Thrilling technologies: No end to human genius -- for good or for evil
Saturday, 7 November 2009
Nerun Yakub
An incredibly smart mobile phone was demonstrated recently on BBC World News, driving a real car, without the driver behind the wheel. It can be controlled from anywhere, even from inside your bedroom, so powerful are its remote sensors. Of course it is not yet available commercially, but given the pace at which exciting new technologies, in all kinds of applications, are being developed and marketed, techno- addicts would be able to possess them in no time. Heady research and development in all branches of science suggest that there is no end to what can be 'man-made' these days ---- from typhoons to tsunamis or snows to swine flu ---- so to say !
BBC television carried another news item the same day: that the Chinese had seeded the sky recently to induce rainfall in certain areas for agricultural purposes. But citizens were caught by surprise when it suddenly started snowing instead. Rain and snow-making experiments had of course been tried before, elsewhere, but nobody knows whether the more violent kind , cyclones and earthquakes, had been tried yet to simulate God-given phenomena.
What cannot human genius accomplish ? The speed at which new, mind-boggling technologies are being researched, developed and introduced industrially is simply out-of-this-world ! Biotechnology-watchers point out that it took 1000 scientists ten years to decode the first yeast genome. About thirty years ago it took a lab only two months to sequence 150 nucleotides (the molecular letters that spell out a gene). By the year 2000, scientists could sequence 11 million letters in a matter of hours ! There was the cloning of 'Dolly' the sheep in 1997 and the first crude map of the human genome in June 2000, and in between, other genome maps of plants, animals and microbes. In 1998, Japanese researchers succeeded in transferring three whole human chromosomes into a rat ! In 1999, Nature magazine reported that the human 'memory gene' had been isolated, replicated and copied into the DNA of rats to enhance their ability to remember.
The implications of all these developments can be at once exciting and terrifying, for it means that any living cell, theoretically, can be harvested and re-programmed ; that we can replicate tissue and organs from our own bodies for organ or bone marrow transplants. Diagnostic kits, drugs and artificial skin are already in the marketplace. So is gene therapy and other wonders in medical treatment. Such biotech tinkering however, can be taken to more threatening levels, such as eugenics and slavery, apart from the all too common weaponisation of bacteria and viruses. According to a report in the New Scientist (11 May 1996) this is 'not only likely but almost inevitable'.
With technologies, such as robotics, space technology, communications, computer sciences, nanotechnology and neural networks all unfolding and developing almost 'organically', as it were ---- and control over them remaining largely in the hands of the most powerful corporations and governments ---- would not the less tech-savvy innocents of the world be at the mercy of the controllers ? Developments in neuroscience, informatics, biotechnology and nanotechnology together can virtually take over the minds of people and programme them to behave as the controllers want. The tide of poor, powerless, unlettered, ill-fed and under-fed peoples the world over would be most likely (they already are, watchers swear!), up for culling through cunning ways.
The global collection of human genetic material (usually cell lines) by medical researchers (including the Human Genome Diversity Project) makes ethnically targeted virus development and deployment very much feasible. Innocents everywhere would invariably blame Almighty God, not an all-powerful racist-military-corporate beast for the pestilence. This is no paranoia, considering that by the end of the 20th century, more than a dozen countries were reported to be researching the use of ethno-bombs ! Then there is the likelihood of livestock or crop-targeted biological warfare, using engineered seeds, chemicals and other controlling methods.
RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International) findings show that a patent had been granted to Purdue University years ago, to suppress the 'suicide trait' in terminator seeds (bio-engineered to become sterile so that farmers do not have seeds to save, for sowing the following year) for several generations, provided a specific chemical, sold by the self-same seed company, is sprayed at regular intervals. If the chemical is 'not applied, or malevolently denied, the harvested crop would bear sterile seeds.' It could also be coded to drop the protein content in rice or raise the cyanide level in cassava for example.
R&D in the neurosciences, which bridges biology and informatics, focuses on the nervous system at the molecular and cellular level to enable, (or has it already enabled ? ) developers to monitor and manipulate brain functions. 'The potential to manipulate human emotions, senses, and capabilities lies at the heart of HPE (Human Performance Enhancement) research…….. … to chemically- enhance vigilance and attention-spans, increase stress tolerance, increase sleep deprivation tolerance, and enhance memory.' Wary watchers point out that whether or not it would be really research into 'enhancement' would depend on the neurons of the researchers ----- which might wish rather to control and debilitate unwanted people!
