Futurist Ray Kurzweil has a simple response to people concerned that technology gives us the chance to alter nature: Nature is inherently flawed, and it's our duty as human beings to use technology to fix it.

Talking to the Independent newspaper to promote a screening of Transcendent Man, Kurzweil said,

The form of opposition [to technology] from fundamentalist humanists, and fundamentalist naturalists – that we should make no change to nature [or] to human beings – is directly contrary to the nature of human beings, because we are the species that goes beyond our limitations... And I think that's quite a destructive school of thought – you can show that hundreds of thousands of kids went blind in Africa due to the opposition to [genetically engineered] golden rice. The opposition to genetically modified organisms is just a blanket, reflexive opposition to the idea of changing nature. Nature, and the natural human condition, generates tremendous suffering. We have the means to overcome that, and we should deploy it.

By 2040 you will be able to upload your brain... [Independent.co.uk]

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