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'In this future — whose underpinnings, as Drs. Church and Venter demonstrated, are here already— life as we know it is transformed not by the error catastrophe
by yannis 17y ago
'In this future — whose underpinnings, as Drs. Church and Venter demonstrated, are here already— life as we know it is transformed not by the error catastrophe of radiation damage to our genetic processes, but by the far greater upheaval caused by discovering how to read genetic sequences directly into computers, where the code can be replicated exactly, manipulated freely, and translated back into living organisms by writing the other way. "We can program these cells as if they were an extension of the computer," George Church announced, and proceeded to explain just how much progress has already been made'.
Amazing stuff! 40 years from now login to have your genes changed to change the colour of your eyes. Pity I will probably not be around!
- csbartus 17y agoWait ... the Singularity is over the corner! In 10 years you'll become part of this synthetic life.
- jacquesm 17y agoI doubt it. The singularity may be a fluke of observation bias, it is very well possible that because you are always at the forefront of technological development when you are alive (or you'd be living in the past) you perceive this tremendous advance during your lifetime, leading you to conclude that pretty soon we'll 'take off'. The singularity has been nicknamed 'the rapture of the nerds'.
- csbartus 17y agoThe Singularity must be the next metasystem transition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition), the Control of Culture. As soon as old media will get napstered and Culture will become impossible to be manipulated, and, as soon as we uploaded ourselves completely to the web --- we will have a new digital universe assuring parallel existences and a gateway to the 'old' biological life. Is that good enough for a Singularity?
- jacquesm 17y ago> as soon as we uploaded ourselves completely to the web - I think I see a few technological snags there.
- csbartus 17y ago"The world will be changed by the ability to routinely read genetic sequences into computing systems and then store, replicate, alter and insert them back into living cells." Source: http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/synthetic-life/ http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/synthetic-lif... , based on the current article.
- yannis 17y agoI wish! But just looking as to how long it took to partially fix IE, I very much doubt it!