Words&Dirt

“Smoke rings propagate through clear air, proving that they indeed carry their own substance with them, neither diluting it with, nor dispersing it into, the surrounding atmosphere.  And yet there is nothing special about the smoke as such––it is the same smoke that hangs over battlefields in shapeless clouds.  The identity of a smoke ring would appear to consist, not in the stuff of which it is made, for that is commonplace and indifferent, but rather in a particular set of relationships that is brought into being among the parts.  It is this pattern of relationships that coheres in space and persists in time and endows the smoke-ring with an identity.  Perhaps some similar observation might be made about other entities that we observe, and credit with uniqueness and identity, including even human beings.  For the stuff of which we are made is just the common stuff of the world, viz. ordinary gross matter, so that a materialist might say, we are no different from rocks; and yet our matter is imbued with some organizing principle that endows us with identities, so that I may send a letter to Daniel Waterhouse in London in the full confidence that, like a smoke-ring traversing a battle-field, he has traveled a great distance, and persisted for a long time, and yet is still the same man.  The question, as always, is whether the organizing principle is added to the gross matter to animate it, as yeast is thrown into beer, or inheres in the relationships among the parts themselves.  As a Natural Philosopher I feel compelled to support the latter view, for if Natural Philosophy is to explain the world, it must do so in terms of the things that make up the world, without recourse to occult intrusions from some external, unknowable Realm Beyond.”

––The System of the World, by Neal Stephenson, pg. 54

“In the future, as DNA databases expand and the full sequence of human DNA becomes available for testing, millions of people will be able to match up with those who share common inherited genetic traits in customized patient-driven health networks, and compare notes on illnesses and collaborate to find cures.  These more customized patient-directed health Commons will also be able to create sufficient lateral scale to bring public attention to their disease cluster and encourage increased government, academic, and corporate research into their illnesses as well as raise funds for their own research, clinical trials, and treatment.

These DNA clusters of biologically matched individuals will also be able to use Big Data to cross-reference each other’s lifestyles––eating habits, smoking and drinking, exercise regimens, and work environments––to further correlate the relationship between genetic predispositions and various environmental triggers.  Because the matched human clusters will include a chronology of life histories from in utero to old age and death, algorithms will undoubtedly be developed to pinpoint potential disease risks at various stages of one’s life as well as effective treatments.

By midcentury or earlier, I suspect that any individual will be able to access a global health Commons search engine, register their genetic makeup, find a matching cluster of similar genomes, and receive a detailed account of their health risks over a lifetime as well as a rundown of the most effective customized medical treatments to make them well and keep them well, at near zero marginal cost.”

––The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism, by Jeremy Rifkin, pg. 245-6