6 ms·
Musing: Hmm, so let's play with Diffie-Hellplant. So you have two inbred genomes as two secrets, persisted as individual organisms. Alice and Bob negotiate on
by scarmig 11y ago
Musing:
Hmm, so let's play with Diffie-Hellplant. So you have two inbred genomes as two secrets, persisted as individual organisms. Alice and Bob negotiate on a public inbred genome that they pull from some kind of seed store (being careful to never re-use one they've used before!). Alice and Bob both create their own crossbreeds deterministically, from the secret organism and the public one. It's hard to get the private genomes from the two crosses, so they can send the seeds in the mail to each other.
After that, I'm not sure you can get two shared secret clones from the crossbreeds and the opposite private inbreeds. (ETA: Pretty positive you can't, though if anyone has any ideas along these lines, I'm eager to hear!)
Sounds like the start of some cypher-biopunk novel, though.
- gknoy 11y agoUntil this moment, I had not realized I would find such a book interesting.
- scarmig 11y agoIf you're interested in sci-fi where biotech trumps cybertech, The Windup Girl is a great read. Relevant to the article, too. It's set in a post-carbon dystopian Bangkok, where giant agribusiness monopolies dominate the world through control of the food supply, including offensive bioengineering to create mutant plagues that destroy native crops and introduce dependency. The main character is an agent of one of these agricorps, whose mission is espionage against Thailand's central seedbank.
- DanBC 11y agoAlso "Calorie Man". Seemingly available here: http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/WindupStories.pdf http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/WindupStories.pdf
- ethbro 11y ago"Calorie Man" reminded me a lot of "New Rose Hotel" by Gibson. Funny how the same story filters through different lenses as the years tick past.