Stephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution"

"At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange information. But what distinguishes us from our cave man ancestors is the knowledge that we have accumulated over the last ten thousand years, and particularly, Hawking points out, over the last three hundred. "I think it is legitimate to take a broader view, and include externally transmitted information, as well as DNA, in the evolution of the human race," Hawking said. In the last ten thousand years the human species has been in what Hawking calls, "an external transmission phase," where the internal record of information, handed down to succeeding generations in DNA, has not changed significantly. "But the external record, in books, and other long lasting forms of storage," Hawking says, "has grown enormously. Some people would use the term, evolution, only for the internally transmitted genetic material, and would object to it being applied to information handed down externally. But I think that is too narrow a view. We are more than just our genes."

Sadly, our species won't make it for much longer at the rate we'll going. There' so many things in humanity's way in these coming years that I want to believe we, as species will be able to make it through all this... but at this point in time, and the type of world we sadly live in, I don't see it happening unfortunately. To come all this way and for nothing... we'll not even going to be able to make it off this planet, let alone colonize space and other planets... What a shame. God help us all.