The world's finest minds have responded with some of the most insightful, humbling, fascinating confessions and anecdotes, an intellectual treasure trove. ...Best three or four hours of intense, enlightening reading you can do for the new year. Read it now." - San Francisco Chronicle
Edge 233 - January 14, 2008
http://www.edge.org
[9,700 words]
This online EDGE edition is available at: http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge233.html
---------------------------------------------------- EDGE PUBLISHES "LIFE: WHAT A CONCEPT!" TRANSCRIPT AS DOWNLOADABLE PDF
BOOK ----------------------------------------------------
"I just read the Life transcript book and it is fantastic. One of the better books I've read in a while. Super rich, high signal to noise, great subject." - Kevin Kelly, Editor-At-Large, WIRED
*
EDGE is pleased to announce the online publication of the complete transcript of this summer's Edge event, Life: What a Concept! as a 43,000- word downloadable PDF Edge book.
The event took place at Eastover Farm in Bethlehem, CT on Monday, August 27th. Invited to address the topic "Life: What a Concept!" were Freeman Dyson, J. Craig Venter, George Church, Robert Shapiro, Dimitar Sasselov, and Seth Lloyd, who focused on their new, and in more than a few cases, startling research, and/or ideas in
the biological sciences.
Reporting on the August event, Andrian Kreye, Feuilleton (Arts & Ideas) Editor of Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote:
"Soon genetic engineering will shape our daily life to the same extent that computers do today. This sounds like science fiction, but it is already reality
in science. Thus genetic engineer George Church talks about the biological building blocks that he is able to synthetically manufacture. It is only a matter of time until we will be able to manufacture organisms that can self-reproduce, he claims. Most notably J. Craig Venter succeeded in introducing a copy of a DNA-based chromosome into a cell, which from then on was controlled by that strand of DNA."
Jordan Mejias, Arts Correspondent of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, noted that:
"These are thoughts to make jaws drop...Nobody at Eastover Farm seemed afraid of a eugenic revival. What in German circles would have released violent controversies, here drifts by unopposed under mighty maple trees that gently whisper in the breeze."
[MORE] http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge233.html#life
---------------------------------------------------- DAWKINS & VENTER CONTINUE THE "LIFE: WHAT A CONCEPT" CONVERSATION
AT DLD 08 IN MUNICH, JANUARY 21 http://www.dld-conference.com/ ---------------------------------------------------- "LIFE: A GENE-CENTRIC VIEW" Craig Venter & Richard Dawkins (Moderator: John Brockman) 10:00am, January 21, Munich
10:00 AM Monday (Jan. 21st) Munich
The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and genomics researcher Craig Venter
will discuss the gene-centric view of life at an EDGE event at DLD (Digital, Life, Design) in Munich on January 21. This event continues the exploration of the ideas explored at the EDGE "Life: What a Concept!" meeting in August.
Thirty-two years ago, Richard Dawkins published The Selfish Gene, one of the landmark books of the 20th Century. In it, he set forth the "gene's-eye" view of life. (See "The Selfish Gene: Thirty Years On" on EDGE). ...
Craig Venter, who decoded the human genome, is on the brink of creating the first artificial life form on Earth. "I have spent", he says, "the last fifteen years of his career doing, digitizing biology. That's what DNA sequencing has been about. I view biology as an analog world that DNA sequencing has taking into the digital world."...
[MORE] http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge233.html#dld
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