notwithstanding that Malaria is a vector born protozoan parasite, and cholera a waterborne bacterial pathogen, Saletan may have a point.

The information age and a technologically advanced society are rapidly redefining what an advantageous genetic makeup may be, at a pace our slowly adjusting biological shells may be unable to compete with.

This stress is already symptomatic, from our rapidly expanding waistlines to the rise in childhood diabetes, bodies that once evolved to store and use every calorie as a bulwark against starvation are now a liability to obesity and it's attendant ailments of heart disease and stroke in a world where food is abundant and cheap.

Attention Deficit Disorder?

Autism?

it is not hard to make a genetic case where half of all children in some schools are on stimulants that we are now bombarding ourselves with information at a faster rate than many have evolved to process it.

Take a good look at that kid you see texting, talking, reading and listening to his I-Pod simultaneously without batting an eye and you get a pretty good idea where the next Google founder and billionaire comes from.

My biggest worry?

Technological and societal advancement comes with a vulnerability, and that is that all that drives you towards new, advantageous traits also shelters you from the natural environment of cold, hunger, violence and disease that still surrounds us.

I am reminded that Aristotle was almost lost to the dark ages, the Renaissance to the Plague, and the ashkenazi to the rise of nazi germany. The more sheltered and distant we become from that basic natural environment that supports us, the more vulnerable we become to it.

if evolution teaches us anything, it is that the more specialized and narrowly adapted a species becomes, the more vulnerable it is to extinction.

Reprobate:

My biggest worry?

Technological and societal advancement comes with a vulnerability, and that is that all that drives you towards new, advantageous traits also shelters you from the natural environment of cold, hunger, violence and disease that still surrounds us.

I am reminded that Aristotle was almost lost to the dark ages, the Renaissance to the Plague, and the ashkenazi to the rise of nazi germany. The more sheltered and distant we become from that basic natural environment that supports us, the more vulnerable we become to it.

if evolution teaches us anything, it is that the more specialized and narrowly adapted a species becomes, the more vulnerable it is to extinction.

I don't follow your logic. You say that new traits that are advantageous also shelter us from the harsh environment. How is that a disadvantage? The more sheltered we are, the less vulnerable we are, by definition.

Are you suggesting that because we're smarter but physically weaker, we are more specialized as a species? Clearly the opposite is true: intelligence makes us better able to adapt to and survive in our environment.

sure, we are less vulnerable, until the electricity runs out.

is a condo without heat warmer than a log cabin with a fire, or colder?

does that I-Pod kid bag a deer when the food runs out, or the guy who lives in a mountain trailer?

the ability to write a million lines of code a day is useless in a world without computers, and a lifetime of sanitized water is a liability, as anyone who has spent even a short vacation in Mexico knows.

Intelligence is relative to the challenges we face. Even now, in this digital age, reading scores are rapidly dropping, although reading scores are still considered a measure of intelligence. We are more specialized by the skills we gain, and more importantly, the skills we have lost.

Being an anesthesiologist may be a great thing, but is a useless skill when there are no drugs to be found.

But we make the electricity, the heating systems, the drugs, and the grocery stores. Sure, any individual is more dependent on others as he gets more specialized. But the species is incredibly adaptive.

If our environment changes as drastically as you speculate (all current food sources run out, requiring hunting for survival?) then human intelligence will be the main reason that the species survives. Individual humans can learn new skills, and apply old skills to new problems.

our ability to technologically advance has always, historically, been akin to the time we have to dedicate to it beyond our basic needs.

so, let's start with a simple Tuna Sandwich.

we go to work at our high tech, well educated jobs, and we have one for lunch.

You open a can, you add mayo, some relish, and some bread, and you are good to go.

The Tuna is caught in Togo, Flash frozen by a liquid nitrogen process, shipped and processed in a cannery at just the right temp, salt content and pressure to sterilize the native and potentially lethal Clostriduim Botulinum and allowing you to buy what would otherwise be rotten and inedible up to months later.

Ditto the mayo, processed and sterilized of Salmonella, and the relish, and the bread, also purged, sterilized, preserved and sent to you.

