PC continues its dive

Global personal computer (PC) sales have fallen for the fifth quarter in a row, making it the "longest duration of decline" in history. Worldwide PC shipments totalled 76 million units in the second quarter, a 10.9% drop from a year earlier, according to research firm Gartner. PC sales have been hurt in recent years by the growing popularity of tablets. And if you think that the Mayans had something to do with this, they didn't. It's just a sign of the market evolving. And speaking of evolution, a somewhat tongue-in-cheek article in The Guardian is proposing some rather interesting predictions for the future of humanity — changes to human form and function that would even make some of the X-Men jealous. To make his predictions, Dean Burnett worked under the assumption that biotechnology will be used to address ongoing selectional pressures. "Evolution is obviously a complex process," he writes, "But it's also a slow process. This means you can make claims about it and by the time it progresses to the point where you're proved right or wrong, you'll be long dead so it won't matter." Ultimately, the question he asks is, what could humans end up being like if current cultural trends and features remain relatively constant over the next few million years? To find out, click here.