k0an.com

With news of Katrina's devastation and my declining company I needed something to cheer me up.

I just read an article today about an amazing lab discovery showing that mice can regenerate limbs and organs:

"We have experimented with amputating or damaging several different organs, such as the heart, toes, tail and ears, and just watched them regrow..."

If they can bring that technology to humans (AFTER deeming it safe) then life as we know it will involve less pain and misery. Hopefully the technology is made available to everyone but I'm guessing there will some expensive licensing models around it making it exclusive to the wealthy.

That reminds me of an idea I had last night after watching the amazing documentary "The Corporation". I highly recommend that movie, it was truly an amazing experience to discover how corporations have shaped our world in the last century. After watching the movie I was reminded yet again that in Capitalism in order for there to be winners there have to be losers. And, to support the ever-increasing wealth of the winners the gap has to become wider.

Since technology could perhaps solve the human health dilemma I wonder if it could solve the human economic dilemma. This is going to sound pretty sci-fi but if we can solve the energy problem (solar, wind, hydrogen, etc...) and perfect nanotechnology (self-assembling machinery and resource assembly) we could have a fleet of zero-maintenance "helper bots" to perform labor. It sounds far-fetched but it is technically possible based on what the scientific community knows today. If we achieved that result we would theoretically no longer have the problems of slave labor, scarcity of resources, pollution, etc... The problem is will the powers-that-be allow something like that to succeed? Will the "captains of industry" allow a utopian society like that to exist?