I don’t know you. But I thank you.
I just finished reading your essay,“Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us”
I am no scientist, but I have the God given ability to look more than 12 inches in front of my nose. (The estimated distance between said nose and my computer monitor.)
While I freely admit that my email address starts with the word “Luddite”, I chose it as a pun because I have a love/mistrust relationship with technology. I love keeping an on-line diary and making connections with people in far flung places in the world.
I relish the opportunity to get to know so many other gifted if “unknown” writers. But along with this love that is in debt to technology, I have a feeling of unease.
For some time, I saw technology as isolated from the natural world.
A sort of either/or proposition. You could opt in or out of the techno train. Go Digital or Go Organic. Nice clean simple choice. I was pretty comfortable knowing there was a bail out position.
Then the genetic engineers started forcing fish genes into strawberries.
And growing human shaped ears on the backs of mice. Everything changed for me after that. It’s one thing to make machines that do wonderful and amazing things with numbers and teach them to do repetitious chores, and to connect us to a network of other people all over the globe. But it is another when we start using them to muck around with strawberries. I like strawberries just the way they are.
Oh, I have had scientific types tell me we have been “manipulating” plants for a long time, and that this is just another way of doing it, and what’s the matter with me, am I against “Progress”? Don’t I want to feed the starving people of the world? Have I no compassion?
Let’s be honest. Genetically altering food is NOT altruistic. It is done to make money, and lots of it, for those who develop and patent their “improved” strains.
As a long time gardener I will never forget the year I planted some marigolds that I bought as starts at the nursery. They were called “Inca Gold”. They were the most beautiful marigolds I had ever grown. Huge, profuse flowers and sturdy compact foliage. Up until then I had gotten marigold seed from my father who saved it from his old fashioned marigolds. We planted them every year, he and I. So I figured I would let my “Incas” go to seed and harvest them and I would have these lovely plants always in my garden, and I would share the seeds with my father. But alas, I didn’t know they were hybrids. The seeds were sterile. The usual black and white shafts I expected were pale, hollow, limp, shells.
Now this was just a hybrid issue… certainly not TOO far from its natural state, just one step away. But that one step rendered that plant a genetic cul-de-sac. How much MORE worrisome are plants whose very essence has been altered? In nature, plants and animals must be very similar in order to cross breed. There is a reason that a mule and the Inca marigold are sterile. This reason is so important, that there are incredibly strong safeguards in place in nature to prevent this cross over from happening. We cannot ignore this! It is incredible to me that knowledgeable scientists seem to be doing just that. It is obvious to me that much more than a cul-de-sac awaits us if we continue along this path.
But the thing is the “we” in that statement does not include “me”.
I have no say so about what some scientist decides to try in his laboratory, that now has the potential to reach into and mess around with my garden, with my ecosystem, with my planet. I don’t get a voice, let alone a veto in his world. I am labeled a Luddite and dismissed without my concerns being given serious thought. End of story, get out of the way.
I know your essay dealt more with nanotechnology and robotics, but I see the genetic engineering of plants as the more clear and present danger. The two are perhaps separate disciplines, but share a common idea: That if it CAN be done, it SHOULD be done, because as everyone knows, science and technology are going to be our “saviors”.
But saviors from what? What exactly are we trying to do? Are our lives really all that much more fulfilling than those that have gone before us? It seems to me the answer is no. What gives humans pleasure is to know their lives have meaning. And it looks to me like the modern technological world is rather bereft of meaning. I heard someone say once that the internet was like a vast ocean that goes all around the world but it is only about 1 inch deep. Where are there people who are thinking the deep thoughts? We have mountains of information, but it is not grounded in much that is tangible. Information separated from context is chaos.
Anyway, I ramble. What I really wanted to say was thank you for writing what you did. We should be asking questions about the directions that our technology is headed. And one of those questions should be: “Is this technology good? “ Not, “Will this technology make me fabulously wealthy?” Contrary to the current climate in western society, just because some new product is able to earn unheard of sums of money, this does not confer upon it goodness.
My model for this comes from an ancient source. What if our goal as humans was similar to another creator of a vast and complex system?….
“And God saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good.”
You can read Bill Joy’s essay at: