Terrorists: now members of the creative class.

In the Washington Post story on the astounding and inevitable news that scientists have created entirely artificial DNA, staff writer Rick Weiss asks:

What kinds of organisms will scientists, terrorists and other creative individuals make?

Whenever a story overblows the historical significance or marvelous might of al Qaeda et al., I'm reminded of the Barbary pirates. I have a vision of shipwrights and patentmasters wringing their hands throughout the 1780s, losing sleep over the steam engine and the frightening applications such technology might be put to by Tripoli. If the Ottoman corsairs get their hands on one—! It's not a totally random association of mine: Tripoli told the first Continental Congress that the pirates attacked American ships because they were charged to by the Qur'an, and that every Muslim lost while battling or pressing Westerners into service would see paradise. Furthermore, no one remember the Barbary pirates—just as no one will remember al Qaeda from an era that saw the birth of the artificial organism.

Posted by Kriston at December 17, 2007 10:16 AM