Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site caip.RUTGERS.EDU Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!caip!AI.MAYANK 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 Sender: daemon@caip.RUTGERS.EDU 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. -------