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From: AI.MAYANK@MCC.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Monosexual Societies.........
Message-ID: <314@caip.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Fri, 1-Nov-85 18:52:01 EST
Article-I.D.: caip.314
Posted: Fri Nov  1 18:52:01 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 3-Nov-85 14:46:06 EST
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Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 43

From: Mayank Prakash 


 > Peter G. Trei :
 >
 > {enter blue-sky mode}
 >
 >    Technological advances do not occur in a vacuum.  Around any
 >breakthrough there are a swarm of related advances, and the
 >interactions of these is impossible to predict.  I would suggest
 >that the same science which may one day give us female-female
 >reproduction is moving us towards a situation in which sex becomes a
 >moot point, particularly for reproduction.
 >
 >     We are slowly but steadily cracking the code of the human
 >genome.  It is not too wild a speculation to suggest that within the
 >next century we will be able to select the genes of our offspring as
 >easily as we assemble the components of a computer system today.
 >Want your child to be beautiful?  You can.  Want a guarantee against
 >cancer? You can get it.  Want intelligence?  Musical talent?  Good
 >teeth?  Longevity?  No pimples?  Soon these will be selectable at
 >will in ones offspring.
 >
 >     Once this technology is in place (and I expect to live to see
 >at least some of it), sex becomes an irrelevancy. Ones' child could
 >be truly ONEs' child.  Male and female characteristics become
 >optional extras (though doubtless almost a 'standard option', at
 >least at first).  But why should genders be limited to two?  I
 >expect talented designer geneticists (they make designer genes)
 >would come up with viable ideas for totally new sexes, opening the
 >door to hitherto unknown classes of love and pleasure.
 >
 >     If one could design one's heirs as easily as one designs a
 >house, what would they be like? The question of gender becomes a
 >small factor in a much larger universe of choice.
 >
 > {exit blue-sky mode}

Try Lem's "Star Diaries" to see these ideas carried out to their 
logical extreme.

-mayank.
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