Un-Natural Selection: Human Evolution's Next Steps
by Joe Palca
Human beings are defying nature. Or at least we’re trying to.
For billions of years, species have evolved by natural selection, the process by which genetic mutations that help an organism survive are passed on from one generation to the next and harmful ones are eliminated.
But natural selection takes time — sometimes millions or even hundreds of millions of years. Humans have only been around for tens of thousands of years, but we are changing the world so much that genetic evolution simply can't keep up.
Millions of years ago, the natural environment was shaping us into the species we are now. Today, we create our own environments, and that has its consequences.
John Hawks, an anthropologist and geneticist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, says we've created a lifestyle that is at odds with the one natural selection provided us with. Consider, for example, what ate when we were hunter gatherers, long before we started farming.
"We adapted to a diet that was much more balanced in terms of lean meat, in terms of high fiber vegetables. And by de-accentuating those aspects of our former diet, we've created a new environment that humans aren't real suited to," Hawks says.
Sometimes, though, genetic adaptation can happen fairly quickly. Hawks says the classic example is a mutation in a gene that makes red blood cells. It's called the sickle-cell mutation and spread through Africa once malaria became a problem there.
“That's a highly adaptive mutation where it occurs when there's malaria around, because it's protective against malaria," says Hawks. If you inherit the mutation from just one parent, you don't get sick. You only get malaria protection. It's only when you inherit the mutation from both parents that you get sickle-cell anemia. So if you're not living in a malaria environment, the mutation is just bad.” And you don’t want that gene, Hawks says, because your offspring have a chance of having sickle-cell anemia.
Keeping Bad Mutations Around
Really bad mutations tend to disappear, because the people who have them frequently don't live long enough to pass them on. That's what natural selection is all about.
But now in some cases we choose to keep these bad mutations around. Take the gene mutation that causes phenylketonuria, or PKU. People with the disease can't break down the amino acid phenylalanine, a problem that can lead to severe cognitive damage.
"It's a devastating disease that you can completely eliminate if you pick it up early," says Matthew Hirschfeld, a pediatrician at Alaska Native Medical Center.
And it can be picked up very early — there's a genetic test for PKU that all babies in the U.S. get at birth. The treatment includes maintaining a diet with low levels of phenylalanine.
But curing the disease does not mean eliminating the mutation. Once upon a time, children born with PKU probably would never have offspring. Now they can, and that helps keep the mutation in circulation.
Choosing Our Genes
In fact, a large part of modern medicine is in the business of overcoming bad mutations.
“We want to have cures for things, we want to make things better," says Hawks. We do this with eye sight: Nearsightedness could have been fatal for people whose ability to survive depended on spotting dinner off in the distance. Now it doesn't matter if we inherited nearsightedness — we wear eyeglasses.
"We wear contact lenses," says Hawks."You get Lasik surgery. We can affect eye sight in many different ways. It's not perfect, but like many instances of technological development, we tinker at it and it changes and eventually we come to a point where we like it or keep changing.
We've turned the notion of natural selection on its head. Nature isn't the only force that picks the genes that stick around — we're doing it too. We're moving toward a time when we can routinely repair, remove or even insert genes in people.
The question is whether we can do as good a job as nature has done up until now.
Showing posts with label evolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label evolution. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Researchers Say They Created a ‘Synthetic Cell’
Researchers Say They Created a ‘Synthetic Cell’
By NICHOLAS WADE
May 20, 2010
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/science/21cell.html?hpw
The genome pioneer J. Craig Venter has taken another step in his quest to create synthetic life, by synthesizing an entire bacterial genome and using it to take over a cell.
Dr. Venter calls the result a “synthetic cell” and is presenting the research as a landmark achievement that will open the way to creating useful microbes from scratch to make products like vaccines and biofuels. At a press conference Thursday, Dr. Venter described the converted cell as “the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.”
“This is a philosophical advance as much as a technical advance,” he said, suggesting that the “synthetic cell” raised new questions about the nature of life.
Other scientists agree that he has achieved a technical feat in synthesizing the largest piece of DNA so far — a million units in length — and in making it accurate enough to substitute for the cell’s own DNA.
But some regard this approach as unpromising because it will take years to design new organisms, and meanwhile progress toward making biofuels is already being achieved with conventional genetic engineering approaches in which existing organisms are modified a few genes at a time.
Dr. Venter’s aim is to achieve total control over a bacterium’s genome, first by synthesizing its DNA in a laboratory and then by designing a new genome stripped of many natural functions and equipped with new genes that govern production of useful chemicals.
“It’s very powerful to be able to reconstruct and own every letter in a genome because that means you can put in different genes,” said Gerald Joyce, a biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif.
In response to the scientific report, President Obama asked the White House bioethics commission on Thursday to complete a study of the issues raised by synthetic biology within six months and report back to him on its findings. He said the new development raised “genuine concerns,” though he did not specify them further.
Dr. Venter took a first step toward this goal three years ago, showing that the natural DNA from one bacterium could be inserted into another and that it would take over the host cell’s operation. Last year, his team synthesized a piece of DNA with 1,080,000 bases, the chemical units of which DNA is composed.
