THE TRANSHUMANIST SCRAPBOOK: DNA AND THE INTERNET
When Dr. Scott D de Hart and I were researching Transhumanism: A Grimoire of Alchemical Agendas, one problem that we encountered, and which I have often commented about here, is that we could barely keep up with the pace of innovation and more importantly, with the types of speculations that various scientists and engineers were themselves making and hypothesizing about future developments, developments that would vastly change human culture and interaction, developments that would challenge the most basic assumptions we make about what it is to be human, and to transact with each other. Our very systems of value - morality - will be impacted, and with that impact, everything that symbolizes value will be changed in profound and fundamental ways (think money here folks, just for starters).
This important article was shared with me by a regular reader here, Ms. K.N. share it here, with some high octane comments below:
DNA Downloaded from the Internet? Leading Geneticist Says Yes!
One need not be surprised that it is the ever-imaginative Dr Craig Venter making these prognostications. The problem is, Dr. Venter's prognostications have, more often than not, come to pass. As I noted in Genes, Giants, Monsters and Men, Dr. Venter led the private component of the race to map the entire human genome, and has led the pack in applying the rules of patent law to genetically modified or created organisms. Indeed, Dr. Venter recently was able to synthesize an entirely new type of life form using genetic engineering techniques.
Now we come to the transhumanism part. It has long been known to cryptanalysists, geneticists, and even computer programmers, that the human genetic code is a code, it's a programming language, and it can even encode basic "text messages". Now Dr. Venter is taking the next obvious step, and stating publicly what was already privately being voiced: any genome of any species can be reduced to a computer program.
Add a 3d printer of extraaordinary sophistication(which don't yet exist in this sophistication, or, so we're told), and the requisite DNA material, and one could literally bring a new precision to genetic engineering by programming the code of the organism on wished to create. Other adaptations would be to step into a "medi-box" and have one's DNA scanned, coded, and "reprinted" sans the tumor or bald head, or even the sex, one didn't want. One could, similarly, create a "clone at a distance" on another continent, or planet, simply by having the code, and the DNA.... "Beam me up Scotty" is a long way off... but consider. Back in the 1960s when Star Trek first appeared, the whole concept seemed so futuristic that Roddenberry himself had to set it two to three centuries in the future.
Now, mere decades later, the basic steps in the technology tree are already here. And if they're not here, as Dr. Venter evidences, they are certainly being thought about. And when people like Venter think about it, that usually means they intend to do it.
See you on the flip side.
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[quote] human genetic code is a code, it’s a programming language, and it can even encode basic “text messages”. [unquote]
There’s an interesting article over at Discovery suggesting that human DNA has extraterrestrial origins (panspermia) because it’s so precisely ordered with “arithmetical and ideographical patterns of symbolic language” that it can’t be explained by evolution on Earth. The scientists hypothesize that ancient semantic messages, signatures of the ‘creators’, are embedded in our genetic code, and so might also serve as a sort of “biological SETI” (for contacting our galactic ancestors over space and time via our quantum entanglement? instead of using radio transmissions). The other scenario they considered was that we exist in a Matrix-like hologram and our DNA was written by a programmer for a model universe. I like the panspermia option, having always felt like Earth was not my original home … but then maybe that’s one of the programmer’s default options 😉
Here’s the article: Is An Alien Message Embedded In Our Genetic Code? [the April 1 date is coincidental, no fooling]
http://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-exoplanets/could-an-alien-message-be-embedded-in-our-genetic-code-130401.htm
BTW, very much enjoying the ‘Transhumanism In Dialogue’ companion reader … thanks Drs. de Hart and Farrell!
They already did 3D human/being printing in The Fifth Element, way before Prometheus and Elysium…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BMzYjJIYv0
…speaking of dna this is worth….a listen.
I’m not sure what you are driving at with this one, Jedi. Is the clue in the song? that is: mending the broken heart, thereby achieving bliss and the coherence to self-navigate one’s DNA which is the internal means to immortality, star birth and star travel thus eliminating the external means of immortality, star birth and star travel which is white powder gold– the scourge of our physical universe?
or our you alerting us to another one of those genetically endowed musical geniuses with a B in his name? Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and now Buble?
