What is Digg?189 Comments
- 3tcp, on 12/18/2007, -0/+48Like VHS and the internet, this technology will not see widespread adoption until the smut industry gets ahold of it.
- chsbrgr, on 12/18/2007, -1/+38These new life forms should have a delicious bacony flavor - just a suggestion.
- forgiste, on 12/18/2007, -3/+39Am I wrong or are we not becoming the intelligent designers ourselves, by way of evolution? How ironic.
- chris9902, on 12/18/2007, -3/+26???
Profit. - inactive, on 12/18/2007, -0/+23Synthetic DNA tentacle monsters? I smell a market in Japan!
- WaterDragon, on 12/18/2007, -11/+32Uh Oh!
It's the beginning of the end!
Scientists create monsters.
Monsters devour people. - sivainternet, on 12/18/2007, -2/+21Look at the timing of this. Just when "I am Legend" gets released.
Isn't life complicated enough already? - KhanneaSuntzu, on 12/18/2007, -12/+28Finally. Humanity wakes up to its full potential. Childhood is over. We are leaving the cradle.
- inactive, on 12/18/2007, -0/+15If the wrong people make vicious mutant creatures, better get out our guns, people, because it'll be time to play some REAL LIFE HALF-LIFE!
- weeeezzll, on 12/18/2007, -2/+15If scientist were really smart that would have just followed the instructions in the book of Genesis and been designing life from dirt and spare ribs centuries ago! Scientist are soooo stupid! lol!!!!
- Lanefair, on 12/18/2007, -0/+13This will solve our population crisis!
Seriously though, I'd really like them to synthesise stem cells so I can put some in my ear and get rid of my tinnitus. - tulpe, on 12/18/2007, -0/+12don't tell me, the previous "intelligent" designer did not ***** it up
- Defuser, on 12/18/2007, -0/+10Of course, the real irony will come when the organisms we create start building Internet Message boards, and shrilling flaming each other in their strident denial that "Humans" exist.
- EarlOfLade, on 12/18/2007, -1/+11What's a "God"?
- Nort9, on 12/18/2007, -0/+10If you can't tell the difference between an artificial human and a natural one then are you sure it's not human?
Either way philosophy and ethics classes will probably get more interesting... - negnin, on 12/18/2007, -0/+10You cannot force scientists to work on the problems you want solved. Individual curiosities will move us forward.
- Arkavus, on 12/18/2007, -0/+10Except there's no gene to modify or add that controls super powers.
- weeeezzll, on 12/18/2007, -0/+9One more suggestion - new life forms should NOT taste like chicken.
- eems, on 12/18/2007, -1/+10create new life forms, let them evolve to form a new ecology... oh man, our entire universe is in some petree dish, isn't it?
- Etchii, on 12/18/2007, -0/+9We've successfully created a monkey with three asses! And over here, a pig with three asses! There is no limit to the amount of asses we can put on a creature! Science!
- Thex1138, on 12/18/2007, -0/+9Spaghetti monster lives!
- MacEnvy, on 12/18/2007, -0/+8Why not link to the actual comic, instead of some other random site that ganked it?
http://xkcd.com/135/ - iancgi, on 12/18/2007, -2/+10AI will be nothing like we all expected it to be. Prepare yourselves for a completely new world people exponential curve of technology is about to drop off into infinity.
- DeFex, on 12/18/2007, -0/+8i want a fly that can find the open half of the window.
- voyvf, on 12/18/2007, -2/+10That's the sky wizard some of the slow folks still believe in. Don't worry, it'll pass.
- NinjaBoy, on 12/18/2007, -0/+8There is a theory that states as a civilization advances it becomes more easy for one person or small group to kill everyone. This seems like one of those steps.
- Stemnin, on 12/18/2007, -0/+8Not anymore worried than about the thousands of nukes we're sitting on, so yeah...
- netdroid9, on 12/18/2007, -2/+9So if I clone your daughter and rape it, it's alright because it's not human? What makes the clone different? Does it lack a soul, or some other invisible thing to mark it as alive? If that's the case, how is this 'soul' introduced? Perhaps not all living things have this soul, perhaps some humans lack it. Say, for example, non-Caucasians. In that case, is it any more a crime to rape a black person than a cloned, and thereby innately artificial person?
In the wonderful world of reality, it doesn't matter if someone has some arbitrary marker declaring them artificial or natural, you're still raping someone who is biologically, physically, and in all other ways except theologically, human. And frankly, I don't care what you believe, you're still a psychopath for thinking that raping *anything* is OK, let alone for trying to justify it with faulty logic. - Logicexe, on 12/18/2007, -0/+7"and here you can see the gene that allows us to violate almost every known law of physics"
We're not going to find super power genes :P - empiric, on 12/18/2007, -1/+8You have a rather limited notion of "full potential"...
- bratterscain, on 12/18/2007, -1/+8God should be outlawed before more people get killed.
- weeeezzll, on 12/18/2007, -1/+8There is a big difference between performing assaulting a human and performing experiments on genetic material.
- Th3Hamburgler, on 12/18/2007, -1/+8good for you
- ISIfunded911, on 12/18/2007, -1/+8In the article they explain that the technology is so simple that soon the same people who create computer viruses will be able to create new viruses and bacteria and release them in nature and the population. So the monsters will be invisible: anything can happen, like a new black plague. Well, not just one: there is more than one computer virus.
