evolve
over the ensuing millennia

and that distinctions
between racial groups

do go deeper than our skin.

When I study
archaeological samples

of skulls that have come
out of the ground

from 5,000 years ago,
from 10,000 years ago,

we can see many of the changes
unfolding in those samples

as we go forward in time.

Brain size changed.

Teeth changed.

And then there are
some kinds of changes

that are distinct
to different regions.

So, there are characteristics

that we can point at
in the skull

that now characterize
Asians versus Europeans.

John thinks racial differences

run much deeper than our bones.

He believes almost every aspect
of our biology changed

as humans migrated
around the world,

even the way our brains work.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What separates
one race from another?

In the 50,000 years

since small groups of people
began migrating out of Africa,

we've developed plenty
of physical differences.

But what invisible difference
might there be?

Just how far apart
has our DNA drifted?

Paleoanthropologist John Hawks

is tracking changes in our genes
over the past millennia.

And he's discovered
something unsettling.

Our DNA loves to gamble.

So, when we look at the way
that DNA changes,

it's sort of like our genes
are addicted to gambling.

It's got four possible base
pairs -- A, C, G, and T.

And here we've got, well,
four colors of chips.

This is like a DNA sequence,

except your DNA
would be enormously longer.

The way that evolution works
on these gene sequences...

As this gene sequence
is reproducing itself,

one base pair
may get swapped out

and a different one
put in its place.

As we lay out many individuals'
DNA next to each other,

those individuals are gonna be
different from each other

at random places.

When a mutation happens,

that can cause
an enormous problem.

Or it could be
an enormous advantage.

Between every generation,

DNA makes about 60 of these
random changes to its sequence.

Sometimes, it hits the jackpot.

Sometimes, it goes bust.

Most of the time, these
mutations do nothing at all.

But all the changes
that don't kill us

are handed down
to the next generation,

living on
like molecular fossils.

And these fossils
give John a way to calculate

how old any particular gene is.

The longer it has been around,

the more random mutations
would have collected around it.

The part that's functionally
important stays the same,

but as you go farther
and farther away from that part,

it's more likely to have

swapped up
with another sequence.

It's the length of that part
that hasn't been swapped

that gives us an idea

of how long it's been
around in the population.

Because the longer
the gene has been around,

the more likely it is that
we'll have these random changes.

When John and his colleagues

used this gene-dating technique

in populations native
to Europe, Asia, and Africa,

they were in for a big surprise.

Many genes were much
younger than they'd expected.

What we discovered
was that lots of them

showed evidence
of really fast adaptive changes.

We're talking about
2,000 places

that, in one part
of the world or another,

have undergone
really recent adaptation.

We were pretty surprised to find
that the number was so large.

John had expected to find

that just a fraction
of a percent of human genes

would show signs
of recent mutation.

But instead, he discovered
that about 7% of our genes

have mutated to new forms

in the last 10,000
to 20,000 years.

Some of these genes are only
found in certain racial groups.

These mutations are not
just related to skin color

and physical appearance.

The changes go far deeper.

Probably
the most obvious examples

are the examples where
there's a disease that's new

that some people have developed
resistance strategies to.

So, malaria, for example,

is a disease that has been
around for about 5,000 years

as a human pathogen.

Over that time, populations
in South Asia, in Africa,

have developed new adaptations
to this particular disease.

But John suspects
there is another force

driving these genetic changes --

our civilization.

It is an idea
that puts him at odds

with most evolutionary
scientists,

including the father
of them all --

Charles Darwin.

Darwin talked about
the hostile forces of nature,

the sun beating down on us,
the cold of the winter,

and these would change us,

because we had to adapt
to those environments.

And in human evolution,
we could invent things.

We could change our behavior
and our culture to insulate us,

to buffer us from those things.

And so the idea was that humans
didn't have to change biology

in order to adapt to new places.

Charles Darwin's
argument was

that farming, houses, clothes,

should stop our genes
from changing and evolving,

because we began protecting
ourselves from our environments.

But John's research shows

that the different ways
groups of humans chose to live

in different parts of the world

could actually
have driven genetic changes.

Probably the best example

of how culture has influenced
our evolution is milk drinking.

Now, it's not normal
for adult mammals

to have access to milk.

If you think about a bull
trying to get milk

up from underneath
the cow's udder...

...it just doesn't work
in nature.

There have been many populations

that have adopted dairy animals
of different kinds.

Five of them have developed
new mutations

that give them, as adults,

the ability to digest
the sugar in this milk.

In northern Europe, this is
a really common mutation.

But if you go to come parts
of the world, like China,

it's very rare for people
to be able to drink milk.

