Juan Enriquez 2003
“Decoding the Future with Genomics”
TED Conference Talk
Crystallized DNA
Mapping and studying DNA is elucidating evolution. Enriquez calls it a “River out of Eden” because DNA is a history of the last billion years. Therefore understanding DNA will change medicine and archeology.
Example: White Europeans diverged from Africans because they were exposed to the plague. Those that survived had a mutation on their CCR5 gene. Through the study of DNA, scientists found this mutation developed 700 years ago, and as a result, Africans are more susceptible to the rapid spread of AIDS.
NEW ZOO OF LIFE
A new zoo of life is discovered through mapping our own genetic history and exploring new terrains on earth:
-There are ten trillion, trillion prochlorococcus–the most abundant species on the planet that we didn’t know existed before a few years ago.
-Our genome is more efficient than some simple amoeba. Humans have approximately 3.2 billion base pairs in our cells whereas this specific amoeba has 620 billion base pairs.
- The Ferroplasma eats iron and lives in an environment like battery acid. It secretes sulfuric acid. It is an ‘archaea’ or an ‘ancient one’ that could survive when the earth was just melted core. He suggests that as we discover life in harsher climates that there is growing evidence for life beyond our planet.
- Thiomargarita namibiensis is a bacteria visible to the human eye that is the size of a period(.) It utilizes sulfates and nitrates to get its energy and is found off the coast of Namibia in the sediment at the bottom of the ocean.
According to the speaker, we are paying attention to “stuff” (Bush and the war) that is temporal. Life isn’t. Whether or not our nation or our species survive, these bacteria will.
EXPERIMENTING WITH THE CODE
Geneticists have begun experimenting with endangered species in order to save them. Scientists take cells from adult animals and put them in a cow’s egg. They “reprogram it” and the cow gives birth to another species.
They are close to closing gene gaps in deteriorated DNA and pull a full string of DNA together
Sounds Familiar...
The speaker effuses that we will be able to take the tree of life and collapse it back. Maybe we will give birth to the primordial ooze.
In 1995 scientists sequenced the DNA of a bacterium. The price is going down to sequence organizes DNA. The first human cost 5 million, 3 million second time and he predicts that soon it will only cost a few thousand dollars. Maybe we will have our own personalized genomes on CDs.
He compares A, T, C, and Gs to 1s and 0s of binary code. (Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, and Guanine are the nucleotide bases that make up the structure of DNA.) Once you have the source code you can make changes to it.
Example: Cliff Tabin’s Lab at Harvard Medical School is reprogramming chicken embryos to grow more wings. Each cell can be programmed to express different body functions. Right now lizards regenerate, but humans don’t. If we keep stem cell research and genomics going, we can learn how this works. During the time of this talk, the Bush administration had passed some sever restrictions on the research with embryonic stem cells. We will be able to stop undifferentiated cells–aka cancer.
We can make very small changes in the gene code and get drastically different outcomes.
We can test for all kinds of genetic information and for 60,000 conditions. While this brings up issues of privacy and insurability, it allows scientists to go after diseases. Knowing what genes are causing the disease allows them to know what treatments will and will not work
Who Controls This Growing Information In Our Fragmented World?
Knowledge of genetics is growing on a log scale. The data is free, but only a very small select population is paying attention. Everyone is focused on the war and on Bush and not on ‘life.’
In a knowledge society the difference between the richest and poorest is 427 to 1 as compared to an agricultural society that is 5 to 1. One third of the global population is producing only 5 percent of the wealth because they don’t understand this change. Literacy in language, computers, and in life code makes the difference. The nations that produce “life” will be those that rise and countries that continually treat their citizens as serfs and fail to educate them will fall.
He discusses that we know how the capacity to build great empires because of the fragmentation of the world. When UN 1950 was founded there were approximately 50 nations now there are about 192.
Then they play him off the stage for time reasons before he can tell us the secrete of using our knowledge of life and code to build a better tomorrow with our children… Darn!