The power of science over life is becoming infinite. And since we are not infinitely wise, we know this infinite power over our fragile bodies will be used negatively. And most people having been fed Hollywood happy ends since childhood, they cannot anticipate a real disaster and do anything to prevent it. People have been turned into technology worshippers: they are sold new products they enjoy, they are fed ads for them all the time, but get very little information about all the dangers of technology. Capitalism forces you to be optimistic. It brainwashes and disinforms people, while accumulating unprecedented power and control. Logically, capitalism will replace life with artificial life, trying to program it to make it more controllable.
Global warming, holes in the ozone layer, oceans getting totally emptied of fish, tropical forests burned and sawed, biodiversity being replaced by standardized copyrighted GM life,...don't you see a pattern? - orlyfactor, on 12/18/2007, -0/+6One word of advice to the new genetic engineers: Don't hire Newman.
- inajeep, on 12/18/2007, -0/+6Check everyone for belly buttons.
- InfiniteNothing, on 12/18/2007, -0/+6That may explain why there's no intelligent life out there contacting us
- bratterscain, on 12/18/2007, -0/+6Digg is not your IM client.
- stupidStan, on 12/18/2007, -2/+8no, they might be making life... simple life, not a monster or even a bacteria. You idiots over-sensationalizing everything.
- PlutoniumPlague, on 12/18/2007, -1/+6I love science & technology, I've always had an inquisitive side of myself and I would LOVE to see what they do with this in the next few decades....but are we, as either humanity as a whole or the American people on a limited scale, ready for this? Sadly, no...
Think about all the arguments and all the disagreements regarding who has the rights to certain intellectual properties, imagine that transferred to these living organisms...
At first, its just bacteria...nobody gets direct blame for when someone gets sick unless in the case of gross negligence, unsanitary cooking conditions, or whatever...but when its an artificial disease...is the creator of said disease responsible? If these organisms are bred to be adaptive and superior and our bodies have never had contact with them then they could be potentially dangerous even without such intent built in to them.
Once this gets past once-celled organisms and we're making - for example's sake - LoLcats that have just enough intelligence to say something ironic or immediately fitting the situation and capable of human gestures and expressions - who will own them? Does ownership cover just the genetic code or does it extend to the lifeform? What happens when that lifeform changes either through evolution or by creating its own new lifeform by crossbreeding with an existing animal?
Don't get me wrong, this sounds fantastic - but imagine the genetic-ownership version of the RIAA & MPAA - backed by anti-evolutionists and religious zealots...
................Actually, this could be the prologue to a pretty good Sci-Fi / Zombie movie... - Logicexe, on 12/18/2007, -0/+5You can't just use a mathematical curve to dictate reality that simply. Reality has things like scarcity, time constraints, population constraints and physical boundaries that all play a role in limiting the speed at which new things can be invented. The curve works now because we're not at the steep part, but can you imagine a world where computer speeds increase by orders of magnitude every second? If you though buying a new console every five years or keeping your PC's hardware up to date was a pain in the ass, wait until you have to buy a new one every second.
If you applied this logic to world records for running a mile you'd be able to derive a function that would eventually go into the negatives. I don't know about you but I'm not expecting anyone to ever be able to run a mile in negative 30 seconds. You can also trace the path of a ball thrown in the air with a quadratic function, but while the function goes on forever to negative infinity the ball stops at the ground. Do you see the problem will applying a mathematical function to reality? It's very useful to be able use that function to track the path of the ball, but you can't just look at the equation and predict that the ball will go through the ground and continue to go down forever, just like you can't look at the speed at which we invent new things or increase the processing speed of computers and assume this exponential increase can go on forever. - voyvf, on 12/18/2007, -0/+5Perhaps not in the fashion you're thinking of. But being able to shake off cancer like it was a common cold... that seems like a pretty super power to me.
- merper, on 12/18/2007, -3/+8We clearly aren't ready to use pointed sticks and fire for only the good of mankind either. Why don't we just go back to living in the jungle and spending all day trying to find fruit off trees?
Anti-science nutjobs like you are traitors to the species. - JimSartor, on 12/18/2007, -1/+6I appreciate all of the humor and am certainly not mocking anyone's joke . . . especially the EVA suit joke, but considering that we have just recently mapped the human genome and still haven't figured what even a small percentage of our genetic makeup even does, I fear it will be a LONG LONG time before we will be creating a human from the ground up sans-navel. However, I wouldn't mind having a glow-in-the-dark child to match my glow-in-the-dark kitty.
- CoolWind, on 12/18/2007, -0/+5stem cell synthesis was announced very recently. look it up on google news.
- BGog, on 12/18/2007, -11/+16Now if we can just keep those lunatics in middle america from saying only god can create life, we'll be all set.
Also anyone who uses the word philosophical or moral can shut up too. Hopefully your ignorance will not stand in the way of science any longer. - sdellboy, on 12/18/2007, -1/+6I believe the new lifeforms will be on Oprah next week, discussing their feelings about coming into being.
- Logicexe, on 12/18/2007, -1/+6What? What does eugenics have to do with this? Eugenics is social Darwinism with the added "bonus" of getting to kill the people you don't like. This is engineering microscopic organic machines that can perform a specific function.
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