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About this book
Technology is a process and a body of knowledge as much as a collection of artifacts. Biology is no different and we are just beginning to comprehend the challenges inherent in the next stage of biology as a human technology. It is this critical moment, with its wide-ranging implications, that Robert Carlson considers in "Biology Is Technology." He offers a uniquely informed perspective on the endeavors that contribute to current progress in this area - the science of biological systems and the technology used to manipulate them.
In a number of case studies, Carlson demonstrates that the development of new mathematical, computational, and laboratory tools will facilitate the engineering of biological artifacts - up to and including organisms and ecosystems. Exploring how this will happen, with reference to past technological advances, he explains how objects are constructed virtually, tested using sophisticated mathematical models, and finally constructed in the real world.
Such rapid increases in the power, availability, and application of biotechnology raise obvious questions about who gets to use it, and to what end. Carlson's thoughtful analysis offers rare insight into our choices about how to develop biological technologies and how these choices will determine the pace and effectiveness of innovation as a public good.
Contents
* Acknowledgments * What Is Biology? * Building with Biological Parts * Learning to Fly (or Yeast, Geese, and 747s) * The Second Coming of Synthetic Biology * A Future History of Biological Engineering * The Pace of Change in Biological Technologies * The International Genetically Engineered Machines Competition (iGEM) * Reprogramming Cells and Building Genomes * The Promise and Peril of Biological Technologies * The Sources of Innovation and the Effects of Existing and Proposed Regulations * Laying the Foundations for a Bio-Economy * Of Straightjackets and Springboards for Innovation * Open Source Biology, or Open Biology? * What Makes a Revolution? * Notes * Index
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Biography
Robert H. Carlson is a Principal at Biodesic LLC.
By: Robert H Carlson
252 pages, 19 line illus, 7 tabs
In this new book, bioengineer Robert H. Carlson forecasts the rise of the cell and the subsequent emergence of biological techniques for making fuels, synthetic DNA that builds new organisms, and reverse-engineered viruses for making vaccines. Biologists, Carlson says, are the new engineers, and the future is in remodeling life as we know it. Wired 20100301 [Carlson] presents an informative view of the future prospects for biotechnology and its regulation. -- Michael A. Goldman Nature 20100422 Biology Is Technology is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the current state of biotechnology and the opportunities and dangers it may create. -- Alex Soojung-Kim Pang American Scientist 20101101 A thoughtful attempt to put what we think we know about biotechnology into a larger context, by a physicist-turned-bioentrepreneur. The Economist 20101204