WEBVTT 00:00:01.317 --> 00:00:03.452 So let me with start with Roy Amara. 00:00:03.452 --> 00:00:07.935 So Roy's argument is that most new technologies 00:00:07.935 --> 00:00:10.597 tend to be overestimated in their impact to begin with, 00:00:10.597 --> 00:00:13.200 and then they get underestimated in the long term because we get used to them. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:13.200 --> 00:00:17.169 These really are days of miracle and wonder. 00:00:17.169 --> 00:00:20.453 You remember that wonderful song by Paul Simon? 00:00:20.453 --> 00:00:21.926 There were two lines in it. 00:00:21.926 --> 00:00:25.613 So what was it that was considered miraculous back then? 00:00:26.608 --> 00:00:32.132 Slowing down things, back then, and the long distance call. 00:00:32.323 --> 00:00:34.689 Because, of course, you used to get interrupted by operators 00:00:34.689 --> 00:00:37.762 who would tell you long distance calling, do you want to hang up? 00:00:37.762 --> 00:00:41.159 And now we think nothing of calling all over the world. 00:00:41.159 --> 00:00:43.812 Well, something similar may be happening 00:00:43.812 --> 00:00:45.884 with reading and programming life. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:46.851 --> 00:00:49.300 But before I unpack that, 00:00:49.300 --> 00:00:52.610 let's just talk about telescopes. 00:00:53.004 --> 00:00:57.556 So telescopes were overestimated originally in their impact. 00:00:57.556 --> 00:01:00.281 This is one of Galileo's early models. 00:01:00.281 --> 00:01:04.695 People thought it was just going to ruin all religion. 00:01:07.019 --> 00:01:07.513 (Laughter) 00:01:07.513 --> 00:01:10.851 So we're not paying that much attention to telescopes. 00:01:10.851 --> 00:01:14.956 But of course telescopes launched 10 years ago, as you just heard, 00:01:14.956 --> 00:01:18.055 could take this Volkswagen, fly it to the Moon, 00:01:18.055 --> 00:01:24.091 and you could see the lights on that Volkswagen light up on the Moon. 00:01:24.895 --> 00:01:28.862 And that's the kind of resolution power that allowed you to see 00:01:28.862 --> 00:01:32.489 little specks of dust floating around distant suns. 00:01:32.489 --> 00:01:36.501 Imagine for a second that this was a sun a billion light years away 00:01:36.501 --> 00:01:39.765 and you had a little speck of dust that came in front of it. 00:01:39.765 --> 00:01:42.742 and that's what detecting an exoplanet is like. 00:01:43.507 --> 00:01:47.964 And the cool thing is the telescopes that are now being launched 00:01:47.964 --> 00:01:51.737 would allow you to see a single candle lit on the Moon, 00:01:52.501 --> 00:01:55.180 and if you separated it by one plate, 00:01:55.180 --> 00:01:58.334 you could see two candles separately at that distance. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:59.355 --> 00:02:02.333 And that's the kind of resolution that you need 00:02:02.333 --> 00:02:05.945 to begin that little speck of dust as it comes around the sun 00:02:05.945 --> 00:02:09.311 and see if it has a blue-green signature. 00:02:09.311 --> 00:02:13.090 And if it does have a blue-green signature, 00:02:13.090 --> 00:02:13.824 it means that life is common in the Universe. 00:02:13.824 --> 00:02:16.385 The first time you ever see a blue-green signature 00:02:16.385 --> 00:02:18.583 on a distant planet, 00:02:18.583 --> 00:02:19.953 it means there's photosynthesis there, 00:02:19.953 --> 00:02:23.341 there's water there, 00:02:23.341 --> 00:02:24.225 and the chances you saw the only other planet 00:02:24.225 --> 00:02:27.307 with photosynthesis are about zero. 00:02:27.307 --> 00:02:29.837 And that's a calendar-changing event. 00:02:29.837 --> 00:02:32.184 There's a before and after we are alone in the Universe. 00:02:32.184 --> 00:02:35.062 Forget about the discovery of whatever continent. 