But in fact, it's the ability
to digest this milk,

the lactase persistence,
as we call it,

which is the weird,
mutant version of this.

And it's all happened
in populations

because they've changed
their culture.

Just as the climates

where different
ethnic groups lived varied,

so did the rules and habits
of their societies.

And their DNA
was forced to adapt.

If you're a human,

you have to survive and
deal with other people every day

in order to reproduce.

And that makes culture
your environment.

Genetic adaptations

may even have altered
the way our brains work.

John and his colleagues

have discovered
around 100 mutations

in genes controlling
brain chemistry

that have taken place

since humanity migrated
from Africa.

One of them,
a genetic variant called DRD4,

may even have triggered that
migration in the first place.

It's linked to ADHD,

because when we study patients
who have ADHD,

they have a greater chance
of having this gene.

One possible reason is

that it made people
more likely to move.

The DRD4 mutation
is most commonly found

in populations that live
outside of Africa.

It appeared
around 50,000 years ago.

It has been called
"the migration gene,"

because traits
like rapidly shifting focus

and quick movements

could have been very useful when
our ancestors were on the move.

Even though short attention
now appears less useful

in our modern,
sedentary society.

DRD4 is the best example
of a gene

that is clearly
recently selected

and has behavioral impacts.

It affects the brain
in some way.

But there are others.

And we don't know what they do,

but we can say that
they're expressed in the brain,

they're related to our behavior
in some way, potentially.

But we don't know
what those changes are for.

The notion that genetic
changes affecting the brain

might actually underpin

the spread of humanity
across the globe

leads to an unsettling question.

Might some races have evolved

to become more intelligent
than others?

It is a highly divisive notion,

but some scientists
are probing the issue,

and their conclusions
have triggered outrage.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Race.

It is a word
that stirs powerful emotions.

Some scientists think

the genetic differences
between us are so small

that the word "race"
doesn't even make sense.

But understanding how
evolution has shaped the races

and continues to do so

is of great
scientific importance.

The trait that sets humans apart
from all other species

is our incredibly complex brain.

But could the brains
of different races be different?

Could they have
different intelligences?

Renowned psychologist
Stanley Coren

has spent years studying
intelligence differences --

not among different races
of people,

but in different breeds of dogs.

Dogs are a marvel
of genetic engineering,

simply because
we've kept the breeds separate.

You know, my grandparents were
Latvia, Lithuania, Russia,

but I take a golden retriever,

and his granddaddy was
a purebred golden retriever,

and his great-granddaddy was,
and so on and so forth.

So, there's less noise
in the genome.

For at least 14,000 years,

humans have systematically
shaped the evolution of dogs,

changing them to fit our needs.

Stanley has measured
the intelligence

of more than 100 breeds.

So, we can get dogs which,
because of their breeding,

differ in terms
of their intelligence.

If you take a young child
below 18 months of age

and you put a towel
over his head,

he thinks
that the world has gone away,

and he sits there.

So, if Montana has a mental
ability

beyond an 18-month-old human,

Montana should throw
the towel off of his head

very quickly.

Are you ready, Montana? Go.

Stanley's test results
have convinced him

that there are big differences
in canine intelligence

from breed to breed.

Where has the world gone?

Okay, what a good dog.

And then I've got a beagle.

And his job is to amuse
my grandchildren.

As dog intelligence goes,

beagles are seven
from the bottom.

So, this bench
that I'm sitting on right now

is more trainable than a beagle.

The top dogs
in terms of intelligence

are the Border Collie,
followed by the poodle.

Some people say, "the poodle?
That's a froufrou dog."

No, the poodle is
a retriever, okay?

And he didn't ask
for that silly haircut.

If some breeds of dogs
are smarter than others,

why could that not be true

for the animals
at the other end of the leash?

University of Delaware
sociologist Linda Gottfredson

has been analyzing
I.Q. test scores

for the past two decades.

She claims they reveal
a subtle but measurable link

between intelligence,
genetics, and race.

For very complex traits
like intelligence,

many genes have small effect,

may push a person this way
or that.

And they're really,
really hard to find.

Individual I.Q.s

are as diverse as the grains
of sand on a beach.

But Linda believes there are
patterns in this noise,

patterns that depend on
our genes.

As any parent knows,

brothers and sisters
look different.

They often have
different personalities,

and they often have different
levels of intelligence.

The average difference
between siblings

is 12 I.Q. points.

If you compare to random people
walking on the beach,

you might ask, "Well,
how different are those people?"

On the average, strangers differ
by 17 I.Q. points.

