In the fourth episode of Cowboy Bebop, Spike and Jet are at a famous space restaurant tailing a bounty when a group of eco-terrorists known as the "Space Warriors" arrives and guns down the target. Meanwhile, Faye Valentine finds a mysterious briefcase which contains a powerful genetic weapon.
This episode has a multitude of elements which can be applied to reality, from the nature of eco-terrorist groups, to the fight against consumerism, to media and law enforcement blackouts, to the need for missile defense systems. There are two elements specifically which I would like to hit on in this article.
Technology - The Future of the Service Industry
In the opening scenes of this episode, Spike and Jet are in the aforementioned space restaurant discussing a special type of delicatessen known as the Ganymede Sea Rat. The scene has a "Pulp Fiction" vibe to it, as the beginning of that movie began in a restaurant with two people (a man and a woman) holding a conversation about typical things before wreaking havoc on the place. Notice that the restaurant in this anime uses a menu system that allows them to place orders without having to wait on a server. That isn't to say there aren't servers in the restaurant; they are just used more for the delivering of the food instead of the placing of orders, increasing overall efficiency.
In my post on Virtual Interfaces I discussed a technology once known as Microsoft Surface 1.0 (now known as Microsoft Pixelsense). One of the features in the teaser video was demonstrating how the tabletop could be used in a restaurant setting to manage payment after a meal. In fact, after the devices were put into production, they were mass purchased by hotels, restaurants, and bars across the world. This article demonstrates some of the ways the Harrah's hotel chain developed software not only for the ordering of food and drink, but to socialize with people at other tables, while this article shows how karaoke bars in Hong Kong got in on the action.
$10,000 may be a steep price to pay for a coffee-table computer, but the aesthetic charm brings customers in, and the expediency brought on by not requiring a server to take the orders (only to deliver them) keeps your customers happy. It would be very interesting to see this technology become the standard in all restaurants and entertainment venues over the next decade.
Genetics - The Science of Genetic Weaponry
The seriousness that the Space Warriors can command is derived from their threat, in the form of a biological weapon which could destroy all human life on Ganymede (8 million people). Its mechanism involves targeting the 2% of DNA which differentiates humans from other primates in the order Homonidae.
If you are unfamiliar with biological structures, DNA is composed of a sugar, a phosphate, and one of four bases. These four bases are Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine, and Thymine (Uracil in RNA). Adenine can only bind to Thymine/Uracil, and Cytosine can only bind to Guanine, limiting the core bonding arrangement of DNA to just two possibilities.
In a DNA sequence, bases are divided into groups of three on either strand. These groups of three are known as codons. So if a strand consists of eighteen bases in sequence, there will be six codons on that strand. The number of codon possibilities is 4 x 4 x 4, or 64, and you can find tables of these possible arrangements on the internet.
Since DNA is made up of two strands, its structure can be thrown off if bases are added, removed or changed. A sort of protection DNA has is that it can bond only one of two ways (see above), preventing altered codons from damaging the DNA catastrophically. That said, significant changes will overcome this protection and completely change the overall arrangement of codons to a point that an entirely new substance is created (usually different proteins or enzymes).
I am not a biology major, so I can't give you more specifics than that; however, I will point out something important. Genetic weapons are created to bind to and destroy certain proteins and enzymes in the body, killing off the host (often painfully). Once you know the codon sequence for the target protein/enzyme, you can begin to construct a virus which binds to that sequence of codons.
Cowboy Bebop, of course, is science fiction, so this idea was taken a step further. Instead of destroying the host, the purpose of the episode's bioweapon was to alter cellular development in the host, changing the cell replication process to produce chimpanzee DNA (and thus chimpanzee cells) in a human. Yes, this terrorist group wanted to turn humans into jungle apes. Really terrible idea because society as we know it would come to an end and I don't know why anyone would want that, but I digress.
Genetic engineering in the real world is not at that stage yet. And even though humans have done things like cloning sheep and creating plants which glow like fireflies, it is highly unlikely that we will reach a point of cell alteration of this magnitude any time in the near future.
No comments:
Post a Comment