Headline May30, 2012/ An Ecology of Machines

'AN ECOLOGY OF MACHINES,'

"ALMOST ALIVE"


Respecful Dedication Ray Kurzweil 

---

So by "2020" the United States will have become more 'non-European' than ever before with consequent changes to culture and outlook. And the recession while still lingering would have left deep slow healing scars. Biotechnology will be on the rise determined to cure heritable, instead of mere infectious diseases. By 2020 we'll make vegetables and fruits that don't rot in stores but if we want to.

We will be able to pinpoint late onset of diseases for example cancer at 55 in a human fetus if we want to. And maybe repair it - with unknown heritable side effects - if we want to. All other debates will seem comparatively civil compared to the passion biotechnology will generate.

The rule of thumb is this : in the future the distinction between technology and biology will disappear. As everything connects, it becomes a web, an ecology of machines, almost alive. And living things from bananas to humans, become things we can engineer and tinker with. Machines become biological and life gets engineered. But of the two forces, life is the more powerful. If we want great complexity in our constructions, life is the model.

The future we are headed for is a grand neobiological one. There's no more potent myth than that of the relentless onward march of medical progress. 50 years ago there was no cure for tuberculosis, no vaccines, against polio or diphtheria, no effective drugs to treat hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, Parkinson, or schizophrenia, no treatment for infertility, no open heart surgery and no transplants. So when we try to imagine what medicine might be capable of by the year 2020, it is natural to assume that the onward march will continue and we will be several steps down the very very long road towards the utopia of perfect health for all.

Perhaps every city will have its own palace of disease, complete with the latest body scanners able to identify with devastating accuracy the source of each and every symptom. Surgeons working round the clock will be replacing each and every organ as it starts to fail, while cancerous cells and damaged neurons will be vanquished by the latest wonder drugs.

So, dear readers, this marvelous research work from !WOW! continues so do everything never to miss it !!!

Good night and God bless!