by FIROZE MANJI and MOLLY KANE
Africa faces today the threat of a new form of conquest, a conquest that is being made possible through astonishing technological revolutions in biology, quantum physics, chemistry and engineering.
Today, all living matter can be modified through genetic engineering; new life forms created and released into the environment through synthetic biology; the properties of common elements and compounds dramatically modified through nanotechnologies (technologies working at the scale of atoms and molecules) and nanomanufacture (creating, for example, semiconductors at molecular level, and even non-nuclear nanobombs); and there is a even a convergence between nanotechnologies, information technologies and cognitive science that potentially enables the development of cerebral implants for monitoring or even controlling our brains.
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