Tag Archives: Human societies

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS SOCIETY SET TO COLLAPSE?

19 Sunday Dec 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Climate Change., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Disconnection., Human Collective Stupidity., Life., Pandemic, POST COVID-19., Purpose of life., Society, Speed of technology., Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Fifteen-minute read) 

Not quite, but every major social indicator imaginable is either flatlining or declining and unwinding, from longevity, to trust, to happiness, to wealth.

 

History shows us that economic collapse will essentially happen with entrenched elites seeking to maintain the status quo.

You would have to be an ostrich with your head stuck in the sand not to see that in exchange for your Freedom, Liberty, and Independence, governments are printing currency to pay their bills and support the tens of millions on public assistance.

But if you take a look around societies that are failing to anticipate their own impending collapses.

There are political classes, intellectual classes, and capitalist classes, to name a few that can conceive of the possibility that society is in a grave, profound difficulty. With the help of the Pandemic now reaching unprecedented proportions, and the continuing Climate crises all are adding up to a pending collapsing society.

Why?

Because we are all too preoccupied with merely surviving the vicious cycle as the collapse intensifies. On one hand are acting as if we are already living in scientifically-planned societies, immune to collapse on a time scale that any of us have to worry about. On the other is the idea that everyone is entitled to have what others have earned is now permeating society with the help of social media.

It is not our hard-won liberties that are being taken away it is our means to live a life in an attempt to save dying economies.

                                  ____________________

If that is not enough just look at what COP26 achieved. 

As you know COP26 was an opportunity for nations from across the globe to agree on a way to limit the devastating impacts of climate change.

What we got was a deal that does not go far enough and will not limit global warming to 1.5C by the end of the century.

Because of the current Pandemic, carbon emissions will continue for the foreseeable future, combined with Methane, we are set to see more wars.

Climate change is going to result in mass migration with wars over resources with the pandemic affecting not just the cost of living but the ability to earn a living. We’re already seeing (with the most recent example in Cameroon where farmers and fishermen are killing each other for water) both ( Climate/ Pandemic ) escalating resulting in steep recessions in many countries.

Current projections suggest that the worldwide recession of COVID-19 would be the fourth deepest and most extreme since the Second World War during this time.

Surely it’s time we started to look at both the Pandemic and Climate Change through the eyes of human liberty, consensus, and laws, all are becoming more relevant day by day, which is paramount to all of us.

Today we are not immune to anybody’s problems.

A collapse of a society anywhere is a global issue, and conversely, anybody anywhere in the world now has ways of reaching us.

However, there are obvious differences between the environmental problems and pandemics in the past and the ones that we face today. The difference between today and the past is globalization.

In the past, you could get solitary collapses.

                                            ———————-

If elites wish to maintain the status quo, why don’t people…take action against those elites?

Are we able to choose what we will do with our lives?

What is the point of life if we cannot choose our own paths?

Common sense tells us that with the state of our planet, that we’re is no longer at liberty to ignore what is happening. If we really can choose, then these choices we have made must be uncaused — something that cannot be explained within the model of science that many of us rely on.

However from a purely scientific perspective, how is it possible that anything can occur without having been caused by something else? 

A human act is an act that is deliberately performed by one possessed of the use of reason. Branches of psychology and many wisdom traditions, attempt to make sense of human existence and experience and to connect those experiences to the world at large. 

Our current view of human mental evolution is like a jigsaw puzzle where many of the pieces have been taken out of the box.

They have not yet been put together to form a coherent picture.

One of the oldest questions in psychology, and in other fields such as philosophy, is whether humans have free will. The central puzzles about human cognition are its curious combination of flexibility and efficiency.

But is this all that defines us?

We don’t have to live with what we got.

Take, the technology behind a nuclear bomb.

It only exists because of the technology because of a cooperative hive mind: hundreds of scientists and engineers working together on an atom bomb.  

This same unique intelligence and cooperation also underlie more positive advances, such as modern medicine and now the vaccines we are using to fight covid. 

Still, as far as we know, we are the only creatures trying to understand where we came from. We also peer further back in time, and further into the future, than any other animal.

What other species would think to ponder the age of the universe, or how it will end?

                                    ———–

Either we put our survival before GDP.

Continue as we are or change by putting our Health before Consumption, putting equality before greed, putting transparency before political power, and sharing our responsibility to future generations. 

