Case Studies: The Human Genome and the Semantic Web

This section reviews two emerging realities in which the economy and society combine to produce knowledge in a way that can be accounted for and explored within the social evolution framework described above. The cases challenge the ability of humans to be in control of the world. They involve cases of coevolution of different evolutionary subsystems. The first case involves coevolution of memes and genes. The second case involves the coevolution of memes and a potential new form of evolution likely to appear within the Internet.

The Human Genome

The human genome project has sequenced the DNA in the human body, deciphering the order in which its physical component parts appear, and roughly calculated how many genes these component parts correspond to. In evolutionary terms, memes are revealing the nature of genes. As yet the functionality (and hence knowledge content) of many genes has yet to be discovered; indeed the exact number of genes remains in doubt (The Economist, 2001), albeit that inaccuracies in 2003 were considerably reduced through a second coding exercise. Genes that relate to certain illnesses are in the process of being found and characterized with the intent to alter the genetic makeup in situ with gene therapy or, alternatively, to devise pharmaceuticals that can act on the 'dysfunctionality' of the gene for that person. Dysfunctionality, which might have been productive variation, had it taken on a slightly different form. In evolutionary terms, in the former case memes are correcting faulty genes, whereas in the second case memes are helping faulty genes function better. Services are available that determine whether certain genes, especially faulty ones, are in a person's DNA, and which, in the near future, will also provide you with a complete personal genome map!

The process, currently ongoing, of making the evolutionary knowledge bound up in our DNA known to us in functional (knowledge) rather than physical (genetic) terms, such that it can be manipulated with our social knowledge, or memes, is revolutionary. Like the semantic web (see below), the human genome project is a public-private joint initiative. Maps of DNA, available on the Web, were created through Web-based collaboration and obviously employ state-of-the-art DNA mapping techniques. Disputes prevail regarding who owns the information, what can be patented in the way of commercial implications arising from the knowledge, whether people should be forced to know their genome, and the implications of its uniqueness and imperfections. Tension thus exists at this knowledge interface between the economy and society as regards our growing knowledge of the knowledge (and hence meta-knowledge) that makes us function in the way that we do.

The complexity of our genetic makeup, and the evolutionary system that genes are part of, mean that in the near future, although our knowledge of our genetic makeup and the consequences of knowledge will grow, it is very unlikely ever to be near to perfect.

Firstly, this is because although human DNA has been sequenced, the genes that are contained within the DNA have largely to be identified and their functionality discovered. Even when this is done, the complexity of gene expression and the interaction of genes with the environment will mean that our memetic knowledge of our genetic knowledge (or memes about genes) will remain very patchy for a long time. Despite this, the discovery of genes, which make people, for example, more or less violent or more or less likely to commit crimes, promotes socio-economic debates regarding the implications of the findings. A discussion on morality and responsibility in evolutionary terms can be found in Dennett (2003).

Secondly, our knowledge about ourselves will remain limited, as we will continue to evolve, in that we are constantly enacting our part in the broader evolutionary system. For example, one—if not the—fastest case of evolution on the planet is that which takes place between human scientific memes about antibiotics and vaccines, and the knowledge material within bacteria and viruses that the pharmaceutical products are developed to fight against. As fast as new knowledge is created—about how bacteria and viruses relate to the world and are embodied into something physical that can be absorbed into the human body in the form of therapeutics—the organisms have also replicated several times, changing their knowledge base into one that can perhaps counter the attack by relating to the world in an alternative way, in what we refer to as antibiotic resistance or vaccine unpredictability. Another example is provided by asthma, a lung disorder that is growing in prevalence in many countries. Here, the development of our socio-economic environment in the form of cars, which emit pollution, is faster than the ability of our genetic knowledge base—expressed in physical terms as lungs—to cope better with this increased level of pollution. It is also thought that asthma might be more prevalent today than in the past because our social memes about household cleanliness, fueled by economic trends to purchase household cleaning products, mean that the underdeveloped immune systems of children are not stimulated by dirt to evolve as the child develops in his/her early years. Here we have a potential case of memetic-genetic-immuno-systemicity at work!

Lastly, there is the issue of cloning. The technology regarding how to clone animals as well as human beings is already in part available and might already be available in some quarters but unknown to general society. Cloning involves using the same genetic material to produce a new generation, as opposed to pharmaceutical techniques that speed up evolution to produce more variation within which scientists might find therapeutic potential. Stem cell research uses the concept of cloning, and hence the introduction in between generations of no variation, aimed at replacing body parts and gene therapy. There is also the prospect of complete human cloning. Needless to say there are many voices about the ethics and worthiness of human cloning. Warnock (2002), the moral philosopher, having opposed such advances in the past, now advocates its development for childless couples for whom other methods are unsuccessful, given that as she sees it, reproduction is a human right. The issue is, however, that for society, large-scale cloning would result in our genetic knowledge base remaining static as much as the complexity of how these genes are expressed makes clones physically different. Cloning is potentially dangerous, however, as although we might feel highly physically evolved, we are not, and furthermore we do not know how the future environment might require us to function. We also know very little about how genes age.

It is unlikely that human cloning—if it becomes a practical reality—will, at least in civilized societies, become a matter of grave danger to society, courtesy of moral pressures. It is more likely it will be developed in a way that is dangerous for uncivil, political reasons. Still, our knowledge of what it is to be a physical human being will continue to steadily grow. Economically there will be incremental pressures to succumb to this increasing knowledge base for commercial ends. In society, there will be calls for constraint as well as calls for letting nature take its course. Fukuyama (2002) claims that the ability to alter human behavior through our biotechnological knowledge of ourselves will have a detrimental effect on liberal democracy. He talks of a 'post-human' future. For certain, society is having problems keeping up with the new science whose very nature (knowledge about what it is to be human and how that knowledge can be altered) makes its regulation complicated and hazardous in a way no other knowledge has been to date. In contrast, Stock (2002) takes the view that, as the prospect of regulation is not realistic, we need to increase the understanding of this knowledge within society to regulate its use in a more 'natural' manner.