00:02:36.958 --> 00:02:40.068 So as you're thinking about this, we're now beginning 00:02:40.068 --> 00:02:41.487 to be able to image most of the Universe, 00:02:41.487 --> 00:02:43.742 and that is a time of miracle and wonder. 00:02:43.742 --> 00:02:47.217 And we kind of take that for granted. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:47.217 --> 00:02:49.572 Something similar is happening in life. 00:02:49.572 --> 00:02:52.757 So we're hearing about life in these little bits and pieces. 00:02:52.757 --> 00:02:55.241 We hear about CRISPR and we hear about this technology 00:02:55.241 --> 00:02:58.567 and we hear about this technology, but the bottom line on life 00:02:58.567 --> 00:03:01.105 is that life turns out to be a code. 00:03:02.107 --> 00:03:04.736 And life as code is a really important concept 00:03:04.736 --> 00:03:06.079 because it means, 00:03:06.079 --> 00:03:09.250 just in the same way as you can write a sentence 00:03:09.250 --> 00:03:13.385 in English or in French or Chinese, 00:03:13.385 --> 00:03:16.481 just in the same way as you can copy a sentence, 00:03:16.481 --> 00:03:18.769 just in the same way as you can edit a sentence, 00:03:18.769 --> 00:03:21.142 just in the same way as you can print a sentence, 00:03:21.142 --> 00:03:24.305 you're beginning to be able to do that with life. 00:03:25.460 --> 00:03:28.943 It means that we're beginning to learn how to read this language. 00:03:28.943 --> 00:03:32.957 And this, of course, is the language that is used by this orange. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:32.957 --> 00:03:34.866 So how does this orange execute code? 00:03:34.866 --> 00:03:37.151 It doesn't do it in ones and zeroes like a computer does. 00:03:37.151 --> 00:03:39.222 It sits on a tree and one day it does, 00:03:39.222 --> 00:03:40.819 plop, 00:03:40.819 --> 00:03:43.641 and that means, execute. 00:03:43.641 --> 00:03:46.550 AACTAAG. Make me a little root. 00:03:47.057 --> 00:03:49.707 TCGACC. Make me a little stem. 00:03:49.950 --> 00:03:53.432 GAC. Make me some leaves. AGC. Make me some flowers. 00:03:53.432 --> 00:03:56.822 And then GCAA. Make me some more oranges. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:57.056 --> 00:03:59.762 If I edit a sentence in English 00:03:59.762 --> 00:04:01.858 on a word processor, 00:04:01.858 --> 00:04:06.954 then what happens is you can go from this word to that word. 00:04:07.984 --> 00:04:10.510 If I edit something in this orange 00:04:10.510 --> 00:04:12.841 and put in GCAAC, 00:04:12.841 --> 00:04:16.484 using CRISPR or something else that you've heard of, 00:04:16.484 --> 00:04:19.180 then this orange becomes a lemon 00:04:19.180 --> 00:04:22.780 or it becomes a grapefruit or it becomes a tangerine. 00:04:23.325 --> 00:04:25.419 And if I edit one in a thousand letters, 00:04:25.419 --> 00:04:27.750 you become the person sitting next to you today. 00:04:27.750 --> 00:04:29.994 Be more careful where you sit. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:29.994 --> 00:04:32.718 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:04:33.203 --> 00:04:36.586 What's happening on this stuff is it was really expensive to begin with. 00:04:36.586 --> 00:04:38.518 It was like long distance calls. 00:04:38.518 --> 00:04:44.013 But the cost of this is dropping 50 percent faster than Moore's Law. 00:04:44.013 --> 00:04:48.494 The first $200 full genome was announced yesterday by Veritas. 00:04:48.494 --> 00:04:50.291 And so as you're looking at these systems, 00:04:50.291 --> 00:04:54.654 it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, and then it does. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:54.654 --> 00:04:58.858 So let me just give you the map view of this stuff. 00:04:59.219 --> 00:05:01.801 This is a big discovery. 