I just put down my new copy of David Marusek's "Counting Heads", only to wade into Mr. Goldstein's mind-boggler...

It would appear that this meme is rapidly approaching the Singularity state.

Goldstein's vision of a future (fast arriving) full of nanobiobots is fascinating stuff. Really, it is. It is too bad that his tone is so shrill and condescending. It doesn't help either that he has taken some fairly straightforward chemistry - antibodies on gold particles, molecullar imprinting, and other such examples - tarted them up in tabloid fashion, and then extrapolated to fantasy. If I wasn't so interested in what I think he was trying to say I would never have completed reading these five pages.

I should admit that this is my first taste of his work and from the biography below the article I sense that there was much before this. I agree with his message, if indeed it is what I think it is. The intervention on our biological nature by nanobiotech's designed devices could very well be an accceleration of what Freeman Dyson has called "post-Darwinian" evolution. There will be more to what we become than siomply teh swapping of genes. Of course we have already begun this journey through the history and sociology of humanity's varied cultures.

Are we ready for the nanobiotech future? Will it be our end? Yeah, we should probably not "try this too" as we have with every other technology that escapes our minds and hands, but I see no indication that we have every, or will ever, learn this lesson. From nuclear weapons to human cloning - once the technology is there it is only matter of time.

I could barely make it through this article, but the gravity of what was being said is truly stunning. Our culture is so steeped in Sci-Fi entertainment, that it's hard to contemplate an actual scientific development such as nanobiobots and the unimaginable possibilities that could ensue.

Many people like to think that all scientific progress is a good thing, but it seems that in all research/business, there is a human greed factor, and that the results may not really be a good thing for the human race. Take Bio-engineered crops. The public has far too little information on this phenomena, and yet it is slowly taking over around the world, and for corporate profits, more than anything. It's doubtful whether the real hazards of bio-engineeered crops have been fully tested.

And now this! When it comes to tinkering with the very margin between life and non-life, we better be careful. It seems to me that miracle scientific developments to prolong life or cure fatal disease, while idealistic, point to a sort of spiritual weakness, rather than strength. We all like to think we are pro-life, especially when it comes to our own life, or our loved ones, but face it, we all have to die someday. We need to make peace with that fact.

As Goldstein says, We are not ready! We weren't ready for nuclear, we probably aren't ready for bio-engineered crops, and I don't think we are ready for nanobiobots to enter our human flesh and blood to possibly, irrevocably, change us into something other than human - out of our control.

But, meanwhile, a few people will be making a bundle of money in this R&D, and that's what counts! I hope I'm wrong.

This article is a careful and rational examination of the current and reasonably projected state of bio-technology. As much as this might shock us, we need to control our emotional reactions to it and consider the logic.

I think Goldstein makes excellent arguments by analogy to presently agreed upon concepts. I think this should be taken seriously, as a good start to a discussion, and not discarded as fearful speculation.

Considering the trajectory of human progress, I believe our most likely terminal adversary (what might end us) is ourselves. Sure, we could make the point of his argument moot by beating him to the punch with a global thermonuclear war, but that only reinforces my prior point. In the net, we are both individually and as a group more succeptable to human events, than "natural" ones. We collectively demonstrate our command of "natural" events, by our unchecked population growth.

If we are forward thinking and smart (and frankly, I think the evidence is against us on that) we need to fully consider the ramifications of what we do. Biotechnology can change us in ways we never expected, and the discrimination of good vs bad will only be made after the fact. We can mitigate that by thinking ahead. This article is a call to think ahead, and it should be heeded. All it asks us to do, is to anticipate the possibilities, and to plan and watch for them. In that, it is no more complex than asking the lumberjack to pay attention to where they stand, and which side of the tree they saw. Just because the concepts might be more complex, it is not fundamentally any different than that simpler analogy. We have grown sophisticated, and we now tread on complex ground. This is a good thing, to take a longer term perspective, it sure beats being cold and hungry.

As individuals and ultimately as a species, our success (and happiness) will be based on our ability to think outside the box. The box is our own minds; disposed to fear, superstition, and worst of all, unmerited hope and optimism. Problems won't just solve themselves, we need to solve them.

Scientific reasoning is not inborn or natural to humans, it must be learned. The best tool we have at our disposal for discriminating fact from fiction is logic and reason. If we aim to control the forces we unleash, be it fire in the past, or biotech in the future, we need to apply our learned capacity for rational thinking. To fail to do so, will get us burned. The article is completely on target in that regard, if we don't critically consider and engage this developing ability we have, it will surely bite us in the ass. Or more specifically, result in the end of humanity as we know it. We tell our children to look both ways before crossing the street, how is this any different?