Please note that all blog posts before 8 April 2007 were automatically imported from LiveJournal. To see the comments and any LiveJournal-specific extras such as polls and user icons, please find the source posting at http://brianenigma.livejournal.com/2001/09/So, I am sitting here watching Gattaca and thinking. Is this what the world will become? Biotech devices, gene manipulation, people branded by their genetic predispositions. In recent weeks, I have looked through the wanted ads–computer programmers for biotech firms. People needed to write firmware for biotech devices. People needed to write software to analyze DNA sequencing. People needed to engineer the world of Gattaca.
I have always told people that if I had lived in the 40’s, I would have had no problem working toward the development of the atomic bomb. Now, I see the early stages of the bomb being developed again. Only this time, it is not being developed in times of war (well, maybe that is debatable), and is not going to be used to kill millions of people–only exclude millions of people. Maybe not as obvious as racial prejudice, but once the technology is in place, just as real. I am not so sure I could build the bomb anymore.
“They have you looking so hard for any flaw, that eventually that is all you can see.”
—
“In a few short years, scientists will have completed the Human Genome Project, the mapping of all the genes that make up a human being. We have now evolved to the point where we can direct our own evolution. Had we acquired this knowledge sooner, the following people may never have been born:
Abraham Lincoln, Marfan Syndrome
Emily Dickinson, Manic Depression
Vincent Van Gogh, Epilepsy
Albert Einstein, Dyslexia
John F. Kennedy, Addison’s Disease
Rita Hayworth, Alzheimer’s Disease
Ray Charles, Primary Glaucoma
Stephen Hawking, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
Jackie Joyner Kersee, Asthma
Of course, the other birth that may never have taken place is your own.”