00:05:01.801 --> 00:05:04.460 There's 23 chromosomes. Cool. 00:05:05.065 --> 00:05:08.360 Let's now start using a telescope version, but instead of using a telescope, 00:05:08.360 --> 00:05:11.181 let's use a microscope to zoom in 00:05:11.181 --> 00:05:13.430 on the inferior of those chromosomes, 00:05:13.430 --> 00:05:16.032 which is the Y chromosome. 00:05:16.032 --> 00:05:20.204 It's a third the size of the X. It's recessive and mutant. 00:05:20.650 --> 00:05:23.587 But hey, just a male. 00:05:25.113 --> 00:05:27.218 And as you're looking at this stuff, 00:05:27.218 --> 00:05:30.851 here's kind of a country view 00:05:30.851 --> 00:05:33.030 at a 400 base pair resolution level, 00:05:33.030 --> 00:05:36.363 and then you zoom in to 550 and then you zoom in to 850 00:05:36.363 --> 00:05:40.520 and you can begin to identify more and more genes as you zoom in. 00:05:40.520 --> 00:05:43.102 And then you zoom in to the state level 00:05:43.102 --> 00:05:46.827 and you can begin to tell who's got leukemia, 00:05:47.702 --> 00:05:50.361 how did they get leukemia, what kind of leukemia do they have, 00:05:50.361 --> 00:05:53.371 what shifted from what place to what place? 00:05:53.371 --> 00:05:57.122 And then you zoom in to the Google street view level. 00:05:57.649 --> 00:06:00.164 So this is what happens if you have colorectal cancer 00:06:00.164 --> 00:06:05.284 for a very specific patient on the letter-by-letter resolution. 00:06:05.284 --> 00:06:09.282 So what we're doing in this stuff is we're gathering information 00:06:09.282 --> 00:06:13.590 and just generating enormous amounts of information. 00:06:13.590 --> 00:06:15.069 This is one of the largest databases on the planet, 00:06:15.069 --> 00:06:19.100 and it's growing faster than we can build computers to store it. 00:06:20.301 --> 00:06:23.324 You can create some incredible maps with this stuff. 00:06:23.586 --> 00:06:25.201 you want to understand the plague 00:06:25.201 --> 00:06:26.611 and why one plague is bubonic 00:06:26.611 --> 00:06:28.246 and the other one is a different kind of plague 00:06:28.246 --> 00:06:30.190 and the other one is a different kind of plague? 00:06:30.190 --> 00:06:32.596 Well, here's a map of the plague. 00:06:33.307 --> 00:06:34.965 Some are absolutely deadly to humans. 00:06:34.965 --> 00:06:36.660 Some are not. 00:06:36.891 --> 00:06:38.985 And oh, by the way, as you go to the bottom of this, 00:06:38.985 --> 00:06:41.392 how does it compare to tuberculosis? 00:06:41.963 --> 00:06:45.620 So this is the difference between tuberculosis and various kinds of plagues, 00:06:45.620 --> 00:06:47.973 and you can play detective with this stuff, 00:06:47.973 --> 00:06:50.216 because you can take a very specific kind of cholera 00:06:50.216 --> 00:06:51.798 that affected Haiti 00:06:51.798 --> 00:06:55.221 and you can look at which country it came from, 00:06:55.221 --> 00:06:57.364 which region it came from, 00:06:57.364 --> 00:07:02.238 and probably which soldier took that from that African country to Haiti. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:05.356 --> 00:07:06.876 Zoom out. 00:07:06.876 --> 00:07:08.753 It's not just zooming in. 00:07:08.753 --> 00:07:12.661 This is one of the coolest maps ever done by human beings. 00:07:12.661 --> 00:07:15.221 So what they've done is they've taken all the genetic information they have 00:07:15.221 --> 00:07:17.031 about all the species, 00:07:17.031 --> 00:07:20.485 and they've put a tree of life on a single page 00:07:20.485 --> 00:07:22.612 that you can zoom in and out of. 00:07:22.612 --> 00:07:26.473 So this is what came first, how did it diversify, how did it branch, 00:07:26.473 --> 00:07:29.685 how large is that genome, on a single page. 00:07:29.881 --> 00:07:31.789 It's kind of the universe of life on Earth, 00:07:31.789 --> 00:07:35.138 and it's being constantly updated and completed. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:35.348 --> 00:07:37.131 And so as you're looking at this stuff, 00:07:37.131 --> 00:07:40.671 the really important changes, the old biology used to be reactive. 