Hack your own Genome

Biohacking might be the next big thing, especially if you can get a full genome digest of yourself for 300,000 dollars today, think about how much cheaper this will be in 10 years, and then 20 years after that. If you can fly into orbit for 200,000 dollars on virgin galactic, why not hack your own genome.

This brings up both good and bad ideas. While the technology itself might not be evil, the desire to create the perfect whatever, from people to babies, to plants, animals, and otherwise will have to be addressed sooner or later. This will cause an even bigger upheaval in populations than the change from the agricultural age into the industrial age. There will be a whole new take on luddites when this becomes cheap, easy, and an afternoons quick visit to the doctors office.

Rewriting your own DNA might be as common place as getting a botox treatment.

The idea though is that as we get smarter about biology and how the genome works, that the marriage of technology and genetics might mean that we solve some of the more complex problems that we have. Fuel, food, shelter being the primary reasons that people fight over things. Be the first kid on your block to make a new critter, or something a bit more dystopian like Blade Runner, biological robots.

Venter: Hopefully it changes how we do everything…Trying to find a way to have substitutes for burning oil and coal…designing number of organisms to replace the existing infrastructure…there is new green jet fuel in testing….we can have 10,000 - 100,000 - a million refineries in the U.S. We now have biological fuel cells driven by bacteria that can take human waste water and made electricity or clean water out of it. Each home can generate its own fuel in the future source; Barrons

While we all spin around web 2.0 and web 3.0, humans 2.0 is also in the making, the real key will be the marriage of technology and biology. The singularity that AI people keep on talking about might be us. As we get smarter with the brain computer interface, it makes sense to hack your own genome to either make that link easier or to reduce issues gotten by our parents. The real question is can these changes be made to the genome that are transferable by the parents to the children.

While we can see both utopian and dystopian ideals around this from designer babies, to perfected human computer interfaces, robotic and human components, the end of all this will be limited by our imaginations and our fears.