Gary Wolf, March 24, 2008
“Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity”
WIRED Magazine
This article features Ray Kurzweil an inventor, author, and poster boy for the Singularity movement. He and his ideas are the topics for two upcoming movies this year.
Ray Kurzweil
Inventor of: Kurzweil reading machine, algorithms that made Lexis-Nexis possible, speech recognition software that developed robot customer service agents, FatKat an automated program that makes decision in the financial markets.
Despite his successes as a young genius, his genetic history is checkered. His father and grandfather died of heart disease before they were sixty. At age 35, Kurzweil was diagnosed with type-2 diabetes and high cholesterol. Through a restrictive diet he has overcome his diabetes and cholesterol.
Yum!
At 61 He takes 180-210 vitamins/mineral supplements per day and goes to a clinic run by Terry Grossman—leading longevity physicians—once a week to receive longevity treatments. Grossman charges $6,000 per appointment. Two met in 1999 and became partners who continually give Kurzweil new age treatments to extend his life. After all, it would be a shame to die just before the singularity occurred.
The Singularity
“The singularity is near. The continued opportunity to alleviate human distress is one key motivation for continuing technological advancement”
It is a term from cosmology that signifies a border in spacetime, like the edge of a black hole, where the normal laws of measurement do not apply. Mathematician John von Neumann used the term in the 1950s, to discuss the accelerating pace of technological development that “gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs as we know them could not continue.”
The idea was expanded upon by Vernor Vinge in 1993 who put the idea on a time table and guessed that within 30 years, superhuman intelligent machines would arise and “take charge of their own evolution, creating ever smarter successors.”
Kurzweil argues that “while artificial intelligence will render biological humans obsolete, it will not make human consciousness irrelevant.” AIs will first be add-ons to human intelligence to extend our bodies and minds to defeat death and disease and immortalize us.
Kurzweil thinks exponentially and not linearly, and his ideas about technological development work on a exponential scale. Exponential change is difficult to differentiate from a linear regression at the beginning of the scale. This idea is evident in Moore’s law—the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles every 18 months.
Moore's Law
He believes that while our current computers and inventions don’t work perfectly, the fact that we are making robots and computers that mimic human behavior is proof that the world is about to change in major was because of exponential development.
“Computers will soon be smarter than humans. Nobody has to die.”
Grossman and singularitairans show how immortality will arrive in stages:
1. Anti-aging therapies and changes in lifestyle will allow people to reach the 125-year limit to our natural lifespans
2. Biological science will find some of the underlying causes of ageing and allow us to surpass that limit
3. Computers will model human consciousness and we can download our personalities into “nonbiological substrates”
Romana is the inventor’s intelligent computer alter ego who he hopes to become when the singularity happens. Unfortunately Romana loses a turing test because she is too clever and doesn’t have limited intelligence like a human. Kurzweil thinks that human emotion is the most complex of all human behaviors, but happiness should not be the goal of our lives. It should be expanding our knowledge.
Unfortunately for Kurzweil he lives a lonely existence because most of his followers are hedging their bets and don’t completely buy into the idea of immortality. But he predicts by 2030s most of our internal organs will be replaced by machines/robots. And that 2045 the singularity will happen.
Criticisms of The Singularity
-Hard to conceptualize defeating death
-Moore’s law’s viability is being called into question- our technological growth maybe slowing already.
-There are other forms of intelligence that super-intelligent computers can be modeled off of other than human
-We maybe limiting ourselves and incapably of “radical self-improvement” because we will reinforce the fact that the brain has certain technical limitations because of its structure.
“Every day he stays alive brings him closer to this climax in intelligence, and to the time when Ramona will be real. Kurzweil is a technical person, but his goal is not technical in this respect. Yes, he wants to become a robot. But the robots of his dreams are complex, funny, loving machines. They are as human as he hopes to be.”