We don’t know exactly what led to our brains becoming the size they are today, but we seem to owe our complex reasoning abilities to notice the unexpected, which our world is now experiencing and will continue to experience with less and less critical reflection.  

Critical reflection requires that the thinker examine the underlying assumptions and radically question or doubt the validity of arguments, assertions, and even facts of the case. 

We are now in need of some critical thinking, not reflection to consider the results of having linked our scenario-building minds into larger networks of knowledge that have made us increasingly reliant on each other.

So what if anything will bring us together to act as one or when will we hit peak humanity becoming a singularity basically?

By peak humanity I mean we’ll have the ability to do things we can’t do alone.

If we could all work together as well as the human body can, that’s when I think we individual humans will be “cells” and we as a collective would be called an individual.

Our problem is that the majority of us are incapable of putting anything before our daily needs.

                                       ———————–

Because our rapidly expanding technology has allowed us all to become instant publishers means we can share information at the touch of a button.

This transmission of ideas and technology helps us in our quest to uncover even more about ourselves with an immense capacity for good. At the same time, we risk driving our closest relatives to extinction and destroying the only planet we have ever called home.

The technology that defines us can also destroy the world.

Why?

Because we’re simply trying to advance too much too fast.

Our cultures and mindsets cant keep up with our technology and morality, so chaos ensues.

How do you expect to survive in a world that is based on imaginary delusions of people without basic knowledge about how Earth works in terms of physics and biology.

This tells us something profound about ourselves.

Unfortunately, we don’t know all of the determinants of human behavior, and we may never understand all of these determinants—so the question of whether or not we have free will is likely to remain a philosophical quagmire.

This is why we are unable to act as one.

So we are left pretty much where we started.

Religions, Languages, Nations, and Cultures are what divide humanity today which is just another flaw as a species. 

So of course, we pass on the good and the bad.

Not until we learn to pull together our unparalleled language skills, our ability to infer others’ mental states, and our instinct for cooperation, will we have something unprecedented to fight Climate Change and future pandemics.

We understand what others think based upon our knowledge of the world, but we also understand what others cannot know. 

The answer lies in fundamentally changing social behavior away from the rapidly moving consuming beings that we are.

We are the only society in world history that has the ability to learn from all the experiments being carried out elsewhere in the world today, and all the experiments that have succeeded and failed in the past so at least we have the choice of what we want to do about it or do we. 

Most people realize that 2020 has thrust two game-changing trends upon us that will change the world for years to come.

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WITH THE INFORMATION AGE ARE WE HEADING FOR CYBEROCRACY.

30 Monday Dec 2019

Posted by in Cyberocracy., Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Freedom, Google, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Modern Day Communication., Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Political Trust, Populism., Reality., Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., Twitter, Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twenty-minute last post of the year read) 

 

Technology is not neutral or apolitical.

So information may very well come to succeed capital as a central theoretical concept for political and social philosophy.

The retrieval systems of the future are not going to retrieve facts but points of view. 

However, the weakness of databases is that they let you retrieve facts, while the strength of our culture over the past several hundred years has been our ability to take on multiple points of view.

The question is, will new technologies speed the collapse of closed societies and favour the spread of open ones. The information revolution empowers individuals, favours open societies, and portends a worldwide triumph for democracy—may not hold up as times change.

The revolution in global communications will forces all nations to reconsider traditional ways of thinking about national sovereignty.

We are witnessing this happing already with the rise of popularism – Election of Donal Trump and Boris Johnston, but the tools that a society uses to create and maintain itself are as central to human life as a hive is to bee life. However, mere tools aren’t enough. The tools are simply a way of channelling existing motivation.

The influence in the information age is indeed proving to revolve around symbolic politics and media-savvy — the ‘soft power’ aspects of influence.

The information revolution may well enable hybrid systems to take the form that does not fit standard distinctions between democracy and totalitarianism.  In these systems, part of the populace may be empowered to act more democratically than ever, but other parts may be subjected to new techniques of surveillance and control.

Technology with algorithms are leading to new hybrid amalgams of democratic and authoritarian tendencies, often in the same country, like China that is building a vast new sensory apparatus for watching what is happening in their own societies and around the world.

The new revolution in communications makes possible both an intense degree of centralization of power if the society decides to use it in that way, and large decentralization because of the multiplicity, diversity, and cheapness of the modes of communication.

Of all the uses to which the new technologies are being put, this may become one of the most important for the future of the state and its relationship to society.