So, you see that biological
brothers and sisters

are 2/3 as different
on the average

as random strangers
on the street.

The genes of strangers vary
more than those of siblings,

and Linda argues this is
why their I.Q.s vary more.

Her interpretation of this data

has led her
to a controversial notion,

that the genetic differences
between races

might lead to differences

in the average intelligence
of those races.

I guess there would be

two rules
about human diversity.

One is that
there's lots of variation

within all groups,

but there's also
a gradation between the groups

so that there are recurring

and sometimes large
average differences

between racial ethnic groups.

I.Q. scores
in any group of people

are spread across a bell curve

ranging from a score
of about 70 to about 130.

There are outliers
on either end,

but most people are clustered
around an average.

There are differences
between racial ethnic groups

on the average in I.Q.

The average white I.Q.
is arbitrarily set at 100.

Blacks in the United States and
in many other western countries

average 85.

Hispanics --
the average would be about 80.

Native Americans
around that level.

And then Japanese
and Chinese Americans

above the white average.

And then Ashkenazi Jews
probably around 110, 115.

Linda's research has
made her a scientific outcast.

She's even been called a racist,
a claim she denies.

Her critics argue
that I.Q. tests results

are heavily skewed
by socioeconomic factors.

Childhood nutrition
and access to healthcare

can vary widely between
different racial groups.

If you live
in a good neighborhood

with well-funded schools,

you are more likely
to be accustomed

to the academic setting
of an I.Q. test.

And if you live
in those neighborhoods,

you are more likely to be
Asian or White.

There are also concerns

over whether the test questions
have a cultural bias,

a bias reflected by the fact

that it's the white I.Q. average
that's set to 100.

Is one race
smarter than another?

Depends on what you mean
by smart.

Could I.Q. scores predict

the greatness
of an artist like Picasso

or of a political leader
like Gandhi?

I.Q. is a narrow obsession.

No two people think
the same way,

regardless of their race.

So, here's a new question.

If the brains of the races
are similar now,

will that always be true?

We are still evolving.

Could our brains
one day become as different

as those of Border Collies
and beagles?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Evolution has given human beings
one incredible asset --

the remarkable network
of nerve cells

buzzing around inside our heads.

The growth of these three pounds
of soft tissue

catapulted human intelligence

to a level far above
the other species.

How much further can it grow?

Will we eventually evolve
into a superior race

of super-intelligent humans?

Neuroscience Professor
Simon Laughlin

from the University of Cambridge
studies brain power.

He tests the limits

of what brains
and their nerve cells can do,

all the while watching
how much fuel they guzzle.

So, I'm interested in
what the physical limits

to the performance of brains are

and in what determines
the processing power of brains.

Simon has developed
a unique way to see

just how much information
living brains are processing

while simultaneously
keeping track

of how much energy
they are using.

His window into the human brain

is through the bulbous eyes
of flies.

They're a simpler system,

so it's like looking at
a pocket calculator

before you work up to
actually trying to understand

a really big computer.

The basic principles by which
the fly's brain operates

is the same as ours,

but they're much easier
to work with,

and we have a much more complete
understanding of what they do.

Simon's ability to measure
the performance of fly brains

is all thanks to this insect's
most bothersome characteristic.

Anybody who's tried to swat
a fly knows

that they're very good
at detecting movement.

And to do that,
they have to be able to respond

to very rapid
and fast changes in light.

In fact, detecting light

is most of what
a fly's brain does.

Simon's lab is stocked
with two species --

the blowfly,
with large, bulging eyes,

and the diminutive fruit fly,
whose eyes are much smaller.

He and his team fit
microelectrodes

into the fly's nerve cells,

then they expose them
to a flickering light

to record
their processing power.

So, the cell responds
to the light

by changing
its membrane potential.

And then we can process
those signals

to work out how much information
they contain.

Simon discovered
that while the fruit fly

is able to see
some of the changes in light,

the blowfly picks up on
even the most minute flicker.

The blowfly's bulbous eyeballs

spew out a huge quantity
of neural data,

enough to fill up
a one-gigabyte memory stick

every minute.

But there's a downside
for the blowfly.

So, the blowfly picks up

about five times as many bits
per second as the fruit fly,

but because it has
a much higher performance,

those bits of information,

each bit costs it
about 10 times more energy.

Information
is very expensive for a fly.

So, we have a sports car
that has a very high top speed.

It has a very high performance.

But also, it has
a very heavy fuel consumption.

It uses a lot of energy.

So, as we're idling along
now in Cambridge,

we're not using
any of our performance at all.

This little car here
has a lot lower performance

than this sports car,

but it's much more economical.

