I CAN'T understand why, in 2014, we still haven't worked out how to grow babies in pods.
I mean, they were doing it in The X Files in the 90s; c'mon, science.
Egg freezing, as suggested as an employment package benefit by Apple and Facebook, is all very well, but if you really want to boost productivity and create jobs, surely pod babies are the win?
The science, to paraphrase Mulder, is out there. In 2002 scientists in the US developed prototypes made out of cells extracted from women's bodies. In early trials, embryos successfully began to grow. It was expected that artificial wombs would be created not too far down the line after that but the developments seem to have stalled somewhat.
There's currently a crowdfunding campaign to develop a hoverboard. I'm sure a hoverboard could be plenty useful but if there's to be any fundraising for futuristic, society-altering technology then artificial wombs should be it.
Being pregnant seems like a terrible state of affairs: sickness, back pain, piles. And what thanks do you get for it? Exactly. People infantilise a pregnant woman, they treat her like she's ill, they turn her body into public property to be commented on and patted. Not to mention all that leaking. I just don't fancy it much.
Imagine being freed, as Apple must imagine for its female employees, of any kind of biological timetable. There would be no limitations for either gender. Freewheel it through your 20s, 30s and 40s and then when you've built up your career, your pension, paid off your student loan, bought a property and gained a modicum of common sense and self-awareness - say, in your mid-50s - it would be time for your employer to cough up for a pod baby.
It's been argued that artificial wombs could lead one gender to eliminate the other from the planet. That seems a little extreme. We'd still need each other for, well, I'm sure we'd come up with something.
Rather than freezing its employees' eggs, the big tech companies could make life easier for working parents by setting up on-site creches. They could expand maternity and paternity leave and give greater flexi-time opportunities. Fine, but this still doesn't deal with the leaking.
The Pill was the great emancipatory development of my mother's generation. I'd like mine to be techno-wombs.
The only point unanswered is how the children would feel about it. It doesn't seem like Apple or Facebook have considered that question either.
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