News

Brazil

In October 2011 our little group: Sonia, Craig, Wendy and Richard visited Brazil. We entered Brazil from Argentina near the Iguassu Falls.

More on Technology and Evolution

I recently read and commented on Dan Brown's latest novel 'Origin' in which the question 'where are we going?' is answered in suggesting an ever greater human symbiosis with technology.  But what if that's not all?

Regular readers will know that I have an artificial heart valve.  Indeed many people have implanted prosthesis, from metal joints or tooth fillings to heart pacemakers and implanted cochlear hearing aides, or just eye glasses or dentures.   Some are kept alive by drugs.  All of these are ways in which our individual survival has become progressively more dependent on technology.  So that should it fail many would suffer.  Indeed some today feel bereft without their mobile phone that now substitutes for skills, like simple mathematics, that people once had to have themselves.  But while we may be increasingly transformed by tools and implants, the underlying genes, conferred by reproduction, remain human.

The possibility of accelerated genetic evolution through technology was brought nearer last week when, on 28 November 2018, a young scientist, He Jiankui, announced, at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong, that he had successfully used the powerful gene-editing tool CRISPR to edit a gene in several children.

Electric Cars revisited

In 2005 I calculated that in Australia, due to our use of coal to generate electricity, electric cars had a higher carbon footprint than conventional cars. 

There's been a lot of water under the bridge since then and now (April 2019) many are promoting electric cars as environmentally friendly, so I thought it was worth a revisit.