We are all Echidna's children now

In Greek mythology Echidna was half woman, half snake. She lived in a cave and, with Typhon, youngest son of Gaia, had many children, the most fearsome monsters of Greek mythology: the many headed dog Cerberus; the Chimera; the Sphinx; the Hydra; the Gorgons; the Harpies ...

CRISPR technology has been developed that allows us to edit genes in situ. The reality of this may not be quite like the title sequence of an X-Man movie, but the consequences are much more far reaching, as has been discussed here. Please read the article, then continue.

Radioactive spiders are no longer required if you want to become Spiderman. You can now customise your own mutant X gene. Come down to the superpower boutique and get fitted out with some enhancements.

Natural selection is side-tracked. Sexual reproduction is redundant. We shall discover the ultimate freedom, the ultimate illusory consumer choice, when we as adults can choose as our parents some random individuals from magazines found on the table in the waiting room of the clinic we attend for our gene therapy, with their glossy airbrushed celebrities finally vindicated and made vivid and real by our imitation of them in the flesh.

Nature and Nurture yield at last to Culture. We are at last outcomes of our own artifice.

And who will save us when it all goes horribly wrong? Where are our original selves going to be backed up? Indeed, what frame of reference remains when all that made us human is swept aside?

How do we revert to our original genetic code after we have given a new one a test drive and have had enough? Or maybe we won't want to: the modification may also alter our attitudes, and once you become the "new you" you are incapable of wanting to change back.

The article I alluded to above is correct. It is impossible to overstate the significance of CRISPR technology. Doudna and her colleagues are ushering us over a threshold greater than anything Copernicus dreamt of, greater than the advent of metallurgy, greater than language and tools. This is more important than having opposable thumbs, because this allows us to choose whether or not to have opposable thumbs.

Imagine a world where no-one inherits their grandfather's eyes. They choose their eyes from a catalogue as adults. The colour of the eyes and the number of them. Imagine a world where you can fly. Imagine a world in which you can inflict the most nightmarish mutations on someone, where you can rewrite someone and delete the original.

Imagine a world where rationality disintegrates and mythology becomes literally true. Imagine a world where we are all Echidna's children.

People have worried about the singularity and the idea of downloading their consciousness into a machine. People have anxiety about a trans-human condition enabled by information technology. Maybe now that day can't come soon enough! Maybe disembodied electric consciousness is preferable to genetic soup.