So are we beginning to see the end of democracy and the beginning of Cyberocracy?   

Crime and terrorism are impelling new installations for watching cityscapes, monitoring communications, and mapping potential hotspots, but sensor networks are also being deployed for early warning and rapid response regarding many other concerns — disease outbreaks, forest protection.

However, the existence of democracy does not assure that the new technology will strengthen democratic tendencies and be used as a force for good rather than evil. 

The new technology may be a double-edged sword even in a democracy.

To this end, far from favouring democracy or totalitarianism, Cyberocracy may facilitate more advanced forms of both. It seems as likely to foster further divergence as convergence, and divergence has been as much the historical rule as convergence.

Citizens’ concerns about top-down surveillance may be countered by bottom-up “sousveillance” (or inverse surveillance), particularly if individuals wear personal devices for detecting and recording what is occurring in their vicinity.

One way or the other Cyberocracy will be a product of the information revolution, and it may slowly but radically affect who rules, how and why. That is, information and its control will become a dominant source of power, as a natural next step in political evolution.

Surplus information or monopoly information that is concentrated, guarded, and exploited for privileged economic and political purposes could and WILL most likely lead to Governance by social media platforms owned by Microsoft/ Apple/ Google/ Facebook/ Twitter.

When we change the way we communicate, we change society. 

The structure may be more open, the process more fluid, and the conventions redefined; but a hierarchy must still exist.

The history of previous technologies demonstrates that early in the life of new technology, people are likely to emphasize the efficiency effects and underestimate or overlook potential social system effects.

The information revolution is fostering more open and closed systems; more decentralization and centralization; more inclusionary and exclusionary communities; more privacy and surveillance; more freedom and authority; more democracy and new forms of totalitarianism.

The major impact will probably be felt in terms of the organization and behaviour of the modern bureaucratic state.

The hierarchical structuring of bureaucracies into offices, departments, and lines of authority may confound the flow of information that may be needed to deal with complex issues in today’s increasingly interconnected world.

Bureaucracy depends on going through channels and keeping the information in bounds; in contrast, Cyberocracy may place a premium on gaining information from any source, public or private. Technocracy emphasizes ‘hard’ quantitative and econometric skills, like programming and budgeting methodologies; in contrast, a Cyberocracy may bring a new emphasis on ‘soft’ symbolic, cultural, and psychological dimensions of policymaking and public opinion.

Why will any of this happen? 

Because the actual practice of freedom that we see emerging from the networked environment allows people to reach across national or social boundaries, across space and political division. It allows people to solve problems together in new associations that are outside the boundaries of formal, legal-political association.

As Cyberocracy develops, will governments become flatter, less hierarchical, more decentralized, with different kinds of middle-level officials and offices? 

Some may, but many may not. Governments [particularly repressive regimes] may not have the organizational flexibility and options that corporations have.

So where are we? 

Future trends:

  1. The advanced societies are developing new sensory apparatuses that people have barely begun to understand and use;
  2. A network-based social sector is emerging, distinct from the traditional public and private sectors.  Consisting largely of NGOs and NPOs, its rise is leading to a re-balancing of state, market, and civil-society forces;
  3. New modes of multiorganizational collaboration are taking shape, and progress toward networked governance is occurring;
  4. This may lead to the emergence of the nexus-state as a successor to the nation-state.
  5. We now have communications tools that are flexible enough to match our social capabilities, and we are witnessing the rise of new ways of coordination activities that take advantage of that change.
  6. Civil society stands to gain the most from the rise of networks since policy problems have become so complex and intractable, crossing so many jurisdictions and involving so many actors, that governments should evolve beyond the traditional bureaucratic model of the state.

There is no doubt that the evolution of network forms of organization and related doctrines, strategies, and technologies will attract government policymakers, business leaders, and civil society actors to create myriad new mechanisms for communication, coordination, and collaboration spanning all levels of governance. 

However, states, not to mention societies as a whole, cannot endure without hierarchies. 

In the information-age government may well undergo ‘reinventing’ and be made flatter, more networked, decentralized, etc.—but it will still have a hierarchy at its core.” As the state relinquished the control of commercial activities to private companies, both the nation and the state became stronger.  Likewise, as the social sector expands and activities are transferred to it, the state should again emerge with a new kind of strength, even though it loses some scope in some areas.

A central understanding of the big picture that enhances the management of complexity is now needed more than ever. 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Just building a clean tech innovation economy is not enough.

