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A briefcase full of poop changed my life.

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Ten years ago, I was a graduate student

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and I was helping judge
a genetic engineering competition

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for undergrads.

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There, I met a British artist and designer
named Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg.

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She was wearing the white
embroidered polo shirt

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of the University of Cambridge team

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and holding a silver briefcase,

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like the kind that you would imagine
is handcuffed to your wrist.

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She gestured over from a quiet corner

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and asked me if I wanted to see something.

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With a sneaky look,
she opened up the suitcase,

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and inside were six glorious,
multicolored turds.

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The Cambridge team, she explained,

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had spent their summer
engineering the bacteria E. coli

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to be able to sense different things
in the environment

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and produce a rainbow
of different colors in response.

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Arsenic in your drinking water?

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This strain would turn green.

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She and her collaborator,
the designer James King,

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worked with the students and imagined
the different possible scenarios

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of how you might use these bacteria.

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What if, they asked, you could use them

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as a living probiotic drink
and health monitor, all in one?

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You could drink the bacteria
and it would live in your gut,

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sensing what's going on,

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and then in response to something,

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it would be able to produce
a colored output.

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Holy shit!

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The Cambridge team went on to win

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the International Genetically Engineered
Machine competition,

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or iGEM for short.

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And as for me, those turds
were a turning point.

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I am a synthetic biologist,

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which is probably a weird term
that most people aren't familiar with.

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It definitely sounds like an oxymoron.

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How can biology, something natural,

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be synthetic?

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How can something artificial be alive?

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Synthetic biologists sort of poke holes

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in that boundary that we draw between
what is natural and what's technological.

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And every year, iGEM students
from all over the world

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spend their summer

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trying to engineer biology
to be technology.

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They teach bacteria how to play sudoku,

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they make multicolored spider silk,

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they make self-healing concrete

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and tissue printers
and plastic-eating bacteria.

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Up until that moment, though,

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I was a little bit more concerned
with a different kind of oxymoron.

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Just plain old genetic engineering.

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The comedian Simon Munnery once wrote

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that genetic engineering is actually
insulting to proper engineering.

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Genetic engineering is more like throwing
a bunch of concrete and steel in a river

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and if somebody can walk across,
you call it a bridge.

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And so synthetic biologists
were pretty worried about this,

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and worried that genetic engineering
was a little bit more art that science.

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They wanted to turn genetic engineering
into a real engineering discipline,

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where we could program cells and write DNA

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the way that engineers write
software for computers.

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That day 10 years ago started me on a path
that gets me to where I am now.

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Today, I'm the creative director

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at a synthetic biology company
called Ginkgo Bioworks.

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"Creative director" is a weird title

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for a biotech company
were people try to program life

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the way that we program computers.

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But that day when I met Daisy,

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I learned something about engineering.

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I learned that engineering
isn't really just about equations

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and steel and circuits,

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it's actually about people.

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It's something that people do,
and it impacts us.

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So in my work,

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I try to open up new spaces
for different kinds of engineering.

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How can we ask better questions,

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and can we have better conversations

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about what we want
from the future of technology?

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How can we understand the technological

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but also social and political
and economic reasons

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that GMOs are so polarizing
in our society?

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Can we make GMOs that people love?

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Can we use biology to make technology
that's more expansive and regenerative?

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I think it starts by recognizing
that we, as synthetic biologists,

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are also shaped by a culture
that values "real engineering"

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more than any of the squishy stuff.

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We get so caught up in circuits
and what happens inside of computers,

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that we sometimes lose sight of the magic
that's happening inside of us.

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There is plenty of shitty
technology out there,

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but this was the first time
that I imagined poop as technology.

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I began to see that synthetic
biology was awesome,

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not because we could turn
cells into computers,

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but because we could bring
technology to life.

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This was technology that was visceral,

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an unforgettable vision
of what the future might hold.

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But importantly, it was also
framed as the question

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"Is this the kind of future
that we actually want?"

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We've been promised a future of chrome,

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but what if the future is fleshy?

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Science and science fiction

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help us remember
that we're made of star stuff.

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But can it also help us remember
the wonder and weirdness

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of being made of flesh?

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Biology is us,

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it's our bodies, it's what we eat.

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What happens when biology
becomes technology?

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These images are questions,

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and they challenge what we think of
as normal and desirable.

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And they also show us
that the future is full of choices

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and that we could choose differently.

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What's the future of the body, of beauty?

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If we change the body,
will we have new kinds of awareness?

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And will new kinds of awareness
of the microbial world

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change the way that we eat?

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The last chapter of my dissertation
was all about cheese that I made

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using bacteria that I swabbed
from in between my toes.

