Who is Smart Enough to Decide how to Improve the Human Species?

Which technology promises to most dramatically change our lives? A plausible answer is artificial intelligence -- see part 2 of our series "The Resistance." But a lot of smart people would say biotechnology. Or maybe both, in a glorious scientific tango.

Genetic engineering and molecular biology benefit from the processing power creating by the digital revolution. There's a convergence happening -- and this is arguably one of the biggest stories in the world right now.

Not long ago I walked around Kendall Square with Juan Enriquez. He’s an academic, investor and co-author of “Evolving Ourselves: How Unnatural Selection and Nonrandom Mutation Are Changing Life on Earth." The book's premise: We’re undergoing directed evolution. Darwinian natural selection is giving way to bio-engineering, both the conscious kind in the laboratory and as an unintended consequence of urbanization, changes in lifestyle, the domestication of animals and so on. There's a reason obesity, autism, asthma and other auto-immune diseases are on the rise; these are side-effects of how we are evolving in our modern environment.

As Enriquez and co-author Steve Gullans write...