In a final step, a team led by Daniel G. Gibson, Hamilton O. Smith and Dr. Venter report in Thursday’s issue of the journal Science that the synthetic DNA takes over a bacterial cell just as the natural DNA did, making the cell generate the proteins specified by the new DNA’s genetic information in preference to those of its own genome.
The team ordered pieces of DNA 1,000 units in length from Blue Heron, a company that specializes in synthesizing DNA, and developed a technique for assembling the shorter lengths into a complete genome. The cost of the project was $40 million, most of it paid for by Synthetic Genomics, a company Dr. Venter founded.
But the bacterium used by the Venter group is unsuitable for biofuel production, and Dr. Venter said he would move to different organisms. Synthetic Genomics has a contract from Exxon to generate biofuels from algae. Exxon is prepared to spend up to $600 million if all its milestones are met. Dr. Venter said he would try to build “an entire algae genome so we can vary the 50 to 60 different parameters for algae growth to make superproductive organisms.”
On his yacht trips round the world, Dr. Venter has analyzed the DNA of the many microbes in seawater and now has a library of about 40 million genes, mostly from algae. These genes will be a resource to make captive algae produce useful chemicals, he said.
Some other scientists said that aside from assembling a large piece of DNA, Dr. Venter has not broken new ground. “To my mind Craig has somewhat overplayed the importance of this,” said David Baltimore, a geneticist at Caltech. He described the result as “a technical tour de force,” a matter of scale rather than a scientific breakthrough.
“He has not created life, only mimicked it,” Dr. Baltimore said.
Dr. Venter’s approach “is not necessarily on the path” to produce useful microorganisms, said George Church, a genome researcher at Harvard Medical School. Leroy Hood, of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, described Dr. Venter’s report as “glitzy” but said lower-level genes and networks had to be understood first before it would be worth trying to design whole organisms from scratch.
In 2002 Eckard Wimmer, of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, synthesized the genome of the polio virus. The genome constructed a live polio virus that infected and killed mice. Dr. Venter’s work on the bacterium is similar in principle, except that the polio virus genome is only 7,500 units in length, and the bacteria’s genome is more than 100 times longer.
Friends of the Earth, an environmental group, denounced the synthetic genome as “dangerous new technology,” saying that “Mr. Venter should stop all further research until sufficient regulations are in place.”
The genome Dr. Venter synthesized is copied from a natural bacterium that infects goats. He said that before copying the DNA, he excised 14 genes likely to be pathogenic, so the new bacterium, even if it escaped, would be unlikely to cause goats harm.
Dr. Venter’s assertion that he has created a “synthetic cell” has alarmed people who think that means he has created a new life form or an artificial cell. “Of course that’s not right — its ancestor is a biological life form,” said Dr. Joyce of Scripps.
Dr. Venter copied the DNA from one species of bacteria and inserted it into another. The second bacteria made all the proteins and organelles in the so-called “synthetic cell,” by following the specifications implicit in the structure of the inserted DNA.
“My worry is that some people are going to draw the conclusion that they have created a new life form,” said Jim Collins, a bioengineer at Boston University. “What they have created is an organism with a synthesized natural genome. But it doesn’t represent the creation of life from scratch or the creation of a new life form,” he said.
By NICHOLAS WADE
May 20, 2010
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/science/21cell.html?hpw
The genome pioneer J. Craig Venter has taken another step in his quest to create synthetic life, by synthesizing an entire bacterial genome and using it to take over a cell.
Dr. Venter calls the result a “synthetic cell” and is presenting the research as a landmark achievement that will open the way to creating useful microbes from scratch to make products like vaccines and biofuels. At a press conference Thursday, Dr. Venter described the converted cell as “the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.”
“This is a philosophical advance as much as a technical advance,” he said, suggesting that the “synthetic cell” raised new questions about the nature of life.
Other scientists agree that he has achieved a technical feat in synthesizing the largest piece of DNA so far — a million units in length — and in making it accurate enough to substitute for the cell’s own DNA.
But some regard this approach as unpromising because it will take years to design new organisms, and meanwhile progress toward making biofuels is already being achieved with conventional genetic engineering approaches in which existing organisms are modified a few genes at a time.
Dr. Venter’s aim is to achieve total control over a bacterium’s genome, first by synthesizing its DNA in a laboratory and then by designing a new genome stripped of many natural functions and equipped with new genes that govern production of useful chemicals.
“It’s very powerful to be able to reconstruct and own every letter in a genome because that means you can put in different genes,” said Gerald Joyce, a biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif.
In response to the scientific report, President Obama asked the White House bioethics commission on Thursday to complete a study of the issues raised by synthetic biology within six months and report back to him on its findings. He said the new development raised “genuine concerns,” though he did not specify them further.
Dr. Venter took a first step toward this goal three years ago, showing that the natural DNA from one bacterium could be inserted into another and that it would take over the host cell’s operation. Last year, his team synthesized a piece of DNA with 1,080,000 bases, the chemical units of which DNA is composed.