20 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by in Politics., Sustaniability, The Future

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A society that holds out for the younger generation prospects that are worse than those held out to their parents and grandparents is a society that has ceased to progress and begun to regress—one that has lost any claim to historical legitimacy even if it is technologically advanced.

The common experience for millions of young people is permanent economic insecurity.

Youth unemployment in the European Union stands at more than 23 percent, while in Spain it is 56.1 percent and in Greece 62.9 percent. There are 26 million young people in the “developed world” who are classified as not in employment, education or training (NEETS). Poverty and homelessness have become mass phenomena.

While the world may not be one big village in terms of lifestyle, it shares an image of “the good life” that’s proffered in movies, TV, and the Internet. That’s what teenagers in Afghanistan have in common with teenagers in England; they’ve been fed the same image of success in the global community and they know it’s inaccessible. They are angry and, ultimately, their anger has the same target — multinational corporations (and the governments that support them).

The political implications of these social transformations are far-reaching – ISIS.

Capitalism as we know it today—is an amoral culture of short-term self-interest, profit maximization, emphasis on shareholder value, isolationist thinking, and profligate disregard of long-term consequences—is an unsustainable system. Only today five of the biggest banks are fined Billions for fixing the Foreign Exchange Market.

Capitalism must change itself, from the inside. This kind of change will require a radically new leadership ethic, one driven by a new set of motivations and a broader understanding of wealth.

With global population rapidly marching toward 11 billion and with it the demand for food, health services, energy and security, we need to reexamine the models that have gotten us to this point.

There are far better men than I to undertake this reexamination.

The word “capitalism” was coined by the socialists and has historically described a system of state-granted privilege and plutocracy.“

Free market capitalism may be viewed as a system in which individuals make voluntary arrangements involving the exchange of capital.

Free market” implies voluntary arrangements, whereas “capitalism” has become (rightly so)  known as a system in which business and coercive state forces collude to serve whatever arbitrary interests may be lobbied for by the businesses or championed for reasons of power by the politicians.

If it’s a free market, it’s not capitalism. And if it’s capitalism, it’s not a free market.

So why bother trying to apologize for “capitalism” when “free markets” are what you (and I) really wish to obtain?  That is, if you really do believe in “free markets”, then you should probably distance yourself from the word “capitalism”.

The modern world is ruled by multinational corporations and governed by a capitalistic ideology that believes:

Corporations are a special breed of people, motivated solely by self-interest.

Corporations seek: to maximize return on capital by leveraging productivity and paying the least possible amount for taxes and labor. Corporate executives pledge allegiance to their directors and shareholders. The dominant corporate perspective is short-term, the current financial quarter, and the dominant corporate ethic is greed, doing whatever it takes to maximize profit.

Capitalist society is guided by the play of the market mechanism.

There is no better evidence of this than- The “recovery” of 2009-10 ensured that “too big to fail” institutions would survive and the rich would continue to be rich. Meanwhile millions of good jobs were either eliminated or replaced by low-wage jobs with poor or no benefits.

We’re living in the age of corporate dinosaurs that take the path of least resistance to profit; they’ve swallowed up their competitors and created monopolies, which have produced humongous bureaucracies.

There achievements are far to numerous to list here, but here are a few in no particular order.

Climate Change. Inequality of Opportunity, Stock Exchanges, Poverty, Wars, Lack of Fresh Water, Sovereignty Wealth Funds plundering the finite Natural Resources for short-term profit, Corruption, Privatization, People Trafficking, Drugs, ect  You could say without fear of contradiction that conditions are far worse today than at any time since the 1930s.

The nearly universal opinion expressed these days is that the economic crisis of recent years marks the end of capitalism. Capitalism allegedly has failed, has proven itself incapable of solving economic problems, and so mankind has no alternative, if it is to survive, then to make the transition to a planned economy, to socialism.

Corporate executives don’t care about the success or failure of any particular country, only the growth and profitability of their global corporation.

Global corporations are ruining our natural capital.  Four of the top 10 multinational corporations are energy companies, with Exxon Mobil leading the list. Global corporations have ravished the world and citizens of every nation live with the consequences: dirty air, foul water, and pollution of every sort. The world GDP is $63 Trillion but multinational corporations garner a disproportionate share — with banks accounting for an estimated $4 trillion (bank assets are $100 trillion). Global black markets make $2 trillion — illegal drugs account for at least $300 billion.

