My grandchildren are growing up as I sit here typing these words into a computer that has more power than anything that had been built forty years ago. I paid less than two thousand dollars for this machine and it beats all but a handful of super-computers that were built even twenty years ago. The industry that creates it has grown large faster than any human industry before it, even those that provide vital services like food and clothing. The power of all of the computers on earth today is probably less than the power that one as yet undersigned machine will attain in the next thirty years of research into computer science. Growth in speed and decreases in cost of computing power will continue into the foreseeable future. Our civilization has conquered electronics and is on its way toward really using biological science efficiently and effectively in our lives. We live in an era of science so marvelous that it is being touted as a threat to our continued existence. First it was the use of Physics in building nuclear weaponry that threatened human life on earth. Now it is biology that is yielding its secrets at a pace that will soon reveal knowledge powerful enough to kill us all. Those secrets will become common knowledge in my lifetime if I continue to live as long as my actuarial tables predict. How do we expect such a world to keep its balance?

Well, I do expect that human life will continue to be extended by biological research, until, perhaps during the lifetime of my grandchildren; we overcome aging and maybe even death by deterioration. The human body is marvelously complex and magnificently designed. Limits to human life are gradually being overcome through the development of the biosciences and that pace is accelerating dramatically. One hundred years from now the human species may be gone entirely from the face of the earth. If it is not, the people living then may enjoy longevity undreamed of today with health and wealth and access to knowledge only really examined by science fiction writers today. These years ahead are turning points for the whole world and all of the people in it. No one of us has the answer to the question of the lady or the tiger behind the doors of the future, but all of us have a stake in that outcome. The religious folks among us have their answer and I hope that it continues to work for them. The rest of us have to analyze the conflicts between the creative powers of the human mind and the destructive means that humanity often uses in the search for other kinds of power.

Growing populations are starting to be less of a pressure point if the recent spate of statistics continues in the same vein. Conflicts worldwide between the proponents of Christianity and those of Islam continue to be worrisome. Communism is dying gradually and Fascism appears to be gaining ground again but neither political system is as strong today as Democracy. That probably is for the best but a lot of power is misused by democratic societies too. They are not immune to the destruction of valuable resources and the misuse of knowledge by those in power. In an attempt to save Iraq and its oil for the world we may have sowed the seeds of its destruction as a nation. It is too soon to tell but the arbitrary boundaries of that newly freed republic contain the seeds of more than one ancient conflict waiting to bloom again. We shall see, but war has seldom solved problems greater than the ones it has created. The current condition of politics in this nation is too chaotic to predict the outcome of a governorship in California with the election just one week away. Who will be in power in 2005 in this nation is clearly impossible to predict but it will have a major impact on the outcome of the choice of doors. The war party is in power today in this nation and it is using the war on terror to consolidate its gains without conscience or abatement. We all need to think a little harder about what the most powerful scientific resources on the planet today are capable of doing if we point them incessantly toward war. God bless and keep you all safe in these rapidly aging times.