Philip Bethge

Tag: zeitgeist

  • Unruhe im Urniversum

    Muss die Asche Verstorbener wie Sondermüll behandelt werden?

    Eine Glosse von Philip Bethge, DER SPIEGEL 3/2016

    Ist der Mensch Gift für die Erde, vielleicht sogar über den Tod hinaus? Diesem Problem widmeten sich jetzt Forscher auf Einladung der Deutschen Bundesstiftung Umwelt. Es ging um die Überreste von 470 000 Leichen, die hierzulande jährlich verbrannt werden. Übrig bleibt Asche, genauer gesagt: Urnenasche. Ist sie gefährlich für Boden und Grundwasser? Vergiftet also Omas gesammeltes Cadmium, Chrom und Blei über das Trinkwasser irgendwann ihre Enkel?

    Die Experten bemühten Bundes-Bodenschutzgesetz und Altlastenverordnung. Von Ofentechnik, Nachverbrennungstemperaturen und Filterstäuben, die bei der Leichenverbrennung entstehen, war die Rede. Doch eigentlich steckt dahinter ein Streit des traditionellen Friedhofsgewerbes mit den Anbietern alternativer Bestattungsformen. Immer beliebter werden Seebestattungen oder sogenannte Friedwälder, in denen die Verwandtschaft unter Bäumen verbuddelt werden darf. Damit solcher Wildwuchs nicht weiter um sich greift, wollen Steinmetze oder Gärtner die Urnenasche möglichst giftig erscheinen lassen. Denn wäre sie Sondermüll, gäbe es einen guten Grund, sie nur auf Friedhöfen zu vergraben.

    Doch die Lobbyisten haben die Rechnung ohne die Wissenschaft gemacht. Die Urnenaschenforschung nimmt die Sache zwar, nun ja, todernst, gibt aber Entwarnung: Akute Vergiftungsgefahr besteht wohl nicht. Nur direkt neben der Urne, gleichsam im Urniversum, ist der Boden geringfügig belastet.

    Somit stellt sich nun die Frage, warum nicht jeder Opas Asche einfach dort verstreuen darf, wo er will. Der Verdünnungseffekt würde das Giftproblem noch weiter entschärfen. Nur einen Gesundheitstipp geben die Experten: Bitte nicht die Staubfahne einatmen!

  • Interview mit Jane Goodall: “Ö-hö-hö-hö-hö-hö”

    Jane Goodall beobachtete jahrelang wilde Schimpansen. Sie entdeckte, dass die Tiere morden und Krieg führen. Als Ökoaktivistin hat die Britin inzwischen mehr mit Menschen zu tun – und glaubt immer noch an das Gute in uns.

    Von Philip Bethge und Johann Grolle

    Als Kind las Goodall gern die Geschichten über den Arzt Doktor Dolittle; sie entfachten ihre Liebe zur wilden Kreatur. Mit 23 brach sie nach Afrika auf, lernte dort den Paläoanthropologen Louis Leakey kennen und studierte in dessen Auftrag die Schimpansen des Gombe-Stream-Schutzgebiets in Tansania. Goodall beobachtete erstmals Werkzeuggebrauch und Kriegsführung bei den engsten Menschenverwandten und wurde dadurch zur berühmtesten Primatenforscherin der Welt. 1986 veröffentlichte sie ihr Hauptwerk, “The Chimpanzees of Gombe. Patterns of Behavior”. Kurz darauf ließ sie die Forschung hinter sich, um ihr Leben ganz dem Schutz der Schimpansen und der Erhaltung der Natur zu widmen. Als Öko-Kämpferin zieht Goodall heute an 300 Tagen im Jahr um den Globus. Das Jugendprogramm “Roots & Shoots” des Jane Goodall Institute findet in mehr als 130 Ländern statt. Die 81-jährige Britin ist Friedensbotschafterin der Vereinten Nationen und trägt den Orden “Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire”. Seit mehr als 20 Jahren, sagt sie, habe sie nicht länger als drei Wochen im selben Bett geschlafen.

    SPIEGEL: Dr. Goodall, in der ersten Hälfte Ihres beruflichen Lebens befassten Sie sich mit Schimpansen, in der zweiten mit Menschen. Hat Ihnen Ihr Wissen über die einen beim Umgang mit den anderen geholfen?

    Goodall: Ich glaube schon. Bei den Schimpansen habe ich viel über nonverbale Kommunikation gelernt. Was uns von ihnen unterscheidet, ist nämlich vor allem, dass sie keine Wörter kennen. Alles andere ist fast gleich: Küssen, Umarmen, Prahlen, Fäusteschütteln. All das habe ich bei den Schimpansen studiert – was mich befähigt, auch Menschen gut zu verstehen. Wenn Sie zum Beispiel jemanden ertappen, wie er einen Fehler macht, zuckt er zusammen und windet sich. Er wird Ihnen dann nicht mehr zuhören, sondern nur überlegen, wie er zum Gegenangriff übergehen kann. Um jemanden wirklich zu überzeugen, müssen Sie sein Herz erreichen.

    SPIEGEL: Wie das?

    Goodall: Ich erinnere mich zum Beispiel an ein Treffen mit dem chinesischen Umweltminister. Ich wollte ihn dazu bringen, unser Jugendprogramm Roots & Shoots in chinesischen Schulen zuzulassen. Aber er sprach kein Englisch, und so saßen wir da, zwischen uns ein Übersetzer, und ich hatte nur zehn Minuten Zeit. Also nahm ich all meinen Mut zusammen und sagte: “Wäre ich ein weiblicher Schimpanse, dann wäre ich sehr töricht, wenn ich ein hochrangiges Männchen nicht untertänig begrüßen würde”, und ich machte unterwürfig: “Ö-hö-hö-hö-hö-hö.” Das Männchen, so sagte ich weiter, müsse nun das Weibchen großmütig streicheln, und dabei nahm ich seine Hand. Ich merkte, wie sie sich verkrampfte, aber ich gab nicht auf und führte seine Hand auf meinen Kopf. Erst war es totenstill, aber dann begann er zu lachen. Am Ende redeten wir anderthalb Stunden lang, und seither gibt es Roots & Shoots an chinesischen Schulen.

    SPIEGEL: Sie sind hier in New York, um auf dem Nachhaltigkeitsgipfel der Uno aufzutreten. Was geschieht, wenn so viele hochrangige Männchen zusammenkommen?

    Goodall: Vor allem: zu viel Gerede. Ich will nicht behaupten, solche Gipfel seien pure Zeitverschwendung, aber ihre Ergebnisse sind meist enttäuschend.

    SPIEGEL: Vielleicht ist der Mensch, von Natur aus eigennützig und auf kurzfristigen Nutzen bedacht, nicht geschaffen, um die Probleme des Planeten zu lösen?

    Goodall: Das müssen wir aber. Wir haben uns von der Natur abgewandt. Stattdessen geht es nur um Geld und Macht. Wir müssen wieder zurück zur Natur finden, um diesen Planeten zu retten.

    SPIEGEL: Wenn die Idee der Nachhaltigkeit aber unserer Natur zuwiderläuft?

    Goodall: Das tut sie ja gar nicht. Selbst Schimpansen verstehen diese Idee. In einem Baum voller Früchte pflücken sie nur diejenigen, die reif sind. Die anderen lassen sie hängen. Das ist nichts anderes als Nachhaltigkeit.

    SPIEGEL: Ein anderes politisches Thema, das uns derzeit in Europa umtreibt, ist die Flüchtlingskrise. Was sagen Sie als Primatologin: Liegt es in unserer Natur, Fremde willkommen zu heißen?

    Goodall: Nein. Primaten sind sehr territorial. Es entspricht ihrer Natur, ihre Nahrungsressourcen, Weibchen und Jungtiere zu schützen. Das erklärt …..

    —> Weiterlesen auf Spiegel.de

  • Invasion der Herzchen

    Was einst mit schlichten Smileys begann, entwickelt sich zu einer neuen Weltsprache: Emojis fluten Chatdienste und soziale Netzwerke. Alles nur Kinderkram? Linguisten suchen nach Erklärungen für den Siegeszug der bunten Bildchen.

    von Philip Bethge

    Die Welt des digitalen Süßholzraspelns ist voller bunter Bilder. Ist die Stimmung gut, bietet sich ein gelbes Smiley in der Kurznachricht an, keck mit einem Auge zwinkernd – oder gleich mit Kussmund, die Wangen zart gerötet .

    Herzchen, rot, gelb, blau und grün oder von einem Pfeil durchbohrt , stehen für Verliebte bereit. Geht es dann um Sex, hat sich die leicht gekrümmte Aubergine als einschlägiges Symbol etabliert – als Pendant zum Pfirsich mit seiner samtigen Längsfurche .

    Der Abschied vom Liebesglück dagegen fällt schwer: ein rotes Ungeheuer vielleicht ? Oder gleich ein Bömbchen mit glimmender Lunte ? Ach ja: Bald ist eindeutig, was die Trennung besiegelt. Noch in diesem Jahr hält wohl der Stinkefinger Einzug in die Bilderwelt der Smartphones.

    Wer auf diese unfeine Weise aus dem Leben der Liebsten gekickt wird, trachtet nun seinerseits nach Vergeltung. Wie wär’s mit ” Du Miststück! “? Doch da versagt die Symbolsprache.  – das wirkt eher niedlich, zumal der Haufen lächelt.

    Emojis heißen die kleinen Bilder, die immer häufiger in Kurznachrichten, Tweets, Posts und E-Mails auftauchen. Schleichend sind sie zu einem inzwischen fast unverzichtbaren Teil der Chatkommunikation geworden – eine Invasion bunter Bildchen, die sich manchmal schon zu ganzen Sätzen formieren und damit die jahrhundertealte Herrschaft der Buchstaben infrage stellen.

    –> Original-Artikel auf spiegel.de lesen

    Rund 1000 Symbole der neuen Weltsprache sind schon im Einsatz. 250 weitere kommen in Kürze hinzu, unter ihnen so Kurioses wie der Vulkanier-Gruß von Mr Spock aus “Raumschiff Enterprise”. Und bald wird es möglich sein, ethnische Vielfalt abzubilden: Die kleinen Gesichter und Figuren soll es künftig politisch korrekt mit verschiedenen Hautfarben geben.

    Auf Smartphones und Tablets sind die Symbole allesamt mit wenigen Fingerklicks erreichbar. Ein Panoptikum des Lächerlichen, so scheint es auf den ersten Blick. Und die Flut der Babyengel , der lächelnden Katzengesichter und Comicgeister im Kurznachrichten-Kauderwelsch scheint jene zu bestätigen, die den Niedergang der Schriftkultur beweinen.

    Aber ist das wirklich so? Ersetzen die schlichten Emojis auf lange Sicht den feinen Ausdruck, die elegante Formulierung, den raffiniert gebauten Satz? Fachleute sind vom Gegenteil überzeugt. “Emojis zerstören keine Traditionen”, sagt die Sprachforscherin Lisa Lebduska vom Wheaton College im US-Bundesstaat Massachusetts. “Sie erweitern die sprachlichen Möglichkeiten und stellen damit sicher, dass die Kurznachrichten, die wir senden, auch richtig verstanden werden.”

    Die Wissenschaftlerin schwärmt von der “Verspieltheit” der digitalen Bilderwelt. Eine Sprachdegeneration vermag sie nicht zu erkennen. “Meine Studenten sind begeistert von der Emotionalität und Unmittelbarkeit von Emojis”, sagt sie.

    Ähnlich erklärt der Google-Programmierer Mark Davis den Erfolg der Bildchen. Er ist Präsident des Unicode-Konsortiums , das die Emojis standardisiert – sie sollen ja überall das Gleiche bedeuten. “Emojis verleihen Kurznachrichten Würze”, sagt Davis. Gesten, Mimik, Intonation – solche Nuancen fehlten der Schriftsprache. Gerade in Kurznachrichten sei es mit Worten allein sehr schwer, Gefühle und Stimmungen auszudrücken. Emojis könnten da helfen. “Sie sind die emotionale Kurzschrift der Onlinekommunikation”, sagt Davis.

    Entsprechend überzeugen Emojis die Nutzer: Rund 200 Emojis pro Sekunde werden derzeit über Twitter in die Welt geschickt. Was die Forscher nicht überrascht: “Emojis sind gleichzeitig ein sehr altes und ein sehr neues Phänomen”, sagt etwa der amerikanische Linguist Ben Zimmer von der Softwarefirma Vocabulary.com. Der “piktografische Impuls”, die Liebe zu kleinen Symbolen und Zeichen, liege in der Natur des Menschen. So gehe beispielsweise auch das heutige Schreibsystem auf Piktogramme zurück, etwa der Buchstabe “A” auf das Bild eines Ochsenkopfes, das irgendwann um 180 Grad gedreht wurde.

    Zugleich bedienten Emojis die Lust, die Grenzen neuer Technologien auszuloten, sagt Zimmer. “Menschen genießen diese Art des kommunikativen Spiels – auch weil wir immer wieder daran scheitern, wirklich das mitzuteilen, was wir meinen.”

    Das Bedürfnis, sich klar auszudrücken, ist so alt wie die Menschheit selbst (siehe Grafik). Der Weg von der Höhlenmalerei zum Alphabet ist eine der elementarsten Kulturleistungen überhaupt. Doch die Schriftsprache ist immer noch nicht perfekt. “Ich denke häufig, dass ein spezielles typografisches Zeichen für ein Lächeln existieren sollte”, sagte der Schriftsteller Vladimir Nabokov schon 1969.

    Sein Wunsch wurde erhört, als der Informatiker Scott Fahlman von der Carnegie Mellon University 1982 das Emoticon erschuf . Er und seine Kollegen fanden Spaß daran, im Onlineforum der Universität sarkastische Witzeleien auszutauschen. Doch offenbar wurden diese häufig fehlgedeutet. Genervt schlug Fahlman irgendwann vor, Scherzhaftes mit einem Smiley zu markieren :-), Ernstes dagegen mit :-(. Bald waren auch das zwinkernde ;- ) und das laut lachende Emoticon :- D geboren.

    Die Farbe verpasste ihnen dann der Japaner Shigetaka Kurita von der Telekommunikationsfirma NTT Docomo. 1999 wollte das Unternehmen die Kommunikation über Mobiltelefone attraktiver machen. Kurita ließ sich von japanischen Manga-Comics und Straßenschildern inspirieren und entwarf 176 Symbole, jedes von ihnen nur zwölf mal zwölf Pixel groß. Die ersten Emojis (japanisch: e = Bild, moji = Schriftzeichen) waren geschaffen und wurden in Japan ein voller Erfolg.

    Der Siegeszug um die Welt begann erst, als das Unicode-Konsortium beschloss, Emojis in seine Datenbank aufzunehmen. Die Organisation, zu deren Mitgliedern Branchengrößen wie Apple, Google, Yahoo oder Oracle zählen, legt die internationalen Standards für die Darstellung von Text fest. Jeder auf der Welt gebräuchliche Buchstabe ist in Unicode einer bestimmten Zahl zugeordnet. So wird erreicht, dass beispielsweise der Buchstabe “A” von jeder Software eindeutig als “A” erkannt und dargestellt werden kann.

    Seit Oktober 2010 sind die Emojis Teil des Unicodes. Ein Smiley, das in China auf einem obskuren Handy eingetippt wird, bleibt daher weltweit ein Smiley, egal, mit welcher Technik es empfangen wird. Das genaue Aussehen der Bildchen legen allerdings die Designer der jeweiligen Software fest. Deshalb tanzt beispielsweise die Emoji-Tänzerin in Apples Handybetriebssystem Flamenco, während die Figur in Android 4.4 aussieht wie John Travolta im Discofieber.

    Immer neue Emojis nimmt das Konsortium nun in seine Liste auf. Neben den japanischen Zeichen sind inzwischen viele Symbole aus den Windows-Schriftarten Wingdings und Webdings vertreten. Das Ergebnis ist ein sehr skurriles Symbolsammelsurium. Besonders beliebt beispielsweise ist ebenjener Haufen, der sich gerade im Englischen herrlich mit anderen Emojis kombinieren lässt (, , *).

    (* Holy shit, shit storm, no shit)

    Warum der Haufen lächelt? Ganz einfach: In Japan, wo das Zeichen herkommt, gilt es als Glückssymbol. Ohnehin lässt sich über die Bedeutung der Zeichen gut streiten. “Verschiedene Kulturen können Emojis auf sehr unterschiedliche Arten verwenden”, sagt Linguist Zimmer. Als Beispiel nennt er das Symbol der beiden aneinanderliegenden Hände  . Während Japaner zum Beispiel das Bild als Gruß interpretierten, würden andere Kulturen betende Hände sehen, sagt Zimmer. Bei den Amerikanern wiederum werde es mitunter als “high five” gedeutet.

    Andere Emojis sind noch rätselhafter. Was zum Beispiel bedeutet das bislang gern als Stinkefinger-Ersatz genutzte ? Was heißen die drei bunten Kugeln auf dem Stock ? Und was will uns der blaue Diamant sagen **?

    (** Japanische Neujahrs-Türdekoration; bunte Reisklöße (Dango), eine japanische Spezialität; japanisches Symbol für „lieblich“)

    Schließlich der “Mann im Anzug, schwebend”, der erst jüngst in den Status eines Emojis erhoben wurde. Wer nachforscht, erfährt, dass irgendein Microsoft-Mitarbeiter vor Jahren mal ein Faible für das Ska-Plattenlabel “2 Tone Records” hatte, dessen Logo dem Schwebemann ähnelt. Durch Unicode geadelt, hat die merkwürdige Figur jetzt für alle Zeit ihren Stammplatz im international gebräuchlichen Schriftstandard.

    Emoji-Fans lieben diese kleinen absurden Geschichten, die auch dazu führen, dass die Bildersprache immer populärer wird. In einer Umfrage aus dem Jahr 2013 gaben 74 Prozent der Nutzer in den USA und 82 Prozent in China an, dass sie Emojis verwenden. Rund acht Milliarden Emojis sind laut der Website emojitracker.com seit Juli 2013 verschickt worden. Das derzeit beliebteste Symbol der Welt ist das lachende Gesicht mit Freudentränen .

    Liebende bezirzen sich mit Emojis, und auch fürs Sexting, also “dirty talk” via Kurznachricht, eignen sich die Bildchen. etwa beschreibt, wie Aubergine und Pfirsich auf genau die richtige Weise zusammenfinden.

    Es gibt soziale Netzwerke, in denen ausschließlich Emojis gepostet werden können, Emojicate etwa oder Emojli. Wer eine Liste mit seinen zuletzt genutzten Emojis an die Internetseite Emojinalysis schickt, bekommt eine Analyse der eigenen Befindlichkeit.

    Und längst hat die Kunst die Bildersprache als neue Ausdrucksform entdeckt. Auf YouTube finden sich Musikvideos, die einzig mit dem Stilmittel des Emojis arbeiten, zum Beispiel ein Video zu Beyoncés Hit “Drunk in Love”. Der Tumblr-Blog “Narratives in Emoji” zeigt Emoji-Zusammenfassungen der Filme “Titanic” und “Independence Day”.

    Sogar ganze Bücher sind schon in Emoji erschienen. Nachdem er 3500 Dollar auf Kickstarter.com gesammelt hatte, brachte der amerikanische Computerexperte Fred Benenson über 800 Emoji-Enthusiasten dazu, mit ihm zusammen jede Zeile von Herman Melvilles “Moby Dick” in eine Reihe von Emojis zu übersetzen. Das Ergebnis heißt “Emoji Dick” , ist als gedrucktes Buch erhältlich und steht inzwischen in der Library of Congress.

    “Emoji Dick” zeigt allerdings deutlich die Grenzen der neuen Weltsprache. Denn wirklich lesen kann das Werk niemand.

    Die erste Zeile etwa lautet . “Nennt mich Ismael”, soll das bedeuten, der erste Satz von “Moby Dick”. Sprachforscherin Lebduska ist skeptisch: “Ich lese auch nach mehreren Versuchen immer noch ,Telefon, Schnurrbartgesicht, Segelboot, Wal, ok’”, kommentiert sie trocken. Selbst Benenson habe eingeräumt, dass “ein Großteil des Buchs keinerlei Sinn ergibt”, erzählt die Forscherin. Begeistert ist sie trotzdem. “Emoji Dick” könne als “Literaturmüll” betrachtet werden, aber auch als “mutiger Ausflug in literaturwissenschaftliches Neuland”.

    Die Frage ist, ob Emojis der Welt erhalten bleiben, mindestens als Ergänzungsmittel. Oder sind sie nur eine Modeerscheinung der Netzwelt, zu sehr Spielerei, um ernst genommen zu werden?

    Tyler Schnoebelen, Linguist von der Eliteuniversität Stanford, heute bei der Textanalysefirma Idibon beschäftigt, sieht durchaus Parallelen zur Schriftsprache. Schnoebelen hat Emoticons analysiert und festgestellt, dass deren Gebrauch je nach Alter, Geschlecht und sozialem Status des Schreibers variiert. Auch beobachtet er, wie sich verschiedene “Dialekte” entwickeln. Und bei der Kombination mehrerer Emojis hat Schnoebelen sogar eine einfache Grammatik ausgemacht, bei der die Stimmung – zum Beispiel ausgedrückt durch ein weinendes Smiley – immer vor der eigentlichen Aussage steht, einem gebrochenen Herzen etwa.

    Schnoebelen sieht eine große Zukunft für Emojis. “Wir haben gelernt zu sprechen, und wir haben gelernt zu schreiben”, sagt der Linguist, aber erst Emojis würden es nun erlauben, “mit derselben Geschwindigkeit zu schreiben, mit der wir sprechen”. Dass dabei mancher Sinn auf der Strecke bleibt, interpretiert der Forscher eher als Vorteil, der “Mehrdeutigkeiten” und “Untertöne” erlaube, die in der Schriftsprache bislang gefehlt hätten.

    “Emojis sind längst nicht so eindeutig, wie man denken könnte”, bekräftigt Lebduska. Das Smiley etwa sei zunächst natürlich ein Symbol der Unbeschwertheit. Doch selbst hinter jedem Smiley lauerten immer die Möglichkeiten der Ironie und des Sarkasmus. Es fasziniere sie, schwärmt Lebduska, wie kreativ die Leute beim Verwenden der Emojis seien.

    Gleichzeitig dringt die Bildersprache in immer mehr Lebensbereiche vor. Leidenschaftlich streiten die Nutzer um die Erweiterung des Emoji-Vokabulars. Eines der Topthemen: Essen. Während Symbole für Eis , Spaghetti und Sushi seit Langem im Emoji-Alphabet existieren, fehlen noch jene für Hotdogs und Tacos, ein Umstand, der auf Facebook-Seiten wie “The Universe Demands a Taco Emoji” vehement beklagt wird. In der nächsten Unicode-Version sollen sie nun enthalten sein, ebenso wie das Einhorn, der Kricketschläger oder das Nerd-Gesicht.

    “Wir bekommen sehr viele Vorschläge für neue Emojis”, sagt Unicode-Präsident Davis. Die Auswahl sei ein Balanceakt, die Entscheidung hänge davon ab, ob das Symbol eine Lücke fülle oder ohnehin bereits weit verbreitet sei. Und auch um ethnische und kulturelle Vielfalt sind die Unicode-Macher bemüht. Zusätzlich zum christlichen Gotteshaus soll es bald Symbole für Moschee und Synagoge geben. Vor allem aber muss sich Davis nun plötzlich mit Hautfarben beschäftigen. Die Sängerin Miley Cyrus, Pop-Ikone vieler Teenager, trat 2012 per Tweet eine Kampagne für mehr ethnische Diversität im Emoji-Universum los (#EmojiEthnicityUpdate). Der Vorstoß fand Anklang. “Unicode hat gedacht, dass wir statt einer schwarzen Person zwei verschiedene Drachen, neun Katzengesichter und drei Generationen einer weißen Familie brauchen”, schimpfte etwa die farbige Sasheer Zamata von der populären US-Show “Saturday Night Live”, “sogar die Black-Power-Faust ist weiß!”

    Nun steht das Unicode-Konsortium unter Druck, die in der Tat fast durchweg hellhäutige Emoji-Welt einzufärben. Vergangenen Herbst kündigte das Konsortium deshalb an, den Usern künftig die Option zu geben, den Hautton bestimmter Emojis zu verändern, und zwar entsprechend der Fitzpatrick-Skala, einem “anerkannten Standard in der Dermatologie”. Apple hat bereits einen “skin tone modifier” für Emojis in eine Beta-Version seines Betriebssystems eingebaut.

    Ohnehin will Davis dafür sorgen, dass sich künftig noch mehr Nutzer in der Welt der Emojis zu Hause fühlen. Das Konsortium werde alles daransetzen, die Bilderkollektion umfassender und einheitlicher zu machen, verspricht der Programmierer. “Technisch gesehen haben wir in Unicode noch Platz für mehr als eine Million weitere Zeichen”, sagt Davis.

    Für die Freunde des elaborierten Textes mag das wie eine Drohung klingen. Doch Sprachforscher wie Lisa Lebduska beschwichtigen. “Natürlich kostet es viel weniger Mühe, ein Herzchen zu verschicken, als einen Liebesbrief zu schreiben”, sagt sie, “aber ich glaube, dass Liebesbriefe trotzdem nicht verschwinden werden.”

    Wie Worte seien auch Emojis eine Reflexion der Welt, sagt Lebduska, und wie Worte hätten die Zeichen das Potenzial “zu beschreiben, zu erkunden und zu verbinden”.

