[ExI] the transparent society

Rafal Smigrodzki rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com
Fri Jun 28 01:47:01 UTC 2013


On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 3:52 PM, spike <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
>
> It is clear to me now what I should have pondered a bit more to start with:
> 23andMe empowers people and governments.  This can be either a good thing or
> a bad thing, or both.  I am fascinated and appalled at the same time, which
> is an odd emotion indeed.

### The transparent society is coming, we will be transparent to them,
the only question is whether they will be also transparent to us. And
it's not a question of ethics, as you noticed, powers (e.g. ones
called forth into being by the wizards at the appropriately called
Illumina) have a way of just nestling themselves into the world,
whether we like them or not, so it's better to learn to live with them
as well as we can.

Talking about powers: Imagine the world of 2025, you are a scheming
female who wishes to entrap a high-earning milquetoast. Of course, by
now every high-earning man (the few that remain) is acutely aware of
the danger of a scheming, fertile female on the prowl for an increase
to her otherwise meager Basic Income. No matter what basic instinct
drives the female, the prudent male craftily avoids any donation of
sperm, knowing that its provenance could not be denied, the way you
could sometimes do in the prehistoric 20th century. The hussy is kept
behind a wall of high-quality polymer, and the man goes to sleep
feeling safe.

Little does he know that our destitute female protagonist is going to
avail herself of a new power: On demand cloning services. She
surreptitiously swipes a small speck of skin, sends it to a shady
sequencer in Somalia, has it sequenced, cloned, and cultured to
produce spermatocytes which undergo meiosis, producing haploid
versions of the milquetoast genome, wiggling their tiny tails in a
test tube.

Not being able to deny carnal contact, and faced with incontrovertible
genetic data, the rich man ends up blaming the polymer manufacturer,
and the female laughs all the way to the bank.

Yeah, if you think men have it rough today, just wait for the world of
tomorrow :)

Rafal



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