INTRODUCTION: WHY IS ETHICS SUDDENLY WHITE-HOT, FRONT-BURNER? 1 1 REDESIGNING HUMANS 13 The Ethics of New Sex 13 Radically Redesigning Humans 30 Renovating Our Brains? 42 Pathologically Sick . . . and Imprisoned 48 2 EXPONENTIAL TECHNOLOGIES: TODAY S ETHICAL QUICKSAND 57 So . . . You Warmed Up the Planet Just a Touch? 57 Renewing Capitalism s License? 65 You Used Do WHAT to Animals?! 79 Deliberate Extinctions: Gene Drives 84 Technology, Truthiness, and the Demise of Institutions 89 3 CAUGHT ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY 99 Just Who Is Supposed to Teach Us RIGHT and WRONG? 100 More Recent Ethical Quicksand: LGBTQIA 118 Endangered and Extinct Religions 125 4 THE IMMORTALITY OF TODAY S MISTAKES 139 Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google Are Electronic Tattoos 139 And Then There Are Dating Sites . . . 151 5 WHY DON T WE FIX IT? 159 Baumol s Cost Disease 160 Mass Incarceration 174 Everything s Disposable . . . 180 6 DEAD WRONG: WE STILL DO IT; WE WILL BE JUDGED 185 Papers, Borders, and Ethics 185 War Profiteering 194 Can Being Precautionary Kill? 199 7 CONCLUSION? 209 Ethics 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 . . . 209 POSTSCRIPT: GAME CHANGERS 223 Universal Ethics? China . . . 223 Artificial Intelligence 227 Pandemics Have a Way of Focusing Your Ethics, Don t They? 234 SETI: First Contact 242 Acknowledgments 247 Notes 249 Index 279
Juan Enriquez is the author of As the Future Catches You, Evolving Ourselves, and other books. A frequent speaker at TED and other conferences, he has contributed to such publications as Harvard Business Review and Foreign Policy. He is the Director of Excel Venture Management, a life sciences venture capital firm.