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n an increasingly globalized world, the two primary directing forces seem to be the affirmation of the Net Economy and the irresistible emergence of biotechnology and genetics. In your opinion, how are these two forces changing the way we live and work? Over the course of world history great technological innovations have always emerged in conjunction with two phenomena – a new method of communication and a change in available resources. For example, that is what happened, when we moved from hand-printed paper to a machine-printed press while at almost the same time, we could suddenly count on combustible fossil fuels and steam-driven machines. The mass printing of newspapers allowed news to reach millions of people at the same time and in so doing provided an important instrument for the expansion of an economy based on fossil fuels and steam power that would have otherwise been impossible to develop in a context with little communication. Similarly, over the past forty years, we have experimented with a series of novelties – innovative combinations of communications technologies and a new resource base. Computers have revolutionized communications and language while genes can be said to represent the new resources. Now these two revolutions, information science and life science, are coming together in a unique paradigm, creating the possibility for a new era of access and for the century of biotechnology. The computer is the language which allows us to decipher the gene map
and to organize millions of years of genetic information into useful economic realities. It is an enormous change compared to the chemical and physical eras which dominated science in the industrial age. Now information technology and biotechnologies will dominate the new global science. What are the implications from a social perspective? We will be forced to reconsider our entire social arrangement and the selfsame social contract which has prevailed up to this point. We will have to reformulate concepts such as governability, natural rights and our relationship with the biosphere. All this will have to be reconsidered step by step as the two forces of change modify the market economy. The Net Economy and its tools are considered, from a social and political point of view, easily acceptable, and in fact, with the possible exception of certain old-guard conservatives, they are generally well-accepted. However, there exists a far different reaction to genetics and the changes they herald. Why is there such a difference? Genetics touch and uncover the basic components of life, and this naturally troubles people greatly. Generally speaking, there are two different opinions on this theme. On the one hand there are those who see immense opportunities and advantages, and on the other hand there are those who are terrorized by the possible consequences. Most of us share both these opinions – hope for the opportunities and fear of some uncontrollable effects. But the point in question is
not science itself, as some people maintain. Learning everything we can about genes is a wonderful objective, and no one will ever go around telling young people that studying these subjects is a waste of time and should be avoided. The problem is to do away with the contradiction that if one is not indiscriminately in favor of the future then one is against progress. This is a crude way of presenting the issue. The problem is not science per se, but how it is applied from an economic and social point of view. Of course, but what is, according to you, the correct way to develop genetics in a socially acceptable manner? In my opinion there is a “hard” path and a “soft” path. The hard path comes from a reductionist approach to science that describes genes as capable of doing everything. It ignores the complex relationships with nature and fools people into thinking that we can play at being nature’s architects as if we had become God, taking it upon ourselves to write a second Genesis. There is no doubt that controlling genetics constitutes a great power, capable of generating enormous enthusiasm. But we must also realize that it carries with it profound social, philosophical and environmental implications for the entire world. The soft approach is based upon the idea of a deep understanding of the basic mechanisms of nature. It is based on a recognition of the fact that genes and proteins can modify nature and the environment and on a conviction regarding the necessity to understand the mechanisms of evolution in
order to develop genetic discoveries in agreement with nature rather than against it. From a principled point of view, it is hard not to be in favor of the soft approach, but what does it really entail? Let’s take two examples, one in agriculture and another in medicine. In agriculture the hard approach is characterized by genetically modified organisms – the GMOs. We take, for example, a plot of land on which we intend to cultivate corn and we equip it with what can only be considered weapons – modified genes – which allow the plant to fight parasites or increase its bio-resistance. Soon, an ear of corn is transformed into a kind of soldier at war with nature thanks to its genetically modified armament. I believe that this is a primitive, out-dated approach founded on a violent scientific instrumentation that does not know how to apprehend a systemic vision of the whole. It does not understand the complexity or the structure of the matter in ways that physicists are coming to understand it. It ignores all the network mechanisms, the connections, the relationships, the incorporation mechanisms. It is an old and out-dated way of addressing the problem that has fallen out of favor and is destined to fail. The soft approach uses the same science but applies it in a new, integrated and intelligent way in order to develop a sustainable agriculture. This kind of genetics does not meddle with nature by taking genes from non-correlated species, for example, and inserting them in another, entirely different species thereby risking colossal
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