Az ember utáni jövő

Despite the fact that you are reading what I have written, it’s not immediately obvious whether I can actually write. Spelling and grammar checks have the ability to cover a multitude of sins. There are even software programs such as Newnovelist.com that teach writers how to create characters and plot structure. Software like Auto-Tune does much the same thing for singers, including singers that can’t actually sing. In other words, we have entered a world where talent can be enhanced or totally manufactured through technology. And you ain’t seen nothing yet. The question of natural and authentic versus manufactured and created talent is perhaps most visible within the arena of sports where individuals have been altering their bodies in subtle ways for centuries. Here pills are regularly popped to enhance performance and we are on the cusp of some interesting ethical issues relating to gene doping and surgical enhancement. Part of this debate is about technology. In an age of genetics and robotics what constitutes cheating – in sports but also at work and in relationships – is changing. But this is only half the story. Not only are we entering a world where enhancement is possible and readily available, we are also entering an age where it’s more or less expected. One emerging cultural trends at the moment is the idea that everyone is special and everyone can do anything if they put their mind and money towards it. Does any of this matter? I think so.

Currently, genetic testing is able to reveal beneficial traits, for example, which sports you may be good at. In the future such tests will become lifestyle products. They will tell parents what their unborn children will be good at, which obviously has all kinds of implications – including that people with enough money may be tempted to create and manipulate talent. This will undoubtedly change the way we define talent but it will also mess with what’s real and what’s not. However, this isn’t new. For instance, the famous guitar solo in Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven doesn’t really exist. Jimmy Page couldn’t play it. It was created through the use of technology – a recording of half-a-dozen or more edited guitar solos. The bad news? According to Michel Sandel, writing in the Atlantic Monthly a few years ago, we owe a debt of gratitude to God, luck or nature because one or all of these powers means that we are not wholly responsible for how things turn out. But remove such elements of chance and we become burdened by the rather lonely thought that we are the drivers, and therefore responsible for everything.

Green and White Cities

According to some reports, the City of Los Angeles is giving serious consideration to the idea of painting some or all of its roads and buildings ghostly white in an attempt to combat global warming. It would certainly make the City of Angels live up to its name. Back in 1936 a Swedish chemist called Svante Arrhenius came up with the idea that the carbon dioxide created from burning coal would fuel a greenhouse effect that would warm the Earth. Fast-forward to 1979 and the US National Academy of Sciences warned that waiting for further evidence of global warming might mean that it would be too late to do anything about it. And onwards to 2008 and it’s more or less business as usual. There’s lots of talk but so far precious little real action. For example, only 1% of airline passengers offset their air-miles when they fly and the record of carbon trading schemes has been shameful. The result is that if we all switched to electric cars and renewable energy tomorrow, total emissions would still be unlikely to fall in the foreseeable future. The best scientific estimate to date is that temperatures will increase by two degrees globally over this century or thereabouts. This will reduce the amount of land that people can live on and also reduce the amount of land that’s available for agriculture – either because it’s too dry or too wet. As for more specific consequences and what we should be doing about them, there appears to be little agreement. On one extreme are those who say we’re all doomed. Others argue that it’s all a giant hoax. Somewhere in the middle is the argument that it’s manageable, especially through the use of new energy technologies and emission reductions.

The former could include nuclear power (especially ‘pebble-bed’ reactors), undersea power stations and zero-emission industrial power plants. The latter includes ideas like air scrubbing, carbon sequestion and other giant engineering projects. But even the green movement itself is split as to where we should be going and how we should get there. One group of greens support what’s termed a ‘sustainable retreat’. This is where mankind frees the land from human interference and retreats to energy-efficient cities. The country is left to turn itself into wilderness – which will preserve various living systems – and the cities themselves will be built along green principles and would include, for example, ‘vertical agriculture’ – literally tower blocks of urban farms that harvest their own power and water and grow food and animals up to 1,000 feet in the air. The other group of greens are what’s known as the ‘pastoral greens’. The idea here is that our problems can be resolved by the widespread adoption of renewable energy: mankind does not have to retreat but lives more in harmony with nature. Conclusions? Both sides seem rather idealistic and unrealistic to me. But what really stands out is that low-cost goods are unsustainable. We are demanding that things are produced cheaply but at the same time we are arguing that environmental and social issues should be seriously addressed. I don’t know about you but these two ideas seem to be totally contradictory. Something’s got to give.