Nicholas Ruiz III
Review of Eugene Thacker’s Biomedia
-Human beings narrate their own existence. But we are now editing ourselves via our internal code–DNA. The literary extrapolation of life past our own existence has become a study of technology. Many societies have yet to grasp fully this change because of capital, but with globalization they will eventually gain access to the “technological implementation of the code.”
-What we have yet to fully engage with as a society is that our beings are the ‘new media.’ Biomedia is the recontextualization of the human being with technology that creates a new understanding of how biology functions.
-Mediated by capital, the code of life (i.e. DNA) and the code of technologies are merging (technology and biology are merging in new ways for those with money).
-We encode our DNA in our genome in biocomputing hardware/software. This digital map of ourselves is then decoded to understand human possibilities and to “digitally edit flesh” to optimize the existing substrate—i.e. our bodies.
-While our societies used to make a distinction between body and soul, this separation has been lost in modern society. We are unable to find the soul; we feel as if we have lost it. Biomedia suggests that we have lost nothing other than the concept.
-The genetic code will be collapsed into digital code giving us “the Code.” The boundaries between bodies of silicon (computers) and DNA bodies will blur.
-DNA is information, DNA is a program. It has computational power. It is a mechanism.
-Biomedia needs to be defined so we can ground our discussions of bioethics in the culture of biomedia. How we narrate our human condition in terms of our bodies is also important to understand along with categories of understanding like the presumptive terms “natural,” “technical,” and “real.”
WRAPPING IT ALL UP
-Everything is happening in the near future with an explosion of technological and biomedical advancement that will surpass our wildest dreams!!! Is this necessarily a good thing? Both authors present a rosey picture without much down side to genetic manipulation and transhumanism.
Eek! You will be assimilated.
-Kurzweil’s arguments are based on idealized computers, not real world ones that function on imperfect software. Read Lanier’s response to Kruzweil’s singularity theory and others like it.
-Kurzweil has been accused of ‘New Age Spiritualism’ or as a ‘Geek searching for God’ with the quest for AI, but Thacker claims that Biomedia will lead to an understanding that the Soul is a farce.
-They have been able to generate tissue to build new tracheas and are learning how to regenerate ‘wings,’ but how quickly will mainstream medicine take to adapt this? Will it just be as Thacker claims a change that is mainly available to those with capital?
-Thacker claims we need to understand Biomedia before we understand bioethics, but where is the moral ground in all of these papers and articles?
-DNA=Code. We are bio computers. What makes us human?
Possibly Relevant Posts:
- Trapped- Mental Illness and Computers (4) | Franklin
- Creating the Virtual Body: Long Live the New Flesh! (7) | Sara Hardwick
- Concluding the 4th travelogue and this evolutionary step (0) | Mushon
21 Comments
Some of Kurtzweil’s claims seem a little far-fetched, but I thought the idea of exponential growth in technological change was important for understanding where he is coming from. I found Enriquez’s talk much more believable. Finding a way to use amoebae as storage devices seems a lot more useful and relatable than escaping death by “becoming” information.
Great summary. I am also happy you brought up Lanier and his critique of AI. I am looking forward to seeing more critical responses here, both about the assertions about and the approaches to this biomediated future.
The concept of Kurzweil’s defeating death is fascinating, though doesn’t sound too plausible. I have two criticisms: 1) I have about the video and reading are that both Kurzweil and Enriquez say that their predictions will come true in the next 20-30 years. Maybe, but it reminds me of how we’d all be traveling in flying cars, or living on the moon in the year 2000. 2) I agree with you Lauren – both of these arguments are idealized. There could be major consequences to the Singularity movement and the potential power of life code knowledge seems almost too powerful.
The Enriquez speech was really compelling, and I don’t really have the background to tackle any of his claims head-on. However, I think he might fall prey to a common quirk all technocrats seem to espouse: that their inventions, the ones on the cusp of belonging to the future, can only be conceived in the image of contemporary modes of production. Just as Babbage, a product of the industrial age, conceived of the computer’s CPU as “the mill”, we see Enriquez’s vision of future medicines operating by the logic of object oriented programing. Kurzweil, too. Thinkers like McLuhan warn us against this technological-determinist thinking.