I still don’t understand why the majority of people still think the concept of human cloning (or all of it’s derivatives) as publicized in any contemporary publication is somehow “futuristic”- as so many have stated: the minute a new concept/technology is announced/introduced to the public domain it’s already been there for 40-50 yrs.:
take something as simple as the bar code: if my read sources are correct it was invented in the mid-50’s, including the laser that reads it-
and if former radio show host Peter David Beter is to be taken seriously (over 80 hrs. of info from this man all archived in the internet), he stated in the mid-70’s that human cloning was at that time already a reality-
take care all-
Larry in Germany
Larry, try thinking ….for a moment that 12000 years ago it was common knowledge.
just saying….have a look around at what they hide, what is around and how they lie lie lie.
They already did this in The Fifth Element by 3D printing of the girl… way before Elysium and Prometheus
Comment on the “division of the social space” in Elysium:
http://youtu.be/MGjwQcUyC7I
Doctor Victor Frankenstein anyone or a Mad Scientist from the Tape Thrillers. And to add to our problems with the demise of bookstores and video stories chains our access to information and entertainment uncensored. Or nearly so has diminished it back to fifties if you can’t afford premium movie channels on cable. It’s back to censored movies on non premium cable channels. How our masters are laboring hard and fast to keep us in the dark. I am writing this late because I was reading along article or essay today 11/15/13 on http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com on scalar physics look it up.
Yes.
Around the globe they’re tighening the corporate noose on “our” so-called freedoms.
TPP & TAFTA are the current Corporate Trojan Horses.
It’s not at all farfetched since it has long since been established that DNA patterns can be transferred by microwaves and made to manifest / materialize elsewhere : Luc Montagnier, Petr Gajarev & Poponin, Y. V. Tszyan Kanchzhen ( Biotron ), Jacques Benveniste ( Digital Biology ) — all detailed @ rexresearchdotcom … You might/could be being mutated subliminally even now via computerized radionics, Fourier transforms, &c… And you can defend/repair yourself in the same manner. For example, I prepare mp3 videos w/ select geometries, colors & sounds that I play all night long with that intent. It’s especially easy nowadays. Back in the 1980s I had to use cassette tapes and colored filters — crude but effective …
those pharohs…..they had some fun here.
That gear you describe, if working, does a lot more than simple DNA modification.
Materia Prima anyone, Mr Venter is mucking about with something he knows nothing about. Unless he has a direct line to mother nature he’s barking up the wrong tree.
Why in the hell do these idiots want to muck about with something that’s about 95% perfect, whoever designed “US” is one of the mysteries of the world, I just hope someday to find out who they are.
dna manipulation…..the bee gee defects sang it best, how do you mend this broken heart……and that is the original sin…..we are all from sin waves, something corrupted dna……its in the bible if anyone cares to read that black box anymore,
Well said Sagnacity.
DNA is critical to life, but it is not in charge.
That is why the field of epigenetics exists. The DNA is not the brain of the cell, its the gonad, its function – reproduction. The brain of the cell, the decision maker seems to be a combination of the cell wall, plasmalemma and the micro filament protein structures that extend into the nuclear membrane and outward into the extra cellular matrix, connecting all other cells together in 1 great micro – macro fascial network, which by the way, is a quantum speed carrier of information. I also suspect that the mitochondria, the cellular engines producing energy are involved. Vast topic, I could ramble on for pages, but duty calls…
ps. Dr. Venter did indeed synthesize life. BUT he used existing biological components to do so, in other words he had a blueprint from nature. That is very different from starting from scratch.
” The brain of the cell, the decision maker seems to be . . .”
The key word here is “seems.”
I am no expert, but there are HUGE parts of biology that simply cannot be explained by DNA. Take all the nuances of the shape of faces. There’s no way “genes,’ which program ONLY amino acids, can carry that information.
