Internet Trumps DNA For Innovation
from the not-surprising dept
theodp writes "Senior-level business executives responding to a BusinessWeek Innovation Survey have named the personal computer (56%) and the Internet (51%) as the greatest innovations of the past 75 years, trumping the discovery of DNA (49%), the polio vaccine (25%), and cloning (2%). When it comes to the most innovative CEOs, execs give the nod to Bill Gates (50%) and Steve Jobs (47%), although Apple (35%) bested Microsoft (32%) when it came to the most innovative company." This doesn't seem that surprising. If you look at what has impacted the people who filled out the survey, of course it's going to be the stuff they see on their desk every day.
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We'd be shorter and crippled
There is no cure for patients once they are affected with polio. Polio spreads through swimming pools and public bathing facilities, so swimming pools would be outlawed. Poor kids used to be accused of spreading polio to rich kids, so poor kids would be put in schools behind iron bars.
In a parallel universe where AIDS was easy to make a vaccine for, maybe people would still be practicing what we would call "unsafe sex", and our prudish sensibilities might seem medieval to them? You're talking to someone who rubbed butts with a lot of females from the School of Public Health at a bar party for grad students tonight. ;-)
Many vegetables naturally contain saponins and erucic acid which stunt growth and deprive the body of iodine. Goiter used to be a serious health problem among Americans who did not eat enough meat, because the vegetables would drain iodine from their bodies. Americans used to be shorter for the same reasons as well. Despite the modern opposition to "genetically modifed" foods, without modern strains of vegetables, vegetarians as we know them today would be writhing in pain from throats swollen shut by goiter. Maybe in a parallel universe where genetically engineering vegetables is very difficult, vegetables are considered a poisonous, terrible food for poor people? (Medieval European aristocrats thought so.)
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If genteric were understood like microsoft "unders
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Re: We'd be shorter and crippled
You want to know why I know this? We've sequenced ourselves first (well, besides the few practice runs with fruit files and what not). Everything else on the planet can fsck-off.
One of two things will happen: we, as a species, will obsolete existing biosystems via genetic engineering and invent our own (we're already obsoleting those ecosystems via destruction) or nature/evolution will teach us, as a species, a very interesting and painful lesson. Either way, the human race is headed for extention in the long run.
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