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I was at Compute Midwest (a tech conference in Kansas City, Missouri) this past fall and saw a demo of this very thing by Autodesk's Andrew Hessel. He ordered s

I was at Compute Midwest (a tech conference in Kansas City, Missouri) this past fall and saw a demo of this very thing by Autodesk's Andrew Hessel. He ordered some customized bacteria (maybe yeast? I don't exactly recall) with the conference title encoded and then sequenced into the microbes. It was very interesting to me that that level of manipulation is available to any of us, right now (even if it's not exactly useful). It did bring up some concerns, though -- do we now have mail-order anthrax manufacturing? This isn't something I'm seriously worried about, but it does seem like something to consider in the future as this technology evolves. Something else I just thought of while typing this is that this would make an awesomely sci-fi means of information storage. No need to remember a password, we've encoded your gut flora with your private key!

wf 13y ago
I love the internet. I was at Compute Midwest too. His talk was where I initially learned about this. Are you from KC?
- jordan0day 13y ago
  Yep, sure am! I really like CM as it's a "big ideas" type-of tech conference, compared to the other sorts we tend to have in the area, which are more geared towards flavor-of-the-month web framework demos and the like.
SkyMarshal 13y ago
>Something else I just thought of while typing this is that this would make an awesomely sci-fi means of information storage. No need to remember a password, we've encoded your gut flora with your private key! Was the first thing that occurred to me too. Talk about steganography.
- vwinsyee 13y ago
  >Something else I just thought of while typing this is that this would make an awesomely sci-fi means of information storage. No need to remember a password, we've encoded your gut flora with your private key! First occurred to me as interesting too. Then I realized that you'd be dropping your private key in every toilet you defecate into. Not to say that secure intra-body information storage isn't possible though. Then again, re: the steganography -- gut flora's pretty diverse (and there's a lot of it). People might not necessarily think to, or want to, dig through your shit.

wf 13y ago

I love the internet. I was at Compute Midwest too. His talk was where I initially learned about this. Are you from KC?

jordan0day 13y ago
Yep, sure am! I really like CM as it's a "big ideas" type-of tech conference, compared to the other sorts we tend to have in the area, which are more geared towards flavor-of-the-month web framework demos and the like.

SkyMarshal 13y ago

>Something else I just thought of while typing this is that this would make an awesomely sci-fi means of information storage. No need to remember a password, we've encoded your gut flora with your private key! Was the first thing that occurred to me too. Talk about steganography.

vwinsyee 13y ago
>Something else I just thought of while typing this is that this would make an awesomely sci-fi means of information storage. No need to remember a password, we've encoded your gut flora with your private key! First occurred to me as interesting too. Then I realized that you'd be dropping your private key in every toilet you defecate into. Not to say that secure intra-body information storage isn't possible though. Then again, re: the steganography -- gut flora's pretty diverse (and there's a lot of it). People might not necessarily think to, or want to, dig through your shit.