Kevin's Watch

Avatar wrote:I have an excellent "juvenile" sci-fi novel called Black Milk by Robert Reed

Mr. Brady?!?!!

Gil galad wrote:There is a pretty cool movie called GATTACA which describes the whole scenario pretty well.

great movie

No Fist, I'm pretty sure not. (Took me a while to figure out what you meant, then had to Google to be sure. No Brady Bunch here. )

Wayfriend wrote:Sure, maybe years and years down the road it'll be perfected. But someone's gotta be those guinea pigs. I don't want my children being them. And if no one wants to be the guinea pigs, it'll never be perfected. Which is why I see it failing to get off the ground for a long, long time, if ever.

Good point, but I'm sure that eventually they'll get around it.

[Edit] Another neat story (actually, a stupendous one) is "Stand on Zanzibar". Everyone wants their kids enhanced. But subconsciously, they all end up fearing their own children. (What would a "better" kid think of his parents? Want to raise a kid who is twice as smart as you?)

Will have to look for it. The same issue is also dealt with in the book I mentioned.

And if they were past the testing stage and were 100% effective? Would not doing it disadvantage your kids in a world where everybody was genegineered?

Quite possibly. And would you want to do that? Deliberately disadvantage them because of your own fear of whatever? (Not you specifically, you know what I mean.)

--A

Avatar wrote:And if they were past the testing stage and were 100% effective? Would not doing it disadvantage your kids in a world where everybody was genegineered?

I see groups of people, such as the religious right, being concerned with retaining "God's image", and discouraging/forbidding/punishing this sort of activity. (Heck, I see new religions being formed.) The fact that it's anti-progress won't stop them - they'll just consider progress a crime against God.

Which brings us back to biomechanical augmentation.

There will always be a faction promoting this form of "enhancement" over changing our genes. For a long time, they would keep pace with each other, one for one. Why change your genes to be smarter when a chip in your brain does the same thing? Why change your genes for legs when you can put in struts and hydraulics? Why make adaptations for weightlessness in space when a really good biotech skin can do the same thing?

I see these two directions bouncing off of each other for the greater part of man's future.

Hmm, an interesting point. On reflection, I think you're right. Neither will supplant the other, both will always be embraced by some, and rejected by others.

--A