    Ob das tatsächlich gelingt, liegt allerdings wohl auch im Auge des Betrachters. Die US-Komikerin Ellen DeGeneres brachte es jüngst in ihrer Show auf den Punkt . “Was heißt diese Zeichenfolge?”, fragte sie ihr Publikum und präsentierte eine Abfolge von Emojis .

    “Für jüngere Leute bedeute das ,Hallo, an welchem Tag und zu welcher Zeit kommt dein Flug an?’”, erläuterte DeGeneres.

    Für ältere Leute jedoch bedeute es etwas ganz anderes, nämlich: “Meine Tastatur produziert nur noch kleine Bildchen, wie bekomme ich sie wieder normal, damit ich nicht mehr diesen Unsinn tippe; und überhaupt: Warum machen sie diese Telefone so klein?”

  • Langsam anziehen

    Kommentar: Warum wir eine neue Mode brauchen

    Von Philip Bethge, DER SPIEGEL 15/2015

    Aldi hat sich diese Woche auf Druck von Greenpeace verpflichtet, bis zum Jahr 2020 nur noch Textilien ohne umwelt- oder gesundheitsschädliche Chemikalien anzubieten. Auch Lidl, Rewe, Tchibo und andere Händler haben auf die “Detox”-Kampagne der Umweltschützer reagiert. Ein schöner Erfolg, aber alles darf das noch nicht gewesen sein. Denn was wir wirklich brauchen, ist eine neue Modebewegung, die weg von der Fast Fashion und hin zur nachhaltigen Klamotte mit langer Lebensdauer führt. Vorreiter dieser Bewegung müssten vor allem die jungen YouTube-Wilden sowie die Schönen und Reichen sein, die uns bereits heute alles Mögliche verkaufen. Ich möchte Rapper sehen, die Firmen wie Nurmi groß machen, deren Jeans aus Stoffresten bestehen. Ich möchte Popstars in Upcycling-Schuhen aus alten Reifen und Lederresten tanzen sehen und Schauspieler, die auf der Berlinale in Kreationen von Labels wie Armedangels oder Brainshirt über den roten Teppich schreiten. Nur wenn Ökoklamotten das Image des Jutesacks loswerden und Ideen wie der “unendliche Kleiderschrank” des Klamotten-Leihshops Kleiderei als cool gelten, wird sich die “Slow Fashion”-Bewegung durchsetzen können. Der Wandel ist dringlich: Etwa 10 000 Liter Wasser verschlingt die Produktion eines Kilos Baumwolle. Vor allem deshalb trocknet beispielsweise der Aralsee aus. In China sind etwa zwei Drittel der Gewässer vergiftet, größtenteils mit Chemikalien aus der Textilindustrie. Rund 4,3 Millionen Tonnen Kleidung landen in Europa jährlich im Müll. Ein neues Party-Top bringe es im Schnitt auf nur 1,7 Einsätze, sagt Kirsten Brodde von Greenpeace. Hätte es dafür wirklich produziert werden müssen?

    Ich baue auf euch, ihr Fairtrade-Kaffee trinkenden, Biogemüse knabbernden Fahrradfahrer: Nehmt endlich auch die Kleider in euer Weltverbesserungsprogramm auf!

  • The Second Cooing: Raising Passenger Pigeons from the Dead

    The Second Cooing: Raising Passenger Pigeons from the Dead

    The world has been without passenger pigeons since 1914. Now, scientists want to bring them back. Geneticist Ben Novak has embarked on the project and has begun collecting passenger pigeon DNA from natural history museums. His “de-extinction” efforts are not without critics.

    By Philip Bethge

    The eye sockets of the slender pigeon are filled with light-colored cotton. Its neck feathers shimmer in iridescent colors, and it has a russet chest and a slate-blue head. The yellowed paper tag attached to its left leg reads: “Coll. by Capt. Frank Goss, Neosho Falls, Kansas, July 4, 1875.”

    Ben Novak lifts up the stuffed bird to study the tag more closely. Then he returns the pigeon to a group of 11 other specimens of the same species, which are resting on their backs in a wooden drawer. “It’s easy to see just dead birds,” he says. “But imagine them alive, billions of birds. What would they look like in the sky?”

    Novak has an audacious plan. He wants to resurrect the passenger pigeon. Vast numbers of the birds once filled the skies over North America. But in 1914 Martha, the last of her species, died in a zoo in Cincinnati, Ohio.

    Novak, a researcher with the Long Now Foundation, a California think tank, wants to give the species a second chance. At the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in Berkeley, Novak used a scalpel to slice small tissue samples from the red-painted toes of the passenger pigeons kept there. He hopes to isolate tiny bits of DNA from the samples and use them to assemble an entire genotype. His ultimate goal is the resurrection of the passenger pigeon.

    “It should be possible to reconstruct the entire genome of the passenger pigeon,” says Novak. “The species is one of the most promising candidates for reintroducing an extinct species.”

    The art of breathing new life into long-extinct species is in vogue among biologists. The Tasmanian devil, the wooly rhinoceros, the mammoth, the dodo and the gastric-breeding frog are all on the list of candidates for revival. To recover the genetic makeup of species, experts cut pieces of tissue from stuffed zoological rarities, pulverize pieces of bone or search in the freezers of their institutions for samples of extinct animals.

    The Dream of “De-Extinction”

    The laboratory techniques to create new life with bits of genetic material were pure fantasy in the past. But now scientists believe that the vision could become reality, step by step. Experts in bioengineering, zoologists, ethicists and conservationists recently met in Washington, DC for a public forum on “de-extinction.”

    “Extinct animals are the most endangered species of them all” because “there is hardly anything left but the DNA,” says Stewart Brand of the Long Now Foundation, which co-hosted the meeting with the National Geographic Society. The current showpiece project in bioengineering is the rebirth of the passenger pigeon.

    The story of Ectopistes migratorius is a striking example of human hubris. When the Europeans arrived, the passenger pigeon was probably the most common bird on the American continent. The birds travelled in giant flocks, sometimes several hundred kilometers long. “The air was literally filled with pigeons,” naturalist John Audubon wrote in 1831, after observing the spectacle. “The light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse.”

    During their long migrations, the pigeons devastated entire forests. They descended upon their breeding grounds in eastern North America by the millions. There are historical accounts, for example, of a breeding ground in Wisconsin the size of Tokyo, where an estimated 136 million passenger pigeons came to breed. The noise was deafening.

    Living in a flock guaranteed the pigeons safety from predators. But the behavior also sealed their fate. When hunters discovered passenger pigeons as game birds, they were able to kill them with brutal efficiency, either by catching them in nets or shooting them with birdshot. They also placed pots of burning sulfur under trees until the birds, anesthetized by the vapors, dropped to the ground like overripe fruit.

    In some breeding areas, hunters slaughtered up to 50,000 passenger pigeons a day. The birds were shipped by the ton in freight cars and sold to be grilled at a few cents a dozen.

    Sequencing the Pigeon DNA

    By the time the establishment of a closed season for the birds was proposed in the US state of Minnesota in 1897, it was already too late. The last wild passenger pigeon was shot to death in 1900. Then, Pigeon Martha — named after Martha Washington, the country’s first First Lady — finally met her end at around noon on Sept. 1, 1914. She was the last surviving specimen in an unsuccessful program to breed the birds in captivity.

    Novak’s goal is to bring back the species, and he seems perfect for the job. In elementary school, he completed a project on the dodo, the extinct bird species from Mauritius. The passenger pigeon has fascinated him for years. “We caused the extinction of the species,” says the 26-year-old. “Now we have a moral obligation to bring them back.” To that end, the genetic detective is visiting natural history museums to take tissue samples from as many of the roughly 1,500 remaining samples of the skin and bones of the bird as possible.

    The passenger pigeon’s DNA has about 1.3 billion base pairs. Their sequence describes what the bird looks like, what its call sounds like and how it behaves. However, the animal’s genetic material in the museums is shredded into miniscule pieces, degraded by bacteria and contaminated with foreign DNA. But that doesn’t deter Novak. He and Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California in Santa Cruz, have begun to decode the bird’s DNA.

    The biologists have an ambitious plan. Bit by bit, they intend to match the DNA sequence of the passenger pigeon with that of its close relative, the band-tailed pigeon. Then they will essentially stamp out the divergent sequences from the band-tailed pigeon genome and replace them with synthesized passenger pigeon genetic material.

    With the help of the genome created in this fashion, the scientists will create primordial germ cells for the passenger pigeon, which will then be implanted into young embryos of an easy-to-breed pigeon species. The scientists hope that once they have grown and mated, the pigeons will lay eggs that will hatch into passenger pigeons.

