Artificial Natural - Unnatural Selection

Technology seems to have far too much control over evolution. Take a look at human evolution for example; we inject ourselves with many different vaccinations to protect ourselves from viruses and as a result natural selection becomes far more limited. As people are now immune to the virus, the process of natural selection is altered. Now, the weaker individuals are no longer eradicated from the population, but instead it may now be that the people with no money for vaccinations are targeted in this process. Due to the technological changes brought about by humans, we have altered a natural balance of how the world should evolve on many different levels.

The process of evolution no longer seems to be that of natural selection but that of an unnatural form. Evolution is no longer based so much on survival of the fittest, but more the survival based on an organism’s compatibility with humans and their technologies. If evolutionary changes for the worse come about through environmental and atmospherical change, then humans are greatly to blame for the ones occurring in the world. The Atlantic cod for example, has decreased in size from fifteen centimeters to ten centimeters over a short period of time. The main reason for this, as researchers say, is that only the larger cod fish get caught in the nets and therefore the smaller fish have a favorable phenotype for survival, which they will then pass on. They have also found that the fish reach reproductive age twenty-five percent earlier than usual so that they can lay eggs before they got caught or killed. As a result, the cod fish lay eggs prematurely and become a weaker population due to the lack of ‘natural’ growth. The fish are no longer evolving naturally and progressively, but unnaturally due to technological inflictions that humans have put on them, quite literally stunting their growth as a species.

It seems that what has happened is that with technology and human interference in specific animal niches, the balance between humans and animals has been upset completely. Humans are using up far too many resources, destroying the atmosphere, being generally wasteful, and other animal species are in danger of extinction as a result. So how can we change our human impacts to that of naturally occurring evolution? Designers behind a lot of technology, need to start learning about what is happening within the world, an attempt to design for the better. In biology, biodiversity is the key ingredient to a sustainable community, and that is why we should aim to restore this currently uneven balance back to a ‘natural’ measure by designing for the future. Not just the future of humanity but that of an ecosystem as a whole.


References:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/science/13fish.html
http://www.ioe.ucla.edu/news/article.asp?parentid=2064