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The Synthetic Age - Outdesigning Evolution, Resurrecting Species, and Reengineering Our World (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R503
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The Synthetic Age - Outdesigning Evolution, Resurrecting Species, and Reengineering Our World (Hardcover)
Series: The Mit Press
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List price R696
Loot Price R503
Discovery Miles 5 030
You Save R193 (28%)
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Imagining a future in which humans fundamentally reshape the
natural world using nanotechnology, synthetic biology,
de-extinction, and climate engineering. We have all heard that
there are no longer any places left on Earth untouched by humans.
The significance of this goes beyond statistics documenting melting
glaciers and shrinking species counts. It signals a new geological
epoch. In The Synthetic Age, Christopher Preston argues that what
is most startling about this coming epoch is not only how much
impact humans have had but, more important, how much deliberate
shaping they will start to do. Emerging technologies promise to
give us the power to take over some of Nature's most basic
operations. It is not just that we are exiting the Holocene and
entering the Anthropocene; it is that we are leaving behind the
time in which planetary change is just the unintended consequence
of unbridled industrialism. A world designed by engineers and
technicians means the birth of the planet's first Synthetic Age.
Preston describes a range of technologies that will reconfigure
Earth's very metabolism: nanotechnologies that can restructure
natural forms of matter; "molecular manufacturing" that offers
unlimited repurposing; synthetic biology's potential to build, not
just read, a genome; "biological mini-machines" that can outdesign
evolution; the relocation and resurrection of species; and climate
engineering attempts to manage solar radiation by synthesizing a
volcanic haze, cool surface temperatures by increasing the
brightness of clouds, and remove carbon from the atmosphere with
artificial trees that capture carbon from the breeze. What does it
mean when humans shift from being caretakers of the Earth to being
shapers of it? And in whom should we trust to decide the contours
of our synthetic future? These questions are too important to be
left to the engineers.
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