In a final step, a team led by Daniel G. Gibson, Hamilton O. Smith and Dr. Venter report in Thursday’s issue of the journal Science that the synthetic DNA takes over a bacterial cell just as the natural DNA did, making the cell generate the proteins specified by the new DNA’s genetic information in preference to those of its own genome.
The team ordered pieces of DNA 1,000 units in length from Blue Heron, a company that specializes in synthesizing DNA, and developed a technique for assembling the shorter lengths into a complete genome. The cost of the project was $40 million, most of it paid for by Synthetic Genomics, a company Dr. Venter founded.
But the bacterium used by the Venter group is unsuitable for biofuel production, and Dr. Venter said he would move to different organisms. Synthetic Genomics has a contract from Exxon to generate biofuels from algae. Exxon is prepared to spend up to $600 million if all its milestones are met. Dr. Venter said he would try to build “an entire algae genome so we can vary the 50 to 60 different parameters for algae growth to make superproductive organisms.”
On his yacht trips round the world, Dr. Venter has analyzed the DNA of the many microbes in seawater and now has a library of about 40 million genes, mostly from algae. These genes will be a resource to make captive algae produce useful chemicals, he said.
Some other scientists said that aside from assembling a large piece of DNA, Dr. Venter has not broken new ground. “To my mind Craig has somewhat overplayed the importance of this,” said David Baltimore, a geneticist at Caltech. He described the result as “a technical tour de force,” a matter of scale rather than a scientific breakthrough.
“He has not created life, only mimicked it,” Dr. Baltimore said.
Dr. Venter’s approach “is not necessarily on the path” to produce useful microorganisms, said George Church, a genome researcher at Harvard Medical School. Leroy Hood, of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, described Dr. Venter’s report as “glitzy” but said lower-level genes and networks had to be understood first before it would be worth trying to design whole organisms from scratch.
In 2002 Eckard Wimmer, of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, synthesized the genome of the polio virus. The genome constructed a live polio virus that infected and killed mice. Dr. Venter’s work on the bacterium is similar in principle, except that the polio virus genome is only 7,500 units in length, and the bacteria’s genome is more than 100 times longer.
Friends of the Earth, an environmental group, denounced the synthetic genome as “dangerous new technology,” saying that “Mr. Venter should stop all further research until sufficient regulations are in place.”
The genome Dr. Venter synthesized is copied from a natural bacterium that infects goats. He said that before copying the DNA, he excised 14 genes likely to be pathogenic, so the new bacterium, even if it escaped, would be unlikely to cause goats harm.
Dr. Venter’s assertion that he has created a “synthetic cell” has alarmed people who think that means he has created a new life form or an artificial cell. “Of course that’s not right — its ancestor is a biological life form,” said Dr. Joyce of Scripps.
Dr. Venter copied the DNA from one species of bacteria and inserted it into another. The second bacteria made all the proteins and organelles in the so-called “synthetic cell,” by following the specifications implicit in the structure of the inserted DNA.
“My worry is that some people are going to draw the conclusion that they have created a new life form,” said Jim Collins, a bioengineer at Boston University. “What they have created is an organism with a synthesized natural genome. But it doesn’t represent the creation of life from scratch or the creation of a new life form,” he said.
Friday, January 01, 2010
Monday, August 31, 2009
robots learn to lie
granted, this probably didn't go beyond the scope of what they were programmed to do, but it's still freaky nonetheless.
10 robots were given points for how often they went for "food," a light-colored ring on the floor vs. "poison," a darker ring at the other end of the space. the robots had blue lights that went off randomly but gave away their position. there were only 8 spots near the food, so they had to compete for the spots. the robots who were the best at finding food went on to the next round. after 50 rounds, the robots started deceiving each other by not emitting their blue light so as not to give away their position when they were near food.
10 robots were given points for how often they went for "food," a light-colored ring on the floor vs. "poison," a darker ring at the other end of the space. the robots had blue lights that went off randomly but gave away their position. there were only 8 spots near the food, so they had to compete for the spots. the robots who were the best at finding food went on to the next round. after 50 rounds, the robots started deceiving each other by not emitting their blue light so as not to give away their position when they were near food.
Monday, July 20, 2009
stephen hawking: "humans have entered a new stage of evolution"
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/07/stephen-hawking-the-planet-has-entered-a-new-phase-of-evolution.html
Although It has taken homo sapiens several million years to evolve from the apes, the useful information in our DNA, has probably changed by only a few million bits. So the rate of biological evolution in humans, Stephen Hawking points out in his Life in the Universe lecture, is about a bit a year.
"By contrast," Hawking says, "there are about 50,000 new books published in the English language each year, containing of the order of a hundred billion bits of information. Of course, the great majority of this information is garbage, and no use to any form of life. But, even so, the rate at which useful information can be added is millions, if not billions, higher than with DNA."
This means Hawking says that we have entered a new phase of evolution. "At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange information."
But what distinguishes us from our cave man ancestors is the knowledge that we have accumulated over the last ten thousand years, and particularly, Hawking points out, over the last three hundred.
"I think it is legitimate to take a broader view, and include externally transmitted information, as well as DNA, in the evolution of the human race," Hawking said.
