All Posts Tagged With: "future biology"

News, as downloaded directly into memory by iJack:

New York, NY–(Urbanagora.com editorial staff) In a small ceremony, attended for the most part by city officials and the children of those killed in the attack, New York Mayor Joan Chang laid a wreath at the Twin Towers Memorial. Looking back from a generation after the events of that day, it becomes clear that this attack on the former United States began the chain of events that led to that country splitting up into a group of smaller nations. The combination of imperialistic hubris pointed in the wrong direction and unnecessary and intrusive attempts to remove the rights of citizenry led to the end of this formerly great nation, only 36 years after its chief rival dissolved in a thundering crash which would cause Fukuyama to declare “the end of history.” In its own way, however, the attack set the stage for the first portion of the 21st Century, since it demonstrated that a group of less than 20 individuals, with fifty dollars worth of simple tools and the understanding of the dynamics of human systems could achieve a result far out of proportion to their apparent power. Costing billions of dollars as well as inciting two wars, their deaths truly opened a new era on the world stage. Since that September morning, the world has lost Tel Aviv, Melbourne and the entire nation of Tibet. Whether the human race itself will survive has yet to be determined.

Moonbase Alpha, Luna–(XCorporation press release) XCorp astronauts have landed on and captured Comet C/2026 Denofrio-Takahashi. This source of water and other necessary consumable materials will be placed in Lunar orbit late next year and used to supply XCorp’s Moonbase Alpha, as well as the American and Chinese Lunar settlements. CEO Peter Diamantis (who was on hand to greet American astronauts three years ago when they finally returned to the Moon) said that XCorp plans to sell the shell of the comet to NASA to be used as shielding for their Mars exploration mission.

San Francisco, CA–(CatFancy.com) Familiars, Incorporated has finally released details of the rollout of their first chip-enhanced kitten, the Mitzi. This fusion of animal and cybernetics should retain the instincts of its feline ancestors, breed true and be as intelligent as a five-year-old child, with a vocabulary of up to 500 English words. The premiere, originally intended for 2025, was delayed when it was found that the implanted chip was causing tumors in early models. Their public-relations Aye stated that this problem has been overcome and that while the fertile females will be expensive for now, sterile females and males will be available for as low as $5000. The line should hit the GenCom stores by next Spring–right in time for Easter baskets.

Salt Lake City, UT–(YorkNews.com) Relatives of millionaire recluse Sandy Gomez have been granted a temporary restraining order preventing him from downloading his personality permanently into his World of Starcraft avatar, Bruce Hotbeam. Since the Utah Supreme Court has yet to decide whether or not the shell of a download is alive or dead, the Gomez estate would be left in a state of flux as far as the heirs are concerned. Mr. Gomez has vowed to carry on his fight, saying “nothing can keep me from the opportunity of eternal life.”

Urbana, IL–(DailyIllini.com) The University of Illinois Board of Trustees has announced that the graduating class of 2028 will be the last with a physical campus. They cited the impossibility of maintaining even the small number of labs and offices with the $2000/year tuition that, even at that low level, students are unwilling to pay for information being taught in PhysSpace. Instruction will, of course, still be available on-line, with guided tutors aiding in hyperlinking to design individual curricula for each student. U.S. Representative William J. Mills was quoted in Washington as saying, “This is a sad day for those of us who fondly remember the professors and wonderful campus life that this great institution provided. It will be missed.”

Washington, DC–(CNN.com) North and South California, Oregon and Washington have brought the number of seceding states to seven. President Paul warmly welcomed “our new, independent brothers and sisters” and pledged to work with them to create trade and defense treaties which will best serve the interests of all the people of this continent. While the exact details of the newly-established governments have not yet been revealed, it is expected that they will reflect the mores of the characteristic societies of each area.

Tokyo, Japan–(Griffendorf.net) Kimiko Oka, spiritual leader of the world-wide Church of the Great Programmer announced that the project to attract the attention of the Being that created “this larger virtual reality that we call PhysSpace” is nearing completion. The project, which used 750 terabytes of processing power to create a specific type of fractal has taken five years and employed 25,000 people. When asked what she will do when the church succeeded, she replied that, “the cheat codes for this simulation may be complex, but having them should insure that the members of our church level up more quickly than those who are unbelievers.”

Toronto, CA–(CBCnews.com) Gay rights activists protested today at the stockholders’ annual meeting of GenDairyProducts.com. Members were shocked last month to find that GDP’s Protex brand milk-with-supplements meant for pregnant mothers included homosexuality as one of the birth defects repaired by its nanocells. CEO Raymond Galtier pointed out that “no one is forcing any mother who does not wish to drink our product to do so.” Experts say that this could result in a drastic decrease in the number of homosexual men within the next two decades.

–Tom (chronage 75, bioage 45)

I don’t usually find the inspiration for writing articles about the future of mankind in The New York Review of Books. Imagine my surprise, then, when I came upon an article entitled Our Biotech Future written by Freeman Dyson.

I’m not going to summarize the points that Dyson made in the article, since he is considerably more eloquent than I will ever hope to be. I do, however, want to talk a bit about the implications of a half-century of biotechnological revolution.

I am going to posit, as Dyson does, that we’re about to enter a period in the advancement of biotechnology that mirrors the computer one that I have experienced during my lifetime. For the purposes of this discussion, let us assume that the year 2005, when 92% of the Human Genome was mapped, has approximate equivalence to the year 1947, when Bardeen et al. invented the transistor.

Moore’s Law states that the amount of computing power per dollar doubles at the approximate rate of once per 18-24 months (the slope has changed slightly over the last half century due to speed of hardware components.)

