Geoff,
What an interesting (and scary) idea.
What is more scary is that this reminds me of the movie series ALIENS.
The namesake is a creature that emerges from unknown origins and adapts to
any environment. What makes this scenario more scary is that there are
those who would capture and attempt to control the uncontrollable, thereby
bringing about their own destruction based on the misguided belief that
such an entity will be controllable.
More to the point of the epilogue, humans have certainly created some
nasty situations for themselves (and others) over the years.
Unfortunately, the greed motive seems to drive ever-increasing
exploitations of this world of ours and its population. Thoughts of
systemic prevention of problems are often set aside in favor of increasing
short-term profits, justified as "Not My Problem."
--Clyde Howell orgpsych@augutsa.net
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>