4 ingredients, 4 sophisticated processes designed to eliminate dozens of pathogens and save you hundreds of hours of time, making what would be impossible for you, as an individual, to do on your own into a simple, everyday task.

if that infrastructure falls apart, everyone will spend all their time fishing, and have no time for much else.

Reprobate:

if that infrastructure falls apart, everyone will spend all their time fishing, and have no time for much else.

The point is obvious. But what makes you think the infrastructure will fall apart?

Your example shows that the food processing chain is long and complex. That does not mean, however, that it is not robust. I have many, many food choices, and the likelihood of all of them disappearing at once is vanishingly small. Even smaller is the chance that no alternatives will be found to replace them.

Rome, Medieval Europe, modern Europe (twice), Russia, China and japan to name a few.

what makes you think we won't?

are we so much better than they?

So how did we get here, if all of those societies collapsed to extinction, or at least to the point of being unable to advance technologically?

no major wars (read nation threatening) or systemic collapses.

on the whole, over history, the periods of prosperity have grown longer, of collapse, shorter.

the russians are still recovering, the chinese, prosperous for the first time in a century.

Africa? still a collapsed mess.

doesnt mean it won't happen here.

how about a plausible scenario?

Iran announces it is no longer going to enrich uranium, instead, to appease that big bad bully the US, buys a hundred Cobalt powered Nuclear generators from russia:

Importing Country: Iran
Russian Developer, Exporter or Manufacturer: Electrosila
Date: 1999
Activity: Agrees to provide two nuclear generators worth approximately $20 million to Bushehr

<link>

useless as bomb material, but incredibly radioactive, nonetheless.

they then pull the cores, add a few explosives, and launch them at every major oil facility and field within range of their short range missiles (of which they have thousands), lethally irradiating 70% of the worlds oil supplies for the next 100 years and cornering the remaining oil market.

every major supply system in the west collapses, no cars, no trains, no planes. Intermittent electricity at best.

what NOW?

what skills do you have to barter for food, clothing, housing and heat?

extinction? no.

but the world as you know it certainly has drastically changed. and the recovery will be long, hard, and mean.

There are alternatives to oil and oil is found in places other than the Middle East. Your plausible scenario is not plausible at all.

"The Tuna is caught in Togo, Flash frozen by a liquid nitrogen process, shipped and processed in a cannery at just the right temp, salt content and pressure to sterilize the native and potentially lethal Clostriduim Botulinum and allowing you to buy what would otherwise be rotten and inedible up to months later."

Clostridium botulinum is a soil borne organism. Why do you associate it with marine fish?

I do get your point though. If there is a collapse of technology, a great deal of the population is going to collapse with it.

Clostriduim Botulinum is a environmentally systemic bacillus found in soil, water, and just about everywhere. Like most Clostridium, it is harmless unless it get's under the correct biological conditions (a protien rich food source, and an anaerobic environment), after which it (and it's fellow Clostridium, Tetani and Perfringens) can produce a spectacular array of toxins.

for Botulinum and Tetani, it's a neurotoxin, for Perfringens a nasty set of proteolytic enzymes and endotoxins.

"Technological and societal advancement comes with a vulnerability, and that is that all that drives you towards new, advantageous traits also shelters you from the natural environment of cold, hunger, violence and disease that still surrounds us."

It is interesting that you should cite the balance or dichotomy if you like that comes with these systematic advances in the species Homo sapiens, viewed as a system. Actually my aching back is a reminder that 80% of all people eventually suffer from lower back disorders, I am told, simply because we have developed technological systems to protect our aged biological systems long past the age at which legend tells us that Eskimo aged used to wander off into the wild to die peacefully of hypothermia. So on the balance our advances are a huge plus not a minus. Even more interesting is the grim reminder that the greatest threat to our survival as a species comes from outer space. I refer to the threatened meteor strike on Mars.

Very soon, if I have anything to say about it, and I already have some ideas, we will develop technologies to overcome the structural evolutionary shortfalls that come with a longer lifespan, as well as your H.G. Wells' type loss of resistance to disease. Ultimately, however, technology is going to be the only thing to save mankind from going the way of the dinosaurs; because evolution is too slow a horse in the survival race for us to place our bets on.

