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Traditional agronomy transfers genes between plants whose kinship lets
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them interbreed. The new botany mechanically transfers genes between organisms
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that can never mate naturally: An antifreeze gene from a fish becomes part
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of a strawberry. Such patchwork, done by people who've seldom studied
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evolutionary
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biology and ecology, uses so-called "genetic engineering" - a double misnomer.
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It moves genes but is not about genetics. "Engineering" implies understanding
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of the causal mechanisms that link actions to effects, but nobody understands
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the mechanisms by which genes, interacting with each other and the environment,
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express traits. Transgenic manipulation inserts foreign genes into random
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locations in a plant's DNA to see what happens. That's not engineering;
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it's the industrialization of life by people with a narrow understanding
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of it.
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The new botany aligns the development of plants with their economic, not
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evolutionary, success: survival not of the fittest but of the fattest.
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High-yield, open-pollinated seeds abound; the new crops were created not
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because they're productive but because they're patentable. Their economic
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value is oriented not toward helping subsistence farmers to feed themselves
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but toward feeding more livestock for the already overfed rich. Most
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worryingly, the transformation of plant genetics
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is being accelerated from the measured pace of biological evolution to
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the speed of next quarter's earnings report. Such haste makes it impossible
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to foresee and forestall: Unintended consequences appear only later, when
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they may not be fixable, because novel lifeforms aren't recallable.
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My continuing professional work is on improving
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the reliability of software. Software is a tool, and as
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a toolbuilder I must struggle with the uses to which
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the tools I make are put. I have always believed that making software more
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reliable, given its many uses, will make the world a safer and better place;
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if I were to come to believe the opposite, then I would be morally obligated
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to stop this work. I can now imagine such a day may come.
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This all leaves me not angry but at least a bit melancholic. Henceforth,
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for me, progress will be somewhat bittersweet.
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Where can we look for a new ethical basis to set
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our course? I have found the ideas in the book
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Ethics for the New Millennium,
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by the Dalai Lama, to be very helpful. As is perhaps well known but little
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heeded, the Dalai Lama argues that the most important thing
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is for us to conduct our lives with love and compassion for others, and
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that our societies need to develop a stronger notion of universal
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responsibility
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and of our interdependency; he proposes a standard of positive ethical
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conduct for individuals and societies that seems consonant with Attali's
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Fraternity utopia.
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The Dalai Lama further argues that we must understand what it is that makes
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people happy, and acknowledge the strong evidence that neither material
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progress nor the pursuit of the power of knowledge is the key - that there
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are limits to what science and the scientific pursuit alone can do.
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I recently had the good fortune to meet the distinguished author and scholar
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Jacques Attali, whose book
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Lignes d'horizons
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(
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Millennium,
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in the
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English
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translation) helped inspire the Java and Jini approach to the coming age
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of pervasive computing, as previously described in this magazine. In his
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new book
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Fraternités,
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Attali describes how our dreams of utopia
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have changed over time:
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"At the dawn of societies, men saw their passage on Earth as nothing more
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than a labyrinth of pain, at the end of which stood a door leading, via
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their death, to the company of gods and to
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Eternity.
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With the Hebrews and
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then the Greeks, some men dared free themselves from theological demands
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and dream of an ideal City where
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Liberty
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would flourish. Others, noting
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the evolution of the market society, understood that the liberty of some
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would entail the alienation of others, and they sought
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Equality
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."
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Jacques helped me understand how these three
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different utopian goals exist in tension in our society today. He goes
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on to describe a fourth utopia,
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Fraternity,
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whose foundation is altruism.
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Fraternity alone associates individual happiness with the happiness of
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others, affording the promise of self-sustainment.
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This crystallized for me my problem with Kurzweil's dream. A technological
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approach to Eternity - near immortality through robotics - may not be the
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most desirable utopia, and its pursuit brings clear dangers. Maybe we should
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rethink our utopian choices.
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I realize now that she had an awareness of the nature of the order of life,
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and of the necessity of living with and respecting that order. With this
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respect comes a necessary humility that we, with our early-21st-century
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chutzpah, lack at our peril. The commonsense view, grounded in this respect,
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is often right, in advance of the scientific evidence. The clear fragility
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and inefficiencies of the human-made systems we have built should give
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us all pause; the fragility of the systems I have worked on certainly humbles
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me.
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We should have learned a lesson from the making of the first atomic bomb
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and the resulting arms race. We didn't do well then, and the parallels
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to our current situation are troubling.
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The nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) technologies used in 20th-century
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weapons of mass destruction were and are largely military, developed in
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government laboratories. In sharp contrast, the 21st-century GNR technologies
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have clear commercial uses and are being developed almost exclusively by
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corporate enterprises. In this age of triumphant commercialism, technology
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- with science as its handmaiden - is delivering a series of almost magical
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inventions that are the most phenomenally lucrative ever seen. We are
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aggressively pursuing the promises of these new technologies within the
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now-unchallenged system of global capitalism and its manifold financial
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incentives and competitive pressures.
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This is the first moment in the history of our planet when any species,
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by its own voluntary actions, has become a danger to itself - as well as
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to vast numbers of others.
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The 21st-century technologies - genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics
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(GNR) - are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents
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and abuses. Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses
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are widely within the reach of individuals or small groups. They will not
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require large facilities or rare raw materials. Knowledge alone will enable
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the use of them.
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Thus we have the possibility not just of weapons of mass destruction but
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of knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD), this destructiveness hugely
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amplified by the power of self-replication.
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Danny's answer -
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directed specifically at Kurzweil's scenario of humans merging with robots
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- came swiftly, and quite surprised me. He said, simply, that the changes
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would come gradually, and that we would get used to them.
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But I guess I wasn't totally surprised. I had seen a quote from Danny in
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Kurzweil's book in which he said, "I'm as fond of my body as anyone, but
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if I can be 200 with a body of silicon, I'll take it." It seemed that he
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was at peace with this process and its attendant risks, while I was not.
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Why the future doesn't need us.

Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species.

By Bill Joy

In the end, what does this Network Economy bring us?

Economists once thought that the coming age would bring supreme productivity. But, in a paradox, increasing technology has not led to measurable increases in productivity.

This is because productivity is exactly the wrong thing to care about.

12 The Law of Inefficiencies

Don't solve problems

Nonetheless, in the coming churn, the industrial age's titans will fall. In a poetic sense, the prime task of the Network Economy is to destroy - company by company, industry by industry - the industrial economy. While it undoes industry at its peak, it weaves a larger web of new, more agile, more tightly linked organizations between its spaces.

Effective churning will be an art. In any case, promoting stability, defending productivity, and protecting success can only prolong the misery. When in doubt, churn. In the Network Economy, seek sustainable disequilibrium.

Ironically, only by promoting churn can long-term stability be achieved.

This notion of constant churn is familiar to ecologists and those who manage large networks. The sustained vitality of

a complex network requires that the net keep provoking itself out of balance. If the system settles into harmony and equilibrium, it will eventually stagnate and die.

Innovation is a disruption; constant innovation is perpetual disruption. This seems to be the goal of a well-made network: to sustain a perpetual disequilibrium. As economists (such as Paul Romer and Brian Arthur) begin to study the Network Economy, they see that it, too, operates by poising itself on the edge of constant chaos. In this chaotic churn is life-giving renewal and growth.

11 The Law of Churn

Seek sustainable disequilibrium

If money and information flow through something, then it's part of the Network Economy.

In the Network Economy, the net wins. All transactions and objects will tend to obey network
logic.

10 The Law of Displacement

The net wins

The harsh news is that getting stuck is a certainty in the new economy. Sooner, rather than later, a product will be eclipsed at its prime. While one product is at its peak, another will move the mountain by changing the rules.

There is only one way out. The organism must devolve. In order to go from one high peak to another, it must go downhill first and cross a valley before climbing uphill again. It must reverse itself and become less adapted, less fit, less optimal.

9 The Law of Devolution

Let go at the top

7 The Law of Generosity

Follow the free

8 The Law of the Allegiance

Feed the web first

1 The Law of Connection

Embrace dumb power
</b>

The Network Economy is fed by the deep resonance of two stellar bangs: the collapsing microcosm of chips and the exploding telecosm of connections. These sudden shifts are tearing the old laws of wealth apart and preparing territory for the emerging economy.

One curious aspect of the Network Economy would astound a citizen living in 1897: The very best gets cheaper each year. This rule of thumb is so ingrained

in our contemporary lifestyle that we bank on it without marveling at it. But marvel we should, because this paradox is a major engine of the new economy.

Through most of the industrial age, consumers experienced slight improvements in quality for slight increases in price. But the arrival of the microprocessor flipped the price equation. In the information age, consumers quickly came to count on drastically superior quality for less price over time. The price and quality curves diverge so dramatically that it sometimes seems as if the better something is, the cheaper it will cost.

"Three centuries ago science was transformed by the dramatic new idea that
rules based on mathematical equations could be used to describe the natural
world. My purpose in this book is to initiate another such transformation,
and to introduce a new kind of science that is based on the much more general
types of rules that can be embodied in simple computer programs."

He goes on to explain that by applying a single key observation - that
the most complicated behavior imaginable arises from very simple rules
- one can view and understand the universe with previously unattainable
clarity and insight. The idea of complexity arising from simple rules -
and that the universe can best be understood by way of the computation
it requires to grind out results from those rules - is at the center of
the book. The big idea is that the algorithm is mightier than the equation.

The Man Who Cracked The Code to Everything ...

... But first it cracked him. The inside story of how Stephen Wolfram went from boy genius to recluse to science renegade.

By Steven Levy

There is only one
time in the history of each planet when its inhabitants first wire up its innumerable parts to make one large Machine. Later that Machine may run faster, but there is only one time when it is born.
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You and I are alive at this moment.
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