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The biotech age will also give us more reason to guard our personal privacy. Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, got it wrong: rather than centralizing power in the hands of the state, DNA technology has empowered individuals and families. But the state will have an important role, making sure that no one, including insurance companies, can look at our genetic data without our permission or use it to discriminate against us.
Then we can get ready for the breakthrough that could come at the end of the next century and is comparable to mapping our genes: mapping the 10 billion or more neurons of our brain. With that information we might someday be able to create artificial intelligences that think and experience consciousness in ways that are indistinguishable from a human brain. Eventually we might be able to replicate our own minds in a machine, so that we could live on without the "wetware" of a biological brain and body. The 20th century's revolution in infotechnology will thereby merge with the 21st century's revolution in biotechnology.
But this is science fiction. Let's turn the page now and get back to real science.