What Will Change Everything?
By EDGE.ORG
Added: Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 UTC
See:
http://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_index.html
New tools equal new perceptions.
Through science we create technology and in using our new tools we recreate ourselves. But until very recently in our history, no democratic populace, no legislative body, ever indicated by choice, by vote, how this process should play out.
Nobody ever voted for printing. Nobody ever voted for electricity. Nobody ever voted for radio, the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, television. Nobody ever voted for penicillin, antibiotics, the pill. Nobody ever voted for space travel, massively parallel computing, nuclear power, the personal computer, the Internet, email, cell phones, the Web, Google, cloning, sequencing the entire human genome. We are moving towards the redefinition of life, to the edge of creating life itself. While science may or may not be the only news, it is the news that stays news.
And our politicians, our governments? Always years behind, the best they can do is play catch up.
Nobel laureate James Watson, who discovered the DNA double helix, and genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter, recently were awarded Double Helix Awards from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for being the founding fathers of human genome sequencing. They are the first two human beings to have their complete genetic information decoded.
Watson noted during his acceptance speech that he doesn't want government involved in decisions concerning how people choose to handle information about their personal genomes.
Venter is on the brink of creating the first artificial life form on Earth. He has already announced transplanting the information from one genome into another. In other words, your dog becomes your cat. He has privately alluded to important scientific progress in his lab, the result of which, if and when realized, will change everything.
WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING?
"What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?"
—John Brockman
Editor and Publisher
Click here to read the responses:
http://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_index.html
Tweet
RELATED CONTENT
Ancient walking mystery deepens
Helen Briggs - BBC News - Science &... 3 Comments
One of the first creatures to step on land could not have walked on four legs, 3D computer models show.
Seth Andrews - YouTube -... 16 Comments
The Center of all Things
An homage to Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot," this video explores humankind's place in the cosmos.
Brian Greene - The Daily Beast 33 Comments
The latest developments in cosmology point toward the possibility that our universe is merely one of billions.
Take a stand for public access to...
Bonnie Swoger - Scientific American 4 Comments
Take five minutes of your time to say that yes, cancer patients, researchers, high school students and people around the country should be able to find out what their taxes already paid for.
Draining of world's aquifers feeds...
Damian Carrington - The Observer 3 Comments
"In the long run, I would still be more concerned about the impact of climate change, but this work shows that even if we stabilise the climate, we might still get sea level rise due to how we use water."
'Ring of fire' eclipse to begin
- - BBC News - Science & Environment 6 Comments
An "annular eclipse" will be visible from a 240 to 300km-wide swathe of Earth stretching from Asia across the Pacific to the western US on Monday.
RSS Feeds
Comments
Comment RSS Feed
Please sign in or register to comment
View Comments Page