00:07:40.671 --> 00:07:42.880 You used to have a lot of biologists that had microscopes 00:07:42.880 --> 00:07:46.945 and they had magnifying glasses and they were out observing animals. 00:07:46.945 --> 00:07:49.680 The new biology is proactive. 00:07:49.680 --> 00:07:53.350 You don't just observe stuff, you make stuff. 00:07:53.350 --> 00:07:55.021 And that's a really big change, 00:07:55.021 --> 00:07:58.269 because it allows us to do things like this. 00:07:58.766 --> 00:08:01.496 And I know you're really excited by this picture. 00:08:01.496 --> 00:08:04.583 It only two us four years and 40 million dollars 00:08:04.583 --> 00:08:06.363 to be able to take this picture. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:06.363 --> 00:08:07.681 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:08:07.681 --> 00:08:09.817 And what we did 00:08:09.817 --> 00:08:13.680 is we took the full gene code out of a cell, 00:08:13.680 --> 00:08:17.615 not a gene, not two genes, the full gene code out of a cell, 00:08:17.615 --> 00:08:21.127 built a completely new gene code, 00:08:21.127 --> 00:08:22.725 inserted it into the cell, 00:08:22.725 --> 00:08:25.579 figured out how a way to have the cell execute that code, 00:08:25.579 --> 00:08:28.426 and built a completely new species. 00:08:29.099 --> 00:08:32.624 So this is the world's first synthetic life form. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:34.009 --> 00:08:36.827 And so what do you do with this stuff? 00:08:36.827 --> 00:08:39.584 Well, this stuff is going to change the world. 00:08:39.584 --> 00:08:41.576 Let me give you three short-term trends 00:08:41.576 --> 00:08:44.090 in terms of how it's going to change the world. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:44.428 --> 00:08:48.206 The first is we're going to see a new industrial revolution, 00:08:48.206 --> 00:08:50.294 and I actually mean that literally. 00:08:50.294 --> 00:08:54.677 So in the same way as Switzerland and Germany and Britain 00:08:54.677 --> 00:08:59.625 changed the world with machines like the one you see in this lobby, 00:08:59.625 --> 00:09:01.536 created power, 00:09:01.536 --> 00:09:04.001 in the same way CERN is changing the world 00:09:04.001 --> 00:09:05.826 using new instruments 00:09:05.826 --> 00:09:08.283 and our concept of the Universe, 00:09:08.283 --> 00:09:11.970 programmable life forms are also going to change the world, 00:09:11.970 --> 00:09:16.452 because once you can program cells in the same way as you program 00:09:16.452 --> 00:09:17.959 your computer chip, 00:09:17.959 --> 00:09:20.552 then you can make almost anything. 00:09:20.552 --> 00:09:23.354 So your computer chip can produce photographs, 00:09:23.354 --> 00:09:25.638 it can produce music, it can produce film, 00:09:25.638 --> 00:09:27.522 can produce love letters, can produce spreadsheets. 00:09:27.522 --> 00:09:30.740 It's just ones and zeroes flying through there. 00:09:30.740 --> 00:09:34.219 If you can flow ATCGs through cells, 00:09:34.219 --> 00:09:37.478 then this software makes its own hardware, 00:09:37.478 --> 00:09:40.044 which means it scales very quickly. 00:09:40.694 --> 00:09:42.368 No matter what happens, 00:09:42.368 --> 00:09:44.258 if you leave your cell phone by your bedside, 00:09:44.258 --> 00:09:47.490 you will not have a billion cell phones in the morning, 00:09:47.490 --> 00:09:53.329 but if you do that with living organisms, 00:09:53.564 --> 00:09:57.597 you can make this stuff at a very large scale. 00:09:57.756 --> 00:10:00.477 One of the things you can do is you can start producing 00:10:00.477 --> 00:10:02.723 close to carbon-neutral fuels 00:10:02.723 --> 00:10:05.352 on a commercial scale by 2025, 00:10:05.352 --> 00:10:08.676 which we're doing with Exxon. 