[tt] [SALT] Mapping life (Juan Enriquez talk)

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from Stewart Brand <sb at gbn.org> -----

From: Stewart Brand <sb at gbn.org>
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 08:42:41 -0700
To: salt at list.longnow.org
Subject: [SALT] Mapping life (Juan Enriquez talk)
Reply-To: services at longnow.org


"All life is imperfectly transmitted code," Enriquez began, "and it 
is promiscuous."  Thus discoveries like the one last month of an 
entire bacterial genome inside the DNA of a fruitfly is exploding the 
old tree-of-life models of evolution. The emerging map replaces gene 
lineages with gene webs.

"There is a whole genomic continent to discover, and we've just 
mapped part of the coastline so far."  Noting that his friend Craig 
Venter has just transplanted the DNA from one microbe into a 
different one, and booted it up there, Enriquez said that humans are 
going to be increasingly designing and controlling the code of life. 
"We'll do with bacteria what we do with our pets."

Likewise new maps of brain function are raising questions such as, 
"Can we model the brain, can we download it, can we transplant it, 
can we reboot it?"  Prostheses such as robotic arms used to be driven 
by muscle signals, but now they are being controlled directly from 
the brain.

Enriquez noted that some nations are charging ahead with such 
technology and the education that drives it while others cripple 
themselves by holding back.  Portugal had colonies throughout the 
world, he said, but they never respected the natives enough to help 
educate them, and so left intellectual blight behind them and at 
home.  London and Paris are full of Indian and Chinese restaurants, 
but there are none in Portugal.  He showed a photo of a billboard 
that read: "Portugal--- We were a world power for about 15 minutes."

The new maps of life, he said, will profoundly affect countries, 
business, religion and ethics.  Being alive in the midst a scientific 
renaissance like this is Christmas every day.

During Q&A Enriquez lamented that the pharmacology industry has 
retreated to doing just marketing now instead of discovery, haven 
been driven into a defensive crouch by public misapplication of the 
"Precautionary Principle" that all new technologies are guilty until 
proven innocent, and innocence is impossible to prove.  Thus the 
potential death of tens is used to head off treatments that could 
save tens of thousands.  I asked him, "What would you call the 
opposite of the Precautionary Principle?"  Kevin Kelly offered from 
the audience, "How about the Pro-actionary Principle?"

				--Stewart Brand


-- 


Stewart Brand -- sb at gbn.org
The Long Now Foundation - http://www.longnow.org
Seminars & downloads: http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/

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Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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