can one patent the rainbow?
Nanotech, biotech, infotech.....lifetech......naturetech......and so on....goes the 21st century information revolution!
The other night I was watching the full moon night under the city's neon lights eating a pizza and drinking synthetic milk,hmmm. Was the moon smiling at the neon bulbs or did I see the neon lamps grimacing at the anachronistic moon? After all, she has lost her dangerous charms long ago since the great Americans conquered her.
A homeless child comes abegging to me with a very natural looking artificial flower, "sir,please but this, only 1 dollar, 3 for 2".
And I was perplexed looking at the moon ,then the neon lamps and the child and then back to the moon.
American scientists have made corn and cotton with their own pesticides, glibly names bt-cotton and bt-corn. Tobacco producing vaccines. Cows with human growth hormones . Potato with human vacinnes and golden rice with vitamin A. Very soon we will all have a deluge of wonderful biotech products.
A poor man gets crushed under a speeding car and people are arguing who is right. I tried desperately to get into the heart of the crowd but failed. The poster of "Aliens part 3" stares maliciously at me. Americans have patented aromatic Indian long grain basmati rice as texmati and several neem products.
Several poor children are famishes in an orissa village but it takes several weeks for the news to reach the delhi 'darbar'. In the meantime several thousand software code lines get uploaded from china to usa. Is this what they call the information age. Or am I going senile!
Very soon humans will be cloned and cancer will be conquered. We are on the verge of growing skins,livers and kidneys in the lab. Who knows ,maybe even the brain. Then Einstein-like brains will be on sale for the highest bidders and of course the richest will get the most expensive of the menu,aha!
Biotech, nanotech, infotech, maybe we will grow forests in the lab, and make lilies bllom and produce artificial moons and rainbows.
I just wonder: "can one patent the rainbow or the lotus"?
I am reminded of the sayings of an american indian when he was appoached for sale of a tribal pristine territory.
"how can you talk of buying and selling of the sun,moon and the earth...they were always there how long before we dont realize......how can you talk of buying and selling the land....can you sell the very air that you breathe"?
Oh biotech,infotech, nanotech.
Which is more perilous for humans: Nature's aritifices or natural sunthetics?
Moonlight under the neon lamps.......
I long to return to the days when my grandma used to sing me a lullaby with me on her back:
' tha tha thabungton,
nacha morambi pobige,
pobi shanam nambige,
heibong charong amatang
thadabiraku thabungton"
A free translation is:
' Oh moon, precious moon
i will also sing a lullaby
with your child on my back,
please drop a bunch,
of figs from up there!'
P.S. Since Armstrong, grandma's have stopped singing lullabies with grandkid on her back in moonlight, as they have been told by wiser americans that there are only frozen water and no fig trees on the moon's surface.
Biotech, nanotech, infotech....there I go again....
Ciao
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