The thing I find interesting about the directed evolution angle is that it is highly likely that this technology will not stay isolated to the richest for more than a generation or two. The reason I think this is procedures such as heart surgery, organ replacement, and powered prosthetics. In my fathers time, open heart surgery was both experimental and limited to either the wealthy or someone who was willing to become a test subject for a new product. Now, this type of surgery is routine with a 2–4 day stay in the hospital. I can compare this because both my father and a friend had similar operations almost 50 years apart. My father had multiple years of scheduled checkups to confirm the correct function of his heart implant, while the friend was given a similar device and sent home three days later with the instructions “See you primary care physician within the week.”

So I see the genetic editing going. Similarly, it will first be used by the ultra-wealthy to select for traits they want in their children. Then it will become possible to apply changes to post-fertilization embryos, still for the ultra-rich. Finally, it will become possible to implement changes to any human the ultra-rich will keep this while releasing the two older technologies to the masses, at this point probably to ‘correct’ some perceived defect in common humanity. A few generations later it will be common to change your looks or genetics at will, and the title of ‘human’ is nearly meaningless, with people changing their body as we change our clothing.

Oh, this path involves quite a few assumptions and other technologies to drive the changes both technological and sociological, but I can look forward and see several routes that would take us to this future.