Surviving Progress Page #5

what you've had in previous eras of epic collapse

which is that even if one civilization goes

down and it may take a while to recover

there are other robust civilizations

that can be guardians of progress.

ROBERT WRIGHT.

- AUTHOR OF NONZERO: THE LOGIC OF HUMAN DESTINY

In that sense some of the things that

have been reassuring in the past

about progress don't necesserily

apply to the current situation

'cause once you get to the global level

you've only got one experiment working.

That's just the inevitable combination

of its growth ever since the stone age

and there were waystations

like the Roman empire

and now here we are and more and

more people, we're in the same boat

and they face problems and either they will

solve them together or suffer together

possibly on a catastrophic scale.

ESCAPING THE TRAP

We are entering an increasingly

dangerous period of our history

our genetic code still caries the selfish and agressive

intincts that were survival advantage in the past

but I'm an optimist.

STEPHEN HAWKING - THEORETICAL PHYSICIS If we are the only inteligent beings in the galaxy

we should make sure we survive and continue.

If we can avoid diseaster for the next

two centuries our species should be safe.

We have made remarkable progress

in the last hundred years.

Our only chance of going through survival

is not to remain on planet earth

but to spread out into space

I was at the conference a few

years back with George Lukas

and he came up and said

there is only two hopes for humanity.

Either we find another planet to

colonize after we've destroyed this one

or perhaps your technology, meaning what we are doing

with genetic code, might allow us to transform ourselves

or other aspects of the planet

where we can continue to live here.

J. CRAIG VENTER.

- BIOLOGIST / CEO SYNTHETIC GENOMICS

We're here to celebrate the complition of

the first survey of the entire human genome

without a doubt this is the most important,

most wondrous map ever produced by human kind.

We are announcing today that the first time our species

can read the chemical letters of its genetic code.

For the last several years my team

has been sailing around the world

looking for all the species in the

ocean, the microspecies, on filters

and we isolate all the DNA,

all at once from all of them

I have a novel way of

looking at these genes

I've use them as the design

components of the future.

It's mind-bugging concept, even

though we're doing it everyday,

that we can simply start with four bottles

of chemicals, write the genetic code

and change the genetic code of species,

basically developing new species

and we can try and find ways to make fuels

that other people haven't even imagined

we can do this with novel source of food

we're limited only by our imagination

and whatever biological reality is

when we consider trying to replace oil,

we use bilions of gallons of oil a year

it's a, I can't even, i think I have pretty good

imagination, envision what a billion gallons of oil is

making a billion gallons of oil from invisible

microbs is a certain leap of faith

in fact that's how we proceed in science.

Instead of writing software for computers,

we can now write software for life.

By changing and taking over evolution,

changing the timecourse of evolution

and going into deliberate design

of species for our own survival

at least gives us some points of optimism

that we have a chance to control our destiny.

We're here today to announce

the first synthetic cell.

This is the first self-replicating species that

we've had on the planet whose parent is a computer.

GODS R US?

One of the challanges that

faces the human species is

we're more and more in a

position of acting like gods

it has been true for a while because we have

the ability to change the climate for example

this is gonna be even more

true with genetic technologies

we're gonna be able to manipulate

other species ad eventualy ourselves.

We're gonna be in a position of

controling our own faith in a way that

no creature has ever, you know, in billion

years on the planet had an opportunity to do.

I once wrote a poem in

which a mad bishop said

"a man became god, became greater

than god, and the godhood of man"

I do not see anyone living in this materialistic

society as being anything like god

I don't know what god is,

but in my wildest dreams I would never

conceive of god or a god as being like

a modern human being in

a materialistic society.

We're anything but godlike, I think

the challenges are so

overwhelming to all of us

that we're all trying to use whatever new

tools we can to try and change the future.

Synthetic biology is a

progress trap par exellence.

JIM THOMAS.

- ACTIVIST/AUTHOR OF THE NEW BIOMASSTERS

Biologist have pointed out that whese

engineering aproach is all very well

and that engineers can try to treat life as it

was some kind of computer engineering substrate

but ultimately the microbes are

gonna end up loughing at them

the life doesn't work like that.

I think the problems that we're seeing

now whever we are talking about hunger,

massive inequity, when we're talking about

climate change or the loss of biodiversity

have been driven over the last 200 years

by a system of overproduction of stuff

and overconsuption of stuff

and that's being inflated and inflated and inflated to a

point where there really is not in any way reasonable

the companies and those of the

governements who supported that approach

are now saying that they will provide new

technologies to continue that consumption of stuff

that level of production.

It's just not realistic.

ExxonMobil and Synthetic Genomics

have built a new facility

to identify the most

productive species of algea.

How'd you imaigne amazing little criters make

crit oil which we could turn into biofuels.

They also absorb CO2. We are hoping to

suplemet fuels that we use in our vehicles

to some day help meet the

words energy demands.

What is harder mapping the entire

genome set that makes up a human being

or making algea produce energy?

Making algea produce energy is not hard but doing

it on a scale required to have a major economic

and environmental impact is

going to be a huge challenge

but have got partner in ExxonMobil to try

and get it to a scale that it needs to be

of billions gallons a year.

A lot of engineering is reqired for

facilities the size of San Francisco

I think that they are

serious and we're serious.

What we're seeing alongside the development of synthetic

biology is a massive corporate grab on plant life.

Literaly speaking that means a grab

on land and a grab on seas as well.

Where people have been moved out of land

to make way for the growing of plant life

that can be transformed into plastics,

chemicals, fuels and so forth

and what drives synthetic biology is not an

attempt to save the planet or help humanity

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