After artificial wombs comes the next step: mirror people.
Somewhere in my house a book is buried. I can't remember the title or author, but he is a former MIT prof who became the CEO of a gen-tech company. He proposed that we create people in which the 'hand-ness' of their amino acids and proteins are mirror images of ours. Such people would be immune to all of our infectious diseases. They could not receive nutrients from their placentas in a natural mother because the nutrients would have the wrong 'hand-ness', so artificial wombs are a pre-requisite.
Of course, the entire food chain would have to be mirrored as well, and that would inevitably lead to real conflict over farmland, the Greatest Replacement of them all.
This is so disturbing. All of it. I think the worst part is thinking that it would be a good thing for a baby to develop in a robot womb. How many babies would die in a development of that technology? And what kind of a person would it bring about? It seems to me that process in itself would do something to the humanity of the child.
We're going to have to tell a better story. And it has to be an embodied story that invites others in. And it has to be at least a somewhat unified story—the scifi trope of 'if aliens show up, then humans will band together' is relevant now. The Machine People are here and have power. Will the Garden City People step up together and shout "NO!" while knowing that it is only their blood that is allowed to be shed? I appreciate you Kale.
After artificial wombs comes the next step: mirror people.
Somewhere in my house a book is buried. I can't remember the title or author, but he is a former MIT prof who became the CEO of a gen-tech company. He proposed that we create people in which the 'hand-ness' of their amino acids and proteins are mirror images of ours. Such people would be immune to all of our infectious diseases. They could not receive nutrients from their placentas in a natural mother because the nutrients would have the wrong 'hand-ness', so artificial wombs are a pre-requisite.
Of course, the entire food chain would have to be mirrored as well, and that would inevitably lead to real conflict over farmland, the Greatest Replacement of them all.
This is so disturbing. All of it. I think the worst part is thinking that it would be a good thing for a baby to develop in a robot womb. How many babies would die in a development of that technology? And what kind of a person would it bring about? It seems to me that process in itself would do something to the humanity of the child.
We're going to have to tell a better story. And it has to be an embodied story that invites others in. And it has to be at least a somewhat unified story—the scifi trope of 'if aliens show up, then humans will band together' is relevant now. The Machine People are here and have power. Will the Garden City People step up together and shout "NO!" while knowing that it is only their blood that is allowed to be shed? I appreciate you Kale.