Biotechnology

[trancejeremy]

It's kind of funny though, Isaac Asimov (as most probably know) wrote a lot about robots, and one of the recurring themes was how humanity would be so terrified of them. The Frankenstein complex he called it.

He actually got that quite wrong, or at least what it's applied to. People seem to love robots. But people do seem to be afraid of genetically modified stuff. I think the US is the only place that eats/uses GM food.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

As someone who works in the biotech field, I would like to state for the record that we have done nothing at all to make squishy, messy, fluidy, and tough genetically engineered biological creatures. Squishy, messy, fluidy things are, well, messy and you'll discover that a lot of us biotech types don't like messy. Messy causes problems - did you see "The Fly?" Look what one little fly did to Jeff Goldblum. Nope, we like things nice and clean. And as for tough, we don't like tough because then we can't get rid of them easily when they start demanding better conditions, end up on Oprah talking about how we exploit them and all that. Nope, our biological creations are easy to get rid of.

In all seriousness, I think Biotech in the end will likely move slower than robotics and AI when it comes to making large changes. There are a lot more ethical questions being raised about how biotech is used and a lot more people watching the researchers compared to robotics and AI. Of course one big breakthrough in those areas could change that very quickly...

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

It's kind of funny though, Isaac Asimov (as most probably know) wrote a lot about robots, and one of the recurring themes was how humanity would be so terrified of them. The Frankenstein complex he called it.

He actually got that quite wrong, or at least what it's applied to. People seem to love robots. But people do seem to be afraid of genetically modified stuff. I think the US is the only place that eats/uses GM food.

I believe a lot of that can be attributed to Asimov and his writing. He set the tone by showing how robots do not have to be a fearful thing. Biotech lacks this voice. The bulk of biotechnology fiction still leans towards the fearful, horror side of things.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

It's kind of funny though, Isaac Asimov (as most probably know) wrote a lot about robots, and one of the recurring themes was how humanity would be so terrified of them. The Frankenstein complex he called it.

He actually got that quite wrong, or at least what it's applied to. People seem to love robots. But people do seem to be afraid of genetically modified stuff. I think the US is the only place that eats/uses GM food.

Yeah, and robots have all those kid-friendly representatives, like Mega Man. Not too mention that new "Robots" movie that just came out. I dont think the movie would have been made if it had been about Biologically engineered creatures.

 

[Fenris]

As someone who works in the biotech field, I would like to state for the record that we have done nothing at all to make squishy, messy, fluidy, and tough genetically engineered biological creatures. Squishy, messy, fluidy things are, well, messy and you'll discover that a lot of us biotech types don't like messy. Messy causes problems - did you see "The Fly?" Look what one little fly did to Jeff Goldblum. Nope, we like things nice and clean. And as for tough, we don't like tough because then we can't get rid of them easily when they start demanding better conditions, end up on Oprah talking about how we exploit them and all that. Nope, our biological creations are easy to get rid of.

In all seriousness, I think Biotech in the end will likely move slower than robotics and AI when it comes to making large changes. There are a lot more ethical questions being raised about how biotech is used and a lot more people watching the researchers compared to robotics and AI. Of course one big breakthrough in those areas could change that very quickly...

I don't know Thornir. I think robotics will have a single big huge break through, like Honda's new robot that walks. Biotech (and I am in the same field) is far more incremental. We won't see the one big breakthrough, but lots of small ones, that are almost imperceptable to lay people. They can "see" the robot walk, but they can't "see" a genome. yet the sequencing of entire genomes is rapidly changing the face of science. A new promoter, a new transformation technique, a new use for an existing enzyme. Little things that change our field significantly. I mean look at Kerry Mullis, that was a revolution to biotech that lay people can't see or understand. Look at GMO crops, we have gone in eight years from an unproven technology to a huge portion of the world's cotton, soybean and corn crops being grown as GMO and that is just for the lines that have been released.

But yes, Biotech has no postive voice, only scare mongers. Robots have been romantized so much that people wouldn't recognize them. heck we have a "robot" down stairs for high-through put systems that can only pipet! Not quite an Asimovian robot.

 

[Mr. Lobo]

Somewhat spawned by the robot thread, am I the only one who wishes the world were going down the Biotechnology route more, now a lot of the stuff I am about to say is very Sci-Fi'ish, but I would prefer squishy, messy, fluidy, and tough genetically engineered biological creatures as opposed to robots.

Personally, I would be a lot more comfortable with a system that has an absolute ON or OFF option. Based on all the known (and I stress "known") organismal weirdness that exists, and mankinds current ignorance of certain aspects of behavior in biological systems, I would not leave biologically engineered organisms to the fate of natural selection.

Of course, at some point humans may be able to predict how their biotech spawn will behave. The pessimist in me says, "I doubt it".

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

But yes, Biotech has no postive voice, only scare mongers. Robots have been romantized so much that people wouldn't recognize them. heck we have a "robot" down stairs for high-through put systems that can only pipet! Not quite an Asimovian robot.

That's another aspect for the image difference. We have robots that do things for us that people can see. Some make our work easier, some are almost as much entertainment as utilitarian, such as the robotic vacuum cleaners, some do things we cannot yet do such as rove Mars. Biotech has little that the everyday person can relate to.

And Mr. Lobo, you are correct that biotech still has so much to learn. One major difference is that biotech is trying to understand a complex system that already exists and then changing it - without always understanding how it affects the whole. Robotics, AI and the like are complex creations of our own and as a result are in more of our control (including an ON and OFF switch, at least until we possibly blur the lines between artificial intelligence and sentience. Then we may have a new ethical dilemma about turning it off.)

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

I don't care about robots. I don't care about biotech. All I want is the damned flying car that the Jetsons and so many other things promised us.

 

[Mark]

It's kind of funny though, Isaac Asimov (as most probably know) wrote a lot about robots, and one of the recurring themes was how humanity would be so terrified of them. The Frankenstein complex he called it.

He actually got that quite wrong, or at least what it's applied to. People seem to love robots. But people do seem to be afraid of genetically modified stuff. I think the US is the only place that eats/uses GM food.

Lots of folks are afraid of losing their jobs to robots. Many people are afraid of machines/technology of all kinds, especially computers (and what people can do to you with them) even if they do not resemble beings of any kind. People are in constant war against spam-bots and other kinds of webcrawlers and spyware auto-surfing the Net in search of ways to breach people's personal security, potentially destroying you economically, if not physically. I think Asimov was fairly on the nose, if only in a literal sense that has played out metaphorically.

 

[Umbran]

I think one reason we haven't gone down this path further is that, like AI, it's proven to be a lot more complex than we originally forsaw.

There's an old saw in the biological fields - "Given precisely controlled conditions of tempreature, humidity, light, and medium, the organism will do whatever it darned well pleases."