In the last ten thousand years the human species has been in what Hawking calls, "an external transmission phase," where the internal record of information, handed down to succeeding generations in DNA, has not changed significantly. "But the external record, in books, and other long lasting forms of storage," Hawking says, "has grown enormously. Some people would use the term, evolution, only for the internally transmitted genetic material, and would object to it being applied to information handed down externally. But I think that is too narrow a view. We are more than just our genes."
The time scale for evolution, in the external transmission period, has collapsed to about 50 years, or less.
Meanwhile, Hawking observes, our human brains "with which we process this information have evolved only on the Darwinian time scale, of hundreds of thousands of years. This is beginning to cause problems. In the 18th century, there was said to be a man who had read every book written. But nowadays, if you read one book a day, it would take you about 15,000 years to read through the books in a national Library. By which time, many more books would have been written."
But we are now entering a new phase, of what Hawking calls "self designed evolution," in which we will be able to change and improve our DNA. "At first," he continues "these changes will be confined to the repair of genetic defects, like cystic fibrosis, and muscular dystrophy. These are controlled by single genes, and so are fairly easy to identify, and correct. Other qualities, such as intelligence, are probably controlled by a large number of genes. It will be much more difficult to find them, and work out the relations between them. Nevertheless, I am sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence, and instincts like aggression."
If the human race manages to redesign itself, to reduce or eliminate the risk of self-destruction, we will probably reach out to the stars and colonize other planets. But this will be done, Hawking believes, with intelligent machines based on mechanical and electronic components, rather than macromolecules, which could eventually replace DNA based life, just as DNA may have replaced an earlier form of life.
Casey Kazan
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Tendency Toward Complexity
i'm currently reading "shantaram," by gregory david roberts. it's a fascinating book about a fugitive's life in india, first living in a slum, then working with the mafia. however, there are many times in the book when he waxes philisophical and it just annoys me, usually because it's not quite how i view the world.
but in one conversation they discuss the meaning of the universe and how you define good and evil. i couldn't believe how much it seemed to sum up my thoughts these days about evolutionary extinction and how nothing in the universe is random. i will insert those passages here when i have time, but basically since the "big bang" the universe has been expanding and forming more complex, moving towards an order. it is the "tendency toward complexity," and maybe "god" is the ultimate complexity.
i haven't wrapped my mind yet around the good and evil aspect of it; that good is anything that helps the universe along toward the ultimate complexity, and evil is anything that holds it back.
i'm looking forward to exploring this further!
but in one conversation they discuss the meaning of the universe and how you define good and evil. i couldn't believe how much it seemed to sum up my thoughts these days about evolutionary extinction and how nothing in the universe is random. i will insert those passages here when i have time, but basically since the "big bang" the universe has been expanding and forming more complex, moving towards an order. it is the "tendency toward complexity," and maybe "god" is the ultimate complexity.
i haven't wrapped my mind yet around the good and evil aspect of it; that good is anything that helps the universe along toward the ultimate complexity, and evil is anything that holds it back.
i'm looking forward to exploring this further!
Thursday, March 12, 2009
another android article
people think i'm crazy when i say humans will all be androids someday, so i love to point out how we're already slowly becoming androids.
One-eyed filmmaker to shoot documentary with camera inside prosthetic eye
By Holly Fox
The Associated Press
BRUSSELS — A one-eyed documentary filmmaker is preparing to work with a video camera concealed inside a prosthetic eye, hoping to secretly record people for a project commenting on the global spread of surveillance cameras.
Canadian Rob Spence's eye was damaged in a childhood shooting accident and it was removed three years ago. Now, he is in the final stages of developing a camera to turn the disability into an advantage.
A fan of the 1970s television series "The Six Million Dollar Man," Spence said he had an epiphany when looking at his cellphone camera and realizing something that small could fit into his empty eye socket.
With the camera tucked inside a prosthetic eye, he hopes to be able to record the same things he sees with his working eye, his muscles moving the camera eye just like his real one.
Spence said he plans to become a "human surveillance machine" to explore privacy issues and whether people are "sleepwalking into an Orwellian society."
He said his subjects won't know he's filming until afterward, but he will have to receive permission from them before including them in his film.
His special equipment will consist of a camera, originally designed for colonoscopies, a battery and a wireless transmitter. It's a challenge to get everything to fit inside the prosthetic eye, but Spence has had help from top engineers, including Steve Mann, who co-founded the wearable-computers research group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.
The camera was provided by Santa Clara, Calif.-based OmniVision, a company that specializes in the miniature cameras found in cellphones, laptops and endoscopes.
Zafer Zamboglu, staff technical-product manager at OmniVision, said he thinks that success with the eye camera will accelerate research into using the technology to restore vision to blind people.
"We believe there's a good future in the prosthetic eye," he said.
The team expects to get the camera to work in the next month. Spence, who jokingly calls himself "Eyeborg," told reporters at a media conference in Brussels that the camera hidden in a prosthetic eye — the same pale hazel color as his real one — would also let him capture more natural conversations than he would with a bulky regular camera.
"As a documentary maker, you're trying to make a connection with a person," he says, "and the best way to make a connection is through eye contact."