It uses much less energy
to go a given distance.

So, you pay a high price
for high performance,

just like neurons.

The powerhouse brain
of a human being

is even less fuel efficient
than that of the blowfly.

And this is why Simon
is almost certain

that the human brain
has reached its limit.

So, if the blowfly
is this sports car,

then the human brain, with it's
vastly superior performance,

is like a space rocket.

Huge amounts of energy being
used to process information.

The human brain
is only 2% of our body mass,

but it consumes 20% of
our oxygen when we are at rest.

The smarter we get,
the higher the energy cost.

If we wanted to have
a brain that was 10% better,

we might have to have one
that was actually 20% bigger.

Then it would make increasingly
large demands on the body.

If the human brain got bigger,

it would be more difficult
to give birth to children.

And if you wanted
to make it much bigger,

when the child was born,

the brain would have to be less
well-developed than it is now.

So, infancy and childhood
would last longer.

Our brain has evolved
to strike some sort of balance

between the cost of processing
the information,

which is very high,

and the amount of information
we actually need to process.

But there may still be a way
for us to become smarter.

If we take matters
into our own hands,

we may build
a superior human race.

And only some of us
will be part of it.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

All of modern humanity

can trace its ancestry back
to a small group of people

living in East Africa
about 50,000 years ago.

We all looked very similar
back then.

Over the millennia,

we've adapted
to our local climates

and become the rainbow of people
we are today.

But evolution hasn't stopped.

Where are we headed?

Could a future race
of superior humans...

Look like this?

Peter Ward is a paleontologist

at the University of Washington
in Seattle.

He finds evolution
everywhere he looks,

even inside a fish market.

Well, we got two really standard
wonderful food fish

in the Northwest.

We've got this nice big halibut
and these beautiful salmon.

If we look at the fossil record,
actually,

these are way more primitive.

These guys were here first
and, in fact,

far more fish look like this --
that beautiful fusiform shape --

than this rather ugly thing.

It's been squished down
and flattened.

It's like taking a salmon,
rolling it on its side,

bringing an eye over,

and living forever with
that totally rotated shape.

This guy lives on the bottom,

and this is a superb adaptation
for where it lives.

From the salmon,
evolution created the halibut.

What, Peter wonders,
might it do to humans?

It is tempting to believe
that nature has a master plan

to evolve us into fitter,
smarter, more attractive beings.

But nature
doesn't work that way.

Our best traits
and our worst traits

are chosen for us
quite randomly.

Albert Einstein
most famously said,

"God does not play dice
with the universe."

Well, maybe he was right
in physics,

but in evolution, there's
a whole lot of dice playing.

Here's my
evolutionary dice -- die.

This is A, T, G, and C --
the genetic code.

When they combine together,

they tell an organism
what traits it's gonna have.

And much of that combination

comes together
in random fashion.

So if I throw
this evolutionary die,

I'm gonna be stuck with
this particular gene,

and that gene might take me
up any one of these four roads.

Three of those roads might kill
you almost instantly.

One of them might be towards
a really superior organism.

If Peter wants to
make his way across town

to a high-end restaurant

using the rules
of DNA navigation,

he will have to rely on
the random roll of a die.

One turn could get him closer.

The next could turn him back
toward where he started.

There's no telling
when or if he will ever make it.

Evolution is a random process

that usually leads
to genetic dead ends.

Ugh!

But what if Peter
could escape the randomness

of natural selection?

Up until we became
a technical species,

we were,
like every other species,

at mercy to the randomness

and to, really,
the nastiness of evolution.

The next stage
of human evolution

is going to be we humans

tinkering
right into the genome itself.

Not only can we change people
in their lifetime,

but we'll be able
to change their very DNA

so that they and their changes

get passed on
to the next generation.

With this type
of directed evolution,

Peter does not have to
blindly depend on chance

to get him where he wants to go.

Waterfront Seafood Grill.

Genetic technology

could take you on a direct route
from "A" to "B",

as long as you can pay
for the ride.

Peter believes that once humans

start pursuing
unnatural selection,

we will diverge
into two separate races --

those who are left rolling
the evolutionary dice

and those who can afford
to design their own genome.

All right.
Thank you much.

Halibut. Thanks.

I could see a point
where once the differences

we engineer into ourselves

are so different
from what you find

in the wild, stock humans

versus the genetically
engineered humans,

there will be a divergence.

If you had children that bred

with other children
with these enhancements,

it keeps going.

You're gonna see
a social drifting apart.

And speciation happens

when gene pools separate --
populations separate.