Also, I would like to submit this clip from an episode of Futurama, where Fry (our time-traveling protagonist who finds himself all-of-a-sudden in the year 3000) finally fulfills his life-long fantasy: dating a celebrity. The technology of the future allows any consumer to download the personality of any celebrity onto a blank robot, in a Kurzweilian vision of a world where humans achieve immortality by preserving their intellects as software… I make a clip for you guys to watch here: http://blip.tv/file/2913881
I agree with Lauren’s perspective that this exponential growth of technology is beginning to slow, but I believe this is only a temporary slow-down as researchers find the next step in technology’s evolution. It’s only a matter of time before we discover that new material that we can mold to our needs/desires and allow it to once again grow exponentially.
This idea of immortalizing ourselves in the machine is nothing new, especially if you also consider the simple personification of the human psyche guised within the computer veiled by the human image concept (…if that makes sense to anyone). It’s to this point that I agree with Alison that even though they say we are headed towards this singularity where we’ll be walking around with organs grown for our benefit, we’re probably much further away then they predict.
We’ve already started to look at the bioethics of such technologies, and even though our nation may be, as Juan would argue, ahead of most of the rest of the world in our research into such fields, we are still very split as to whether we want to proceed in this direction. And maybe it does come down to the spiritual level because the argument tends to come down to whether or not we want to play god (or God)?
Kurzweil, here, becomes one of those thinkers that we can only take with a grain of salt. In an idealized world, his prophecy might sounds perfect, but if we learn anything in this program it’s that our world isn’t perfect, thus preventing such ideas from flourising (communism, schizoanalysis, or psychoanalysis) and so we can only take these ideas and use them where applicable with certain regard for their follies.
I thought the Enriquez talk was the most interesting (practical applications are COOL!), and I look forward to reading the Lanier link Lauren gave us later today. Here’s a question for the group though:
SHOULD WE BE BRINGING STUFF BACK TO LIFE? I’m not going to go all Pet Cemetery on you. I actually support stem cell research (I say “actually” because I’m more of God person than a Science person, if you put a gun to my head.) Here’s my critique of Enriquez though…
I think we should, as a society, spend an equal amount of time and money valiantly trying to create a system of governance for the use of this research because if we do NOT, then the George Bushes, the Abe Lincolns, the Ayatollahs, the Premiers, the Murdochs, the Jobs–the sovereigns of history past and present, will become astronomically more important than they are now, regardless of who or how many speak the “language of life.” These leaders who we either elect, pay and/or suffer to speak for us will likely, if ignored for “life,” use the research or the lack of research in ways that dramatically impact our lives.
Lauren rightfully calls out the idealized view here. Enriquez, in particular, suggests that science is incorruptible. Maybe he doesn’t say this, but he certainly says we pay attention to the wrong thing (politics). Yet, science IS political. He could improve his rhetoric by advocating for a greater focus on this amazing information and potentiality, period. Of course, he was speaking to a roomful of “smart people” so he may have been using the technique of “hey, look at how dumb the rest of the world is,” but that seldom works outside of the room.
P.S. Lauren already used images from two of my favorite SciFi things: Star Trek & Gattaca. Here is another fave from both my childhood and today that speaks to the tension between humans and computer-mediated research:
http://www.syfy.com/battlestar/
So say we all?
Like any good eccentric, Kurzweil makes you scratch your head and wonder what the hell is going on. What got me however is that I’ve never really stopped to consider fully the exponetial pace of technology in the 20th to 21st century given that most of us grew up already surrounded by computers and the idea of the Internet. To look back at the leaps made, and projections of ideas, it doesn’t seem as extreme to beleive that we will be facing some interesting and challenging situations in dealing with AI.
I did also like the common refrain of how bad it would suck to die before everyone lives forever after the singularity- would be quite sad.
Also, was I the only one who was a little freaked out by the four winged chickens? Or did it just make everyone hungry?
