We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right in… - Edward O. Wilson

Samuel Butler's famous aphorism that the chicken is only an egg's way of making another egg has been modernized: the organism is only DNA's way of making more DNA.

In the process of natural selection, then. any device that can insert a higher proportion of certain genes into subsequent generations will come to characterize the species.

For the first time in history a conviction has developed among those who can actually think more than a decade ahead that we are playing a global endgame. Humanity's grasp on the planet is not strong. It is growing weaker. Our population is too large for safety and comfort. Fresh water is growing short, the atmosphere and the seas are increasingly polluted as a result of what has transpired on the land. The climate is changing in ways unfavorable to life, except for microbes, jellyfish and fungi. For many species it is already fatal.