The past five years have demonstrated the impossibility of changing anything within the existing political system. Inequality has grown enormously. The stock market is booming, the Forbes 400 are richer than ever, yet the conditions for youth and workers are disastrous. War continues without end.

However the historical bankruptcy of capitalism does not bring about its automatic collapse as it will if not already doing so turn Climate Change into profits.

 It is from the market that the capitalist economy receives its sense.

So what if anything is to be done.

At the start of this post I said that Capitalism must change itself, from the inside.

Is this possible. Yes but only by making it pay for our values. By putting humanity back into human.

We needed to make the private enterprise economy work better in a redistribution of wealth and income toward greater equality.

This can only be done by placing:

A World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Stock Exchange Transactions, on all Foreign Exchange transactions (over$20,000) and on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions. 

A capitalist economy is inherently unstable” It is one thing to recognize the instability of capitalism, but another to show that an alternative to it is possible.

Clearly no one has got a clue” about what might replace it.

What ever it is we can not going on tolerating a world … in which the needs of the many come before the greed of the few. It is time to recognize that “ Like what, exactly?” is an honest and profound question that demands straight and worked-out answers. And it is time to start working out those answers. I am not advocating abstract revolutionism here.

When questions about the future are bound up so intimately with day-to-day struggles, a new human society surely cannot emerge through spontaneous action alone. To transcend this impasse, people need to know not just what to be against, but what to be for, not just “ what is to be done,” but what is to be undone— what is it exactly that must be changed in order to have a viable and emancipatory socialism?

Unfortunately, this issue received almost no attention throughout most of the last century.

So it is only in recent years that any significant attention has been paid to whether another world is possible. But now, when the future of capitalism is a live issue, it seems to me that this issue needs to be understood as the central problem of revolutionary thought today.

The younger generation is “lost” not just in the sense that it has no future under capitalism, but also in the sense that it is increasingly “lost” to the ruling class and its political establishment. The forms through which the bourgeoisie seeks to maintain political control are losing their hold. Their conscious political experience has been dominated by unending economic crisis, war, the dismantling of democratic rights, political gangsterism and corruption.

And if that not bad enough The global economy is splintering with new and devastating trade agreements like the TTP.

If the function of the market as regulator of production is always thwarted by economic policies in so far as the latter try to determine prices, wages, and interest rates instead of letting the market determine them, then a crisis will surely develop.

It would be disastrous merely to call for socialism while ignoring the problems of mass unemployment. This brings me to the notion of developing socialism within capitalism, enlarging the space of the commons or whatever. Unfortunately, it cannot be done. It has been tried (for instance, in the Israeli kibbutzim ) and it does not succeed. The economic laws of the larger system will not allow it. If you buy from the capitalist world “ outside,” you also have to sell to it in order to get the money you need to buy from it, and you will not sell anything if your prices are high because your costs of production are high. And if you have debts, you have to repay them.

So it appears there is only the one option as I suggest : Make Global Capitalism contribute by a World Aid Commission.

We live in interesting times. The stakes are high. The time has come to face the future with sober senses. The good news is we’re witnessing the failure of global corporate capitalism. The bad news is we don’t know what will replace it.

Financial inequality in the 21st century is on the rise, and accelerating at a very dangerous pace turning into a conflict between billionaires.

Complete change will not happen overnight. It will not be built on the back of one investor or one innovative entrepreneur. It will be something that business owners, investors, political leaders, consumers and entrepreneurs must all work together toward.

Neither of these categories (Investor-Innovator) makes or produces anything but their wealth, which is really a super-wealth that has broken away from the everyday reality of the market, which determines how most ordinary people live.

Worse still, they are competing with each other to increase their wealth, and the worst of all case scenarios is how super-managers, whose income is based effectively on greed, keep driving up their salaries regardless of the reality of the market. This is what happened to the banks in 2008, for example.

So when you look at Climate change what you see is that it is true that it will take time to roll out the infrastructure and technologies to get off fossil fuels, and we will burn a lot of fossil fuel in the process.

What explains our collective failure on climate change? Why is it that instead of dealing with the problem, all we seem to do is make it worse?

Here’s is the inconvenient truth: when you tell people what it would actually take to radically reduce carbon emissions, they turn away.

What would it take to radically reduce global carbon emissions and to do so in a way that would alleviate inequality and poverty? The World Aid Commission.

