Sending DNA Into Space? WTF?

I read this article a few minutes ago about a certain company in Silicon Valley that is sending a few people’s DNA into space. It’s called Operation Immortality, and it’s meant to preserve the DNA of the best and the brightest (and seriously, please turn the sound off on your website — there’s nothing worse than navigating the web and having something chirp in your ear randomly when you hit a page).

Who have they chosen to represent mankind? Well here’s the short list so far:

• Kevin Rose, creator of the social-bookmarking website Digg
• Robert Scoble, one of the world’s most popular tech blogger
• Tim Draper, founder of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson

So I gotta ask, and I mean no disprespect to any of the guys on the list, but is that really the best mankind can offer for the future? What about a nobel peace prize winner, or a few noted artists or musicians? Maybe toss in a few fields medal winners and a humanitarian or two for good measure.

If the company is trying to preserve the human race, then I would think diversity is would be important, not three guys from the same basic sector. Yes, it’s important that Digg continue to live on 1000’s of years from now in some distant human establishment reconstructed from DNA, but maybe tossing in a girl or two might be a good idea, or a few people that don’t play on computers all day.

The ice caps are receding, the earth is warming at an unprecedented scale, and animal species are going extinct each and every day – and here we have companies sprouting up trying to save a few bloggers and technology people from extinction. I would think we can find a few better things to spend that money on.

Obviously it’s a marketing ploy meant to get people like me to blog about it, and I actually think it’s a neat idea, but if you’re serious about preserving the human race, then please add some non-techies to the list.