WEBVTT

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So let me with start with Roy Amara.

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So Roy's argument is that
most new technologies

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tend to be overestimated
in their impact to begin with,

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and then they get underestimated in
the long term because we get used to them.

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These really are days
of miracle and wonder.

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You remember that
wonderful song by Paul Simon?

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There were two lines in it.

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So what was it that was considered
miraculous back then?

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Slowing down things, back then,
and the long distance call.

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Because, of course, you used
to get interrupted by operators

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who would tell you long distance calling,
do you want to hang up?

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And now we think nothing of calling
all over the world.

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Well, something similar may be happening

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with reading and programming life.

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But before I unpack that,

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let's just talk about telescopes.

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So telescopes were overestimated
originally in their impact.

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This is one of Galileo's early models.

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People thought it was just
going to ruin all religion.

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(Laughter)

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So we're not paying that much
attention to telescopes.

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But of course telescopes
launched 10 years ago, as you just heard,

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could take this Volkswagen,
fly it to the Moon,

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and you could see the lights
on that Volkswagen light up on the Moon.

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And that's the kind of resolution power
that allowed you to see

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little specks of dust
floating around distant suns.

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Imagine for a second that this
was a sun a billion light years away

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and you had a little speck of dust
that came in front of it.

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and that's what detecting
an exoplanet is like.

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And the cool thing is the telescopes
that are now being launched

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would allow you to see
a single candle lit on the Moon,

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and if you separated it by one plate,

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you could see two candles
separately at that distance.

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And that's the kind
of resolution that you need

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to begin that little speck of dust
as it comes around the sun

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and see if it has a blue-green signature.

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And if it does have
a blue-green signature,

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it means that life is common
in the Universe.

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The first time you ever
see a blue-green signature

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on a distant planet,

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it means there's photosynthesis there,

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there's water there,

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and the chances you saw
the only other planet

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with photosynthesis are about zero.

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And that's a calendar-changing event.

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There's a before and after
we are alone in the Universe.

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Forget about the discovery
of whatever continent.

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So as you're thinking about this,
we're now beginning

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to be able to image most of the Universe,

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and that is a time of miracle and wonder.

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And we kind of take that for granted.

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Something similar is happening in life.

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So we're hearing about life
in these little bits and pieces.

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We hear about CRISPR
and we hear about this technology

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and we hear about this technology,
but the bottom line on life

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is that life turns out to be a code.

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And life as code is
a really important concept

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because it means,

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just in the same way
as you can write a sentence

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in English or in French or Chinese,

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just in the same way
as you can copy a sentence,

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just in the same way
as you can edit a sentence,

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just in the same way
as you can print a sentence,

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you're beginning to be able
to do that with life.

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It means that we're beginning
to learn how to read this language.

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And this, of course, is the language
that is used by this orange.

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So how does this orange execute code?

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It doesn't do it in ones and zeroes
like a computer does.

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It sits on a tree and one day it does,

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plop,

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and that means, execute.

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AACTAAG. Make me a little root.

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TCGACC. Make me a little stem.

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GAC. Make me some leaves.
AGC. Make me some flowers.

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And then GCAA. Make me some more oranges.

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If I edit a sentence in English

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on a word processor,

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then what happens is you can go
from this word to that word.

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If I edit something in this orange

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and put in GCAAC,

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using CRISPR or something else
that you've heard of,

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then this orange becomes a lemon

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or it becomes a grapefruit
or it becomes a tangerine.

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And if I edit one in a thousand letters,

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you become the person
sitting next to you today.

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Be more careful where you sit.

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(Laughter)

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What's happening on this stuff
is it was really expensive to begin with.

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It was like long distance calls.

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But the cost of this is dropping
50 percent faster than Moore's Law.

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The first $200 full genome
was announced yesterday by Veritas.

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And so as you're looking at these systems,

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it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter,
it doesn't matter, and then it does.

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So let me just give you
the map view of this stuff.

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This is a big discovery.

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There's 23 chromosomes. Cool.

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Let's now start using a telescope version,
but instead of using a telescope,

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let's use a microscope to zoom in

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on the interior of those chromosomes,

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which is the Y chromosome.

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It's a third the size of the X.
It's recessive and mutant.

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But hey, just a male.

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And as you're looking at this stuff,

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here's kind of a country view

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at a 400 base pair resolution level,

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and then you zoom in to 550
and then you zoom in to 850

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and you can begin to identify
more and more genes as you zoom in.

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And then you zoom in to the state level

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and you can begin to tell
who's got leukemia,

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how did they get leukemia,
what kind of leukemia do they have,

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what shifted from
what place to what place?

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And then you zoom in
to the Google street view level.

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So this is what happens
if you have colorectal cancer

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for a very specific patient
on the letter-by-letter resolution.

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So what we're doing in this stuff
is we're gathering information

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and just generating
enormous amounts of information.

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This is one of the largest
databases on the planet,

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and it's growing faster than we
can build computers to store it.

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You can create some incredible
maps with this stuff.

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you want to understand the plague

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and why one plague is bubonic

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and the other one
is a different kind of plague

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and the other one
is a different kind of plague?

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Well, here's a map of the plague.

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Some are absolutely deadly to humans.

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Some are not.

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And oh, by the way,
as you go to the bottom of this,

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how does it compare to tuberculosis?

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So this is the difference between
tuberculosis and various kinds of plagues,

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and you can play detective
with this stuff,

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because you can take
a very specific kind of cholera

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that affected Haiti

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and you can look at
which country it came from,

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which region it came from,

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and probably which soldier took that
from that African country to Haiti.

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Zoom out.

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It's not just zooming in.

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This is one of the coolest maps
ever done by human beings.

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So what they've done is they've taken
all the genetic information they have

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about all the species,

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and they've put a tree of life
on a single page

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that you can zoom in and out of.

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So this is what came first,
how did it diversify, how did it branch,

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how large is that genome,
on a single page.

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It's kind of the universe
of life on Earth,

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and it's being constantly
updated and completed.

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And so as you're looking at this stuff,

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the really important changes,
the old biology used to be reactive.

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You used to have a lot of biologists
that had microscopes

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and they had magnifying glasses
and they were out observing animals.

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The new biology is proactive.

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You don't just observe stuff,
you make stuff.

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And that's a really big change,

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because it allows us
to do things like this.

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And I know you're really
excited by this picture.

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It only two us four years
and 40 million dollars

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to be able to take this picture.

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(Laughter)

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And what we did

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is we took the full
gene code out of a cell,

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not a gene, not two genes,
the full gene code out of a cell,

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built a completely new gene code,

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inserted it into the cell,

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figured out how a way
to have the cell execute that code,

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and built a completely new species.

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So this is the world's
first synthetic life form.

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And so what do you do with this stuff?

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Well, this stuff is going
to change the world.

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Let me give you three short-term trends

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in terms of how it's going
to change the world.