*Good place for Edge, actually.
Edge.org
July 24, 2012
http://www.edge.org
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THE THIRD CULTURE
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THE EDGE DINNER IN TURIN
THE BIOLOGICAL-DIGITAL CONVERTER, OR, BIOLOGY AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT
After Dinner Talk by J. Craig Venter
WHAT IS LIFE? A 21st CENTURY PERSPECTIVE
On the 70th Anniversary of Schrodinger's Lecture at Trinity College, Dublin
by J. Craig Venter
A NEW KIND OF SOCIO-INSPIRED TECHNOLOGY
A Conversation with Dirk Helbing
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THE EDGE DINNER IN TURIN
Ginevra Elkann e Carlo Antonelli
hanno il piacere di invitarla all'
Edge Dinner
in onore di John Brockman, J. Craig Venter e Brian Eno
martedi 10 luglio
ore 19.30 aperitivo
ore 20.30 cena
Ristorante Del Cambio - Piazza Carignano, 2 - Torino
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/Turin12/Del_Cambio.jpg
THE BIOLOGICAL-DIGITAL CONVERTER, OR, BIOLOGY AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT
After Dinner Talk by J. Craig Venter
"We can now send biology at the speed of light, and this is one of the implications of our work, which we recorded two years ago making the first synthetic life form. We completely synthesized the genetic code of a cell starting with a digital code in the computer–it's the ultimate interface between computers and biology. The digital code and the genetic code have a lot in common; something Schrodinger pointed out in 1943, saying it could be something as simple as the Morse code. ... Digital code, as you know, is a binary code, and ones and zeroes, and your genetic code is literally four-base code with ACGs and Ts. We can now readily convert in between the two, and we can define life at its most basic level. Things that were a mystery fifty, sixty, seventy years ago, we now understand completely."
J. CRAIG VENTER is regarded as one of the leading scientists of the 21st century, most notably for the first sequencing and analysis of the human genome published in 2001 and the most recent and most complete sequencing of his diploid human genome in 2007. He is Co-Founder, Chairman, Synthetic Genomics, Inc.; Founder, J. Craig Venter Institute; Author, A LIFE DECODED
GINEVRA ELKANN a film producer, runs Asmara Films S.R.L. in Rome. She is President of Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli in Turin, her family's art museum, founded by her grandparents Giovanni and Marella Agnelli.
CARLO ANTONELLI is Editor-in-Chief of the Italian edition of Wired magazine. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of the Italian edition of RollingStone magazine and professor of Sociology of Fashion at the University of Bologna.
EdgeVideo (34 minutes)
[Permalink: http://www.edge.org/conversation/biology-at-the-speed-of-light
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WHAT IS LIFE? A 21st CENTURY PERSPECTIVE
On the 70th Anniversary of Schrodinger's
Lecture at Trinity College, Dublin
by J. Craig Venter
"I view DNA as an analogue coding molecule, and when we sequence the DNA, we are converting that analogue code into digital code; the 1s and 0s in the computer are very similar to the dots and dashes of Schrodinger's metaphor. I call this process "digitizing biology".
"Life is a process of dynamic renewal. We're all shedding about 500 million skin cells every day. That is the dust that accumulates in your home; that's you. You shed your entire outer layer of skin every two to four weeks. You have five times ten to the 11th blood cells that die every day. If you're not constantly synthesizing new cells, you die."
"Life is based on DNA software. We're a DNA software system, "you change the DNA software, and you change the species. It's a remarkably simple concept, remarkably complex in its execution."
EdgeVideo (1 hour 4 minutes)
[Permalink: http://edge.org/conversation/what-is-life
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A NEW KIND OF SOCIO-INSPIRED TECHNOLOGY
A Conversation with Dirk Helbing
There's a new kind of socio-inspired technology coming up, now. Society has many wonderful self-organization mechanisms that we can learn from, such as trust, reputation, culture. If we can learn how to implement that in our technological system, that is worth a lot of money; billions of dollars, actually. We think this is the next step after bio-inspired technology.
DIRK HELBING is Chair of Sociology, in particular of Modeling and Simulation, at ETH Zurich - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and the Scientific Coordinator of the FuturICT Flagship Proposal.
EdgeVideo (43 minutes)
[Permalink: http://edge.org/conversation/a-new-kind-of-social-inspired-technology
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EDGE IN THE NEWS
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LA STAMPA.IT SCIENZA-TURIN
July 12, 2012
CRAIG VENTER: DNA BY E-MAIL AND IN 3D FOR TAILORED VACCINES
by Gabriel Beccaria
We will decipher DNA ship at lightning speed around the world, where it is necessary. Yesterday evening you could hear these prophecies by Craig Venter in Turin, in an event known as the "Edge Dinner", one of the many dinners between scientists and assorted guests organized around the world by John Brockman, the literary agent American stars of science.
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EDGE.ORG
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Karina Knoll, Editorial Assistant
Copyright (c) 2012 by Edge Foundation, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
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