00:10:08.676 --> 00:10:11.185 But you can also substitute for agricultural lands. 00:10:11.185 --> 00:10:16.344 Instead of having a hundred hectares to make oils or to make proteins, 00:10:16.344 --> 00:10:17.961 you can make it in these vats 00:10:17.961 --> 00:10:21.370 at 10 or a hundred times the productivity per hectare. 00:10:21.679 --> 00:10:24.410 Or you can store information, or you can make all the world's vaccines 00:10:24.410 --> 00:10:26.347 in those three vats. 00:10:27.483 --> 00:10:31.432 Or you can store most of the information that's held at CERN in those three vats. 00:10:32.612 --> 00:10:36.386 DNA is a really powerful information storage device. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:36.870 --> 00:10:38.654 Second turn: 00:10:38.654 --> 00:10:42.037 you're beginning to see the rise of theoretical biology. 00:10:42.463 --> 00:10:47.148 So medical school departments are one of the most conservative places on Earth. 00:10:47.148 --> 00:10:48.563 The way they teach anatomy 00:10:48.563 --> 00:10:51.761 is similar to the way they taught anatomy a hundred years ago. 00:10:51.761 --> 00:10:53.917 "Welcome, student. Here's your cadaver." 00:10:53.917 --> 00:10:57.735 One of the things medical schools are not good at is creating new departments, 00:10:57.735 --> 00:11:00.004 which is why this is so unusual. 00:11:00.004 --> 00:11:07.248 So Isaac Kohane has now created a department based on informatics, data, 00:11:07.248 --> 00:11:09.552 knowledge, at Harvard Medical School. 00:11:09.552 --> 00:11:11.581 And in a sense, what's beginning to happen 00:11:11.581 --> 00:11:14.045 is biology is beginning to get enough data 00:11:14.045 --> 00:11:17.199 that it can begin to follow the steps of physics, 00:11:17.199 --> 00:11:22.576 which used to be observational physics and experimental physics, 00:11:22.576 --> 00:11:24.666 and then started create theoretical biology. 00:11:24.666 --> 00:11:27.391 Well that's what you're beginning to see 00:11:27.391 --> 00:11:28.709 because you have so many medical records, 00:11:28.709 --> 00:11:30.168 because you have so much data about people, 00:11:30.168 --> 00:11:32.997 because you've got their genomes, because you've got their ??, 00:11:32.997 --> 00:11:34.721 because you've got their microbiomes. 00:11:34.721 --> 00:11:36.543 And as this information stacks, 00:11:36.543 --> 00:11:40.451 you can begin to make predictions. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:40.451 --> 00:11:43.315 The third thing that's happening is this is coming to the consumer. 00:11:44.955 --> 00:11:49.873 So you too can get your genes sequenced. 00:11:49.873 --> 00:11:52.624 And this is beginning to create companies like 23andMe, 00:11:52.624 --> 00:11:55.110 and companies like 23andMe are going to be giving you 00:11:55.110 --> 00:11:57.960 more and more and more data, not just about your relatives 00:11:57.960 --> 00:12:01.138 but about you and your body and that's going to compare stuff 00:12:01.138 --> 00:12:02.842 and that's going to compare stuff across time, 00:12:02.842 --> 00:12:06.440 and these are going to become very large databases. 00:12:06.440 --> 00:12:09.240 But it's also beginning to affect a series of other businesses 00:12:09.240 --> 00:12:12.136 in unexpected ways. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:12.136 --> 00:12:15.211 Normally, when you advertise something, you really don't want the consumer 00:12:15.211 --> 00:12:21.674 to take your advertisement into the bathroom to pee on, 00:12:22.200 --> 00:12:24.839 unless of course if you're IKEA, 00:12:24.839 --> 00:12:28.571 because when you rip this out of a magazine and you pee on it, 00:12:28.571 --> 00:12:31.910 it'll turn blue if you're pregnant. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:32.100 --> 00:12:32.579 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:12:32.579 --> 00:12:36.475 And they'll give you a discount on your crib. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:36.475 --> 00:12:37.540 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:12:37.540 --> 00:12:39.868 Right? So when I say consumer empowerment, 00:12:39.868 --> 00:12:42.095 and this is spreading beyond biotech, 00:12:42.095 --> 00:12:45.424 I actually really mean that. 00:12:46.519 --> 00:12:50.755 We're now beginning to provide at synthetic genomics 00:12:50.755 --> 00:12:53.506 desktop printers 00:12:53.506 --> 00:12:57.529 that allow you to design a cell, 00:12:57.529 --> 00:12:58.491 print a cell, 00:12:58.491 --> 00:13:00.929 execute the program on the cell. 00:13:00.929 --> 00:13:04.119 We can now print vaccines real time 00:13:04.119 --> 00:13:07.190 as an airplane takes off before it lands. 00:13:07.190 --> 00:13:12.315 We're shipping 78 of these machines this year. 00:13:12.315 --> 00:13:17.945 This is not theoretical biology. This is printing biology. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:18.571 --> 00:13:21.589 Let me talk about two long-term trends 00:13:21.589 --> 00:13:25.558 that are coming at you over a longer time period. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:25.897 --> 00:13:29.055 The first one is we're starting to redesign species. 00:13:29.055 --> 00:13:31.131 And you've heard about that, right? 00:13:31.131 --> 00:13:33.841 We're redesigning trees. We're redesigning flowers. 00:13:33.841 --> 00:13:35.964 We're redesigning yogurt, 00:13:35.964 --> 00:13:38.891 cheese, whatever else you want. 00:13:39.250 --> 00:13:42.622 And that of course brings up the interesting question, 00:13:42.622 --> 00:13:48.019 how and when should we redesign humans? 00:13:48.019 --> 00:13:52.429 And a lot of us think, 00:13:52.429 --> 00:13:53.044 "Oh no, we never want to redesign humans." 00:13:53.044 --> 00:13:55.083 Unless, of course, if your child has a Huntington's gene 00:13:55.083 --> 00:13:57.077 and is condemned to death, 00:13:57.419 --> 00:14:00.758 or, unless if you're passing on a cystic fibrosis gene, 00:14:00.758 --> 00:14:03.130 in which case, you don't just want to redesign yourself, 00:14:03.130 --> 00:14:05.694 you want to redesign your children and their children. 00:14:06.994 --> 00:14:11.149 And these are complicated debates and they're going to happen in real time. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:11.149 --> 00:14:13.777 I'll give you one current example. 00:14:13.777 --> 00:14:17.573 One of those debates going on at the national academies today 00:14:17.573 --> 00:14:22.827 is you have the power to put a gene drive into mosquitos 00:14:22.827 --> 00:14:25.811 so that you will kill all the malaria-carrying mosquitos. 00:14:27.199 --> 00:14:31.301 Now, some people say 00:14:31.301 --> 00:14:35.007 that's going to affect the environment in an extreme way, don't do it. 00:14:35.240 --> 00:14:39.112 Other people say, you know, this is one of the things 00:14:39.112 --> 00:14:40.018 that's killing millions of people yearly. 00:14:40.018 --> 00:14:44.703 Who are you to tell me that I can't save the kids in my country? 00:14:45.430 --> 00:14:47.125 And why is this debate so complicated? 00:14:47.125 --> 00:14:49.965 Because as soon as you let this loose in Brazil 00:14:49.965 --> 00:14:53.171 or in southern Florida, mosquitos don't respect walls. 00:14:53.171 --> 00:14:55.541 You're making a decision for the world 00:14:55.541 --> 00:14:58.229 when you put a gene drive into the air. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:02.415 --> 00:15:05.326 This wonderful man won a Nobel Prize, 00:15:05.326 --> 00:15:07.122 and after winning the Nobel Prize, 00:15:07.122 --> 00:15:11.988 he's been worrying about, how did life get started on this planet 00:15:11.988 --> 00:15:15.503 and how likely is it that it's in other places? 