> Why do you hope that computers will never
>acquire these non-material attributes, qualities, whatever they are?
For the same reason I hope we never learn to talk with whales: the ACLU
will sue to emancipate them, enfranchise them, and pay them reparations.
I expect them to take up the cause of the chimps at Central Washington
University any day now.
<G>
The other day I watched a Startrek re-run about the android who creates
another android and claims it as his "son." This is the frightening
aspect about bio-engineering. Slavery was a universal social custom and
was never a racial issue until it reached North America. In North
America, theoretical Christian ideals clashed with the economics of
slavery. How does one justify owning a fellow human, particularly a
fellow Christian? Simple, one declares black people to be non-human and
forbids teaching then Christianity. Back then there was no objective test
for humanness and it was easy to say that black people didn't look like
humans.
But then blood typing was discovered (by a black scientist <G>) and the
objective classification of the human race as differentiated from other
animals began. By all possible scientific tests all of humanity is united
as a particular classification of animal.
But now it is known that humans share more than 80% of DNA sequences with
other animals. There are unique DNA sequences that classify humans but NO
unique DNA sequences that classify black people or any other race.
I know, we all know, that one one these days some one will modify one of
these human strings and patent it as a new animal. It will look almost
human and be sexually attractive to perverted humans - thus a new slave
race with no "human" rights. You all know this will be tried because it
will mean economic riches for the person who pulls it off.
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