Of course all the genetic templates for our new biota are Terran; the minds designing them are Terran; but the terrain is Martian. And terrain is a powerful genetic engineer, determining what flourishes and what doesn’t, pushing along progressive differentiation, and thus the evolution of a new species. And as the generations pass, all the members of the a biosphere evolve together, adapting to their terrain in a complex communal response, a creative self-designing ability. This process, no matter how much we intervene in it, is essentially out of our control. Genes mutate, creatures evolve: a new biosphere emerges, and with it a new noosphere. And eventually the designers’ minds, along with everything else has been forever changed.

Kim Stanley Robinson
Green Mars

As Robinson points out, terrain is a powerful engineer. As the terrain has changed here in the metaverse, the evolutionary pressure to establish a new form, a new platform, and a new perspective has proven irresistable.

CogDiss will remain my “thinking out loud” space but my Wanderings about AECT will take place over on Terra Incognita where Donal Little and I will continue the discussions we started as part of the AECT Strategic Task Force. I’ll be highlighting other sites around the ‘Verse as they become more significant so watch this space for future developments.

Thanks for coming back to see what I’ve written.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 2nd, 2006 at 10:20 pm and is filed under Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.