00:15:15.503 --> 00:15:18.768 So what he's been doing he's been going around to this graduate students 00:15:18.768 --> 00:15:20.864 and saying to his graduate students, 00:15:20.864 --> 00:15:24.531 build me life but don't use any modern chemicals or instruments. 00:15:24.531 --> 00:15:27.219 Build me stuff that was here three billion years ago. 00:15:27.219 --> 00:15:32.241 You can't use lasers. You can't use this. You can't use that. 00:15:32.568 --> 00:15:36.957 He gave me a vial of what he's built about three weeks ago. 00:15:36.957 --> 00:15:38.128 What has he built? 00:15:38.128 --> 00:15:41.531 He's built basically what looked like soap bubbles that are made out of lipids. 00:15:41.531 --> 00:15:45.410 He's built a precursor of RNA. 00:15:45.410 --> 00:15:50.188 He's had the precursor of the RNA be absorbed by the cell, 00:15:50.188 --> 00:15:53.457 and then he's had the cells divide. 00:15:54.301 --> 00:15:57.215 We may not be that far, 00:15:57.215 --> 00:16:00.949 call it a decade, maybe two decades, 00:16:00.949 --> 00:16:04.067 from generating life from scratch 00:16:04.579 --> 00:16:07.846 out of proto-communities. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:07.846 --> 00:16:10.710 Second long-term trend: 00:16:10.710 --> 00:16:14.109 we've been living and are living through the digital age, 00:16:14.109 --> 00:16:16.240 we're starting to live through the age of the genome, 00:16:16.240 --> 00:16:21.220 and biology and CRISPR and synthetic biology, 00:16:21.220 --> 00:16:24.990 and all of that is going to merge into the age of the brain. 00:16:24.990 --> 00:16:28.994 So we're getting to the point where we can rebuild most of our body parts 00:16:28.994 --> 00:16:32.214 in the same way as if you break a bone or burn your skin, it regrows, 00:16:32.214 --> 00:16:35.530 we're beginning to learn how to regrow our tracheas 00:16:35.530 --> 00:16:37.997 and how to regrow our bladders. 00:16:37.997 --> 00:16:39.644 Both of those have been implanted in humans. 00:16:39.644 --> 00:16:43.219 ?? is working on 32 different organs. 00:16:43.219 --> 00:16:45.688 But the core is going to be this, 00:16:45.688 --> 00:16:49.258 because this is you And the rest is just packaging. 00:16:49.258 --> 00:16:53.797 Nobody's going to live beyond 120, 130, 140 years 00:16:53.797 --> 00:16:56.324 unless if we fix this. 00:16:56.324 --> 00:16:57.975 And that's the most interesting challenge. 00:16:57.975 --> 00:17:02.680 That's the next frontier, along with how common is life in the Universe, 00:17:02.680 --> 00:17:04.686 where did we come from, 00:17:04.686 --> 00:17:07.036 and questions like that. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:08.294 --> 00:17:11.697 Let me end this with an apocryphal quote from Einstein. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:11.697 --> 00:17:13.940 [You can live as if everything is a miracle, 00:17:13.940 --> 00:17:16.426 or you can live as if nothing is a miracle.] NOTE Paragraph 00:17:16.426 --> 00:17:18.897 It's your choice. 00:17:18.897 --> 00:17:21.254 You can focus on the bad, you can focus on the scary, 00:17:21.254 --> 00:17:24.092 and certainly there's a lot of scary out there, 00:17:24.092 --> 00:17:28.768 but you use 10 percent of your brain to focus on that, or maybe 20 percent, 00:17:28.768 --> 00:17:30.618 or maybe 30 percent, 00:17:30.618 --> 00:17:33.028 but just remember, 00:17:33.028 --> 00:17:36.406 we really are living in an age of miracle and wonder. 00:17:36.406 --> 00:17:39.779 We're lucky to be alive today. We're lucky to see this stuff. 00:17:39.779 --> 00:17:42.042 We're lucky to be able to interact with folks like the folks 00:17:42.042 --> 00:17:45.002 who are building all the stuff in this room. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:45.002 --> 00:17:49.066 So thank you to all of you for all you do. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:49.066 --> 00:17:52.762 (Applause)