Friday, March 3, 2017

Cyberpunk is here and it is Wetware

So CRISPR technology has been growing for a few years but it's essentially here. There's a great Vox article right here on what CRISPR is and what it does...and why we should realize that our fundamental understanding of the future of life has irrevocably changed (we just don't realize it yet). See also this Gizmodo article.

Short vesion: CIRSPR is a very efficient, very cheap and very fast gene editing/splicing technique that basically makes pretty much anything involving gene editing and splicing possible. We're looking at the infancy of transhumanism with CRISPR and I don't even think I'm exaggerating.

And now there's this: conversion of computer data to biodata and back. Poor Johnny Mnemonic and his 128MB data limit. They should have been etching code on to your DNA!

They key issue with the story above appears to be how efficient the process was: there's enough room to effectively etch lengthy programs, videos, virus....you name it. More impressive than etching this data onto DNA was the fact that it could be read back and converted with no loss of data.

Yes, the cyberpunk future is here. It's just a bit wetter and more transhumanist than we might have thought....


2 comments:

  1. This is amazing stuff. When I hear it discussed on NPR, I can almost see my future self looking back on these moments, when I'm driving around hearing about this as news, and thinking, "Man, I had no idea how much this was about to change our world..." Thanks for the post!

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  2. indeed CRISPR is freakin' amazing and so is this, 215 petabytes!

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