It is a grim vision
of the future --

a global gated community

of super-rich,
long-lived human 2.0's

hogging all the resources...

And a completely separate
species of people

who can barely survive.

But another technological course

is driving us
in a different direction.

The next big leap toward
creating a superior human race

may come from us putting aside
our differences

and putting our heads together.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Earth is already
a crowded place.

And by the end of this century,

the human population
will probably reach 11 billion.

We'll be packed in
as tightly as bees in a hive.

That prospect
has inspired some scientists

to envision
a new evolution of mankind.

Just as insect colonies
share the workload,

perhaps we can learn to harness
the power of multiple brains

and create a vastly superior
global hive mind.

"Sandy" Pentland is the head
of the Human Dynamics Lab

at M.I.T.

He's a pioneer
of a new field of research --

computational social science.

Sandy believes humanity

is about to become
a smarter, superior species --

not because
we're going to evolve

at the individual level,

but through a transformation
in the way we work together.

So, human organizations

are a little bit like
an information machine.

The gears
not only have to fit together,

but they have to be synchronized

so that they work together
rather than against each other.

So, this desire to synchronize

is something that's very ancient
in our species,

and you see it in dance
and also in music,

like here
with the M.I.T. Logarhythms,

where bass comes in.

Bass:
we

And the baritone comes in.

Baritones:
are
Bass:
we

And the tenor.

Tenors:
we are
Baritones:
are Bass:
we

and then they meld together
into a whole.

Music like this
is an example of something

that's much bigger
than just the individuals.

Humans are naturally
social creatures.

We developed language
and culture

to trade knowledge
and share experiences.

Sandy believes
that we are about to supercharge

the degree
to which we share knowledge,

thanks to a quantum leap
in communication technology.

One of the most profound changes
has happened in the last decade.

And something
that's not well appreciated

is the fact that we all carry
around phones,

and these are getting smarter
and smarter.

Take traffic, for example.

You can now look on your phone
or on your car dashboard

and see how dense the traffic is
and get real-time updates.

Technology
that lets us share pictures,

share stories
in a way we never could

and just turns the clock
right up more.

That's all driven
by those phones

that people are carrying around.

So, we're being able to make

this sort of
unified intelligence.

Handheld smart devices

are getting us to work and think
together like never before.

They are merging humanity

into a single
interconnected mind

that spans the globe,

capable of feats no single brain
could achieve.

In 2009,

the Defense Advanced
Research Project Agency

set a challenge designed
specifically for hive minds.

It placed 10 red balloons,

each adorned
with a special certificate,

at secret locations
across the U.S.

It offered a $40,000 prize

to the team that discovered
the GPS coordinates

of all 10 balloons the fastest.

Thousands of teams
took up the challenge.

Sandy's plan was to engage

a swarm of cell-toting,
social-media-connected minds.

And what we did
is we leveraged social media

in a very creative way.

So, I wouldn't just give you
a prize for finding a balloon.

I'd give you a prize
for recruiting people,

one of whom
might find the balloon.

So, if they found the balloon,
you'd get some, too.

And what this does
is it creates a cascade.

Thousands and thousands
of people,

all recruiting their friends
to look for the balloon

because it's in their interest
to do that.

Sandy's method
worked incredibly well.

His M.I.T. team bagged photos
of all 10 balloons,

uncovered in places like
San Francisco's Union Square

and a tennis court in Virginia,

in just nine hours.

They were able
to find the balloons

faster than anybody else
in the world --

in fact, in a time

that they generally thought
was impossible.

In social species,
there's a drive to be social.

If you ask,
"What's the number-one thing

that contributes
to life satisfaction?"

It's building things
with other people.

And what we've done
is developed technology

to try and help us do that.

Imagine a sea of humanity
with instant awareness of events

taking place over ranges
of thousands of miles.

We could trace the source
of a viral epidemic

to one apartment block
in a matter of hours,

just by seeing
who was staying home from work

with their cellphone turned on.

We could solve age-old problems
of hunger and poverty

by tracking
supply and demand for food

on a minute-to-minute basis.

What you'll see in the future,

where we're able
to pool our experience

to make all of
our individual experiences better.

So, what is
the future of race?

Genetics tells us that there are
subtle differences between us.

Both on the inside and
the outside.

Those differences emerged
as we wandered the Earth

as separate tribes,
for more than 50,000 years.

But now, something new
is happening in human history.

We don't have room
to be separate anymore.

Technology, combined with our
deep instinct to work together

is about to push us
one giant step forward.

And will create
not a superior race,

but a superior species,
to which we will all belong.

== sync, corrected by elderman ==
DHD sync by tagman90

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