    Chickens in a Duck’s Egg

    The procedure is not only complicated, but also largely untested. But, says Novak, “all the necessary steps are being studied intensively right now.” For instance, he explains, biologists have already managed to insert primordial germ cells from chickens into duck eggs. The drakes that emerged a short time later actually carried the sperm cells of chickens.

    Novak is already thinking beyond the hatching of the first passenger pigeon. Once a flock of the birds has been created, he plans to release them into the wild. “The passenger pigeon was a keystone species in the forest ecosystems,” says Novak, explaining that the destructive force of the flocks led to a radical rejuvenation of forests. Thick layers of pigeon droppings fertilized the soil, which soon led to new growth. “Passenger pigeons are the dance partners of the forest,” the scientist raves. And the “ballroom” still exists.

    But even if scientists can pull off this feat, does it really make sense to bring a long-extinct species back into the world? “Conservation biology’s priority must remain that of ensuring a future for species (currently) existing on the planet,” retired Professor Stanley Temple of the University of Wisconsin-Madison says critically. He fears that species extinction could be trivialized in the future. “People might say: ‘Can’t we let them go extinct and bring them back later?’”

    Zoologist David Ehrenfeld of Rutgers University also criticizes the species resurrection projects, saying that they are “extremely expensive” and, in light of a global species crisis, downright absurd. “At this very moment, brave conservationists are risking their lives to protect dwindling groups of existing African forest elephants from heavily armed poachers, and here we are talking about bringing back the wooly mammoth,” he says.

    Ehrenfeld also doesn’t believe that revived species would stand much of a chance of survival. “Who will care for the passenger pigeon chicks?” he asks, noting that parental care is “critical” for the development of young birds.

    Darkened Skies

    But Novak rejects the criticism. “Passenger pigeon parents were never incredibly involved in raising their young,” he says. He also plans to teach the chicks the basics of passenger pigeon life by dyeing carrier pigeons and essentially using them as flight controllers for the returning species.

    “We’ll ferry them with homing pigeons down to wintering grounds and back to the breeding area,” he says. “After a few years, we have passenger pigeons that fly the same (routes) as their forefathers.”

    When that happens, clouds of passenger pigeons will darken the skies once again, and another dream could be fulfilled for Novak. “Part of me would really love a passenger pigeon as a pet,” says the scientist. And perhaps, he adds, the pigeon zoo could even be expanded.

    There are 50 extinct pigeon species worldwide, says Novak. He has already earmarked three of them for resurrection: the Japanese silver-banded pigeon, the Choiseul crested pigeon and the thick-billed ground dove.

    “I am a pigeon nut,” says Novak.

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

  • SPIEGEL Blog: Surrogate Mother (Not Yet) Sought for Neanderthal

    An interview published last week by SPIEGEL with American genetic scientist George Church has sparked frenetic media speculation about a supposed plan to bring the Neanderthal back from the dead. Church feels his remarks were mistranslated, but it was other media outlets that twisted his words.

    “Wanted: Surrogate Mother For Neanderthal,” screamed an article in the Berliner Kurier tabloid in the German capital on Tuesday, complete with an image of a grinning, bearded caveman. Britain’s Independent seemed positively creeped out by a Harvard professor who wanted to bring such beings back to life as some kind of “Palaeolithic Park.” Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph implored: “Spare Neanderthals This Modern Freak Show.”

    Media and websites around the world — in Britain, Italy, Poland, Greece, Hungary, Russia, South Korea and Turkey — expressed interest in the idea of resurrecting the Neanderthal. By Wednesday morning, more than 600 sources on Google News had reported the story, with all citing SPIEGEL as their source. What happened?

    The source of the net furore was an interview SPIEGEL conducted with George Church. The Harvard University genetic researcher then provided an explanation to the Boston Herald for the sudden media fever. He blamed it on an error downstream of SPIEGEL. He said it had been incorrectly reported that he was looking for a surrogate mother to carry a Neanderthal clone.

    The sudden interest in the Neanderthal, our human cousin, may tell us a little bit about the diffuse fear of overly ambitious genetic researchers. But it tells us even more about the laws of tabloid journalism.

    In this case, the entire brouhaha arose in articles written outside of SPIEGEL’s domain. And it is important to us to communicate this because we make a significant effort to ensure that our stories are correctly translated when they appear on our English-language website. Occasionally mistakes slip through — as is inevitable with any site that relies heavily on translation — but when they do we are quick to correct them.

    In addition, we sent Church an English version of our interview the week before it went to print for authorization. This provided him with an opportunity to change any formulations that may have caused any room for misinterpretation. We did make some alterations later without checking, and have since apologized to him for introducing the word “hell,” which he did not say.

    A Storm of Coverage

    It should quickly be obvious to anyone following the hype over the Neanderthal surrogate mother closely that the storm of coverage didn’t break out until a week after the interview was published. Last Friday, we posted the interview, which we had requested from George Church because we had been fascinated by his latest book. The title alone, “Regenisis,” seemed promising.

    And Church didn’t disappoint in his interview. He laid out the great future he believes the still relatively young research field of “synthetic biology” will have. Regardless whether he was discussing the cloning of humans, the genetic optimization of Homo sapiens, the manipulation of the genetic code of all life forms or the re-creation of the Neanderthal, nothing was treated as taboo in his interview. In other words, it offered plenty of fodder for both controversy and thrilling entertainment.

    The interview first appeared in the German-language print edition of SPIEGEL on Monday, Jan. 14, and the raft of outraged reader letters reflected the intense interest the interview generated. Church has always presented himself as a bold and argumentative visionary who won’t hesitate to consider anything that might be scientifically feasible.

    Initially, few media outlets picked up the story. Nor did that change after we posted a short article focusing primarily on Church’s remarks on the potential for resurrecting the Neanderthal on SPIEGEL ONLINE in German. The hype machine got going shortly after that.

    It was only then that the story was given the decisive spin — by other media outlets. Early tweets on the interview, may have helped to set the tone, like one person who tweeted: “My life’s new ambition: Mate with a Neanderthal woman.” A short time later, the first journalist stumbled across the interview’s emotive word: “surrogate.” That’s when headlines like the one that appeared in the Daily Mail — “Harvard professor seeks mother for cloned cave baby” — were born. Subsequent tweets are already discussing the possibility of a film being made of the story.

    The question of whether a surrogate mother could be used for a possible future Neanderthal clone does in fact pop up in the interview. In the question, we cite a passage in Church’s book in which he writes that, “a whole Neanderthal creature itself could be cloned by a surrogate mother chimp — or by an extremely adventurous female human.”

    No Want Ad Implied

    It would have to be clear to anyone who gives that passage in the interview a critical read — and the same applies to both the German and English versions — that it is in no way intended as some kind of want or personal ad. Church didn’t mean it that way and we didn’t understand it to mean that either. Really, what Church was explaining is that he considers the rebirth of the Neanderthal to be technically possible. He also explains the steps that would be necessary to get there. The last step, someday, would be the search for a surrogate mother. He also says that he believes the chances are good that he might experience the birth of the first Neanderthal clone within his lifetime. We thought that statement alone was a bit of a reach, particularly given that Church is 58 years old today.

    We’re sorry that Church, who provided us with such fascinating insights into his research, has now become the victim of media hype. In the course of the past two decades, he told the Boston Herald, he has done perhaps 500 interviews about his research and this is the first one to spiral out of control quite like this.

    What’s perhaps most bizarre about the entire media hysteria over Church’s interview is that potential surrogate mothers are now contacting the geneticist. His concern — at least if things get to that stage — that he will have difficulty finding potential surrogate mothers appears to be unfounded.

    *Editor’s Note: At the request of George Church, five changes have been made to the above text. In particular, he wanted to avoid the impression that he had blamed a translation error on the part of DER SPIEGEL for the confusion that ensued following the interview’s publication.

     

  • Interview with George Church: Can Neanderthals Be Brought Back from the Dead?

    In a SPIEGEL interview, synthetic biology expert George Church of Harvard University explains how DNA will become the building material of the future — one that can help create virus-resistant human beings and possibly bring back lost species like the Neanderthal.

    –> Update: The Interview has sparked frenetic media speculation about a supposed plan to bring the Neanderthal back from the dead. Church feels his remarks were mistranslated, but it was other media outlets that twisted his words.

    George Church, 58, is a pioneer in synthetic biology, a field whose aim is to create synthetic DNA and organisms in the laboratory. During the 1980s, the Harvard University professor of genetics helped initiate the Human Genome Project that created a map of the human genome. In addition to his current work in developing accelerated procedures for sequencing and synthesizing DNA, he has also been involved in the establishing of around two dozen biotech firms. In his new book, “Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves,” which he has also encoded as strands of DNA and distributed on small DNA chips, Church sketches out a story of a second, man-made Creation.

