DIY BioHacking

Hackers are everywhere.  We are also finding that the Universe is information theoretic, that if we can build a big enough or fast enough machine that we can simulate any physical process.  A lot of folks will tell you this isn't so, they're wrong.

We're also finding that Nature is highly programmable and hackable as well.  For the longest time you had to be in a well-funded lab in order to hack biology.  But with the advent of The Internet giving humanity the ability to form fora without having to leave their living room, or garage.

"No one needs a PCR machine at home, and the accoutrements to biological research are expensive, even if their prices fall daily..." from a Nature article that seems eerily familiar.  Maybe something about there being a need for only five of them on the planet or needing only 640K of RAM.

The thing that most folks who work in industry or a lab forget is that for most of human history the folks doing the heavy lifting of discovery and pushing the boundaries did not work in industry or academia... but their basements or garages.  Granted, some of the more esoteric discoveries pushing the boundaries of human knowledge today will require the infrastructure provided by industry or academia.  However, don't dismiss the lone gun hacker that has that one moment of brilliant insight.

Later in the article...


'Jim Collins, a synthetic biologist at Boston University, says that the costs of doing molecular-biology research make the comparison between amateur biologists and the hackers who drove the personal-computer revolution inappropriate. There's a vast chasm between these tinkerers and those with access to a traditional lab. Faculty members, Collins says, typically ask for hundreds of thousands of dollars from a university to start a molecular-biology lab. Smart amateurs might be able to bring fresh perspective, he says, but they face an uphill battle. "I'm not saying you need to be appropriately pedigreed. I'm saying you need to be appropriately resourced."'

Jim is wrong.  Reason #1 is that he is pedigreed and deems those not pedigreed but doing this work in their lab-garages as a threat to his funding.  The reason his faculty members as for hundreds of thousands of dollars is because the system they operate under has allowed, and indeed expects those kinds of requests.

The same was true in the early days of computing.  There were folks tinkering away in their "shacks", chipping away at the hard problems of information theory and computing... and the big boys in the big labs of those days looked down upon those tinkerers in the same way.

Reason #2 that Jim is wrong is that the fundamental appropriate resource is human ingenuity and brainpower.  Having all the tools in the world at your disposal means squat if you don't have the first clue.  The hacker idea of 'clue' is more useful than the most powerful tool.  Tools are only force multipliers, there must be force applied before the tool works.

We are in the early stages of BioHacking.  However, I expect this field to take off as quickly as the computing industry did.  Stay tuned as it will be interesting.

What Hollywood shoud fear

I have a friend who is a writer.  Over twenty years ago I sat with him, late one nite, on a bridge over the canals of Las Colinas talking about various things.  One of those things was story and how I envied his ability to put mere (ha!) words together to tell a story.  I also, that nite or soon thereafter, claimed that copyright was dead.  His rebuttal was that this is how he hoped to make part of his living, selling books.  I responded that I believed the system to be out of whack.  That his skill, and therefore value, is the ability to build a story using only words.  That all the other stuff is extraneous and middle-man fluff.

In so many words.

Copyright is dead.  Creators will create.  Nothing will stop them.  Consumers will consume.  Nothing will stop them.

This is what Hollywood should fear, this is what any industry that is essentially a middle-man or broker role should fear.

Sintel is a short movie that was created entirely on commodity hardware using open-source tools.  The story is compelling and moving.  From a technical standpoint everything works, beautifully.  If this is what a talented team can do outside of Hollywood now... wait a few years!

Then wait another couple of decades (a very short time, really) and see what humanity will be doing with atoms instead of bits.

Apple's "iTV"

Over at Engadget the "Real Geeks(TM)" are pissing all over themselves with respect to the latest rumor in the Apple Universe. A "trusted source" explains that Apple will be announcing a new set-top-box called the "iTV" based around their A4 architecture sometime this fall.

Several observations...

1. This makes a whole lot of sense given that Google has announced an STB.
2. Apple has stated that the Apple TV was just a "hobby".  Whether folks realize it or not, Apple is very strategic in their forward thinking and planning.  It has been a "hobby" because they needed to be able to get the early adopters to play with the technology to figure out where to go.  If you don't understand how the iterative process works, you won't get that last statement.  You won't also understand why Apple does the things it does.  E.G. copy-and-paste on the iPhone.
3. The "Real Geeks(TM)" are aghast at the idea that this device won't run 1080P.  Misses, the point.  The point is that if the $99 price point is correct this will entice consumers like crazy!  The average consumer could care less, probably can't define the difference between 1080i/1080p/720p.  Most probably can't visually tell the difference either.
4. And now, for the Péice de résistance.  Games.  The blowhard "Real Geeks(TM)" are debating technical merits when the real meat here is that this is how Apple will make an entry into the Living Room gaming market.  Several iOS game apps have millions of downloads and are played an average of an hour per day per user.  Think about that.  Now think about that as it applies to leisure time in front of the television.  Get it?