But Spence also acknowledged privacy concerns.
"The closer I get to putting this camera eye in, the more freaked out people are about me," he said. They aren't sure they want to hang around with someone who might be filming them at any time, he said.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
evoluntionary extinction revisited
Researchers were building robot nanoworms, designed to seek out and kill cancer cells, and swarms of robot dragonflies for the U.S. military. South Korean customs authorities began training seven clones of Chase, their preeminent sniffer dog, and Sri Lankan researchers announced success in teaching mongoose-robot teams to detect land mines.
- Harpers Magazine, July 2008, Findings pg. 96.
(also see my blog post from dec. 11, 2007, and all the comments for more on our shift toward nanotechnology, the merging of technology and humanity, and evolutionary extinction.)
- Harpers Magazine, July 2008, Findings pg. 96.
(also see my blog post from dec. 11, 2007, and all the comments for more on our shift toward nanotechnology, the merging of technology and humanity, and evolutionary extinction.)
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
the good, the bad and the tiny
i am so glad i took the time on the bus to read the ABA journal this month from cover to cover. might have missed this gem!
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/the_good_the_bad_and_the_tiny/
The [Nanotechnology] committee expects to include ethics topics on its nanotech agenda, says Hsieh, who notes that some scientists believe nano-scale biology has the potential to significantly enhance the performance, durability and health of the human body.
"So there is the question: Is it ethical to do so?" says Hsieh, a member of the advisory board of the Nanoethics Group, an independent research organization based at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. "And who would benefit—just the rich people who can afford it? It would be like cosmetic surgery, only more so."
WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK?
Experts say Congress ultimately will have to play a greater role in ensuring that concerns about nanotechnology issues are addressed sufficiently. Otherwise, they say, public doubts about the field will grow.
Bergeson expects Congress, sometime soon, to review whether the Toxic Substances Control Act in its current form is adequate to deal with nano-scale materials.
In April, public interest groups and the chemical industry wound up on the same side in support of a 10 percent set-aside to fund environmental, health and safety research as part of a roughly $1.5 billion reauthorization of the National Nanotechnology Initiative.
"Public trust is the dark horse in nanotechnology's future," said David Rejeski, director of the Project on Emerging Technologies, in testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Innovation. "If government and industry do not work to build public confidence in nanotechnology, consumers may reach for the 'No nano' label in the future, and investors will put their money elsewhere. Public perceptions about risks—real and perceived—can have large economic impacts."
Referring to the kinds of coalitions that are developing on the issue, Bergeson says, "Nanotechnology forges alliances where you might not expect them."
That's just one of the surprises in a field that promises many more to come.
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/the_good_the_bad_and_the_tiny/
The [Nanotechnology] committee expects to include ethics topics on its nanotech agenda, says Hsieh, who notes that some scientists believe nano-scale biology has the potential to significantly enhance the performance, durability and health of the human body.
"So there is the question: Is it ethical to do so?" says Hsieh, a member of the advisory board of the Nanoethics Group, an independent research organization based at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. "And who would benefit—just the rich people who can afford it? It would be like cosmetic surgery, only more so."
WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK?
Experts say Congress ultimately will have to play a greater role in ensuring that concerns about nanotechnology issues are addressed sufficiently. Otherwise, they say, public doubts about the field will grow.
Bergeson expects Congress, sometime soon, to review whether the Toxic Substances Control Act in its current form is adequate to deal with nano-scale materials.
In April, public interest groups and the chemical industry wound up on the same side in support of a 10 percent set-aside to fund environmental, health and safety research as part of a roughly $1.5 billion reauthorization of the National Nanotechnology Initiative.
"Public trust is the dark horse in nanotechnology's future," said David Rejeski, director of the Project on Emerging Technologies, in testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Innovation. "If government and industry do not work to build public confidence in nanotechnology, consumers may reach for the 'No nano' label in the future, and investors will put their money elsewhere. Public perceptions about risks—real and perceived—can have large economic impacts."
Referring to the kinds of coalitions that are developing on the issue, Bergeson says, "Nanotechnology forges alliances where you might not expect them."
That's just one of the surprises in a field that promises many more to come.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
artificial life
from "findings," harper's magazine, april 2008:
american scientists artificially reproduced the dna of a venereal-disease bacterium and expected to use the technique to create artificial life within ten years.
american scientists artificially reproduced the dna of a venereal-disease bacterium and expected to use the technique to create artificial life within ten years.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Electronic tattoo display runs on blood
http://www.physorg.com/news122819670.html
by Lisa Zyga
Jim Mielke's wireless blood-fueled display is a true merging of technology and body art. At the recent Greener Gadgets Design Competition, the engineer demonstrated a subcutaneously implanted touch-screen that operates as a cell phone display, with the potential for 3G video calls that are visible just underneath the skin.
The basis of the 2x4-inch "Digital Tattoo Interface" is a Bluetooth device made of thin, flexible silicon and silicone. It´s inserted through a small incision as a tightly rolled tube, and then it unfurls beneath the skin to align between skin and muscle. Through the same incision, two small tubes on the device are attached to an artery and a vein to allow the blood to flow to a coin-sized blood fuel cell that converts glucose and oxygen to electricity. After blood flows in from the artery to the fuel cell, it flows out again through the vein.
