This refers to the column “Politics of recycling plastics” (July 27). The first man-made plastic was created in 1862. It has taken over 150 years to wake up to its potential for damage and will take may be another 50 to stop its usage. We explore and create new things, but are not prescient enough to its outcomes and far less earnest to rectify the damages in time. But man's genius would continue to drive his curiosity and innovation. We already are into human genetic intervention and modification. In a lesser time than it took us to realise the harm caused by plastics we may meet the bigger consequences of this with little idea as to where it would take us. We will then leave it to future generations to suffer the consequences and seek remedies that are rendered harder to devise and implemented with deliberate delay.
Man, though gifted with brilliance, is cursed with the lack of farsightedness. His eagerness to pander to his creativity overrides his sense of equilibrium. And now we are into artificial intelligence. We might, in the process, create an all pervasive adversary and yet blissfully go about feeding it with greater might and reach. It would then be a battle between man's own twin geniuses for creation and destruction.
R Narayanan Navi Mumbai
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