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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Not a good thing
  • Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 11:33:59 -0700


This cannot be a good thing:

"Biotech farmers this week are lauding what they say is a milestone for the
industry — the planting of the billionth acre of biotech seed. "

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/farm_scene

What, technology is moving too slowly for you? Have but a bit of patience; Monsanto is working hard to convert the world to its corporate image. Bioethics be damned, the revolving door between their head office and the FDA spins fast.

I myself suffer from the dis-ease of future-shock. I am highly concerned about what I put in my mouth and I care about soil and downwind pollution of organic acreages. Besides withdrawing to my personal piece of rural paradise and there being largely in control of my food and my life, I see little I can do about the Monsanto Monster and its ilk.

An article in the May-June 2005 issue of Utne Reader gave pause. The title is HUMANITY: The Remix; Is building a better human the key to utopia--or the world's most dangerous idea? The author is Alyssa Ford. While the article is about transhumanism, the parallel with food crop bioengineering is apparent.

"Today human intelligence, in the form of technology, is about to make possible the elimination of pain and lives filled with unimaginable pleasure and contentment, writes James Hughes, author of Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future (Westview, 2004). The former editor of a zine called EcoSocialist Review who teaches health policy at Trinity College in Connecticut, Hughes, 44, is executive director of the World Transhumanist Association. His goal, he says is to convince fellow liberals that a pro-technology, democratic form of transhumanism is the way of the 'Next Left.'"

"The movement's eccentric subchapters include the body-modification transhumanists, who have implanted silicon-based magnets under their skin to create a computer-human chimera effect. The Singularitarians believe we're heading for a genetic point of no return--the Singularity--when change in the species will be so great as to make us virtual gods."

"Transhumanists like Hughes dismiss what he calls 'bio-Luddite' concerns as just another case of future shock. At any major shift, they say, the change-fearing masses first rebel and then get over it. What's more, with our contact lenses, artificial heart valves, and cell phones, we are cyborgs already. Smallpox vaccine and anesthetics for childbirth pain were once both renounced as insults to God. How is Bush's effort to limit federal funding for stem cell research, and the wider crusade against cloning, any different?"

"Amid the debate over whether these powerful new tools should be controlled, or even can be, one thing is sure: If we ever find ourselves stepping into a posthuman future, it will be for all the usual human reasons."

Seems to me that the arguments over stem-cell research, cloning and genetic engineering may be moot. Humans have an insatiable desire, an instinct it seems, to explore new fields, to reach ever further, and, yes, to make life easier. Slothful creatures that we are, technology that promises more-better-faster is resisted only when it comes at us faster than we can assimilate.

I see no way technology can be stopped. The question is control. The issue is not if, but how fast.







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