Designer drugs

Using three dimensional images of protein structure, they can rotate their cyber molecules on a screen and study them from all angles to figure out which drugs might best fit active sites on a protein surface. Chemical engineers can manipulate different combinations of drug and disease protein, analyze the functional outcomes of adding one molecule to another, and build up therapeutic molecules from scratch.

Social Reconstruction

All human activity springs from two sources : impulse and desire. When men find themselves not fully consented, and not able instantly to procure what will cause content, imagination brings before their minds the thoughts of things which they believe would make them happy. A life governed by purposes and desires, to the exclusion of impulse, is a tiring life; it exhausts vitality, and leaves a man, in the end, indifferent to the very purposes which he has been trying to achieve.

the conventional conception of what constitutes success leads most men to live a life in which their most vital impulses are sacrificed, and the joy of life is lost in listless weariness.

Biotechnology

All protein molecules are long folded chains of smaller molecules calles amino acids. One of smaller proteins, insulin, contains more than 50 amino acids. The number, types and arrangement of amino acids in a protein molecule determine its structure, and its structure determine the job it will do in a living organism.

DNA is built up by repeating subunits of three linked molecules:base, sugar and phosphate. These units named necleotides are fundamental components of DNA. Because there are four different bases, there are four different kinds of nucleotides.

A protein molecule is made by a gene in two stages. First an RNA copy of gene is made. Transcribed from a template of DNA, the RNA copy has a nucleotide sequence complementing that of gene. Then the RNA move to another part of the cell, where its nucleotide sequence is translated into a sequence of aminoacids to build a protein.

Fact & Fiction - Bertrand Russel

"World on worlds are rolling over,
From creation to decay
Like bubbles on a river
Sparkling, bursting, borne away."
- Shelley.

"I love waves and winds and storms,
Everything almost
Which is Nature's and maybe
Untainted by man's misery."
- Shelley.


"Though life may be bad and the world full of unmerited suffering, yet there is in man a capacity of greatness and occasional splendour which makes ultimate and complete despair impossible."
"Only kind of freedom which is undesirable is that which diminishes the freedom of others"
"Holders of power, always and everywhere are indifferent to the good or evil of those who have no power, except in so far as they are restrained by fear."
"Where any large group is basically out of sympathy with the rest of the citizens of the state, democracy is apt to become unworkable, except by a use of force which will produce great discontent in the subordinate group, and a harsh temper in the dominant group"
"Any set of men, entrusted with power over others, will abuse their power unless they have reason to fear that they may lose it."

Beyond Robotics

Beyond Robotics, there is another field, artificial life, or Alife, in which biology is modeled. Tom Bay, biologist at University of Delaware, developed a computer program called Tierra. This system sinulated a simple computer so that Ray could have complete control over how it worked. Multiple computer programs competed for resources of processing unit in the simulated computer. Ray placed a single program in a 60,000 word memory and let it run. Like DNA in biological systems, the code was interpreted to produce the process of creature itself, and it was copied to make a child program. There were "Cosmic Rays" that would occasionally randaomnly flip a bit in memory and were copying errors where as a word was being written to memory a random bit within it might flip. Thus mutations appeared. Before long "parasites" less than half the size of original seed program evolved. They were not able to copy themselves, but they could trick a larger program into copying them rather than itself. Soon hyperparasites and social programs that needed each other to reproduce evolved.

Cybernetics

Besides the electrical engineering theory fo the transmission of messages, there is a larger field which includes not only the study of language but the study of messages as a means of controlling machinery and society, the development of computing machines and other such automata, certain reflections upon psychology and nervous system, and a tentative new theory of scientific method. This larger theory of messages is a probabilistic theory, an intrinsic part of movement that owes it origin to Willard Gibbs - Cybernitics


Its the purpose of Cybernitics to develop a language and techniques that will enable us to attack the problem of control and communication in general, but also to find the proper repertory fo ideas and techniques to classify their particular manifestations under certain concepts. In control and communication we are always fighting nature's tendency to degrade the organized and to destroy the meaningful the tendency, as Gibbs has shown us, for entropy to increas. To live effectively is to live with adequate information. Thus communication and control belong to the essence of man's inner life, even as they belong to his life in society.

Existentialism

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. Such is the first principle of existentialism. It is also what is called subjectivity. The Kantian ethics says, "Never treat any person as means, but as an end.". The only way to determine the value of this affection is, precisely, to perfomr an act which confirms and defines it.

"Man's destiny is within himself".
"I think; therefore I exist".
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained.".

Man makes himself. In choosing his ethics, he makes himself, and force of circumstances is such that he cannot abstain from choosing one. Freedom as the definition of man does not depend on others, but as soon as there is involvement, I am obliged to want others to have freedom at the same time that I want my own freedom. There are no accidents in a life; a community event which suddenly burst forth and involves me in it does not come from outside.

"In war there are no innocent victims"

Influence of science

The happy unity of instinct is gone from us, and we flounder in a sea of reasoning and doubt; in the midst of unprecedented knowledge and power we are uncertain of our purposes, our values and our goals. The balance of mind which once came of a warm religious faith is gone; science has taken from us the supernatural basis of our morality, and all the world seems consumed in a disorderly individualism that reflects the chaotic fragmentation of our character.