Living with the genie: biotechnology, cloning, robotics, nanotechnology

At a time when scientific and technological breakthroughs keep our eyes focused on the latest software upgrades or the newest cell-phone wizardry, a group of today's most innovative thinkers are looking beyond the horizon to explore both the promise and the peril of our technological future.

Human ingenuity has granted us a world of unprecedented personal power -- enabling us to communicate instantaneously with anyone anywhere on the globe, to transport ourselves in both real and virtual worlds to distant places with ease, to fill our bellies with engineered commodities once available to only a privileged elite.

Through our technologies, we have sought to free ourselves from the shackles of nature and become its master.

Yet science and technology continually transform our experience and society in ways that often seem to be beyond our control.

Today, different areas of research and innovation are advancing synergistically, multiplying the rate and magnitude of technological and societal change, with consequences that no one can predict.Living with the Genie explores the origins, nature, and meaning of such change, and our capacity to govern it.

As the power of technology continues to accelerate, who, this book asks, will be the master of whom?