Saturday, August 20, 2016

The Weekly Sneak: Let's All Get Scared Together

This week it is about the potentialities of CRISPR technology, except not really because my mind doesn't quite work that way. It is more a freakout about the social consequences of genetic manipulation and what the future holds. 

Heh. Okay, nothing ever works out the way we imagine it will. Leonardo da Vinci would soil his toga at the sight of an Airbus 380. Even Elon Musk hasn't been able to deliver the Jetsons' flying cars and it's 2016- we've only gotten to self-driving. We've eradicated diseases except antibiotics are starting to  lose the biological warfare race and things are starting to come back that shouldn't. Futurology is a weird and unpredictable unscience. But it is fascinating. Oh, genetically modified humans are here, people. I can't wait to see world religions handle this one:

"...okay, what's this. What is this thing? And most importantly: what does it mean for Africa, Africans, East Africans and Tanzanians in particular. Will it harm the children? Are our babies going to be okay? I do not know. Nobody knows yet. Which is why this essay is now going to turn into a discussion about the importance of education and what we think it means. We need a generation of people who might be able to answer these questions.
For the longest time we have embraced the outmoded British thinking that Arts and Sciences are separate crafts. They are not. Science, when done right, requires not only rigor and persistence but imagination. Arts, when done right, require discipline and intellect and range and of course imagination. And both of those, done right, will probably be based in a spiritual or philosophical examination of what life means to begin with."

For the record: there is definitely a good side to this technology. The problem is, well, humans. 

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