Once we can manipulate our genome, Lamarckian fashion, the rate of change will be staggering. - J. Doyne Farmer

We're rapidly creating an extraordinary silicon-based petri dish for evolution of intelligence. By the year 2025... we're likely to have computers whose raw processing power exceeds that of the human brain. Also, we're likely to have more computers than people...

It seemed that fundamental physics was stuck. The particle physicists were smashing particles into each other with ever increasing force, trying to figure out how many quarks could dance on the head of a pin. The cosmologists were working with very few facts... on what seemed to me to be mainly religious grounds. And most of physics was still focused on pushing and pulling, on the material properties... rather than on its informational properties. ...those that relate to order and disorder.

If we choose, we can use genetic engineering to alter the character of our offspring. ...the motivation to do this will eventually become overwhelming.