On both the top and bottom surfaces of the display is a matching matrix of field-producing pixels. The top surface also enables touch-screen control through the skin. Instead of ink, the display uses tiny microscopic spheres, somewhat similar to tattoo ink. A field-sensitive material in the spheres changes their color from clear to black, aligned with the matrix fields.
The tattoo display communicates wirelessly to other Bluetooth devices - both in the outside world and within the same body. Although the device is always on (as long as your blood´s flowing), the display can be turned off and on by pushing a small dot on the skin. When the phone rings, for example, an individual turns the display on, and "the tattoo comes to life as a digital video of the caller," Mielke explains. When the call ends, the tattoo disappears.
Could such an invasive device have harmful biological effects? Actually, the device could offer health benefits. That´s because it also continually monitors for many blood disorders, alerting the person of a health problem.
The tattoo display is still just a concept, with no word on plans for commercialization.
by Lisa Zyga
Jim Mielke's wireless blood-fueled display is a true merging of technology and body art. At the recent Greener Gadgets Design Competition, the engineer demonstrated a subcutaneously implanted touch-screen that operates as a cell phone display, with the potential for 3G video calls that are visible just underneath the skin.
The basis of the 2x4-inch "Digital Tattoo Interface" is a Bluetooth device made of thin, flexible silicon and silicone. It´s inserted through a small incision as a tightly rolled tube, and then it unfurls beneath the skin to align between skin and muscle. Through the same incision, two small tubes on the device are attached to an artery and a vein to allow the blood to flow to a coin-sized blood fuel cell that converts glucose and oxygen to electricity. After blood flows in from the artery to the fuel cell, it flows out again through the vein.
On both the top and bottom surfaces of the display is a matching matrix of field-producing pixels. The top surface also enables touch-screen control through the skin. Instead of ink, the display uses tiny microscopic spheres, somewhat similar to tattoo ink. A field-sensitive material in the spheres changes their color from clear to black, aligned with the matrix fields.
The tattoo display communicates wirelessly to other Bluetooth devices - both in the outside world and within the same body. Although the device is always on (as long as your blood´s flowing), the display can be turned off and on by pushing a small dot on the skin. When the phone rings, for example, an individual turns the display on, and "the tattoo comes to life as a digital video of the caller," Mielke explains. When the call ends, the tattoo disappears.
Could such an invasive device have harmful biological effects? Actually, the device could offer health benefits. That´s because it also continually monitors for many blood disorders, alerting the person of a health problem.
The tattoo display is still just a concept, with no word on plans for commercialization.
man clones himself
from harper's, march 2008, pg. 96 "findings":
japanese scientists unvelied a robot that plays the violin, a robot that solves rubik's cubes, a robot that recognizes itself in a mirror, a robot snoplow that eats snow and excretes ice bricks, a robot exoskeleton that can be worn be elderly farmers, and a robot that walks at the command of a monkey on a treadmill in north carolina.
a california scientist used skin cells to create embryonic clones of himself.
japanese scientists unvelied a robot that plays the violin, a robot that solves rubik's cubes, a robot that recognizes itself in a mirror, a robot snoplow that eats snow and excretes ice bricks, a robot exoskeleton that can be worn be elderly farmers, and a robot that walks at the command of a monkey on a treadmill in north carolina.
a california scientist used skin cells to create embryonic clones of himself.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
more on evolutionary extinction
from harper's (magazine), june 2007, pg. 96, "findings":
scientists in nevada created a sheep-human hybrid that is about 15 percent human; other researchers successfully grew sperm from human bone marrow, which could theoretically lead to a future in which pairs of lesbian mothers can produce their own daughters without the intervention of a male.
roboticists were working hard to create robots that will interact "rhythmically" with humans.
from harper's, april 2007, pg. 108, "findings":
a woman with a bionic arm can now sense her missing fingers in her chest.
scientists in nevada created a sheep-human hybrid that is about 15 percent human; other researchers successfully grew sperm from human bone marrow, which could theoretically lead to a future in which pairs of lesbian mothers can produce their own daughters without the intervention of a male.
roboticists were working hard to create robots that will interact "rhythmically" with humans.
from harper's, april 2007, pg. 108, "findings":
a woman with a bionic arm can now sense her missing fingers in her chest.
Monday, December 17, 2007
new cloning techniques
"Skin cells bring cloning a step nearer to efficiency," Nicholas Wade, New York Times, Jan. 5, 2000The much-heralded era of animal cloning has moved closer to fruition with a new technique that seems far more efficient than earlier methods. With the new cloning technique, four calves, now 7 months to 9 months old, have been cloned from skin cells scraped from the ear of a prize Japanese bull.
implants
percentage of americans who say they are willing to have an internet-access device implanted in their brains: 10
(from harpers index, january 2008 issue)
(from harpers index, january 2008 issue)
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
god has been cloned
i read this in Harper's Magazine and it changed my life, giving me my new fascination with evolutionary extinction and cloning, and i further took it toward it's natural conclusion of robots, androids and nanotechnology.
