Gerald Joyce of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, frets that as the boundaries blur, biologists are now going to be directing evolution and that we are witnessing “the end of Darwinism.” “Life on Earth,” Joyce has noted, “has demonstrated extraordinary resiliency and inventiveness in adapting to highly disparate niches. Perhaps the most significant invention of life is a genetic system that has an extensible capacity for inventiveness, something that likely will not be achieved soon for synthetic biological systems. However, once informational macromolecules are given the opportunity to inherit profitable variation through self-sustained Darwinian evolution, they just may take on a life of their own.”

This is not hyperbole. All the key barriers to the artificial synthesis of viruses and bacteria have been overcome, at least on a proof-of-principle basis. In 2002, researchers at SUNY Stony Brook made a living polio virus, constructed from its genetic code. Three years later, scientists worried about pandemic influenza decided to re-create the devastating 1918 Spanish flu virus for research purposes, identifying key elements of the viral genes that gave that virus the ability to kill at least 50 million people in less than two years. What all this means is that the dual-use dilemma that first hit chemistry a century ago, and then hit physics a generation later, is now emerging with special force in contemporary biology.

The chances of a U.S.-Chinese crisis in the coming years are low, but they are not negligible, and they are made more troubling by the risk of such a confrontation escalating. The most important steps Beijing and Washington can take are those that might help prevent crises from developing in the first place. Since uncertainty about the scope of each side’s vital interests would be a trigger for such crises, the two countries should deepen political and military exchanges that focus closely on this problem. Even if they cannot achieve full clarity, discussions can help draw attention to what each side believes poses the greatest risks.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139651/avery-goldstein/chinas-real-and-present-danger

Top 10 Disappearing Futures

http://www.wfs.org/futurist/2013-issues-futurist/september-october-2013-vol-47-no-5/top-10-disappearing-futures

The advent of wearable smartphones could accelerate the disappearance of endangered languages, but also lowering of economic barriers and of fundamentalist intolerance.

By 2020, the ubiquity of wearable smartphones and the power of the conversational interface will give youth everywhere “teacherless education”; that is, conversation, both with remote peers and with the Web itself.

For kids in developing nations, the killer app of teacherless education will be learning a more developed nation’s language at the same time they learn their own. Their wearable will “listen in” as they learn their native language and deliver the same words in the foreign language of choice, along with images, learning aids, and games that test proficiency.

Of the roughly 6,000 languages spoken today, perhaps 3,000 endangered languages will no longer be spoken by children in 2030. Most other languages will have lost users as well, as the languages of developed nations with the most open cultures increasingly take their place. We’ll also see many more scientific, technical, business, social, and artistic “languages” (knowledge systems) taught from birth.

Adults will no longer need to visit a doctor’s office for routine checkups.

By 2030, adult visits to a doctor for an annual physical, blood cholesterol screening, exams for prostate or breast cancer, and many other important but nonemergency consultations will be a thing of the past.

Several trends will drive this change:

1. Technology will enable an accurate and personalized diagnosis in your own home. The ubiquity of smartphones and sensors tied to cloud computing will allow screening for chemical indicators for cancer, blood glucose and oxygenation levels, EKG, respiration rate, heart attack and stroke precursors, and more. The information will upload into a personal medical database, and no human will ever see it until your database alerts your doctor that something is amiss.

2. Patients will, after initial privacy concerns abate, begin to understand that regular, consistent monitoring of many health indicators will act in their favor, preserving good health and indicating potential catastrophic conditions.

3. Insurers will price policies and make coverage conditional on the use of this system of monitoring and detection.

4. The efficient economics of this system address the cost implications of socialized medicine and the looming doctor deficit.

The public-health benefits begin to become evident as daily, real-time reporting of conditions like typical flu symptoms will aid in the delivery of medicines and enable people to avoid interactions where they might either become ill or spread their own illnesses.

Users will be alerted to issues via algorithms that scan daily test results. Computers may send simple text questions to obtain more information; if that questioning cannot resolve the issue, the computer will schedule an examination with an appropriate specialist.