“Can we create new life out of our digital universe?” asks Craig Venter. And his answer is, yes, and pretty soon. He walks the TED2008 audience through his latest research into “fourth-generation fuels” — biologically created fuels with CO2 as their feedstock. His talk covers the details of creating brand-new chromosomes using digital technology, the reasons why we would want to do this, and the bioethics of synthetic life. A fascinating Q&A with TED’s Chris Anderson follows (two words: suicide genes). (Recorded March 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 32:52.)
Watch Craig Venter’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.
Read more about Craig Venter on TED.com.
Naveen Sethia commented on Mar 9 2008
Thanks for putting up this wonderful talk.
Jim Stolze commented on Mar 9 2008
Thanks for putting this up so quick after the conference!
I blogged about this talk in dutch:
read the post.
suzi finer commented on Mar 7 2008
Fascinating stuff here…adding the link now.
Emily McManus commented on Mar 7 2008
@Rich — thanks! Link is fixed.
Rich J commented on Mar 7 2008
You link to the wrong video! That’s a link to Alan Kay.
The real link is here:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/227