Monday, August 22, 2011

The next biggest thing

Will it be curing all viruses? Curing cancer? Finding a way to hook the brain up to a computer?

I think it will be this one thing: answering abiogenesis once and for all. Which is not to say that the recent news actually moves us closer to it.

I mean one of those first two things will probably happen after the third thing (if not before). And I can't agree more that those first two things are more morally important. I just think that the question of our origins -- how did life arise on Earth? -- will haunt us more from our past than our future can ever escape.