I can confidently say that most people are completely ignorant of how different the future will be and how rapidly it is approaching. Our existing laws, social structures, national organizations, and systems of government will have to be restructured to avoid irrelevance.
In no area are these changes more profound than biotechnology. Very soon we will be faced with the world of Do-It-Yourself Biotechnology, what Baris Karadogan correctly calls The Ultimate Empowerment of the Consumer. We will have to deal with new terrorist threats where small groups of people can home-grow biotech and nanotech weapons to wreak massive human destruction. We will be faced with complex social questions our parents couldn't imagine, such as What is a Human Being?
And yet, if these issues get demagogued by political opportunists the technological advances may never come. Or may not happen in the right places at the right times. Over regulation and pushing it underground would seem to me to be a mistake.
Alternatively, is an advantage of Bush's stem cell shenanigans that while it clearly hasn't stopped stem cell research it has at least started a conversation?
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