The desire to be stronger and smarter, Faggella says, will quickly give way to a quest for a new kind of happiness and fulfillment.“In the last 200 years, technology has made us like gods … and yet people today are roughly as happy as they were before,” he says.“So, I believe that becoming a super-Einstein isn’t going to make us happier and … that ultimately we’ll use enhancement to fulfill our wants and desires rather than just make ourselves more powerful.”

What exactly does that mean?Faggella can’t say for sure, but he thinks that enhancement of the mind will ultimately allow people to have experiences that are quite simply impossible with our current brains.“We’ll probably start by taking a human version of nirvana and creating it in some sort of virtual reality,” he says, adding “eventually we’ll transition to realms of bliss that we can’t conceive of at this time because we’re incapable of conceiving it.Enhancing our brains will be about making us capable.”

Ethics and religion

A TALE OF TWO HUXLEYS

In contrast with his brother – “Brave New World” author Aldous Huxley (right) – Julian Huxley was a scientific optimist who believed that new technologies would offer people amazing opportunities for self-improvement and growth.