The Sci-fi Idea Bank is a spreadsheet of 3,567 sci-fi ideas, that proves, if you choose to believe it, that ideas for new technologies appear in science fiction first, and, can serve, for the ambitious, as a catalyst to bring Sci-fi to life. Vintage (like 1634 vintage!) and post-modern, it includes: bio-energy (1726), food tablets […]
Category: Science Fiction
There Will Be Dragons. Imagine. (Full Review)
So, here it is. And the question that might occur to you before you read or as you finish “How to Build a Dragon or Die Trying: A Satirical Look at Cutting Edge Science” is, Can we do it? Because when you get around a group of synthetic biologists, talk often turns to de-extinction projects […]
The $100 Million Science Media Fund
For this year’s SynBioBeta conference, Data Collective founder and investor Matt Ocko hosted a panel on Abundance and Scarcity. Matt backs entrepreneurs attacking trillion-dollar problems to “amplify capitalism’s benefits and reduce its costs to society.” In Matt’s own words, his team is creating a future of “abundance, comity, and amity.” Matt invited artist and storyteller […]
Please Kill Me (Review)
Pedro Paramo is the book I’ve most given away. It’s a thin, easy to read, very influential novel. It will haunt you. The second book I’ve most given away is Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Through a series of alternating interviews, PKM traces the history of punk. From New […]
Brewing Stories to Drive the Bioeconomy
When I speak with non-technical, non-biotech audiences, I’m always looking for a place where we can start the conversation. These days, it’s with brewing. Most people, remember, know little-to-nothing about the way biology is impacting their lives. Most people, I believe, want to know. So these days, I start the conversation with beer and wine. Both […]
Yeast Engineering and Apple Clinics
This week I’ve been thinking a lot about this MIT Technology Review article on writing the yeast genome. The article profiles NYU’s Jef Boeke, one of the founders and leaders of Genome Project write (GP-write). Writing a genome, which is still expensive, will drive advances across many fields (I’ve written about this project in the […]
The Sprawl Trilogy
Netflix just started airing Altered Carbon. It’s a rad take Richard K. Morgan’s 2002 cyberpunk novel. One of my favorite genres, cyberpunk typically explores how the street repurposes tech, life in cyberspace and off-planet. Last fall, I reread William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy – Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive. (Neuromancer, BTW, is credited with […]
The Story Grid. Pedro Paramo.
I’m a story nerd. I enjoy re-reading books, re-watching movies. I like figuring out how the authors or film makers put the story together. What hints did they place at the beginning of the story, and resolve at the end? I’ve read plenty of books on writing screenplays, plotting, and character development. Last year, I […]
2017 Media Consumed: Highlights
Here’s a link to my Pinterest board of media consumed during 2017. It’s always fun to go back and review what I read, listened to and watched. In many ways, it was a year for cyberpunk because I was anticipating Blade Runner 2049 and I wanted to reread Snowcrash. But overall, I didn’t read as […]
I Wanted To Be Right But Synthetic Yeast News Proved Me Wrong
I was wrong. On Quora, someone asked: How far are we from engineering a completely synthetic, self-replicating cell or organism? My original answer was three years. 2020. My answer was based on research I’ve been conducting for What’s Your Bio Strategy? Then last week, Science ran an issue on the creation of synthetic chromosomes. Scientists […]