PART 2
THE THIRST FOR KNOWLEDGE
Man's greatest discoveries have often happened by accident or curiosity. Great social change has often followed useful ones. It was by accident that ancient man found metal in the fire after heating earth, and glass after heating sand. The first steam engines in 1698 led to a massive demand for coal and the rapid industrialization of England. Life would never be the same again.
Then came the discovery of electricity in 1820 and the means of storing it in a battery in 1836, together with the means of generating it using magnets and massive coils of wire turning at high speed by 1850, with industrial power generation by 1880.
The petrol engine invented in 1885 also had a massive impact which continues today. Radio transmission started in 1901 as yet another curious experiment before leading to television broadcasts in 1936 and today's satellite technology.
Often the work of the inventor is hijacked by urgent need; the second world war accelerated work on penicillin, aircraft engines and rockets, radar and of course, nuclear energy.
The continued arms race in the cold war of the 50's and 60's together with the American space program goal to walk on the moon led to a massive search for ways to reduce weight of electronic equipment. Bulky glass valves using technology dating from earlier this century used a lot of heat, took time to warm up, were unreliable, and heavy. A rocket full of glass was unlikely to go far.
THE SILICON CHIP
Laboratory discoveries of silicon's remarkable ability to allow electricity to flow well at times and badly at others, produced a replacement for valves. The age of the transistor dawned. By the 1960s transistor radios were proudly displayed in every High Street. Their main distinguishing feature printed boldly on the box was the number of transistors they contained.
Thirty years ago, scientists found ways to produce larger sheets of silicon onto which could be built not two or three but millions of transistors, each vastly smaller than a pinhead. A computer occupying a room 200 feet by 100 feet and with its own generator could now be compressed into a metal box the size of a briefcase, running on batteries.
In 1980, people were predicting that by 1990 every person in the West would own things containing these "silicon chips": in cars, washing machines, radios, electric mixers or calculators to name but a few. In 1980, this looked a little far-fetched. By 1988, it was already a reality. By the mid 1980s, most shops had converted to electronic cash registers, most banks were using electronic cash dispensers and it had become impossible to buy a transistor television, except in a junk shop.
Most of these discoveries were made by inventive, curious people interested in solving puzzles and finding out more about the world we live in. Most of these people were already searching for a particular answer to a particular problem. Few realized at the time how big an impact their own discoveries would have. As we will see, the same has been true of genetic engineering.
FASTER AND FASTER
Every ten years, our total scientific knowledge is doubling: we knew twice as much about the world in 1950 than in 1940, four times as much by 1960, 8 times as much by 1970, 16 times as much by 1980 and by 1990, we knew over 30 times as much scientifically as 50 years previously. By now, count on 60 to 100 times as much as we did then.
The pace of discovery is increasing so fast that human brains cannot understand it all. We are already beginning to see major problems with equipment we make such as computers because there is not one brain in the world capable of understanding the whole machine. When unexpected things happen, it can be extremely difficult to understand why, and how to solve the problem.
Even if no new progress is made in computer design, it will probably take programmers at least another 10 years from now to get to grips with what these early 1990's machines are really capable of. At the top end, scientists are making huge advances every month in making faster, more powerful electronic brains while at the bottom end, we are struggling to keep the electronic brains we now have busy for more than one per cent of their working lives.
Such is the pace of change in computers that the model bought today is guaranteed to be prehistoric within 6 years. Because it can take up to a hundred man or woman years of labor to produce a good program say for accounting all new machines have to be able to run old programs. Bigger and bigger brains are running systems designed originally for tiny, slow electronic brains over 10 years ago and are working less and less efficiently.
These points are emphasized because unless we understand what is happening in electronic programming now, we will not fully understand the impact of genetic programming in the future, where, once again, the tools and equipment available is developing enormously faster than our thinking about how to use them. However there is one big difference: computers may make people redundant in many jobs but they do not alter life itself. Genetic engineering on the other hand by definition alters the very substance on which life is based.
THE NEW INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
So, into this new computerized age, we now add the age of the gene, with greater potential to help than the microchip, and possibly (if the technology is used unwisely for peaceful or military purposes) the power to harm of a dozen nuclear reactors or atomic bombs.
The Bio-revolution is being developed under exactly the same pressures as the computer revolution or any other of the major discoveries this century: it is driven by curiosity, together with commercial interest built on urgent human need. So what are the human needs? It is also built on the discoveries of the past, in particular the progress in computer technology.
CLONING: WONDER OR ABOMINATION, PAGE 2 |
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