    SPIEGEL recently sat down with Church to discuss his new tome and the prospects for using synthetic biology to bring the Neanderthal back from exctinction as well as the idea of making humans resistant to all viruses.

    SPIEGEL: Mr. Church, you predict that it will soon be possible to clone Neanderthals. What do you mean by “soon”? Will you witness the birth of a Neanderthal baby in your lifetime?

    Church: I think so, but boy there are a lot of parts to that. The reason I would consider it a possibility is that a bunch of technologies are developing faster than ever before. In particular, reading and writing DNA is now about a million times faster than seven or eight years ago. Another technology that the de-extinction of a Neanderthal would require is human cloning. We can clone all kinds of mammals, so it’s very likely that we could clone a human. Why shouldn’t we be able to do so?

    SPIEGEL: Perhaps because it is banned?

    Church: That may be true in Germany, but it’s not banned all over the world. And laws can change, by the way.

    SPIEGEL: Would cloning a Neanderthal be a desirable thing to do?

    Church: Well, that’s another thing. I tend to decide on what is desirable based on societal consensus. My role is to determine what’s technologically feasible. All I can do is reduce the risk and increase the benefits.

    SPIEGEL: So let’s talk about possible benefits of a Neanderthal in this world.

    Church: Well, Neanderthals might think differently than we do. We know that they had a larger cranial size. They could even be more intelligent than us. When the time comes to deal with an epidemic or getting off the planet or whatever, it’s conceivable that their way of thinking could be beneficial.

    SPIEGEL: How do we have to imagine this: You raise Neanderthals in a lab, ask them to solve problems and thereby study how they think?

    Church: No, you would certainly have to create a cohort, so they would have some sense of identity. They could maybe even create a new neo-Neanderthal culture and become a political force.

    SPIEGEL: Wouldn’t it be ethically problematic to create a Neanderthal just for the sake of scientific curiosity?

    Church: Well, curiosity may be part of it, but it’s not the most important driving force. The main goal is to increase diversity. The one thing that is bad for society is low diversity. This is true for culture or evolution, for species and also for whole societies. If you become a monoculture, you are at great risk of perishing. Therefore the recreation of Neanderthals would be mainly a question of societal risk avoidance.

    SPIEGEL: Setting aside all ethical doubts, do you believe it is technically possible to reproduce the Neanderthal?

    Church: The first thing you have to do is to sequence the Neanderthal genome, and that has actually been done. The next step would be to chop this genome up into, say, 10,000 chunks and then synthesize these. Finally, you would introduce these chunks into a human stem cell. If we do that often enough, then we would generate a stem cell line that would get closer and closer to the corresponding sequence of the Neanderthal. We developed the semi-automated procedure required to do that in my lab. Finally, we assemble all the chunks in a human stem cell, which would enable you to finally create a Neanderthal clone.

    SPIEGEL: And the surrogates would be human, right? In your book you write that an “extremely adventurous female human” could serve as the surrogate mother.

    Church: Yes. However, the prerequisite would, of course, be that human cloning is acceptable to society.

    SPIEGEL: Could you also stop the procedure halfway through and build a 50-percent Neanderthal using this technology.

    Church: You could and you might. It could even be that you want just a few mutations from the Neanderthal genome. Suppose you were to realize: Wow, these five mutations might change the neuronal pathways, the skull size, a few key things. They could give us what we want in terms of neural diversity. I doubt that we are going to particularly care about their facial morphology, though (laughs).

    SPIEGEL: Might it one day be possible to descend even deeper into evolutionary history and recreate even older ancestors like Australopithecus or Homo erectus?

    Church: Well, you have got a shot at anything where you have the DNA. The limit for finding DNA fragments is probably around a million years.

    SPIEGEL: So we won’t be seeing the return of the caveman or dinosaurs?

    Church: Probably not. But even if you don’t have the DNA, you can still make something that looks like it. For example, if you wanted to make a dinosaur, you would first consider the ostrich, one of its closest living relatives. You would take an ostrich, which is a large bird, and you would ask: “What’s the difference between birds and dinosaurs? How did the birds lose their hands?” And you would try to identify the mutations and try to back engineer the dinosaur. I think this will be feasible.

    SPIEGEL: Is it also conceivable to create lifeforms that never existed before? What about, for example, rabbits with wings?

    Church: So that’s a further possibility. However, things have to be plausible from an engineering standpoint. There is a bunch of things in birds that make flying possible, not just the wings. They have very lightweight bones, feathers, strong breast muscles, and the list goes on.

    SPIEGEL: Flying rabbits and recreated dinosaurs are pure science fiction today. But on the microbe level, researchers are already creating synthetic life. New bacteria detect arsenic in drinking water. They create synthetic vaccines and diesel fuel. You call these organisms “novel machines”. How do they relate to the machines we know?

    Church: Well, all organisms are mechanical in the sense that they’re made up of moving parts that inter-digitate like gears. The only difference is that they are incredibly intricate. They are atomically precise machines.

    SPIEGEL: And what will these machines be used for?

    Church: Oh, life science will co-opt almost every other field of manufacturing. It’s not limited to agriculture and medicine. We can even use biology in ways that biology never has evolved to be used. DNA molecules for example could be used as three-dimensional scaffolding for inorganic materials, and this with atomic precision. You can design almost any structure you want with a computer, then you push a button — and there it is, built-in DNA.

    SPIEGEL: DNA as the building material of the future?

    Church: Exactly. And it’s amazing. Biology is good at making things that are really precise. Take trees for example. Trees are extremely complicated, at least on a molecular basis. However, they are so cheap, that we burn them or convert them into tables. Trees cost about $50 a ton. This means that you can make things that are nearly atomically precise for five cents a kilo.

    SPIEGEL: You are seriously proposing to build all kinds of machines — cars, computers or coffee machines — out of DNA?

    Church: I think it is very likely that this is possible. In fact, computers made of DNA will be better than the current computers, because they will have even smaller processors and be more energy efficient.

    SPIEGEL: Let’s go through a couple of different applications of synthetic biology. How long will it take, for example, until we can fill our tanks with fuel that has been produced using synthentic microbes?

    Church: The fact is that we already have organisms that can produce fuel compatible with current car engines. These organisms convert carbon dioxide and light into fuels by basically using photosynthesis.

    SPIEGEL: And they do so in an economically acceptable way?

    Church: If you consider $1.30 a gallon for fuel a good number, then yeah. And the price will go down. Most of these systems are at least a factor of five away from theoretical limits, maybe even a factor of 10.

    SPIEGEL: So we should urgently include synthetic life in our road map for the future energy supply in Germany?

    Church: Well, I don’t necessarily think it’s a mistake to go slowly. It is not like Germany is losing out to lots of other nations right now, but there should be some sort of engineering and policy planning.

    –> Read original interview at SPIEGEL Online International

    Is Church Playing God?

    SPIEGEL: Germans are traditionally scared of genetically modified organisms.

    Church: But don’t forget: The ones we are talking about won’t be farm GMOs. These will be in containers, and so if there’s a careful planning process, I would predict that Germany would be as good as any country at doing this.

    SPIEGEL: There has been a lot of fierce public opposition to genetic engineering in Germany. How do you experience this? Do you find it annoying?

    Church: Quite to the contrary. I personally think it has been fruitful. And I think there are relatively few examples in which such a debate has slowed down technology. I think we should be quite cautious, but that doesn’t mean that we should put moratoriums on new technologies. It means licensing, surveillance, doing tests. And we actually must make sure the public is educated about them. It would be great if all the politicians in the world were as technologically savvy as the average citizen is politically savvy.

    SPIEGEL: Acceptance is highest for such technology when it is first applied in the medical industry …

    Church: … yes, and the potential of synthetic life is particularly large in pharmaceuticals. The days of classic, small molecule drugs may be numbered. Actually, it is a miracle that they work in the first place. They kind of dose your whole body. They cross-react with other molecules. Now, we are getting better and better at programming cells. So I think cell therapies are going to be the next big thing. If you engineer genomes and cells, you have an incredible amount of sophistication. If you take AIDS virus as an example …

    SPIEGEL: … a disease you also want to beat with cell therapy?

    Church: Yes. All you have to do is take your blood cell precursors out of your body, reengineer them using gene therapy to knock out both copies of your CCR5 gene, which is the AIDS receptor, and then put them back in your body. Then you can’t get AIDS any more, because the virus can’t enter your cells.

    SPIEGEL: Are we correct in assuming you wouldn’t hesitate to use germ cell therapy, as well, if you could improve humans genetically in this way?

