I love science. Probably because it's generally a challenge to me--my brain is very good at language and creative enterprise, but I've always had trouble with math and science--and I like to beat my head against things I don't understand once in a while. I like the things science can tell us about our history just as much as the things it can tell us about our future.
But very rarely do I come across something new that doesn't make me think of that moment in Jurassic Park where Ian Malcolm looks at the scientists and the man behind the dinosaurs and asks if any of them thought about whether or not they should have created dinosaurs while they were so all-fired busy figuring out if they could.
And I'm not talking about the likelihood of the Large Hadron Collider ending the universe, or new vaccines creating super-germs, or whoever happens to be building SkyNet this week. I'm talking about this.
You should totally go read the article, even if it gets a little science heavy in some places and a little strangely quasi-religious in others, it's interesting. The gist of it is there's a seventy-some year old scientist out there who's been obsessing over his need to stop aging for fifty-some years, and he thinks this spectacularly low number of people born with a incredibly rare genetic disorder might be his answer.
So, skating over literally half of what I just said there--like how his life's gone for the last fifty years while he's been freaking out about getting old, and how he's basically capitalizing on someone else's pain and in my reading anyway doesn't feel all that sorry about that (reminder, I am one of the least sentimental people in the universe most days so if I think you're being callous that's something to think about)... Dude wants to stop aging.
Like how does that even work? Do we get a magic pill at 27 and stay young and perfect (assuming you won the genetic lottery in the first place and you're young and perfect)? And even if we could choose to stop aging, does that mean immortality? Does that mean Facebook--or whatever comes after it--fills up with family pictures, comments hanging around at the bottom like 'Spent spring-break in Cabo with Gram, she always picks up better looking guys' or 'Me Mom and Grandma belly-dancing, I'm the one in the pink' where everybody's indistinguishable from each other?
Okay, scratch that one, that sounds cool.
Anyway. I'm not a Luddite, I don't think modern technology is ruining us all and everything is scary. But when you start looking at big changes, not better cosmetics or disease control, when you're just in it to live forever maybe it's time to step back and think about whether or not you should. Sometimes that's more important than can.
But very rarely do I come across something new that doesn't make me think of that moment in Jurassic Park where Ian Malcolm looks at the scientists and the man behind the dinosaurs and asks if any of them thought about whether or not they should have created dinosaurs while they were so all-fired busy figuring out if they could.
And I'm not talking about the likelihood of the Large Hadron Collider ending the universe, or new vaccines creating super-germs, or whoever happens to be building SkyNet this week. I'm talking about this.
You should totally go read the article, even if it gets a little science heavy in some places and a little strangely quasi-religious in others, it's interesting. The gist of it is there's a seventy-some year old scientist out there who's been obsessing over his need to stop aging for fifty-some years, and he thinks this spectacularly low number of people born with a incredibly rare genetic disorder might be his answer.
So, skating over literally half of what I just said there--like how his life's gone for the last fifty years while he's been freaking out about getting old, and how he's basically capitalizing on someone else's pain and in my reading anyway doesn't feel all that sorry about that (reminder, I am one of the least sentimental people in the universe most days so if I think you're being callous that's something to think about)... Dude wants to stop aging.
Like how does that even work? Do we get a magic pill at 27 and stay young and perfect (assuming you won the genetic lottery in the first place and you're young and perfect)? And even if we could choose to stop aging, does that mean immortality? Does that mean Facebook--or whatever comes after it--fills up with family pictures, comments hanging around at the bottom like 'Spent spring-break in Cabo with Gram, she always picks up better looking guys' or 'Me Mom and Grandma belly-dancing, I'm the one in the pink' where everybody's indistinguishable from each other?
Okay, scratch that one, that sounds cool.
Anyway. I'm not a Luddite, I don't think modern technology is ruining us all and everything is scary. But when you start looking at big changes, not better cosmetics or disease control, when you're just in it to live forever maybe it's time to step back and think about whether or not you should. Sometimes that's more important than can.
That picture has absolutely no relevance to the thing I just wrote, but I like it. It's from here under this license.
PS. Wrote that entire thing and then thought "Gee, that sounds a little like Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, the fifty pages I read anyway..." Yeah. That's still on the too-read list. More-so now.
PS. Wrote that entire thing and then thought "Gee, that sounds a little like Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, the fifty pages I read anyway..." Yeah. That's still on the too-read list. More-so now.
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