Ms. Nip here captures, in my humble opinion, the essence of where new technologies in genetic engineering like CRISPR^[1] seem to be taking us ... to the stars. And, by extension to her argument, it is yet another herald of the ongoing transformation of human animal into a transcendental liminality^[2] where the Platonistic and Aristotelian dichotomy unite.

Lisa Nip:

How humans could evolve to survive in space

Footnotes:

And finally, my two cents-worth of an answer in the comment section of that article - transcribed here, becuase, c'ummon, I can't justify creating a blog post without making a contribution to the body of content :-P)

JC Martinez-Sifre  4 months ago

To the question of: "Even if we could edit human genes safely and precisely, why would we do so ..."

Why? To colonize Mars and survive Climate Change.

There a whole lot of flora and fauna already out there that thrive in exotic environments. Besides the treatment or eradication of diseases and the issue of designer babies, CRISPR makes any strand of DNA from any species current or even extinct a candidate for splicing into the human genome.

I've heard that there's an active effort to un-extinct the woolly mammoth. It's not a far stretch to think of humans who can tolerate interstellar space with a bit of DNA from Tardigrades or photosynthetic people who breath CO2 and fart ozone. And, it's not unreasonable to think that the knowledge of how to do that effectively is in the not-too-distant future. After all, Custer's last stand and Armstrong's stepping onto the moon happened in the span of a single lifetime.

^[2] An audio blurb: Terrence McKenna: what it's like when the species prepares for hyperspace

The most recent issue of Wired magazine has an article on emerging rules of etiquette in our Web 2.0 environment. While its clear that it's a hot topic and one worthy of continued discussion, there remains something from Old Tech that could underwrite the rules that become applicable to these new avenues of communication.

That is, I spied a sign posted on plywood walls used to enclose a construction site at a busy intersection in Brooklyn. It said, "Lost Dog," and went on to describe in an artful print out, complete with a picture, the dogs breed, its idiosyncrasies and a description of how it went missing. While this is an Old Tech appeal to the neighborhood, whoever compiled the document did something extraordinary: they wrote in Sharpie over their public notice, "We found her. Thanks."

While it might have well been just as good to tear off the print out, there was a very humane sense of good will and completion in being notified that the collective "us" had accomplished the mission of returning this beloved dog to its rightful owner.

Likewise, when it comes to the general ease with which we can add our comments to Web artifacts such as friend's status updates, their blog posts or twitters, or even mainstream media articles, what seems to still be downright alienating from all of this is those statements like, "We found her. Thanks."

That is, a status update is not just completed by the act of being commented on; a text or email message is not sent; a blog post or its comments has not been read; a dropped phone call is not over until, at some level, all of these ways of communicating have been issued an "signal received, end of line."

As such, a rule of thumb added to the Wired article for etiquette in these things is this: make it known when a text has been received with a simple response, add a closing comment to comment threads, find a way to say the tide and true "goodbye" to drop calls; in short, make it known that in cyberspace, you, the originator of the transmission says, "10-4. Over and out."

When bacteria talk, they cast their vote. And when their individual votes are numerous enough, they act, and they act in unison.

It's probably the holy grail of marketing to discover the precise mechanisms of viral videos and viral anything on the Internet, and if these erstwhile marketers had had any interest in their one and only biology course in college or any interest in biology whatsoever in the form of a TED talk, they might have gleaned from the primordial world a clue as to how individuals congregate into united action.

The nomenclature of Digg.com votes and the use of "viral" in viral videos, it would seem, is no accident.

Here's how it works on a microscopic level: the simple bacteria, in the average course of a work day, dispenses a chemical particular to its species into its environment. That chemical is identical to the one's that others of its like secrete. The purpose of this chemical is to merely announce to the world of bacteria like it, "I am here."

When enough of the bacteria are in close quarters secreting this chemical, the density of this, hormone or pheromone, as it were, says to all the bacteria to perform an action that their single-cell, one-and-only function dictates like becoming phosphorescent or to initiate their virulent attack on their much larger host - something no individual bacteria has hopes of doing alone.

