I witnessed a pretty interesting article the other day and it was this... http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...rams-700-terabytes-of-data-into-a-single-gram In short basically we were able to upload 700 terabytes of data into the human DNA code. Of course there's no current way for us to encrypt this data it really makes me wonder just how close we might be getting to trans-humanism. If you don't know, transhumanism is basically the idea that eventually our current biological form will be obsolete and we will have to take control of our own evolution through modification of the human genome. Lately we've been doing it though machinery(prosthetic limbs, military exoskeletons, etc) but with this we may actually be taking the first step creating copies of the human mind as scientist have been predicting that we will be seeing more and more of this within our lifetime. Is it just science fiction? Will humanity doom itself long before we can get to this point? Is it ethical? Are you for it or against it? Opinions. If you're interested you should also look up some details on the Singularity which is essentially the ultimate goal of transhumanism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
I've done plenty of research on the Singularity. It's bound to happen as long as we don't die out first. Given that we're about 100 years before becoming a Type-1 civilization, the Singularity could happen right in that timeframe. In the end, it'll take longer for it to become publicly accepted rather than the technology to come into existence. That's my guess. Plenty of religious nutjobs will call out scientists on their role in trying to "play God". As for whether or not it's truly ethical...well, I don't know. We shouldn't try to extend our lives further unless we have the resources to sustain it. If nobody ever died of natural causes, that would be a terrible thing for the Earth. We need death until we have the ability to truly become self-sustaining.
