My only Christmas gift 2018

The only Christmas gift I made/gave this year was an open & ad-free mobile game designed by my older daughter Elea when she was 3; today was the first public release of "Princess Versus Creeps", tested by my 2 and 4 year olds: https://youtu.be/gJG-n7E3Tuw

All assets and source code are openly available at: https://github.com/Syksy/PVC

The dawn of a utopian or a dystopian society for the humankind?

Just in case somebody might've missed it, we possibly just entered a new era of "humankind" just now.

Reports indicate that the Chinese researcher Jiankui He from the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen China has produced a trial in which two babies, whose embryos have been altered using the CRISPR/Cas9-technology, have possibly been born. The Chinese researcher He has declined to give conclusive confirmation to the trial (probably waiting for an upcoming big scientific conference). Apparently the consensus is that a mother indeed gave birth to twins, in which one of the two babies - thanks to genetic editing - was born immune to the HIV virus due to experiment-driven changes to the CCR5 gene.

While CRISPR, a revolutionary technology, has been around for a while now, this is now the first reported case of actual human beings altered using CRISPR being born that I am aware of. Mostly ethical constraints and/or practicalities have so far prevented such experiments from being conducted - China to a degree might be a wild west of such experimentation, and have previously raised a lot of eye-brows with their rather liberal use of such techniques. Roughly speaking, Western countries have been more conservative in their use of such advances.

Obviously a lot of questions rise, both negative and positive; are we now playing God, and if so, should we? Are we now capable of saving people from otherwise lethal diseases - or, on the other hand, should we be doing that at all and instead let the natural course of things occur? Will us "vanilla" humans eventually vanish, and genetically tailored humans become the standard? Is this the beginning of the dawn of a utopian (i.e. repair fatal traits, ethical enhancement of our species) or dystopian future (e.g. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and its alpha/beta/.../epsilon-caste humans)? What traits are ethical to alter; IQ? Lethal diseases? Muscularity? Cognitive traits related to e.g. self restraints due to feeling empathy toward fellow human beings (i.e. military utility)?

This is just broad level food for though without going into technical details of whether such experimentation is safe or not and all the specific nuances of how such practices might alter the path for our species. This particular experiment also apparently falls into the grey area of whether or not this is "treatment" or "enhancement", as such technology is not truly available in countries where HIV is rampant. According to researchers working with the particular disease, HIV's not a disease that'd be ideal target for altering a potentially fatal trait in the first wave of such experimentation. 


Some reading (there's already plenty even though the news are a couple days old): 

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612458/exclusive-chinese-scientists-are-creating-crispr-babies/

http://time.com/5463741/crispr-human-babies/

Father's Ashen Letter

Father's Ashen Letter

Died a stillborn past long ago
This spirit of self lingers on
Unable to let grasp of life go
For their tiny steps I fathom

Paper pieces of life around
Words written all scattered
Of love and of care abound
Songs for a world unbattered

These things unable to express
Mornings that do not dawn a sun
Man ought to emotions suppress
Living inside the barrel of a gun

Pushed aside by the long road
Drowned under the anxious yoke
Unshaven worn out face an ode
Ashes under childhood home oak

Words scribbled by a fireplace
Happier days, whispered the wind
Ink smokes as words set ablaze
For my dearest own kin and kind



(Happy birthday, whispers wind
My dear, dear own kin and kind)