One other observation here.  Based on the idea that the "iTV" will be based on iOS, that should mean Bluetooth keyboard connectivity.  A nice option for couch-surfing.

I can think of a couple of places where this will be useful, even though our home already has three AppleTV devices.

Non-human intelligence?

Robots in the stock market? Or maybe extra-terrestrials?

Connecting the dots in Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky". The Emergent's use their advanced knowledge of computing and networking to compromise the Spider's systems and networks. Effectively running their own software company.

Could just as easily manipulate the markets in other fashions.

Plausible? I suppose so. Likely? Not very.

It doesn't matter. We are all human.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Seong Yong Kim on Vimeo.

Why automated driving will take over

Traffic shockwaves, those traffic jams that occur for no apparent reason, have been reproduced in a laboratory setting for the first time.  This is one of the primary reasons that automated driving systems will take over.  Humans are unpredictable.

Spare time? Make the world smile!

Create acts of senseless beauty and random kindness.

There has been much discussion of what a post-scarcity world would look like.  One side of the debate posits that no one will create anything because they won't get paid for it.  You don't have to look far to find these dinosaurs in the world today.  The big conglomerates that produce the media and expending ever more energy trying to protect their "assets".   Come to think of it, when you look at it in those terms the energy budget could be thought of as upside down.  The media conglomerates expend great amounts of energy on defending their "territory" and ever decreasing amounts of energy on creating or finding new "sustenance".

The other side of the debate (as if there were only two sides to this debate, the world is not that black and white) posits that people will create for the sheer sake of creation.  The Free and Open Source movements are current examples that can be easily found in the world.  Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or millions, of person-hours have been contributed for "free" to the creation of tremendous monuments like Linux.

I'll posit a third idea.

That people will spend their time, their most valuable commodity, in endeavours that will make them and other folks smile.

For example:



If it is not immediately apparent to you, I want to bring two things to your attention.

1. These students spend a LOT of time getting everyone together and then choreographing this event.
2. I'd bet that not a one of them made a dime from doing this.

 These students did this for two, to my mind, fundamental reasons.

1. Because it was fun.  It made everyone around them smile.  Thereby making themselves smile.  Endorphins are a tremendous thing!
2. Those that participated got some whuffie.  Those that organized got even more whuffie.

They created something that was unique in that moment.  They also created something that will last a very long time.  Years, decades from now there will still be students who talk about the day a dance troupe broke out in the cafeteria.  Those students that were there will tell their children, or grandchildren, about the day this happened.  Whether they danced or observed, they all participated.

Here's another example from Improv Everywhere.



Improv Everywhere began life doing flash mob type stuff.  They've really opened up their repertoire as of late.  The organizers may be making some money through advertising on YouTube, etc. but I doubt that it is a tremendous cash flow by any stretch of the imagination.  The real question is how do they get 207 people to do these things?  Look at the smiles on the faces of the folks around them when they freeze.  Listen to the applause at the end of the event.  Go back, I'll wait.

Not only that, but they can help a cause.  Here's one of their latest events.  Again, pay attention to the smiles on the uninformed participants faces.  Not everyone gets what is going on... but those that do initially cannot believe it is happening but have a fun time with it once they begin to understand.



I recently showed a friend of mine a YouTuber that calls himself MysteryGuitarMan.  Here's an example of one of his videos.




The fact that blew my friend away is that MysteryGuitarMan has 500,000 subscribers.  I'm one of them.  He asked how the dude made money.  Through advertising and t-shirt sales was my answer, but that's not the real point, is it?!?  The real point is that MysteryGuitarMan can influence 500,000 people.  Directly.  That's not a large number, but neither is it small.  That's the truly powerful idea here.

Of course, that also brings us back to the initial reason for this post.  Why does he do this?  Do you think he had the idea of doing this for the money when he started?  Doubtful.  Very doubtful.  MGM started doing this because it was fun and because he loved creating.  It grew from there, and he may be financially successful from it one day... but I am willing to bet that he'd create even if he weren't getting paid in the historical sense of that word.

Amazing time-lapse of STS-131

Air & Space has a beautiful time-lapse of the assembly of STS-131.