The proof that DNA is quite a minor part of the picture, is the famous fact that chimps and humans share about 98% of their DNA. Most humans differ in all their characteristics by several hundred percent! (joke, but not really most humans are different by more than 2%). What is the qualitative difference between chimps and humans? It is literally infinite. So if 98% of the DNA is the same, then DNA cannot be the only thing that makes us. There is something else . . .
I went to the theater with a friend this past summer to see the movie Elysium. What I found curious about the film was the use of “scanning” technologies that had as a component the ability to “fabricate” new organs, new skin and new immune systems sans viruses and birth defects. These ideas are not only in the scientific community, but the movie industry is carrying them also. The technology represented here contained both the “decoding” engine for analyzing the DNA of the person being scanned and also the “encoding” engine for the reproduction of tissues without defects. The technology only worked if the subject was alive and his DNA was registered in a centralized databank. This is the latest movie example of which I am aware where the concept of 3D printing is fully explored and realized as a fact of life within the contextual universe it created.
What I found curious, though, was the personality of the individuals, and their educational levels, remained intact. Curious, that! No matter where one opinion resides on the issue of the connectedness of Hollywood to the “planning committee” for re-engineering humanity, the argument for consciousness is not addressed here. To me this is an artifact from the movie that remains unresolved. Speculations about this can go any direction, so none is pursued. It is simply an artifact worth mentioning.
With respect to Elysium the plot of the story represents the idea of the storming of “heaven” by an underclass to gain access to “life extension” technologies through the exploits of the one man to grandfather in the rest of humanity by the sacrifice of his life in the winning. Because the plot is boiler plate I first considered it an artifact of lesser import. It’s resemblance to religious themes can hardly be unnoticed. But the social engineering inherent in the “hero” remains critical to the story line, which is just another one of those curious features that remains unresolved. Like its predecessor, it’s simply catalogued.
“Entertainment” is “programming” in a social engineering sense. When the occasion comes that I do view them, I look for the artifacts. Anything in the educational field in public view I also consider entertainment in its broadest sense, for nothing of import is really taught anymore.
Great observations Origen’s child… I’ll have to watch that movie carefully. Thanks for sharing.
Then you will absolutely love the NAZI reference. My terse review hardly scratches the surface–focusing only on the alchemy and transhumanism elements. You may be entertained on many levels.
With respect to Promethius, I found over 24 references to alternative media themes and memes. If one wants to see Hollywood’s references to many of these themes, this one is an excellent primer. It has a corporate hidden space program, ancient astronauts, a war in heaven between two members of the same race, the seeding of Earth with it’s own life forms. You may have already written about this one–my memory isn’t very good. But there was more to this movie than the plot–including that tragic hero theme again but in feminine form.
Ah yes that is one of the problems with the less and less hypothetical custom manufactured organs–where does the soul and consciousness reside? Are those ineffable things simply a sum of chemical bonds?
Mr Venter et al know all too well (imo) that our genome has been tampered with and probably that of every other species on the planet also!
I read a recent report in which he was featured where he was, if not overtly stating it, certainly implying at the very least some form of intelligent design in human DNA. To my knowledge he is a Darwinist (for the record) but I wonder what he would say to us all after half a dozen pints or so in a pub???
If I can find the article I will link it here.
Email the link to me Enlil… I’d like to be sure to see it and I simply don’t have the time to read each and every comment on the site. I do my best to moderate it but that’s the reality
Happily, there be real mysteries to life not solved by DNA, and that means life is not simply a chemical reaction. DNA studies have their place, but DNA is secondary if not tertiary to life.
In different terms basic chemical reactions have great mysteries that are simply treated as givens–eg molecules have a binding energy related to electron valencies. And just where does that energy come from, and what are the implications of the confirmation of the Higgs Boson? The Higgs Boson sure implies a Higgs Field and that just looks like another name for… Not odd at all that suddenly the mysteries of DNA have greater implications for what’s called high energy physics.