What is life? Can we create it? Customize it? Edge has just published over six hours of video from their new Master Class on the future of biology, which attempts to answer those and other provocative questions. Featuring geneticists George Church and Craig Venter, the set is a a surprising, challenging look at what science has in store for our world, from the minds of two of the field’s most fascinating pioneers.

Summarizes attendee George Dyson,

In this future — whose underpinnings, as Drs. Church and Venter demonstrated, are here already — life as we know it is transformed [...] by discovering how to read genetic sequences directly into computers, where the code can be replicated exactly, manipulated freely, and translated back into living organisms by writing the other way.

Visit the Edge Master Class and start watching now >>

You’ll notice several familiar faces among the class’ pupils, including TED speakers Larry Brilliant, Larry Page, Nathan Wolfe, Nathan Myhrvold and Stewart Brand.

Photo: George Church (left); Craig Venter (right). Credit: Edge.org