Did the singularity remind anyone else of The Last Question by Isaac Asimov?? http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
Kurzweil’s thoughts honestly freak me out a little bit. I don’t know why anyone would basically want to become a robot…if death is no longer imminent at some point in one’s life, what is the motivation? DNA is a code, a code that allows us to do something and not others (not all are blessed with great genes..), but i would like to think that the concept of us one day not being around anymore would pus poeple to make a contribution in their lifetime, and live their life to the fullest. Stem cell research is definitely crucial, especially in regards to cancer research, but i’ll be damned if I eve buy a four winged chicken at the supermarket fr dinner (@franklin – yes that freaked me out too!). I do not see technology growing exponentially the way that it has been for too much longer, we’re bound to hit a threshold at some point…hopefully AI won’t become the type of situation where our bodies become some sort of avatar for code…
@Franklin: I jumped out of my chair and squealed when I saw the extra-winged chicken! EEK!
@gorditamedia: frak yeah, so say we all!
I too enjoyed Enriquez’s talk – I like these science geeky things that make me go oooh and aaah – the possibilities seem SO endless when presented like that, eh? but after all of that, I still had some skepticism left over because I don’t think this’ll move forward as fast as he seems to think. having said that, I do believe that everything he said definitely seems possible. not sure how I feel about bringing things back to life – not for any ‘god’ reason, but because I do still believe in evolution and survival of the fittest and stuff. bringing the dodo back to life will only serve to make it a novelty item in a zoo, and if it was released into the wild, it might adversely affect the ecosystem and other organisms – I don’t think that’s a good outlook. I certainly don’t want Dr. Moreau or Jurassic Park like things!
I had read the Kurzweil piece when it came out in Wired and remembered thinking that what he was trying to achieve was certainly weird. I guess at some level someone has to start the whole immortality thing to see how far or where it goes, but to assume that you are destined to be around for something is a little… I don’t know. the more I think about it, the more I feel like when my time is up, my time is up (I’m scared of death, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t coming!) and to prolong that artificially may not be the right thing to do (but my fear of death makes me want this to be true as well!)
And maybe that is the survival of the fittest – the next generation (not mine, I’ll probably be long dead) will figure out a way to keep living for a long time, but then they might lose the ability to procreate and on and on. a futurist’s life must be weird – coming up with possible scenarios based on directions that science is moving in… but still gives us lots to think about =)
@Melissa: thanks for the Asimov – haven’t read him in a long long time so it was nice to reacquaint myself =)
Melissa this is a great story that is applicable to this discussion. I especially like the line “The Galactic AC has solved many problems for us, but in solving the problems of preventing old age and death, it has undone all its other solutions.”
That is something to chew on…
This is scary! The stuff about immortality kind of makes me get the willies–have these people never read a science fiction story? Immortality is bad news! (That being said, my family’s genetics suck as much as Kurzweil’s, so I’d like to get me some of those longevity treatments. But not forever!)
I agree with gorditamedia that the important thing now is to work on ways to govern this kind of genetic tomfoolery. There’s a lot of exciting potential, but we don’t want another Jurassic Park situation on our hands. We definitely need a codified law of bioethics sometime soon.
I shot an interview with Kurzweil in 2007 about the whole longevity issue. One of his answers to the questions of ethics and why would we want to live this long had to do with intellectual dialogue. Basically the longer any given consciousness lives, the more experience it gains and the more wise it becomes. It is better to have an author alive and defend their ideas rather than have someone else interpret them how they want and totally butcher them (Marx anybody?).
I also saw him talk a while back and he mentioned how prototypes have already been made for nanorobots that can enter our blood stream and accomplish different tasks for the immune system….crazy.
This was a really good summary. I enjoyed the subject matter this week. Grasping the concept of mediatizing (is that a word?) animals (including ourselves) was probably impossible to comprehend up until the last century. You know, back when people could hardly believe that a machine such as the phonograph could produce music in their very own living rooms. What better way to illustrate that technology is, in fact, exponential? It’s growing at an alarming rate. I’m not convinced that its going to slow down any time soon (as evidenced by my podcast).
