Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
11. Genetic and financial engineering
The nature/nurture interaction means that the results of the expression of genes as proteins
depend on the environment in which they are expressed
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. Analogously, the consequences
of the developments of biotechnology depend on the social system within which they are
expressed. There are huge possibilities of good or evil. Thus, scientists cannot be
unconcerned with politics and must act responsibly. We may be sure that some people,
somewhere
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, are thinking about the uses of bioinformatics for military, selfish and
destructive ends
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. Social control of applications of genomics cannot be left to
oligarchies
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. This means that scientists in genomics must work to create an informed
public and this implies an opposition to secrecy
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.
Today, information, especially that relating to molecular structure and genetic
sequences, is being enclosed, as land was enclosed in the 18th and 19th centuries in Britain,
and is becoming private property
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(as are also computer components, algorithms and
methods
32
). The Human Genome Project has generated acute conflicts in the "Republic of
Science" and more generally
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. Huge data-banks of the DNA information on individuals are
being built up for social, political and military purposes. Even the ownership of ordinary
standard English words and phrases are being claimed by arrogant companies and
litigation
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absorbs a large proportion of the social product, especially in the USA.
With the development of socio-biology, through the efforts of E. O. Wilson, D. S.
Wilson, R. Dawkins, J. Goodall and many others, the extension of biological ideas, from
the collective behaviour in insect societies to the noösphere, is making progress towards
understanding the behaviour and evolution of individuals, groups and species. “Memes”
have been proposed as units of social structure
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circulating in the world of information. At
the insect level some quantitative confirmation of numerical predictions has been achieved.
Such topics should eventually be included in bioinformatics as part of the dialogue between
information and matter.
12. Lucretius
In due course I and you and everyone else will cease to operate as living systems. The
atoms will disperse and all that will be left will be traces of information distributed round
the world. There will be bits of genetic sequence continuing in descendants and in relatives,
some genetic information may be recoverable from organic specimens, there will be items
in the Internet and in documents of all kinds. There will also be transient memories residing
in others. It will all be a matter of chance as to what survives of us, but it will be
information recorded in various kinds of matter.
I must draw your attention again to Lucretius' topic:
De Rerum Natura
, [on the
nature of things]. It reached us from antiquity in only a single manuscript copy and, with
the development of printing at the end of the fifteenth century, it was reprinted and
translated and generally circulated so that, by chance, this remarkable philosophic outlook
has survived to our own times
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and remains a source of inspiration and consolation for us
even two thousand years later.
It is information transmitted in code from our ancestors and it is this coding into
language which distinguishes the human species from all others. Lucretius had said "I set
out to loose the mind from the knots of religion"
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. His topic's great merit is that it sought
to give a complete, unitary picture of the universe, free from prevailing superstitions. Also,
we might note, prophetically perhaps, in view of the concern over AIDS and SARS (Severe