The result of this advancement is obvious everywhere. The computer with which I am writing this has twice the power of the Cray that was housed on the north side of the campus in 1980. Small cellular phones have access to the internet, can take photographs and serve as location devices. My Hyundai has more artificial intelligence than the Apollo 13 lander.

Less obvious are the social results of that accelerated technology. Teen-agers who leave for college are no longer separated from their parents, being able to ask them for advice twenty-four hours per day, even from the interior of crowded, annoyed movie theatres. In Britain, one is photographed on the average of 34 separate times per day. Privacy, as it was once understood, no longer exists. The Internet has a photographic memory–even the scores of Advanced Squad Leader games that I played fifteen years ago are on the public record.

Of course, I’m stating the obvious. All of you know on a gut-level about these things, since you are immersed in them every day. Those of you who are in the legal profession are looking at the controversies over “intellectual property” and Congress, reeling from the defeat of the immigration bill by an inflamed, networked populace, is looking into the question of whether or not music broadcasters on the ‘Net are the equivalent of those over the airwaves.

Biology is another matter, however. We’ve touched on the subject once or twice here in Urbanagora–specifically on the implications of male homosexuality being a pre-determined trait and the ability to improve our children–designer babies, so to speak.

So, assuming that the cost of any given biotech procedure and product is reduced by a factor of four every three years, what does the next fifty years look like?

1) Implications of cheap genomic testing

The Celera effort cost about $300 million dollars to sequence the first human genome. If Moore’s Law is applied to this number, we could approximate the year 2023 or so for a $1000 personal genome kit. With this kit, not just a trained professional, but an average citizen, would be able to find his propensity to genetic diseases, the most likely form of cancer from which he would die, and the most facile kind of talents for which his brain would be designed.

A pre-born child’s DNA at an extremely early gestation could be determined. It seems not outside the realm of probabilty that birth-control technology could be tweaked to chemically analyze the DNA of a fertilized egg and prevent implantation of ones that are not desirable for the parents. This may seem like a stretch to some, but keep in mind that at present 80% of the preborn who test positive for Down’s Syndrome are aborted.

It could begin very innocently, with predisposition to breast cancer eliminated, juvenile diabetes next, all the while improving the human race, so to speak. It then is not so large a jump, perhaps then, to Maxihet(tm), which would guarantee a straight male child to the loving parents that wanted one.

Living in a world where the generation born after 2022 is entirely above average (like those lucky children in Lake Woebegone) is just the beginning. With privacy a privilege of the last century, imagine a world where everyone has access to your genome. In a 2026 version of a singles bar, potential dates could look over the biological data of the stunning blonde projected over her image onto their contacts and realize that she has a 35% probability of gaining over 40 pounds by the time she reaches 50.

2) Becoming one with the Planet

Or, in this case, the planet being one with us.

Dyson talks a lot in his article about a post-Darwinian world where, once again like the beginning of life, genes are freely shared.

Let’s talk a bit about furry fandom.

There are a group of people who identify strongly with anthropomorphic animals. They write fiction about themselves in these forms, attend parties where they dress up in costume (some of them having sex in those personas).

Currently, there a few individuals who have taken this to an extreme. Stalking Cat is probably the most famous example. In parallel, the sports community is in the middle of a controversy about allowing Oscar Pistorius, who runs on steel blades attached to his ankles to compete with “normal” runners.

What will be the changes wrought to society when one can, with a cheap kit containing retroviruses, physically alter onesself? The current legal controversies over transgendered individuals are complicated enough. You lawyers in the audience need to get ready to find some precedents that will cover trans-specied individuals.

3) Life Extension

Last weekend, I cautioned some folks that they needed to take care of themselves, for they are likely to be able to live as long as they wish if they’re careful.

Human beings are programmed to die. This programming could very well be hacked by expert users, and hacked very, very soon.

If you think that the Social Security System is in trouble now…..think about it when the number of people eligible for the program exceeds the number paying into it by an order of magnitude or more.

All current law, economics, social sciences and religons assume that people will die, and in a time less than a century. Extreme longevity will overthrow EVERY assumption that underlies our society–at the very least, it will be as big a change in human life and philosophy as the development of agriculture or cities.

4) Thou Art God

Well, perhaps not in terms of the ruler of the Universe, but in terms of being the creator of life.

Dyson talks about kits being available to children to be able to splice and design new DNA and their winning prizes for the most attractive new lizard or dinosaur.

In 1947, there were only a few individuals who could program a computer. The idea that one would end up being able to work with a hundred creative individuals to invent a shared imaginary world like World of Warcraft (in which four million people are adventuring at the time that you read this) would have been as alien as the ideas that I have been discussing in the paragraphs above.

At the moment, there are about as many individuals who can program biological systems as there were computer programmers in 1947. Some of them work just down the street from me. If there’s a Moore’s Law relationship on the horizon for biology, by 2060 or so, humanity will be able to create any life form out of flesh that they can imagine.

And, in my own way, I can picture it….

You see, everytime I go to an art show at a science-fiction or fantasy convention, there’s an entire section of the exhibit that’s devoted to paintings of cats with various forms of wings. Sturgeon’s Law applies, of course, so many of the works are pretty bad. Others, though, capture the dichotomic beauty of pouncing, gliding, dancing felines.

I take quite a bit of comfort knowing that it is more than a little likely that as mankind skateboards into the Singularity, it’ll be accompanied by the mewling and swooping of batches of calico, Siamese and tuxedo winged kittens.

“Like ‘em? Made ‘em myself–Heathkit!”

Tom