The seminar will draw from resources in linguistics, neuroscience, sociology, and literature to consider future trends in human communication. Written language and reading over 4,000 years have helped form the human mind. Recent changes in information technology may have a profound effect on this acquired state, for better or for worse.

The discoveries of bacterial insertions in the human genome, escapes of modified plant genes into corn's wild relatives, and mutations of Avian Flu into potential pandemics raise concerns about how bioethics remains largely (and inaccurately) premised on the control of discrete bodies like 'selfish' genes.