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THE SHAPE OF SHIT TO COME
STEVE LOWE AND
ALAN McARTHUR
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
Are you ready to be innovated?
Are you ready for a world of kids making their own pets with gene-splicing kits? Or food that comes in packets that talk to you about how to cook the contents? While geeky types graft robot limbs onto themselves in a bid to become immortal before blasting off to their holiday homes in space?
You’re not ready. Don’t fool yourself.
The future was meant to come with a capital F – the genetic enhancements, the moon bases, the supercomputers killing all the humans … aaaaaargh! – but then it didn’t arrive. But a whole host of techy advances currently in development hell mean that this time, more than any other time, the future is coming.
Are you ready for the people trying to clone mammoths from frozen DNA? People you actually know – friends of yours – having sex with robots? The wearable computers?
Maybe you are ready for wearable computers. We’ll give you that one.
This book started with idle curiosity about what was taking shape in the world. We suspected something was going down with technology. But a few peeks round the corner rapidly became a series of moments – shared here – of going: fucking hell – really? Our eyes widened, in fear and excitement, and stayed wide for ages.
As it transpires, out there on the fringes of public consciousness, nerds made rich as Croesus by the Internet are joining messianic scientists and military researchers in bringing some mind-bending things to pass. iPhones aren’t even the half of it. The mad professors have got the keys to the genetically modified sweetshop. And we all know what that means. Except we don’t – which is the point.
And while we’re out front in the shop, trying to get our heads round the genetically modified sweets, they’re in the back turning themselves into multi-bodied super-strength cyborgs with spooky telepathic powers. It’s like they’re always one step ahead of us.
In this super new world, it is hard to stay grounded. Even renowned physicists writing pop-science round-ups of current developments will veer madly between sober scientific inquiry and saying how it is our nailed-on ‘destiny’ to become ‘The Gods of Mythology’, and liberally pepper their writing with references to deities and superheroes. But this stuff is so nuts, it is no wonder the scientists start believing they are Thor (during the writing of this book, we too have occasionally had moments of thinking we are Thor … we actually might be Thor – can two people be Thor?).
In this book we sceptically scour the labs, the theories, the freaky cults, the Internet mega-corporateers who all ride scooters around, indoors … and ask questions like: don’t all the people who go to space come back mad? Are GM crops such a headfuck because the people who make them are such utter bastards, yet the people who oppose them are such hippy mentalists? And also, how long will it be before we hear the tragic question: ‘Mummy? Why is Daddy sleeping in the robot’s room?’
Some of what is happening promises great things for humanity. Some of it promises the end of humanity. So it’s worth paying attention. Otherwise we will leave our fate in the hands of adults who ride scooters indoors. They ride around on scooters indoors, but hold in their hands the power to change human nature itself.
What have we done?
CHAPTER 1: GENES
The mouse that did not roar, but instead made another surprising animal noise
This was no ordinary mouse. In January 2012, Japanese scientists announced they had genetically engineered a new kind of mouse. A mouse unlike other mice. Those mice squeaked. Not this mouse. This mouse went where no other mouse had, sonically speaking, gone before. This mouse tweeted, like a bird.
Lead researcher Arikuni Uchimura of Osaka University’s well-named School of Frontier Biosciences said of the process that led to this fantastical creation: ‘We have cross-bred the genetically modified mice for generations to see what would happen.’
That’s right: they wanted to see what would happen. And what did happen? A mouse tweeted like a bird. It’s fucked up.
Biotech – which is short for biotechnology, which is short for biological technology, which is not short for anything – is running wild. The building blocks of nature are a minefield. And the minefield is on fire. Not a day goes by without a headline like ‘Genetic breakthrough could slow – or halt – the ageing process’ or ‘Why hating brussels sprouts could be in your DNA’ or ‘Glowing Cats Shed Light On AIDS’. (I deliberately didn’t look at that last story – preferring my own reverie.)
The mysteries of life itself are being unravelled before our eyes. Think of the ramifications, and also the implications. We are gaining the ability to mess with human genes – possibly changing characteristics, for good or ill, for generations to come.
Some call this playing God. But why should we not play God? Why should He have all the fun? Maybe He was wrong in having the mice squeak and birds tweet. Maybe it’s time to mix that whole game right up. From now on, maybe we should treat mice that merely squeak with the disdain they deserve.
But who gets to play God? Many bleeding-edge geneticists have a sort of punk-rock DIY libertarian aesthetic that favours posting gene codes on the Internet so anyone can knock up new strains in the garage. It’s a world of out-there ideas. Veteran future-watcher and renowned Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson believes the biotech revolution will be fun, and educative: he believes we should welcome gene-splicing kits in the homeplace. He even joyfully envisages biotech kids’ games ‘where you give the child some eggs and seeds and a kit for writing the genomes