    Church: Well, there are stem cell therapies already. There are hematopoietic stem cell transplants that are widely practiced, and skin stem cell transplants. Once you have enough experience with these techniques you can start talking about human cloning. One of the things to do is to engineer our cells so that they have a lower probability of cancer. And then once we have a lower probability of cancer, you can crank up their self-renewal properties, so that they have a lower probability of senescence. We have people who live to be 120 years old. What if we could all live 120 years? That might be considered desirable.

    SPIEGEL: But you haven’t got any idea which genes to change in order to achieve that goal.

    Church: In order to find out, we are now involved in sequencing as many people as possible who have lived for over 110 years. There are only 60 of those people in the world that we know of.

    SPIEGEL: Do you have any results already?

    Church: It’s too early to say. But we collected the DNA of about 20 of them, and the analysis is just beginning.

    SPIEGEL: You expect them all to have the same mutation that guarantees longevity?

    Church: That is one possibility. The other possibility is that they each have their own little advantage over everybody else. What we are looking for is protective alleles. If they each have their own answer, we can look at all of them and ask, what happens if you put them all in one person? Do they cancel each other out, or do they synergize?

    SPIEGEL: You seriously envisage a new era, in which genes are used as anti-aging-cures?

    Church: Why not? A lot of things that were once left to luck no longer have to be if we add synthetic biology into the equation. Let’s take an example: virus resistance …

    SPIEGEL: … which is also achievable using synthetic biology?

    Church: Yes, it turns out there are certain ways to make organisms of any kind resistent to any viruses. If you change the genetic code …

    SPIEGEL: … you are talking about the code that all life forms on Earth use to code their genetic information?

    Church: Exactly. You can change that code. We’re testing that out in bacteria and it might well be possible to create completely virus-resistant E. coli, for example. But we won’t know until we get there. And I am not promising anything. I am just laying out a path, so that people can see what possible futures we have.

    SPIEGEL: And if it works in bacteria, you presumably could then move on to plants, animals and even humans? Which means: no more measles, no more rabies, no more influenza?

    Church: Sure. And that would be another argument for cloning, by the way, since cloning is probably going to be recognized as the best way of building such virus resistance into humans. As long as it is safe and tested slowly, it might gain acceptance. And I’m not advocating. I’m just saying, this is the pathway that might happen.

    SPIEGEL: It all sounds so easy and straightforward. Aren’t biological processes far more complicated than you would like to lead us to believe?

    Church: Yes, biology is complicated, but it’s actually simpler than most other technologies we are dealing with. The reason is that we have received a great gift that biology has given to us. We can just take a little bit of DNA and stick it into a human stem cell, and all the rest of it is self-assembled. It just happens. It’s as if a master engineer parked a spacecraft in our back yard with not so many manuals, but lots of goodies in it that are kind of self-explanatory. You pick up something and you pretty much know what it does after a little study.

    SPIEGEL: Do you understand that there will be people who feel rather uncomfortable with the notion of changing the genome of the human species?

    Church: I think the definition of species is about to change anyway. So far, the definition of different species has been that they can’t exchange DNA. But more and more, this species barrier is falling. Humans will probably share genes with all sorts of organisms.

    SPIEGEL: First you propose to change the 3-billion-year-old genetic code. Then you explain how you want to create a new and better man. Is it any wonder to you when people accuse you of playing God?

    Church: I certainly respect other people’s faith. But, in general, in religion you wouldn’t want people to starve. We have 7 billion people living on this planet. If part of the solution to feed those people is to make their crops resistant to viruses, then you have to ask: Is there really anything in the Bible that says you shouldn’t make virus-resistant crops? I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally more religiously problematic about engineering a dog or a cow or a horse the way we have been doing it for 10,000 years versus making a virus-resistant crop.

    SPIEGEL: Virus-resistant crops is one thing. Virus-resistant humans is something altogether different.

    Church: Why? In technology, we generally don’t take leaps. It’s this very slow crawl. We are not going to be making a virus-resistant human before we make a virus-resistant cow. I don’t understand why people should be so deeply hurt by that kind of technology.

    SPIEGEL: Apart from religious opposition, biotechnology also generates very real fears. Artificial lifeforms which might turn out to be dangerous killer-bugs. Don’t we need special precautions?

    Church: We have to be very cautious, I absolutely agree. I almost never vote against caution or regulations. In fact, I requested them for licensing and surveillance of synthetic biology. Yes, I think the risks are high. The risks of doing nothing are also high, if you consider that there are 7 billion people who need food and are polluting the environment.

    SPIEGEL: Mr. Church, do you believe in God?

    Church: I would be blind, if I didn’t see that faith in an overall plan resulted in where we are today. Faith is a very powerful force in the history of humanity. So I greatly respect different kinds of faith. Just as I think diversity is a really good thing genetically, it’s also a good thing societally.

    SPIEGEL: But you’re talking about other people’s faith. What about your own faith?

    Church: I have faith that science is a good thing. Seriously, I’d say that I am very much in awe of nature. In fact, I think to some extent, “awe” was a word that was almost invented for scientists. Not all scientists are in awe, but scientists are in a better position to be in awe than just about anybody else on the planet, because they actually can imagine all the different scales and all the complexity. A poet sees a flower and can go on and on about how beautiful the colors are. But what the poet doesn’t see is the xylem and the phloem and the pollen and the thousands of generations of breeding and the billions of years before that. All of that is only available to the scientists.

    SPIEGEL: Mr. Church, we thank you for this conversation.

    Interview conducted by Philip Bethge and Johann Grolle.

    –> Read original interview at SPIEGEL Online International

  • Michio Kaku: ‘Eternal Life Does Not Violate the Laws of Physics’

    In his best-selling book “Physics of the Future,” American professor Michio Kaku lays out his vision for the world in 2100. Kaku, the son of Japanese immigrants, spoke to SPIEGEL about a future in which toilets will have health monitoring sensors and contact lenses will be connected to the Internet.

    SPIEGEL: Professor Kaku, in your book you write about how we will be like gods in the future. Are you saying that our grandchildren will be gods? Isn’t that a bit immodest?

    Kaku: Just think for a moment about our forefathers in the year 1900. They lived to be 49 years old on average and traveled with horse-drawn wagons. Long distance communication was yelling out the window. If these people could see us today with mobile phones at our ears, Facebook on our screens and traveling with planes they would consider us wizards.

    SPIEGEL: It’s still a big step to go from wizards to gods.

    Kaku: So what do gods do? Apollo has unlimited power from the sun, Zeus can turn himself into a swan or anything else and Venus has a perfect body. Gods can move objects with their mind, rearrange things, and have perfect bodies. Our grandchildren will be able to do just that.

    SPIEGEL: Let’s do a little time traveling. Close your eyes and imagine waking up on a September morning in the year 2112. What do you see?

    Kaku: More important than what I see, is what will be omnipresent. Intelligence will be everywhere in the future, just like electricity is everywhere today. We now just assume that there’s electricity in the walls, the floor, the ceiling. In the future we will assume that everything is intelligent, so intelligence will be everywhere and nowhere. As children, we will be taught how to manipulate things around us just by talking to them and thinking. Children will believe that everything is alive.

    SPIEGEL: We’ll ask the question in a different way. What will we experience on this morning in 2112?

    Kaku: When we wake up, the first thing we want to know is what’s going on in the world. So we put in our intelligent contact lenses and with a blink we are online. If you want information, movies, virtual reality, it is all in your contact lenses. Then we’ll drive to work.

    SPIEGEL: Driving? How boring!

    Kaku: Aw, you want to fly? Cars may even fly, but we will also be able to manipulate our cars just by thinking. So, if you want to get into your car, you simply think, and you call your car. The car drives itself, and boom, there you are.

    SPIEGEL: So our grandchildren will fly to work. And what will change there?

    Kaku: If you are a college student, you blink and you can see all the answers to the final examination by wearing your contact lenses. Artists will wave their hands in the air and create beautiful works of art. If you’re an architect, you will see what you are creating and just move towers, two apartment buildings around as you construct things.

    SPIEGEL: Why do we have to even bother leaving the house if all of our needs, questions and desires are played out virtually on our grandiose contact lenses?

    Kaku: Well, you will want to go outside because we are humans, and our personality hasn’t changed in 100,000 years. We’re social creatures. We like to size each other up, figure out who’s on first, who’s on second. But technology will be able to help with that. In 2100, for example, when you talk to people, you will see their biography listed right in front of you. If you are looking for a date, you sign up for a dating service. When you go outside and people walk by you, their faces light up if they’re available. If someone speaks to you in Chinese, your contact lens will translate from Chinese to English. We will still resist certain technologies, however, because they go against who we are.