The biologist's term for this activity is called the "Quorum Vote."

The human equivalent is called the "Digg."

The ramifications of a Digg being ascribed to a specific behavior or set of actions to be done when Digging gets to a certain level; that is to say, if Digging it not only pulls it to the top of the list, but also is a call for some sort of action, or product for that matter ....

Digg, at the end of the day - if as below, so above with our bacteria friends then the presumption is by our innovative advertiser or new-media periodical, that a threshold of diggs constitutes an action on the part of the producer of the content.

Bacterium, it's been understood thus far, were, as a phylum, independent, single-cell organisms whose function was merely to consume enough that mitosis would kick in and it could copy itself by splitting into two. That is, on its best day, the high school biology class would swoon with excitement at witnessing under a microscope the act of a ripe bacterium, fat with eating, decide that it was going to expand the scope of its singular DNA by making two of itself.

I suppose it's a strange model to pitch these days - that the audience for advertisements and news articles - could initiate collective activity spearheaded and organized by the agency producing the media, but in this enterprising age ... Anything's possible.

Part 2:

A co-founder of Twitter, Evan Williams, is vocal in his experience of seeing his simple concept - answering the question "What are you doing?" in 140 characters or less - be used in innovative ways - in bacterial ways, if you will. While Twitter would on its surface seem to suggest that answering that question might yield rather banal offerings like "brushing my teeth," or "deciding on Newman's Own spaghetti sauce or Barilla," it would seem that when banal and ordinary individual are in extreme circumstances, the Tweet can, like the bacterial pheromone, unite individuals into common action.

One of the examples Williams cited were the Tweeters would announce gasoline prices they'd observed while driving around town. The utility of such reports by individual "cells," as it were, is evident when in fact the colony of Atlanta is, like everywhere else, suffering from the toxicity of the fueling-the-car-environment to their pocket book.

No doubt, the Tweets, like the bacterial chemical counterpart played a role in shaping the behavior of drivers of like mind, and perhaps opens an insight into means engineering collective behavior derived from the animal kingdom.

Time should reveal if there's a model to be uncovered through mechanisms such as Twitter. There might even be avenue for networks of tweeters united towards the same goal - especially if that goal happens to be, like in the bacterial realm, the mastery by individuals over a much larger, more complex and infinitely massive cultural trend or idea that no One Man Army could ever challenge alone.

A dialogue has opened in this gadgety, mobile-ready culture that proposes this: the modern Joe moves in our midst, but is not really there with us. In at least two podcasts I've encountered, Zencast and TED talks, there's a light, but decidedly concerned frown over the fact that folks these days are so plugged in - to their music, their texts, their mobile gaming, their chats and so on - that the realm of operation for their conscious attention is definitely not with what's in arms reach or in ear shot or in the line of sight or on the pallate, but, instead, in an alternate universe that transcends space and time; they're, instead, in a private space occupied by their friend or colleague in another state, following the rhetoric of a podcast recorded earlier in the week, or otherwise, unrecognizably "altered" to the "Now" - their Now.

It's likely that the dialogue will be ruthless and bloody where families will be torn asunder when either the call goes straight to voicemail too many times or the hubby spends most of the time on the couch staring into a 17" screen while you're both supposed to be watching your favorite show "together" or the estranged son or daughter leads an alternate life that you are definitely excluded from.

Mrs. Manners and the like will have their arms full: answer the cell only when undivided attention for the call is available, or will it be apropos for friends to hear you answer the question "paper or plastic."

It's a versatile, multi-dimensional place these days: The Now. It's an Axial time where information is not just ready and available, but also too loud, too ruthlessly intrusive and violating that perhaps the Now of yesteryear (the '70s and Ram Das) is gone, gone, gone beyond the beyond.

Which is all to say that until some sort of consortium arises to codify the etiquette of mobile electronics, it's likely that we all are haphazardly trying desperately hard to stay connected to our present moment while we stay, irrevocably, connected to the information super highway.

It's perhaps an image of the Now that we could all probably relate to in one way or another: The Now - running a three-legged race while balancing an egg on a spoon.