What the Covid vaccine tells us about the future of humanity – Stuff.co.nz

Ask Jamie Metzl, an acclaimed futurist , what the future holds and the answer might surprise: we already know, because were already in it.

The human species is well on the path of developing and applying god-like powers to read, write and hack the code of life, Metzl says. And the consequences of that, were seeing right now in fact, more than 90 per cent of us literally have the very latest of the biotechnology revolution inside us, in the form of the revolutionary mRNA vaccines which have been developed to fight the Covid pandemic.

mRNA vaccines are basically injecting instructions to your cells... to do something they werent naturally designed to do, which is create this foreign object that is the spike protein from the SARS-COV2 virus. Then your body identifies that foreign intruder that you have produced you are the manufacturing plant, and thats how you get your immunity.

For Metzl, talking in the latest episode of the WellBeings podcast with Dominic Bowden, the point is less about individual technologies even the magic of those vaccines, as he puts it and much more about how all of us respond to them.

Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images

The Pfizer vaccine, which works by instructing our cells how to recognise an invasion of Covid virus.

We should all recognise that were making societal choices about how these technologies are used and should be regulated, and everybody should be part of that process.

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Those who resent technology and feel we should go back to natural ways, he argues, weve already passed that point.

Its not `technology yes or no?. Its, `technology, how best for humans? and, he adds, for other species.

./Stuff

Futurist and writer Jamie Metzl, talking via Zoom for Dominic Bowden's WellBeings podcast.

We can dwell on the bad; its normal to dread how new technologies could be harnessed for harm and evil; but as a race and as individuals, the challenge is to imagine their positive potential and then push for them to be turned to improving our lot, Metzl says.

Hes troubled, for example, by the effects of industrial agriculture, be it on livestock, on environments or on people. He questions why we wouldnt use already-available technologies to grow meat in a bio-reactor, to produce animal protein that is meat at a cellular level and so avoid the cruelty and harm inflicted by mass-scale agricultural models.

Similarly, if we can grow energy, rather than dig it up and go to wars over it, why wouldnt we?

The Covid vaccines may be a more immediate example of how some will view the possibilities of technology as evil in themselves. Metzl sees them as amazing, the benefits they have delivered to humanity even more so.

The fact that we have this hope of the vaccines is just incredible. Because if we didnt have it, imagine this was like 100 years ago with the Spanish flu, and we just had to wait for this virus to burn through 7-8 billion humans. That would have been even more terrifying than this is.

For those who fear technology his advice is, just because something feels unnatural doesnt mean its wrong or dangerous... Everything we have felt unnatural and dangerous, until its normalised.

Nobody should be afraid of the technology in and of itself...

All of this stuff seems like magic until it shows up... [and then] it just becomes normal.

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What the Covid vaccine tells us about the future of humanity - Stuff.co.nz