    SPIEGEL: What’s an example of that?

    Kaku: The paperless office. The paperless office was a failure, because we like tangible things. If I give you a choice between tickets to see your favorite famous rock star or a video of a close-up of your favorite rock star, which would you choose?

    SPIEGEL: The concert tickets naturally.

    Kaku: That’s the caveman in us. The caveman in you says, “I want direct contact. I don’t want a picture.” The caveman in our body says once in a while, we have to go outside. We have to meet real people, talk to real people, and do real things.

    SPIEGEL: Speaking of real things, we were fascinated by the toilet of the future described in your book.

    Kaku: Yeah. You will still have to go to the bathroom because our biology hasn’t changed. But your toilet will have more computer power than a university hospital does today.

    SPIEGEL: The toilet as a supercomputer?

    Kaku: Your toilet will have a chip in it called a “DNA chip.” It will analyze enzymes, proteins and genes for cancer. In this way we will be able to fight cancer long before a tumor even has a chance to develop. We will be able to also detect other illnesses early and fight them. But we will still have the common cold. There are at least 300 different rhinoviruses and you need to have a vaccine for each one. No company is going to do that, because it is going to bankrupt a large corporation to make a vaccine for each of them.

    SPIEGEL: What a defeat! Comfort us — did you not just refer to the perfect body of Venus?

    Kaku: The nature of medicine will shift away from basically saving lives to perfection. We will be able to rearrange our own genome.

    SPIEGEL: I assume that you mean to make ourselves prettier, stronger and generally better?

    Kaku: Those ambitions will be there.

    SPIEGEL: As we get a better handle on genetic technologies, won’t there be more of an urge to create designer babies?

    Kaku: We need a debate about these issues. This is going to create societal problems. You have to have an educated public democratically debating how far to push our beautiful children and the human race.

    SPIEGEL: Will we eventually be able to conquer death?

    Kaku: Eternal life does not violate the laws of physics, surprisingly enough. After all, we only die because of one word: “error.” The longer we live, the more errors there are that are made by our bodies when they read our genes. That means cells get sluggish. The body doesn’t function as well as it could, which is why the skin ages. Then organs eventually fail, so that’s why we die.

    SPIEGEL: What can we do about that?

    Kaku: We know the genes that correct these things. So if we use genetic repair mechanisms, we might be able to repair cells so they don’t wear out, so they just keep on going. That is as real possibility. We will also be able to regenerate organs by growing new ones. That can already be done now.

    SPIEGEL: Then we will get rid of death?

    Kaku: In principle, yes.

    SPIEGEL: Then how will we decide who gets to live and who must die? Who will be allowed to have children?

    Kaku: I don’t think children or overpopulation are going to be a problem. When people live longer, they have fewer children. We see that in Japan, the US and in other countries where prosperity, education and urbanization are on the rise.

    –> Read original interview at SPIEGEL ONLINE International

    ‘It’s Nice to be Superman for an Afternoon’

    SPIEGEL: Okay, back to the toilet. What do I do when the toilet tells me that I have cancer cells?

    Kaku: You talk to the wallpaper, and you say…

    SPIEGEL: Excuse me, but you talk to the wallpaper?

    Kaku: As I mentioned, everything will be intelligent, even the wallpaper. You talk to the wallpaper, and you say, “I want to see my doctor.” Boom! A doctor appears on the wall. It’s a RoboDoc, which looks like a doctor, talks like a doctor, but it’s actually an animated figure. It will tell you what is going on in your body and answers all medical questions with 99 percent accuracy, because it has the medical histories of everyone on the planet available.

    SPIEGEL: Will we also have robot driving instructors and robot cooks?

    Kaku: Yes, of course.

    SPIEGEL: But aren’t robots still rather dumb, even after 50 years of research into artificial intelligence?

    Kaku: That’s true. ASIMO, the best robot around today has the intelligence of a cockroach. However, that will change. In the coming decades, robots will be as smart as mice. Now, mice are very smart. They can scurry around, hide behind things, look for food. I can see that in 10, 20, 30 years, we will start to have mice robots, then rabbit robots, cat robots, dog robots, finally monkey robots maybe by the end of the century. They will do dirty, dull and dangerous jobs for us. That means they have to feel pain too.

    SPIEGEL: Are you talking about machines with the ability to suffer?

    Kaku: We will have to build robots with pain sensors in them, because we don’t want them to destroy themselves.

    SPIEGEL: Then won’t we have to start talking about robot rights?

    Kaku: Once we design robots that can feel pain, that’s a tricky point. At that point, people will say, “Well, they’re just like dogs and cats.”

    SPIEGEL: When will machines become a threat, like HAL from the movie ‘2001?’

    Kaku: At some point we can plant a chip in their electronic brains that shuts them down when they start to develop dangerous plans.

    SPIEGEL: But won’t they be intelligent enough to take the chip out themselves?

    Kaku: Sure, but that won’t happen until after 2100.

    SPIEGEL: How comforting.

    Kaku: Then we always have the option of making ourselves even smarter.

    SPIEGEL: Are you referring to the old science fiction idea that our brains are immeasurably smart?

    Kaku: Exactly, and spending the whole day calculating Einstein’s theory of relativity. I don’t seriously believe that. It goes back to the caveman in us. What do cavemen want? Cavemen want to have the respect of their peers. They want to look good to the opposite sex. They want prestige. If we’re stuck inside a computer calculating Einstein’s theory of relativity, who wants that?

    SPIEGEL: The idea that one day we will all be Supermen or Superwomen sounds really tempting though.

    Kaku: I think what’s going to happen is we will have avatars. They will have all these powers that we want — to be perfect, superhuman and good looking.

    SPIEGEL: Great! Does that mean we can send our avatars to meetings that we don’t want to attend?

    Kaku: You will send your avatars to the Moon or on virtual trips or whatever. But you also have the option of shutting it off and getting back to normal again. The average person will not necessarily want to be Superman, but they may want the option of being Superman for an afternoon. It’s nice to be Superman for an afternoon, but then to say, hey, “let’s go out and have a beer with friends.” Do you see what I’m saying?

    SPIEGEL: Yes, of course. Atavism beats out the avatar. But just how strong are these caveman impulses? Could there one day be a movement against all of this new technology?

    Kaku: Such movements always accompany technological changes. When the telephone first came out, it was very controversial. Throughout history, we only talked to friends, relatives, kids. That’s it, period. Then comes the telephone. There were many voices denouncing it, saying we had to go back to talking to our families, so on and so forth.

    SPIEGEL: You claim in your book that we are the most important generation that has ever lived. Doesn’t every generation think that?

    Kaku: Out of all the generations that have walked the surface of the Earth, we’re the only ones to witness the beginning of the process of becoming a planetary civilization. We decide whether humanity survives.

    SPIEGEL: What do you mean by “planetary civilization?”

    Kaku: We physicists rank civilizations by energy. A Type 1 planetary civilization uses all the energy that is available on the planet. In a hundred years, we’ll be Type 1. We’re on our way there. We will control the weather. We will control earthquakes and volcanoes eventually. Anything planetary, we will control. Type 2 is stellar. We will control stars, like Star Trek. Then Type 3 is the entire galaxy, where we’ll control the Milky Way galaxy.

    SPIEGEL: Hold on a second. We aren’t even close to that now!

    Kaku: No, we are in a transition. We still get our energy from dead plants, oil and coal. Carl Sagan did a more precise calculation. He figured out that we’re actually Type 0.7. So we’re on the threshold of being Type 1. We will have two planetary languages, English and Mandarin. Look at the Olympics. That’s planetary sports. Look at soccer, another planetary sport. The European Union is the beginning of a planetary economy, if it ever gets off the ground correctly.

    SPIEGEL: We are having a few tiny problems with that last one.

    Kaku: Well, nevertheless, when I look at the larger sweep of things, I see that we are already coming together. We’re entering the birth of a planetary fashion and we are already seeing the birth of planetary culture. Democratization of the world marches on.

    SPIEGEL: What is one thing from the world you imagine that you would like to have today?

    Kaku: Well, I wouldn’t mind having a few more decades to live and, for example, to see the first starship. Also, it’s a shame that I cannot live in the 11th dimension.

    SPIEGEL: What do you mean by that?

    Kaku: The energy of wormholes, black holes and of the Big Bang. You would have to be a Type 3 civilization before you can begin to manipulate that energy. That’s the province of my field of research, string theory.

    SPIEGEL: I think that’s where we can no longer keep up. Professor Kaku, we thank you for this interview.

    Interview conducted by Philip Bethge and Rafaela von Bredow

    –> Read original interview at SPIEGEL ONLINE International