John Robb and others have highlighted the terrorism implications of the synthetically created polio virus.
It’s probably true that anyone with a reasonably cheap lab can — or will shortly be able to — create harmful viruses. As yesterday’s Financial Times pointed out, “The experiment that a person conducted to win the Nobel Prize two decades ago can now be conducted by my 11-year-old grandson.” That’s what happens with the advance and dissemination of technology.
But there are three other sensible reactions to the news. First, as John himself points out in a comment, “As with the nuclear terror of the last 50 years, you have trust in the essential goodness of humanity that we are going to survive relatively unscathed.” Second, as John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid brilliantly explained in their Social Life of Information, foreseeing a path for how technologies will be used is profoundly difficult. There is no inevitability about extrapolating trends. Third, we should be thrilled at this latest example of scientific ingenuity. The artificial creation of life has long been mooted, but here we have it for real.
“If Osama bin Laden had been taught to sow seeds when he was a nipper, he wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing.” Gardening expert Alan Titchmarsh shows his profound faith in the powers of digging in the soil on Desert Island Discs.
Jamin Raskin argues the case for constitutional literacy.
“The nation is suffering a profound crisis of constitutional literacy. According to a National Constitution Center poll five years ago, ‘only 5 percent of Americans can correctly answer 10 rudimentary questions about the Constitution’, such as naming any of the rights contained in the First Amendment or declaring true or false whether the president is elected directly by the people. Notably, one out of six citizens (this means tens of millions of people) actually believes that “the Constitution establishes America as a Christian nation.”