The Emergence of Engineered Evolution |
For most of the life of the universe advancements have been slow relying on "Traditional Evolution" which selects on survivability. It's a slow crude process that takes billions of years and leads to some amazingly great and amazingly poor engineering. But now we are self aware and we networked our abilities and we are now building things out of advanced materials. We are transitioning from traditional evolution to engineered evolution.
Engineered evolution is when we take control of the evolutionary function to get an outcome that we desire. We selectively breed animals and crops to turn them into creatures that are better to eat or do work for us. We also make tools and habitats out of advanced materials. All our technology is part of humanity. We don't hunt and kill with our bare hands or dig roots in the forest. We drive our cars to the grocery store. We use machinery to grow food in remote places and use ships and planes to bring it to us.
If we can control our evolution, what shall we choose to evolve into? How do we make the right choice?
And now we can synthesize DNA sequences and will soon be able to print custom life forms or design custom life forms. Soon we will be able to print custom humans with custom genetics. We will also be able to enhance these humans using advanced materials and electronics. We are coming into an age what we can control our own evolution. We can choose what we will become. But some choices will be better than other choices. How do we know if we made "the right choice"? And what does the right choice even mean?
|