In summary, the growth of our knowledge about our genes can be viewed in coevolutionary (gene-meme) terms. Any action that reduces the variety within the human genetic knowledge pool will reduce our potential to survive because it will inhibit our potential to adapt to new circumstances and contexts. Equally, the harder we fight against viruses, prions, and bacteria (i.e., organisms with knowledge generation times that are similar to our own fast knowledge generation times within social life), the more we will place selection pressures on these entities to generate knowledge even faster.

The Semantic Web

The semantic web is the next generation of the Internet (Scientific American, 2001; Business Week, 2002). It represents a huge leap in functionality compared to the current version. The difference lies in the new generation's potential to understand meaning and to relate that meaning to other meaning. This means computers will not only, as happens today, recognize that a certain page contains key words, the meaning of which it does not know, but will be able to know the meaning of those words and relate the meaning to other meaning at different locations within the Net or within personal organizers, PCs, or other equipment such phones and TVs.

The huge step up in functionality involves a language called XML, which tags Web page content in a standardized format in a meaningful way. Numbers become times, amounts of currency, distances, or whatever other meaning numbers can have. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a combination of a dictionary and thesaurus, allowing computers to understand the syntax of information on the Web page. It is a framework for supporting metadata, allowing for XML data exchange. It arranges XML tags into triples that are similar to sentences and reminiscent of DNA triple codons. Lastly, what is called the 'ontology' will be a type of encyclopedia that lays out the relationships between the XML tags and the RDF concepts. This allows for meaning in different databases to be combined or compared. Effectively, the technology behind the semantic web reverses the process of social construction through a form of technological determinism.

Specifically, this new functionality creates the processing power within computers to assess when the software program assigned to a task has enough information for that task and when to make the decisions it is designed to make. Thus, armed with the meaning that humans have bestowed on words, the semantic web can not only be read by humans, but notably can be read, interpreted, and manipulated by computer programs. Agents, or software messengers, will be able to: roam the semantic web, collecting information from diverse sites, process this information, and exchange findings with other programs, thereby carrying out sophisticated tasks on behalf of humans. The result will be that these agents can do tasks that involve matching and linking of information in a meaningful way, and produce novel thoughts through the combination of ideas. Both of these tasks are currently associated with what it means to be human, as opposed to a computer. In terms of matching, the semantic web will be able to match time availabilities of people with product availability or cost availability. In practical terms this might involve the development and use of social 'travel agents' to make the arrangements for holidays composed of many elements, as well as economic 'manager agents' working on behalf of manufacturers that search and negotiate with suppliers and customers. Equally the semantic web will allow digital equipment to talk to each other, for example, as the phone is answered, the TV or car radio is turned down, without any human intervention.

The Web is already powerful in evolutionary terms because it self-organizes communities of interest into virtual space making geographic and social distances equivalent. It mixes all types of information from academic to everyday, different languages, drafts and final scripts. It moves knowledge with greater agility than man alone. The semantic web increases the speed at which knowledge can move around society and combine in novel ways. As it is being developed in the same open spirit that the html Internet was developed, it will also be owned by everyone and no-one and, as such, is likely to have a similar effect on society and the economy as the first version of the Internet. Society will become even more knowledge-based. Knowledge equalities at the level of access to the Internet may or may not become equal according to policy decisions, but differences over time will become smaller. Economically, the semantic web will create, as did the current Web, ways of doing business that were not possible before.

Post the launch and adoption of the semantic web, socio-economic knowledge interface will become less emotionally intelligent and less based on power and politics, and more in time based on what ensures it gets replicated within the Internet. Productivity will rise in the sense of tasks previously done by humans being completed by Internet functionality. Tensions in society will emerge, however, as the technology becomes increasingly more able to avoid the control of humans. This situation is akin to Chinese governmental powers finding it easier to restrict access to books than it does access to the Internet, and as much as it can block access to Web pages, it is harder to block search engines and it will be harder still to block semantic web-based agents.

The 'danger' in human terms, but not in memetics terms, is that over time it can be imagined that semantic web-based agents will become so sophisticated, they will not need human intervention to copy themselves into slightly different agents able to manage more complex problems. This will be achieved by the agents representing knowledge in different ways, ways that might not be easily intelligible, let alone controllable, to humans. Trust is already difficult to develop in virtual worlds, let alone in the more sophisticated semantic web. What will trusting a semantic web agent look and feel like? Unimaginable new meme strategies may evolve, strategies that are not based on human traits such as emotion and power, but that still explain why certain knowledge is retained over time when other knowledge is not.

The semantic web will generate a source of knowledge generation that will be out of the control of humans and hence will not always be part of either the information society or economy, as we know it. The semantic generation of the Internet is evolutionary in that knowledge, rather than solely data or information, can be exchanged without human intervention—a new form of evolution. The new Web is more human-friendly, does not have to rely on humans, and contains more interpretive and manipulative flexibility. It has, in essence, a greater capacity for memes, memetic variation, and systemic agency. Like the human genome project, the innate liberalism of the Internet in general, and the semantic Internet in particular, has the feeling of humanity losing control of the Digital Era. As evolutionary theory would predict, evolution is evolving.