An incredibly smart mobile phone was demonstrated recently on BBC World News, driving a real car, without the driver behind the wheel. It can be controlled from anywhere, even from inside your bedroom, so powerful are its remote sensors. Of course it is not yet available commercially, but given the pace at which exciting new technologies, in all kinds of applications, are being developed and marketed, techno- addicts would be able to possess them in no time. Heady research and development in all branches of science suggest that there is no end to what can be 'man-made' these days ---- from typhoons to tsunamis or snows to swine flu ---- so to say !
BBC television carried another news item the same day: that the Chinese had seeded the sky recently to induce rainfall in certain areas for agricultural purposes. But citizens were caught by surprise when it suddenly started snowing instead. Rain and snow-making experiments had of course been tried before, elsewhere, but nobody knows whether the more violent kind , cyclones and earthquakes, had been tried yet to simulate God-given phenomena.
What cannot human genius accomplish ? The speed at which new, mind-boggling technologies are being researched, developed and introduced industrially is simply out-of-this-world ! Biotechnology-watchers point out that it took 1000 scientists ten years to decode the first yeast genome. About thirty years ago it took a lab only two months to sequence 150 nucleotides (the molecular letters that spell out a gene). By the year 2000, scientists could sequence 11 million letters in a matter of hours ! There was the cloning of 'Dolly' the sheep in 1997 and the first crude map of the human genome in June 2000, and in between, other genome maps of plants, animals and microbes. In 1998, Japanese researchers succeeded in transferring three whole human chromosomes into a rat ! In 1999, Nature magazine reported that the human 'memory gene' had been isolated, replicated and copied into the DNA of rats to enhance their ability to remember.
The implications of all these developments can be at once exciting and terrifying, for it means that any living cell, theoretically, can be harvested and re-programmed ; that we can replicate tissue and organs from our own bodies for organ or bone marrow transplants. Diagnostic kits, drugs and artificial skin are already in the marketplace. So is gene therapy and other wonders in medical treatment. Such biotech tinkering however, can be taken to more threatening levels, such as eugenics and slavery, apart from the all too common weaponisation of bacteria and viruses. According to a report in the New Scientist (11 May 1996) this is 'not only likely but almost inevitable'.
With technologies, such as robotics, space technology, communications, computer sciences, nanotechnology and neural networks all unfolding and developing almost 'organically', as it were ---- and control over them remaining largely in the hands of the most powerful corporations and governments ---- would not the less tech-savvy innocents of the world be at the mercy of the controllers ? Developments in neuroscience, informatics, biotechnology and nanotechnology together can virtually take over the minds of people and programme them to behave as the controllers want. The tide of poor, powerless, unlettered, ill-fed and under-fed peoples the world over would be most likely (they already are, watchers swear!), up for culling through cunning ways.
The global collection of human genetic material (usually cell lines) by medical researchers (including the Human Genome Diversity Project) makes ethnically targeted virus development and deployment very much feasible. Innocents everywhere would invariably blame Almighty God, not an all-powerful racist-military-corporate beast for the pestilence. This is no paranoia, considering that by the end of the 20th century, more than a dozen countries were reported to be researching the use of ethno-bombs ! Then there is the likelihood of livestock or crop-targeted biological warfare, using engineered seeds, chemicals and other controlling methods.
RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International) findings show that a patent had been granted to Purdue University years ago, to suppress the 'suicide trait' in terminator seeds (bio-engineered to become sterile so that farmers do not have seeds to save, for sowing the following year) for several generations, provided a specific chemical, sold by the self-same seed company, is sprayed at regular intervals. If the chemical is 'not applied, or malevolently denied, the harvested crop would bear sterile seeds.' It could also be coded to drop the protein content in rice or raise the cyanide level in cassava for example.
R&D in the neurosciences, which bridges biology and informatics, focuses on the nervous system at the molecular and cellular level to enable, (or has it already enabled ? ) developers to monitor and manipulate brain functions. 'The potential to manipulate human emotions, senses, and capabilities lies at the heart of HPE (Human Performance Enhancement) research…….. … to chemically- enhance vigilance and attention-spans, increase stress tolerance, increase sleep deprivation tolerance, and enhance memory.' Wary watchers point out that whether or not it would be really research into 'enhancement' would depend on the neurons of the researchers ----- which might wish rather to control and debilitate unwanted people!