Just like the invention of the microscope served no intrinsic purpose without scientists looking through the lenses, so too is the mere ability to rapidly sequence genomes useless. Microbiology did not come into existence fully-formed on the day someone first cobbled some pieces of bent glass together. However, that hardware capability enabled the field’s existence, and that branch of science arguably created a miniature technological singularity as a result, using Wikipedia’s definition of “[that which can] make the future … unpredictable and qualitatively different from today.” Living in a world moments after the mere inception of germ theory, as opposed to angry spirits who need to be appeased in order to keep one healthy, is a qualitative difference, don’t you think?

A world in which we can rapidly sequence genomes is, in its own small way, qualitatively different from a world in which we cannot, and between the many thousands of advances in other fields just like this one (which are bootstrapped by one another, like the advances in genomic analysis that will arise because of the demand created by this rapid sequencing technology), we will see the emergence of overall exponential growth and completely unpredictable progress that futurists like Kurzweil predict. Assaulting the idea because the timeline of progress looks exactly as predicted – a slow start for a long time, then explosive growth – is foolish.

A better comparison might be between astronomical observational abilities and reading the genome. I don’t know what metric would be useful for astronomy, so I don’t know what the comparison would look like.

Nekura