[jowiar]

One question: What is meaning?

Making life longer? Making life better? Creating options? Creating experiences?

I think everyone here can agree on the basic idea that some things have meaning and some do not. Reaching consensus on what specifically has meaning, though, is impossible.

Finally, is it that far fetched to posit that technologies developed and refined to predict consumer desires or the financial markets can be repositioned to predict weather, disease (both on a world-wide level and a cellular level). That these predictions can be used to improve the quality of people's lives, the availability of food, and otherwise? These techniques are the byproduct of the current bubble, and targeting them at the physical world, scaling them up (planetary) or down (molecular) will be the focus of the next century.

Finally, in relation to my earlier point, 42... Discuss.