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Given humans are currently causing the 'Sixth' of these major mass extinctions this is relevant. My own view is that there's about to be a massive increase in b
by technotony 11y ago
Given humans are currently causing the 'Sixth' of these major mass extinctions this is relevant. My own view is that there's about to be a massive increase in biodiversity driven by synthetic biology and that this is going to lead to an acceleration in evolution - specifically our newly developed ability to enable horizontal gene transfer between species means improvements nature finds in one evolutionary branch can rapidly be applied to all evolutionary branches.
- jessaustin 11y agoWe can imagine a future in which everyone view this genetic craziness as normal, and people feel sorry for us poor benighted fools who live just before the end of the Age of Heredity. Of course, we can also imagine a future in which the world is populated entirely by a ten-meter carpet of rapidly-adjusting and constantly-warring bacteria.
- bhewes 11y agoReference Peter Watt's "Echopraxia" - http://www.rifters.com/ http://www.rifters.com/
- jessaustin 11y agoNow I've read it. Great stuff! It will take some time before I work out how it compares against Blindsight, but [SPOILER!?] I was glad to find out that it doesn't all end in bacteria.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- bro-stick 11y agoNot to excuse humans' massive transformation of Earth, but life usually "finds a way." So it seems plausible evolution via natural selection may accelerate a few remaining species to bifurcate to take advantage of antropogenic climate change which wiped out would-be past competitors for resources. Given enough time, perhaps other technology-making and art-creating lifeform/s may eventually challenge or coexist with us. Perhaps a plot to a terrible, megabudget Hollywood scifi movie too.