The need for culture to define itself in terms of relative values interferes with rightful progress. As we carry past solutions to now non-existent problems, our culture is subsumed by a need for tradition – the tired old call of parents too confused by their offspring to do much else but bark orders to limit action. We exceed our parents as we start where they left off.

There is no real notion of a skill level of the passing on of traits be they genetic or otherwise – but influence by parents may channel a level of safety and simply by being and acting do they manifest a “magnetism of motion” that defines “a field of influence” in which offspring develop. A sort of family magnetism. A web of cohesion. Social politics binds us and tears us, but family bonds remain despite efforts to annul them – they still exist.

As progress is necessary or the world would have no hope, it follows then that intergenerational change is requisite. Evolution is too slow for humanity. Immediate results are sought. Evolutionary demands have become intimate, such as the need to have children at the right time, of the right kind, with the right health and the monitoring of prenatal progress and the intrusion of medical solutions to problems that are invisible to the parents. These are all evolutionary factors.

Some science fiction proposes a take over by artificial intellect that comes to the inevitable conclusion that humanity was a danger to existence and therefore must be eliminated; to accept this as logical supposes the impregnation of life into (inanimate) matter. The fashioning of a machine that can think. The mind tries to understand itself and make replicas of its very function at some mechanistic level appears to be something that can not be so replicated.

The inverse is probably far more likely. Instead of the transfer of intellect into matter, it is much easier to install metal arms, computerised lungs or mechanical hearts. Hark back to that (purely of its moment) “6 Million Dollar Man” played by Farah Fawcett’s ex-husband Lee Majors. A cheap military weapon by today’s standards, (but it was a cheap series in many ways).

The idea of nanobot installation into human skin and the addition of computer circuitry to the being is well explored in science fiction and horror, from Star Trek’s “The Borg” assimilating anything and everything they can wrap their flesh around to “Tetsuo – The Iron Man” – an effective Japanese horror film about a man whose muscles are turning into iron. The amalgamation of flesh and silicon has been going on for years. The use of electronic devices embedded in the flesh seem commonplace in fiction and in medicine.

Is this on a level with the stem cell debate – a matter of religious sensitivity? And if so, should that hold back progress for those who believe differently? Are we allowed by the laws of nature to interfere with the balances of life, or have we already gone so far overboard in that endevour that nature can no longer defend us from her inevitable wrath?

Or has our very interference with nature demanded a certain urgency for progress so we may colonialise space? Is the need to define culture as an evolutionary trait starting to overtake the need for culture as a mode of understanding our differences?

As we chip away at our grandchildren’s future with this over consumption are we evolving better faster more reliable grandchildren? It appears that is the inevitable result of our cultural imperative.

If Argentianian ants do not get there first.