The Idealist 002 - Evolution 🙈
The Idealist: Vol. 2
And we're back.
The Idealist returns for a second edition, fuelled by all of your kind words and feedback. Also, 'sup to the new subscribers that have come along for the ride since last time.
The email worked. It sparked a bunch of interesting conversations both over email and subsequently in person. I got sent interesting stuff and explored some areas in depth that I hadn't made time for before.... things that, once I properly wrap my head around them, will be featuring here too.
And the concept will evolve too... but more of that in due time.
So thanks for that - keep the ideas flowing and without further ado... here's some clickbait for ya.
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Gene editing! Designer babies! The loss of individualism! Panic! That's generally the response to anything related to CRISPR. And while confusion, fear and moral panic is a pretty standard response to any new and fundamentally powerful technology, maybe it's time to get informed about it. You've probably read about this week's breakthrough in removing genetic mutations that cause heart failure already. But this New Yorker interview with Siddhartha Mukherjee explores further some of those moral and political questions. His book, the aptly-titled The Gene, has shot to near the top of my ridiculously long reading list.
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While we're on the topic of my reading list, I've just finished Mark O'Connell's journey into the weird world of transhumanism, To Be A Machine. It's an amusing read, filled as it is with an earnest scepticism. And while most of it is well deserved and amusing, it doesn't quite answer some of the fundamental questions that it sets out to explore - that of what it means to be human and how much of that can be retained in this strange balance of utopian vs. dystopian post-humanism.
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A lighter dive into the transhumanist world can be found in a recent Codebreaker podcast on The Augmented Self. Or the story of Moon Ribas, a self-described cyborg artist who can literally feel the earth move.
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The earth may move, but next time you go through a forest, please be quiet... trees may be sleeping
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And finally, to repeat a familiar trope from the last newsletter, here's a video about the genius of Edgar Wright's directing, as I wait patiently for the streaming release of Baby Driver.