GOD HAS BEEN CLONED..:
(From a book of interviews between Jean Baudrillard and Enrique Valiente Noailles, Exiles from Dialogue, to be published next month by Polity. Baudrillard, who died in March, was the author of more than fifty works of philosophy and criticism, including
Simulacra and Simulation. Noailles is a philosopher and journalist. Translated from the French by Chris Turner.)
ENRIQUE VALIENTE NOAILLES: You say there's sometimes a simultaneous upsurge of good and evil – that combating evil leads to reactivating it.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD: You've only to take the "zero deaths" formula, a basic concept of the security order. It's clear that this equates mathematically to "zero lives." By warding off death at all costs (burdensome medical treatment, genetics, cloning), we're being turned, through security, into living dead. On the pretext of immortality, we're moving toward extermination. It's the destiny of maximum good, of absolute happiness, to lead to a zero sum. Illusion – that is, evil – is vital. When you exchange this vital illusion for the unconditional promotion of good, then you're heading for a blowback from the accursed share. This is how things are getting better and better yet, at the same time, worse and worse.
NOAILLES: History might be an attempt to annihilate one part of the duality.
BAUDRILLARD: Human beings can't bear this duality either in the world or in themselves. They can't bear failing the world by their very existence, nor the world failing them. They've sown disorder everywhere, and in wishing to perfect the world, they end up failing themselves. Self-hatred fuels the whole technological effort to make the world over anew. It's on this failing of existence that all religions thrive. You have to pay. In the past, it was God who took the reprisals; now we do it. We have undertaken to inflict the worst on ourselves, and to engineer our disappearance in an extremely complex and sophisticated way, in order to restore the world to the pure state it was in before we were in it.
NOAILLES: Perhaps the Last Judgment has taken place, and we're carrying out the punishment.
BAUDRILLARD: A fine metaphysical hypothesis, except that this self-hatred is a turn taken by Western subjectivity, and also one it's currently imposing on the rest of the world. This nihilism begins with Romanticism, but it has now become a major undertaking, an enterprise of self-immolation by technology against a background of obscure resentment at the evil spirit that's dragging us into it. So depending on how you see it, it can be taken as a challenge in suicidal form or as the enactment, as you said, of God's judgment.
NOAlLLES: What makes it look more like a punishment being carried out than a suicide is that it's taking place in slow motion.
BAUDRILLARD: And cloning can be said to be a slow-motion suicide – not a sudden disappearance but an innovative form of extinction of the species by doubling. The obliteration of something by that selfsame thing is the definition of suicide.
NOAILLES: This could also be a repetition of the original act: in the same way as we received it, giving the world over to another species, handing on the torch. We can't do any more with it, so over to you!
BAUDRILLARD: It's a way of being rid of the problem, of relieving ourselves of the responsibility by devolving it to another – artificial species; a way of telling God, "Sort it out with them!" But that's just a dream. One question remains: Isn't the process of artificial perpetuation of the species – which runs counter to evolution – part of evolution? "Natural" evolution wants species to disappear. It isn't just a biological fact that every species and every individual wishes both to survive and at the same time to disappear. It isn't just that it's destined to disappear but that it wants to, by another kind of will, and does all it can to do so. Human beings are opting to break that rule today by aiming for immortality, through cloning and many other things. But aren't they actually obeying the same rule or even bringing about an accelerated disappearance? It might be an opportunity for the human race, by putting a world of clones into orbit, to recover its original form, but God will be forced to clone himself too! It would take a clone-God to manage a world of clones.
NOAILLES: Nietzsche's madman, who went looking for God with a lantern in the daytime, would run off horrified, shouting, "God has been cloned!" And if we've materialized the kingdom of God in this world, we've created an immanence with all the tools of transcendence, including salvation and damnation. If what Saint Thomas Aquinas cruelly points out is true-"So that the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly, they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell"-it is perhaps this deep delight in the misfortune of others that's the engine of the duplication.
BAUDRILLARD: But we're already in this artificial world. We've already become clones here and now. We've already exchanged transcendence for the law of DNA. The moral law, Kant's law, the one that was written in the starry sky and in man's inner world, is now inscribed in the genetic code. There's no ideal site of consciousness any longer. And if in the past we could symbolically exchange this world with God under the sign of a moral law we'd invented, we can't exchange it for anything any longer, except the spectral universe that awaits us. Even in the economic field, the field of exchange par excellence and of value, we're beginning to realize, as generalized speculation takes over, that it's the nothing that circulates. And this is why things are going faster and faster, no longer being hampered by either the moral law or the law of value. There's obviously an extraordinary fragility in this, which shows up in the perpetual crisis of the economic and political spheres. But there's a complicity in this exchange of the nothing, a deep complicity that has a bright future because it's a collusion between criminals, between accomplices in the perfect crime. There will no longer be anyone to say the emperor has no clothes, no longer anyone to betray the fact that all this generalized exchange is based on nothing and that it can generalize itself only on the basis of the nothing. If this were revealed, it would be the apocalypse in the literal sense, and we would stand before the nothing as a fait accompli.