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I told you that the poop changed my life.

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I worked with the smell artist
and researcher Sissel Tolaas

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to explore all of the ways
that our bodies and cheese are connected

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through smell and therefore microbes.

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And we created this cheese

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to challenge how we think
about the bacteria

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that's part of our lives

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and the bacteria
that we work with in the lab.

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We are, indeed, what we eat.

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The intersection of biology and technology

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is more often told as a story
of transcending our fleshy realities.

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If you can upload
your brain to a computer,

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you don't need to poop anymore after all.

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And that's usually a story
that's told as a good thing, right?

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Because computers are clean,
and biology is messy.

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Computers make sense and are rational,

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and biology is an unpredictable tangle.

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It kind of follows from there

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that science and technology
are supposed to be rational,

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objective

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and pure,

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and it's humans that are a total mess.

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But like synthetic biologists poke holes

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in that line between nature
and technology,

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artists, designers and social scientists

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showed me that the lines that we draw
between nature, technology and society

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are a little bit softer
than we might think.

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They challenge us to reconsider
our visions for the future

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and our fantasies
about controlling nature.

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They show us how our prejudices,
our hopes and our values

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are embedded in science and technology

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through the questions that we ask
and the choices that we make.

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They make visible the ways
that science and technology are human

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and therefore political.

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What does it mean for us
to be able to control life

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for our own purposes?

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The artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr

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made a project
called "Victimless Leather,"

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where they engineered
a tiny leather jacket

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out of mouse cells.

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Is this jacket alive?

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What does it take to grow it
and keep it this way?

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Is it really victimless?

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And what does it mean
for something to be victimless?

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The choices that we make

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in what we show and what we hide
in our stories of progress,

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are often political choices
that have real consequences.

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How will genetic technologies
shape the way that we understand ourselves

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and define our bodies?

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The artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg
made these faces

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based on DNA sequences
she extracted from sidewalk litter,

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forcing us to ask questions
about genetic privacy,

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but also how and whether
DNA can really define us.

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How will we fight against
and cope with climate change?

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Will we change the way
that we make everything,

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using biological materials
that can grow and decay alongside us?

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Will we change our own bodies?

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Or nature itself?

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Or can we change the system
that keeps reinforcing those boundaries

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between science, society,
nature and technology?

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Relationships that today keep us
locked in these unsustainable patterns.

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How we understand and respond to crises

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that are natural, technical
and social all at once,

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from coronavirus to climate change,

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is deeply political,

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and science never happens in a vacuum.

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Let's go back in time

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to when the first European settlers
arrived in Hawaii.

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They eventually brought their cattle
and their scientists with them.

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The cattle roamed the hillsides,

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trampling and changing
the ecosystems as they went.

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The scientists catalogued the species
that they found there,

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often taking the last specimen
before they went extinct.

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This is the Maui hau kuahiwi,

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or the Hibiscadelphus wilderianus,

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so named by Gerrit Wilder in 1910.

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By 1912, it was extinct.

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I found this specimen
in the Harvard University Herbarium,

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where it's housed with five million
other specimens from all over the world.

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I wanted to take a piece
of science's past,

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tied up as it was with colonialism,

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and all of the embedded ideas

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of the way that nature and science
and society should work together,

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and ask questions about science's future.

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Working with an awesome team at Ginkgo,

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and others at UC Santa Cruz,

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we were able to extract
a little bit of the DNA

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from a tiny sliver of this plant specimen

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and to sequence the DNA inside.

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And then resynthesize a possible version

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of the genes that made
the smell of the plant.

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By inserting those genes into yeast,

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we could produce little bits of that smell

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and be able to, maybe, smell

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a little bit of something
that's lost forever.

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Working again with Daisy
and Sissel Tolaas,

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my collaborator on the cheese project,

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we reconstructed and composed
a new smell of that flower,

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and created an installation
where people could experience it,

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to be part of this natural history
and synthetic future.

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Ten years ago, I was a synthetic biologist

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worried that genetic engineering
was more art than science

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and that people were too messy

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and biology was too complicated.

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Now I use genetic engineering as art

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to explore all the different ways
that we are entangled together

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and imagine different possible futures.

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A fleshy future

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is one that does recognize
all those interconnections

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and the human realities of technology.

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But it also recognizes
the incredible power of biology,

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its resilience and sustainability,

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its ability to heal and grow and adapt.

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Values that are so necessary

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for the visions of the futures
that we can have today.

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Technology will shape that future,

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but humans make technology.

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How we decide what that future will be

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is up to all of us.

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Thank you.