The evidence, based on the history of our increasing powers over these past million years or so, seems to suggest that the answer is both yes and no.

We have committed terrible atrocities both against ourselves and the environment. Sometimes we are incredibly petty, buying expensive sport cars and lip implants when there really is no point to such things.

Other times we are incredibly noble. Most of us keep saying we want to save the world even though, nine times in ten, we fall flat on our silly faces. We want to cure the worlds diseases. We want to help the poor. Even though these things often appear hopeless.

Even our worst are sometimes noble. The yin contains some yang and vice versa. Hitler was kind to animals. Ghandi alienated his son. The evil contains a little good. The good contains a little evil. Is it really possible to be all yin or yang? Is that kind of perfection really possible?

My guess is no. My guess is that things won't get better and they won't get worse. They'll just get different. We'll be exchanging the agony of the human condition for the agony of the post-human condition.

Should we even waste our time with human desires anymore?

That is a question each technically savvy person needs ask themself. (Yes, I know that's grammatically incorrect but are you so sure gender, let alone gender in language, is really meaningful anymore?) The argument could be made that they don't really serve any purpose anymore and are a tremendous waste of time. This is a slight variation on the spock meme–a hopefully more constructive variation. Perhaps I can call it the Ghandi meme.

Some folks, sometimes I'm one of them, perhaps mortified with what human motivations sometimes drive us to do, want to walk away from the shallow impulses that make us fear different skin colors or engage in anorexic behavior or seek to have children in our fifties and sixties.

Aside from some health reasons, why waste time with this?

Why envy the power and beauty of youth? Why have children in the first world if they consume more than 20 times the resources of children in the third world? Why envy all those kids that were smarter and faster than you were in high school?

Some human desires are driving this rush of technology. Is this good or bad?

Perhaps the first thing we need to focus on is transcending the shallowness. We have to sit down and think about what's best for us as a civilization and culture *not* what's best for us as a species because the time is rapidly approaching where we will differentiate into a wide variety of species.

What's best for us as individuals and what's best for us as groups and a group? How do we keep the two from conflicting?

The questions that biotech is posing to us now are very similar to the questions that will machine-phase nanotech will pose to us later.

If biotech/pharmacology/etc. gives us the means to enhance our own biology in vivo, will we be allowed to?

So far it appears that the answer is yes and no. We ban athletes from using drugs from enhancing their physical capacity, yet we allow people to use cosmetic surgery. At work we ban some mind altering chemicals and actively promote others like caffine. So far there hasn't yet been any scandals where kids are failed from tests because of memory enhancing drugs but we habitually assign ritalin, effexor, etc. to school children.

Granted we are still at the primitive stages, but as the drugs and knowlege of their effects improve, this question will get more and more strident.

Nevermind steering our children's genes, what about what we can do to ourselves now with chemicals and therapies?