Just building a clean tech innovation economy is not enough. We have to reinvent our economy from the ground up if we are to successfully address these challenges.

CLIMATE CHANGE IS GOING TO CHALLENGE EVERYTHING THAT CAPITALISM OR ANY SOCIAL SYSTEM STAND FOR.

What we need is “ethical capitalism,” Business leaders must become servant leaders, leaders who serve not just themselves and share holders, but leaders who serve employees, customers, the community, the planet, humanity, future generations, and life itself.

Science has made huge steps, society has not.

The sooner we fix Capitalism the sooner we move to the future we imagine.

If anyone has a better idea, I would be all ears. 

 

Is man going to recreate himself?

25 Saturday Apr 2015

Posted by in The Future

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Determination of the entire DNA sequence contained in the human genome will not answer the question:

What is a human?

 

 

Geneticists will not be able to look at a person’s DNA sequence and predict everything about the appearance and characteristics of that person. Even if geneticists can identify segments of DNA as genes, the vast majority of the genes they discover still will have unknown functions.

In addition, many human traits such as body stature and intelligence result from multiple genes, and the exact number of genes that might contribute to such a trait is not obvious, nor are the ways in which those genes interact.

An individual’s genetic make-up greatly contributes to the type of person he or she is, but environmental variables such as diet, education, climate, family values, and access to health care also play a considerable role in determining an individual’s characteristics.

Before I go any further I have to declare that this subject is away beyond me, so if there is any one who has gone to the trouble of reading this far please feel free to contribute. All I can say if we do recreate ourselves I hope we do a better job than the first time around.

The increased understanding of the human genome is driven largely by rapid advances in technology. And the single most profound advance has been in the cost and the speed of sequencing.

The chromosomes of a sperm or egg contain about 3 billion base pairs, so a body cell has 6 billion. The whole set of base pairs in a gamete is the genome.

I don’t think it is possible to know all of the future effects of the human genome project, because people are coming up with new ways to use the information all the time.

Of course, the farther we peer into the future, the cloudier is our vision.

And it has a Scary side.

You will have read recently that scientists in China are editing the genetic code in human embryos.

So What wrong with that?

Is this unethical and will it be used to further the goals of those who wish to become ‘ creators’ in their own eyes.

Science has struggled to understand the mysteries of “less-than-human” beings since the late 1400s when the Spanish Inquisition first formalized state persecution of Jews and Muslims. And while the horrors of Nazi Germany exposed fatal flaws in science’s quest to build the master race, the ethical dilemmas posed by the science of eugenics are far from behind us.

While I understand that there are or will be many benefits to man from genetic engineering this is another step to manipulation for enhancing.

So are we on the threshold of modifying our own germ line and take control of our genetic destiny.?

The genetic engineering of humans — tools more powerful than a Nazi’s wildest dreams is unlocking life’s code.

The prospect of creating heritable modified genes and manufacturing designer babies that are more intelligent and beautiful than their peers is unthinkable for some.

But you would be naive to think that is wont happen . The potential for profit, in terms of both cash and the welfare of humanity, is almost limitless.

Understanding the genome will undoubtedly be the most important achievement of the 21st century, and perhaps of all time.

People looking back 50 years from now will consider medicine a barbaric, random process. If the promise of genomics is fulfilled, it will transform the lives of everyone.

It will spark many complex questions both ethical and not.

Human societies are not inferior or superior to one another but they could become so in not the so distant future.

The sequence of the human genome will underpin bio medical research for decades:

Genetic testing is not only a medical procedure. It is also a way of creating social categories that will be discriminated against based on their genetics, never mind race or religion.  Genetic discrimination” will be on our heads.

Is sequencing the human genome an intellectually appropriate project for biologists?”

How close actually are we to personalized medicine?

When will we begin to see the benefits of the Human Genome Project?

To Date the genomic mapping of humans can even be used to track the migration of humans from Africa over 50,000 years ago, as well as unlock the evolutionary timeline of the origin of man.

Genomics will be used to create better crops, better meat, more sophisticated robotics, new materials, and even whole new forms of life.

However in man the things which are not measurable are more important than those which are measurable.

Because of the ethical issues that it raises and the potential that it has to change human reproduction, and ultimately human society, it is crucial that we start to establish the boundaries of this science before the technology advances even farther.

On the other hand.

If man is to colonize the vastness of the Universe he will have to be recreated.