Mankind Overspecialized for Living in "Gadget-Ridden Environments"

The outlook seems grim. Natural selection under civilized conditions may lead mankind to evolve towards a state of genetic overspecialization for living in gadget-ridden environments. It is certainly up to man to decide whether this direction of his evolution is or is not desirable. If it is not, man has, or soon will have, the knowledge requisite to redirect the evolution of his species pretty much as he sees fit. Perhaps we should not be too dogmatic about this choice of direction. We may be awfully soft compared to paleolithic men when it comes to struggling, unaided by gadgets, with climatic difficulties and wild beasts. Most of us feel most of the time that this is not a very great loss. If our remote descendants grow to be even more effete than we are, they may conceivably be compensated by acquiring genotypes conducive to kindlier dispositions and greater intellectual capacities than those prevalent in mankind today.

Notes:

Would it be a bad thing for humans to adapt to such a state of things?

Folksonomies: evolution cultural evolution

Taxonomies:
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/society (0.482093)
/law, govt and politics/government (0.468856)

Keywords:
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Entities:
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Does Natural Selection Continue to Operate in Modern Mankind?'

Periodicals>Journal Article: Dobzhansky , Theodosius and Allen, Gordon (1956), Does Natural Selection Continue to Operate in Modern Mankind?', American Anthropologist, 1956, 58, 595, Retrieved on 2012-04-25

Folksonomies: evolution culture