I dunno, connecting our minds to the "cloud" through some kind of augmentation seems pretty far fetched in 25 years. 200 maybe, although that far ahead who knows what the world will look like. I can only think of one reason and one reason only that augmented humans won't be the case in the near future: privacy.

Look at all the backlash against the xbone for just having the Kinect read your facial expressions and movements. Think of all the people who have had some kind of identity theft, fraud, or their emails/passwords hacked, etc. Now imagine someone trying to sell those people on the idea of allowing your brain to connect to the cloud and risk not only your personal data, but your person. Your thoughts, feelings and memories being as secure as your Facebook profile. Isn't going to happen. Not on a worldwide scale at least.

It might be a fun tool for researchers and a toy for the super rich, but would take a long, long time to overcome the social and cultural stigmas associated with that type of interface to permeate everyday life. And all this is assuming that there would not be any kind of medical problems or mental health side effects of "plugging in". 

At the same time we have new smartphones that can tell when you are looking at the screen.

Bottom line is, there is not a massive outcry pushing privacy. Sure there are a few blips, a boycott here, and a rally there. But overall there is a massive technology push to destroy privacy in the interest of big data and one by one legal hurdles are getting out of the way.

People right now are throwing their privacy away just to get some pictures of their friends on facebook. You think that if i gave them the power of the internet into their brain, potentially making them smarter than any human who has ever lived, and they won't take it because of some privacy issues?

I suppose the premise seems a little silly to argue as social media and all sorts of cloud applications are taking over our everyday lives. Perhaps the xbox was a poor example because millions of people are going to buy them anyway. Consider this though: there's a big difference between posting a picture for your friends to see and uploading part of your consciousness to the cloud. Brad touched a little bit on this earlier with his question of the telescope.

He asked why should he futz around with his own telescope when he can just connect to a telescope thousands of miles away and see the same thing even better? The answer is because you're removing another part of yourself from the experience. Some of my fondest childhood memories are futzing around with my telescope with my dad and finally being able to see Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Not sure if I would remember stargazing as a kid if it were just, "Well, let's look at this computer screen and see what we could've seen out on the porch with a little more work." That's why people didn't suddenly stop going to rock concerts and comedy shows when Youtube was invented, or stop people from attending their favorite sports events or traveling the world when we got TV (and HDTV).

Digital information does not give us the same experience as our good old human senses. I know it's all electrical impulses anyways, but if we're able to invent a Matrix-like reality to plug into within 25 years, I'll be very surprised.

You assume humans will still be around in 200 years.