GOD HAS BEEN CLONED..:
(From a book of interviews between Jean Baudrillard and Enrique Valiente Noailles, Exiles from Dialogue, to be published next month by Polity. Baudrillard, who died in March, was the author of more than fifty works of philosophy and criticism, including
Simulacra and Simulation. Noailles is a philosopher and journalist. Translated from the French by Chris Turner.)
ENRIQUE VALIENTE NOAILLES: You say there's sometimes a simultaneous upsurge of good and evil – that combating evil leads to reactivating it.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD: You've only to take the "zero deaths" formula, a basic concept of the security order. It's clear that this equates mathematically to "zero lives." By warding off death at all costs (burdensome medical treatment, genetics, cloning), we're being turned, through security, into living dead. On the pretext of immortality, we're moving toward extermination. It's the destiny of maximum good, of absolute happiness, to lead to a zero sum. Illusion – that is, evil – is vital. When you exchange this vital illusion for the unconditional promotion of good, then you're heading for a blowback from the accursed share. This is how things are getting better and better yet, at the same time, worse and worse.
NOAILLES: History might be an attempt to annihilate one part of the duality.
BAUDRILLARD: Human beings can't bear this duality either in the world or in themselves. They can't bear failing the world by their very existence, nor the world failing them. They've sown disorder everywhere, and in wishing to perfect the world, they end up failing themselves. Self-hatred fuels the whole technological effort to make the world over anew. It's on this failing of existence that all religions thrive. You have to pay. In the past, it was God who took the reprisals; now we do it. We have undertaken to inflict the worst on ourselves, and to engineer our disappearance in an extremely complex and sophisticated way, in order to restore the world to the pure state it was in before we were in it.
NOAILLES: Perhaps the Last Judgment has taken place, and we're carrying out the punishment.
BAUDRILLARD: A fine metaphysical hypothesis, except that this self-hatred is a turn taken by Western subjectivity, and also one it's currently imposing on the rest of the world. This nihilism begins with Romanticism, but it has now become a major undertaking, an enterprise of self-immolation by technology against a background of obscure resentment at the evil spirit that's dragging us into it. So depending on how you see it, it can be taken as a challenge in suicidal form or as the enactment, as you said, of God's judgment.
NOAlLLES: What makes it look more like a punishment being carried out than a suicide is that it's taking place in slow motion.
BAUDRILLARD: And cloning can be said to be a slow-motion suicide – not a sudden disappearance but an innovative form of extinction of the species by doubling. The obliteration of something by that selfsame thing is the definition of suicide.
NOAILLES: This could also be a repetition of the original act: in the same way as we received it, giving the world over to another species, handing on the torch. We can't do any more with it, so over to you!
BAUDRILLARD: It's a way of being rid of the problem, of relieving ourselves of the responsibility by devolving it to another – artificial species; a way of telling God, "Sort it out with them!" But that's just a dream. One question remains: Isn't the process of artificial perpetuation of the species – which runs counter to evolution – part of evolution? "Natural" evolution wants species to disappear. It isn't just a biological fact that every species and every individual wishes both to survive and at the same time to disappear. It isn't just that it's destined to disappear but that it wants to, by another kind of will, and does all it can to do so. Human beings are opting to break that rule today by aiming for immortality, through cloning and many other things. But aren't they actually obeying the same rule or even bringing about an accelerated disappearance? It might be an opportunity for the human race, by putting a world of clones into orbit, to recover its original form, but God will be forced to clone himself too! It would take a clone-God to manage a world of clones.
NOAILLES: Nietzsche's madman, who went looking for God with a lantern in the daytime, would run off horrified, shouting, "God has been cloned!" And if we've materialized the kingdom of God in this world, we've created an immanence with all the tools of transcendence, including salvation and damnation. If what Saint Thomas Aquinas cruelly points out is true-"So that the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly, they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell"-it is perhaps this deep delight in the misfortune of others that's the engine of the duplication.
BAUDRILLARD: But we're already in this artificial world. We've already become clones here and now. We've already exchanged transcendence for the law of DNA. The moral law, Kant's law, the one that was written in the starry sky and in man's inner world, is now inscribed in the genetic code. There's no ideal site of consciousness any longer. And if in the past we could symbolically exchange this world with God under the sign of a moral law we'd invented, we can't exchange it for anything any longer, except the spectral universe that awaits us. Even in the economic field, the field of exchange par excellence and of value, we're beginning to realize, as generalized speculation takes over, that it's the nothing that circulates. And this is why things are going faster and faster, no longer being hampered by either the moral law or the law of value. There's obviously an extraordinary fragility in this, which shows up in the perpetual crisis of the economic and political spheres. But there's a complicity in this exchange of the nothing, a deep complicity that has a bright future because it's a collusion between criminals, between accomplices in the perfect crime. There will no longer be anyone to say the emperor has no clothes, no longer anyone to betray the fact that all this generalized exchange is based on nothing and that it can generalize itself only on the basis of the nothing. If this were revealed, it would be the apocalypse in the literal sense, and we would stand before the nothing as a fait accompli.
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