In middle school, we read a book called the singularity. The concept is a bit different; two brothers find a singularity (a time pocket type device) in a shed, and they decide to spend the night. This one night in the real world turns out to be 3 years within the singularity. They go through something akin to solitary confinement during their stay, and they both come out much more physically mature than when they entered. They’re unable to reconcile the fact that the past 3 years to them were only one night. Will we ever be able to reconcile concepts such as immortality? I think Kurzweil is an idealist, and that he’s so intelligent that certain “common sense” issues escape him. Even if we do reach a point of singularity and immortality, what will that mean for us? With no fear of the unknown, what is to preserve concepts like morality? Why live to pursue knowledge when you’re so incredibly jaded with being perpetually alive? I think what makes us human is our vulnerability, empathy, and intense emotion. I suppose that intangible traits are what make up the soul – which could turn out to be only human component that is not capable of being improved or physically manipulated.
From an evolutionary and biological standpoint, the purpose of life is to procreate and sustain the species. That goes out the window in a world of immortality. I suppose of that happens, we will officially be machines rather than humans. Machines can be conscious, too. This seems incredibly bleak to me, and leaves me with an uncomfortable knot in my stomach. If this happens during my life time, I’m taking my family and heading for the hills.
CHOCOLATE CHIP? REALLY? REALLY PEOPLE?
Moving on, Kurtzweil = looney. I’m sure one day the majority of his claims about the future will come true, but I highly doubt it will be by 2045. I agree with his statement about knowledge (o hay grad. school) vs. happiness, however, I’ve always seen it as knowledge = happiness. Why you gotta go and separate the two, Kurtz?
Basically, what I’m trying to say is the zombie apocalypse will happen long before any of this.
Nanobots have long freaked my out especially after reading Prey by Michael Crichton and watching Mr. Crusher’s science experiment go awry in TNG. But the government has a lot of money invested in the development of nanobiotechnology (with a huge development center at Cornell) for health and environmental purposes. Very interesting stuff.
Creepy. But interesting to think that since we are not yet (yet!) a global culture, how AI capabilities – and the attendant ethical questions – evolve in say China could be vastly different from what evolves here (e.g., it’s not such a stretch to imagine space-challenged, one child China putting an age cap, “No one can live past 110″)
In the States at least, with our industry-propelled medical R&D systems, I imagine that if and when these capabilities become closer, the biomedical community will do what they generally do when faced with thorny issues: make some show of bowing to the greatest public outcry, but carry on research and keep following the breadcrumbs to where future money might lie. If they can see a market for such “immortality,” interested entities will keep funding the research – and funding equals genuine possibility.
“God creates dinosaurs, God destroys dinosaurs. God creates Man, Man destroys God, Man creates dinosaurs…” Definitely familiar stuff here. The idea of integrating with the computers we use seems both disturbing and exciting, however there is a saying my father taught me “If you can’t beat em, Join em”. Wireless internet access through my brain would be cool, but then we have a sticky question… can the human brain be hacked? As for biotechnology and life-code, there are plenty of people who are interested in that research field, I have serious questions about its morality though. After reading a few Michael Crichton novels, I found my self thinking more in depth about this changing world and, quite frankly, I’m concerned about where it’s heading.
I’m in a buzz over what transhumanists and singularitarians mean when they say ‘information’ as something which we ultimately are. Does the type of physical system matter in producing long-lived personalities? Does the composition of a body matter in maintaining a stable self? These questions don’t seem satisfactorily answered in Ray Kurzweil’s talks, nor in anywhere else as far as I know. If anyone knows of some paper or talk which discusses these issues, I’ll love to know.
Cathy, try Jaron Lanier’s One Half A Manifesto: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier/lanier_index.html His later writings is as provocative but unfortunately not as rigorous as this one.