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    c opies of itself.  Suddenly the fields, streets, kitchens and garbage

    heaps are awash in bright new contraptions stumbling over each other

    in an effort to grab the stuff more contraptions are made of.  And, to

    put it bluntly, there simply isn't enough raw material to go around.

    It doesn't take long before some bright designer endows his

    gadgets with a clever twist.  The improved models speed up the

    raw-material gathering process by pouncing on finished-products from

    rival micro-plants, stripping them to pieces, and using the parts as

    pre-packaged parcels of raw industrial stuff.  The insidious new

    models spread fast, stalking unwary gizmos left and right, strewing the

    planet with discarded components that others snatch in seconds.  Then

    the updated models increase their efficiency even further by working

    in packs.  Sometimes millions of complex final products are lost at a

    time.  But in the grand scheme of the new economy, the loss is not that

    great.  Gadgets abducted for scrap can be replaced at a price that even

    the Koreans would find hard to believe.

    This auto-construction technique, based on Dawkins' replicators,

    is the genetic system.  The genetic method's sheer efficiency is one of

    the primary reasons mother nature isn't nice.  She doesn't have to be.

    For the last few billion years, raw materials have grown so scarce

    and finished goods so numerous that gizmos have scrambled through

    a mad dash to grab and disassemble each other.  But that fact doesn't

    disturb mother nature at all.  In fact, she's discovered that research and

    development is AIDED by the finished products' competition.  Just toss

    them out there and watch them try to outwit each other.  Keep the

    clever and flip the unsuccessful into the circular file.  From a million

    failures will spring the breakthroughs of tomorrow.

    The generative power of the genetic process helps explain why

    we are so appallingly expendable in the eyes of an indifferent cosmos.

    Our pre-historic cousin the Neanderthal?  Clever contraption.

    Numerous anthropologists believe the Neanderthal was capable of

    philosophy, religion and language. Unfortunately once you evolve

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