We are faced with: (1) the natural status quo; then there is (2) relatively rapid change ... like pollution, global warming, the hole in the ozone layer or the dawn of a new ice age; and then (3) there is catastrophic change, such as is threatening our nearest neighbor right now ... a likely meteor strike on Mars; with (4) going all the way to the doomsday scenario, instant annihilation. There are only eight planets and one star in our system, ignoring Pluto. In only the last 10 years Jupiter has been hammered with 21 strikes in a single session and now Mars. If we extrapolate these numbers, it makes a strike on Earth within the lifetime of a child born today not just possible but likely.

Make no mistake about it. We need all the technological know how we can get to pull a survivable number of us through even a medium size strike if we use a scale of zero to planetary annihilation. And let us not forget the sun, an even larger target, which given the right conditions could toast us to a crisp in slightly more than eight minutes, given the right conditions. (Fortunately we only live 50 to 100 years anyway so the chances of any of us even encountering any of these doomsday scenarios are remarkably slim.)

On December 9, 1994, asteroid 1994XM1 passed even nearer at a distance of 70,000 miles …. Even small asteroids -- 100 yards (100 meters) in diameter and larger -- can cause significant local destruction. This is because asteroids and comets typically travel so fast: about 10 miles per second (16 kilometers per second), that is, 600 miles a minute or 36,000 miles per hour … March 12, 1998, the New York Times and other newspapers around the world announced that, on October 26, 2028, asteroid 1997XF11 would pass dangerously near to Earth, possibly striking our planet. Preliminary observations indicated that 1997XF11 was somewhat less than a mile in diameter. The impact from such an asteroid would cause widespread damage and death; probably hundreds of millions of people would die. However, the chances for an actual collision were small according to an initial scientific March 11 report. <link>

“The point is obvious. But what makes you think the infrastructure will fall apart?” (Fitzpatrick)

From a reading of the foregoing dialogue it appears that you are both examining different sides of the same coin. Reprobates’ fear of the downside of technology is clouding his appreciation of the reality that the source of technology's robustness is that it is now almost ubiquitous throughout the world, so that it is doubtful that it will ever disappear like the libraries of Alexandria or the fabled Atlantis. As long as that is true, it is unlikely that any circumstance other than a doomsday strike from outer space or a thermonuclear holocaust will completely obliterate man's ability to overcome environmental threats. At the same time this type of scenario is still possible in a limited way when we think of the threat of possible pandemics, or many of us scarcely remember now the Y2k virus that was a real threat if we hadn't been able to anticipate and forestall it.

Yes, Reprobrate’s fears are appropriate for concerns over national economics and hegemony. Infrastructures can and do fall apart. Some of the crazy postings on the Fray make me fear for America. There are almost an infinite number of scenarios that could give a nation such a setback that it could become nothing more than a chapter in World History. Most are unlikely, but we should never think that our nation is immune. No civilization has been to date. Nevertheless, I side with Fitzpatrick's take on the power of technology because it is based on a widespread understanding of the theory behind the miracles it has wrought even within the last quarter century. Our unraveling of the human genome extends our knowledge into a previously uncharted area of human understanding. What Reprobate is failing to understand is that we are only becoming weaker, by neglect of old strengths, in areas where we have become stronger technologically. (And that’s all I initially intended to say in this post! I’m in trouble!)

(We have even reached, or are approaching, the point of knowledge where we can have a prosthetic device send signals to the brain that may be indistinguishable from the signals of a real organ or body part. We can already simulate, (limited) sight, and sound, so nothing is keeping us from simulating touch, but time. Superman, here we come!)

I started working with computers in '78 but it took me almost a decade to accept that electronic data was no more fragile than paper records. In fact many baby boomers still don't seem to appreciate the survivability of electronic data, to the extent that many otherwise brilliant men are still getting caught with data that a shredder or a match would have disposed of promptly in the old days.

Modern technology, as with fire, gunpowder, the wheel, and the printing press lives forever in the minds of man. The process is probably irreversible, never mind Will Smith, in “Legend,” Reprobate still doesn't get it that technology is here to stay! (But so is the threat of nuclear war, which is no legend, unfortunately.)

that your arguments go out when the power goes out.

:-)