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In this visionary look into the future, renowned physicist Freeman Dyson argues that three rapidly advancing new technologies solar energy, genetic engineering, and world-wide communication together have the potential to create a more equal distribution of the world's wealth. He proposes that the advent of solar power in the Third World would connect residents of even the most remote areas to the vast stores of information on the Internet, which could ultimately end the cultural isolation of the poorest countries. Similarly, he contends, breakthroughs in genetics might well enable us to give our children healthier lives and grow more efficient crops, thus restoring the economic and human vitality of village cultures devalued and dislocated by the global market. Written with passionate conviction about the ethical uses of science, The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet is both a brilliant reinterpretation of the scientific process and a challenge to use new technologies to close, rather than widen, the gap between rich and poor.
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