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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (15351)	1/2/2002 6:37:02 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 281500

Carl, sure, the best technology costs a LOT of money. But mindless expenditure is still a bad thing. No doubt there is some careful scrutiny of just what options there are to protect against imagined attacks, but there's a tendency to focus on the glitzy glamour [GG] stuff because it is a LOT of fun and being in charge of it is much more impressive than being in charge of box-cutter avoidance. "I'm developing a space-based shiny marbles real-time MIRV interception and deflection strategy". "I'm figuring out a way to stop box-cutters and rapid oxidation reactions getting onto aircraft". Which guy would the girl be more impressed by? Which will cost more money? Which would save more lives? Which is the better investment? There isn't unlimited money, so choices are essential. Maybe protection against a comet impact would make a LOT more sense than protection against a hijacked 777 [leave it to the passengers to protect themselves - they'll be enthusiastic now, as shown by their swarming over Richard Reid]. I disagree with this bit too: < The (ruins of the) Parthenon still stands, but the only thing people remember about the siege of Potidaea is that Socrates distinguished himself in battle by saving the life of Alcibiades: This is one of the reasons I'm in favor of spending government bucks on making big, beautiful buildings. Pretty much everything else we do is completely forgotten in just a few thousand years, only the stones remain> Actually, I have visited the Parthenon and remember that, but didn't have a clue about Socrates saving somebody. But that doesn't mean I'm in favour of government stealing money from taxpayers and building Stalinist Style edifices to the grandeur of the state. Also, a few years ago, I tried to work out what really counts. Sure, there are a few stacks of rocks from ancient Egypt and some buildings from a few centuries ago which are interesting. But what is really left and does more than satisfy idle curiosity is human DNA and knowledge. Those are the eternal verities of human life. They are the value. What is dramatic is that humans are now able to create cyber deoxyribonucleic acid, [CDNA], manipulating our children's design to suit ourselves. Until now, humans have done genetic engineering by seeking out sex partners which make them think "Omigod, I would just love to combine my DNA with his/hers" while standing around in the X-rays and cosmic rays, chemical soup and other mutation-causing random variations of our dangerous little planet. The resulting babies are tossed into the environment and those who are well-designed, attractive to their peers and lucky carried on the gene pool. The other 99.999999999999% [over many millennia] were recycled as failures back into the ecospher. Very few randomly mutated and selectively combined DNA efforts were successful. Now, we can have a McDonald's style menu. "Yes, I'll leave the cystic fibrosis, asthma, immune system weakness and heart valve problem DNA out. But please plug in an ASTM 4 melanin supply for sun protection and I'd like some of those IQ 170 options. Make it small! We are going to have a tiny car and figure if we become little, we can save a LOT of money. Oh, can't be only 4 kg because the IQ needs 2 kilograms of brain and it won't fit? Okay, what size do we need for 160 IQ? 30 kg minimum? Oh, that seems okay..." No more muck in our DNA!! Yaayy!!! The other dramatic thing happening on the two things which matter, DNA and knowledge, is that knowledge is going extra-somatic, meaning it resides OUTSIDE our brains. We keep our knowledge here: google.com and simply ask when we want to know something. CDMA is taking cyberspace wireless and mobile. So we have a vast memory bank available and it remembers really well and is really fast. Anyone over 50 with senior moments knows how they can know they know something but can't quite put their finger on it. Then, they get it later. But Google does it NOW. And that's just the beginning. Soon, we will have cyberspace do our thinking for us too. Why bother working out a chess move when you can get a better result from a computer? We are too stupid to be in charge of thinking. Look at the way people drive cars for example. Leave it to cyberspace = no more getting lost and no more crashes and we'll be able to travel REALLY fast, a metre apart!! Zooommmmmmm. The industrial revolution replaced our muscles and the cyberspace revolution will replace our brains. Forget the buildings and let's hear it for CDNA and CDMA. That's the future. Not stones. Mqurice