EMCS Web Design

A few months ago, humanity hit a huge milestone on the path of what we are capable of and it never even made the news or anything. No one even knows about it. I guess its a sensitive topic, but I think it definitely needs to be debated. I'm talking about creating artificial life. Yet again, your going to have to take my word for it that it relates to web design.

Let me explain exactly what happened..

Scientists scooped the insides of a cell out of the membrane and all that was left was an empty shell completely void of life. They programmed and created DNA which then was put in place in the cell and in the right conditions, the DNA created the necessary components of the cell. Its very similar to the way a cell would normally reproduce. The DNA doubles itself into 2 buds and the cell splits in half and 1 bud goes to the new cell and the 2nd stays in the existing cell. The DNA takes over from there. Only this was completely man-made DNA created from basic amino acids in a lab.

The part that makes this relate to web design is the fact that they referred to the DNA that they created as 'Software' like it was no different than creating an iPod. Although I always acknowledged the fact that humans were basically just squishy machines, hearing DNA described as software was very jolting. They weren't doing anything different than what I do when I program an online application to do a specific job. The goal of this project is to create bacteria that create fossil fuels as by products and/or feed on greenhouse gasses to undo some of the damage we have already done. I wish web programming had the same possibilities as programming cells and I could simply create a website that solved all out problems, but unfortunately that's not the case, at least yet not yet.

Anyway, why aren't we talking about this? This raises serious environmental and metaphysical issues. Can somethings be controlled? Can we create an entire human from scratch? if so, would it be a human as we know it or an empty, soulless abomination. Yes, we've cloned before, but this is entirely different. There is no birth involved. It's starting with a cell in a petree dish and growing from nothing. Do the pros outweigh the cons and is this even ethical? Do we really want to accept the fact that our DNA is no different than source code? This is definitely food for thought.