DQ: Does technological advancement negatively impact biological evolution?

[Tranquil Claw 80]

DQ stands for "Daily Question", a new theme I started recently.

 

     This is a really heavy one from my helpful philosopher. Honestly I think it entirely depends on the technology at hand. When you look at the iPhone and how it eats up our days like a hungry monster, it makes you stop to think just what ways technology is impacting us. Almost every technology created has some sort of negative impact in one area or another when you think about it long enough. 

[Lisa 5,552]

Negatively impact our biological evolution?
lol

I just imagine everyone in a thousand years time with square eyes for looking at computer screens for too long.

[Adri 52]

I'm not sure, as we live in an age with rapid technological advancements and people are overall living quite a bit longer. Perhaps evolutionary progress in humans might seem unnecessary to nature because of this 

 

I'm not a biologist nor have taken many biology courses so I am kinda talking out of my ass 

[Celtore 2,769]

Evolution isn't some process that needs to be safeguarded, our gene pool is always mutating regardless of the technology we craft (until we become machines.) The survival of our individual genes is possibly a bit more random when compared against other animals in the wild, but that's thanks to modern medicine, our advancing technologies, our position of dominance in the animal kingdom and our compassion for one another.

 

So while it likely does have an impact, whether or not that's a bad thing is up to you; I don't think it is. On a more positive note, I don't think we'll be under the thumb of evolution for much longer anyway.

[sweetolebob18 724]

Species come & go All The Time.  The average species lasts about 3-5 million years.  That being said, there are times when 1/2 or more the species on Earth die out in under, oh, say 1 million years time. They are called "Great
Dyings"​ There have been 5 of these in Earth's history (IIRC), the last being the end of the Dinosaur era (about 65 million years ago).

 

We are in the middle of 1 right now.  Give us another 200 years & we'll make our quota (probably 50 would do, but what's the rush?)

 

I'd say that affects evolution.

Edited October 2, 2015 by sweetolebob18

[RDBestPony 271]

Yes, i think technical advancements will affect us negatively. Think about it, if we had no technology, then everyone would be outside, doing things. Not staying inside and relying on machines to do it. smartphones and tablets, what do those things offer other than a source of entertainment, maybe news, but is it really necessary to have? The new generation has all information literally at their fingertips. Technology is making people "evolve" in a way that make us lazy, and dependant on technology, having a negative affect. This will get even worse as technlogy advances even more into the future.

[SugarfootWillie 383]

I'm going to link to a few places papers while I answer this question.

 

Technology is impacting biological evolution. There is no question or room for debate on this, but the quality of the change varies by what you standard of good and bad is. A large part of modern technology relies on electromagnetism. DNA is a fractal antenna in electromagnetic fields, meaning it's physical structure and active genes change when exposed to electricity or radiation (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21457072) (http://becknatmed.com/doc/fractalbackground.pdf).

 

Before technology became so wide spread, say 200 years ago, there was only cosmic background radiation, as well as radioactive naturally occuring elements and rocks. These had an insignificant impact on evolution (http://www.pnas.org/content/82/24/8602.full.pdf). However, since the atomic era humanity has created a blanket of microwave and radio wave radiation around the planet for the sake of communication; humanity has detonated hundreds of atomic weapons, the radiation from which is still in our atmosphere, oceans, and land; humans have computers on their person almost all the time; nuclear power plants have malfunctioned and leaked loads of radioactive chemicals into our environment.

 

Despite the above, it is hard to determine just HOW and to what degree technology is impacting biological evolution. Not only has there not been enough time to observe the effects (macro-evolution takes a while), but epigenetics has taught us that every inner and outer environmental factor changes the structure of our DNA on a daily basis. I imagine that since electromagnetic radiation causes DNA to change its physical structure and the expression of its components, then any organism exposed to EMF radiation will have a different phenotype, and thus accelerate adaptive radiation.

 

Even though it is hard to say now how evolution is being impacted by technology, we can predict that in a few hundred years these factors will be attributed to a global impact. Right now the planet is undergoing the 6th mass extinction type event in its history, and anthropogenic global warming is a contributor (http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024/meta;jsessionid=150A06773466418F2151EE0694E2EFF8.c1). This extinction event is opening up various ecosystems and allowing surviving species to undergo evolutionary radiation, which will result in speciation of various clades.

 

TL;DR it is hard to say how technology is impacting biological evolution; however, there is no doubt that an impact is occuring. One can argue that technology is accelerating the rate at which evolution occurs on a global scale.

Edited October 3, 2015 by SugarfootWillie

[EpicEnergy 22,224]

I don't believe in evolution, but I still say that technology negatively affects humans. A better question to ask is whether technology's impact on humans is more positive than negative.

[Vefka 1,499]

Technology certainly affects evolution. Humanity don't live by the rule "the strongest survive", nowadays almost all people live in the same condition and it doesn't matter if you're disabled or have bad genes (I'm talking about living and surviving, not society). I think we stopped the process of natural selection, but I don't know if it's a good or bad thing

Edited March 2, 2021 by Vefka