Embedding the Future: the X2 Project goes public!

With the public launch of the X2 project, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang realized one of his dreams. Alex is the research director of The Institute for the Future (IFTF), an independent nonprofit research group headquartered in Palo Alto, Silicon Valley. He writes:

The project is called X2, and its aim is to forecast the future of science, technology and innovation. The name may sound like science fiction, but it’s actually an historical allusion. In my previous life as an academic historian, I studied the X Club, a group of Victorian scientists who were very interested in the future of British science. The Club formed when its members were still young, ambitious outsiders, fighting to establish their reputations in a world in which social connections and privilege mattered more than scientific achievement; by the time they retired, its nine members were among the leaders of British science.

That said, dear ‘still young, ambitious outsiders’ you can now sign up for the project and join the groups you’re interested in. I suggest you starting with Quick Start. Disclaimer: I am the so called “steward” of the embryonic group Biomedical Sciences and Biotechnology.

How to predict the future via Twitter: Google invests in Navigenics

Wow, I guess it’s time for me to move into the stock market business! Here’s the story via David Bradley’s tweet: Julie Kent, Search Engine Journal, April 21st, 2008: Google Wants to Index Genetic Information, Invests in Second DNA Start-Up

In 2007, Google made headlines when they invested $4.4 million in 23andMe, a genetic screening start-up company began by Anne Wojcicki, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and a business partner. But if you thought that was Google’s only interest in genetics and DNA, you’re wrong. Google has also been investing in a second DNA start-up called Navigenics, which for $2,500 and a small bit of saliva will provide you with genetic test results delivered securely online containing information about the likelihood for 18 medical conditions.

What’s really funny here is that I predicted this investment last Friday, on the 18th, on Twitter. The original idea was Aaron Swartz’s Google thought experiment: Imagine you were suddenly put in charge of Google. What would you spend your time doing? I came up with this answer (picking Navigenics because of ther profile and location) on behalf of Sergey Brin:

The whole tweetstream:

Life extension people are happy: keep living, please!

I found this picture of Aubrey de Grey with his book Ending Aging on his head at the BIL conference in Quinn Norton’s Flickr Stream. Quinn Norton is a bodyhacker technophiliac journalist photographer. Robust, healthy lifespan extension can easily be interpreted as an extreme body-, life- and biohack so no wonder that more and more geeks are turning their attention to this little, unsolved hack. Maybe with time they will learn not just how to write the names properly but how to set up a private lab and isolate DNA and stem cells, at home. (blogging pictures = not enough time to write posts)

Biotech DIY for aging/life extension research: the double future?

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” - said Alan Kay, computer legend in 1971.

Recently I had a comment dialogue with Chris on whether state-supported research or industrial business enterprises can (or should) lead to big progress in robust and healthy life extension technologies. Besides the government and corporation coin the research breakthrough could come from an aging focused foundation like the non-profit Methuselah Foundation behind the SENS approach, which supports research projects (like MitoSENS and LysoSENS) and scientists (like Mark and John) through cooperation with university labs. And finally, there is going to be another option to contribute:

Imagine the following future scenario: biotech DIY is becoming an accepted home activity so geeks are setting up private labs and conduct basic in vitro (but not in vivo) research.

First DIY RFID experience: Arduino controlled Parallax reader

In the last couple of weeks I became heavily interested in RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology probably because the dangerous idea of all pervasive computing and the opportunities to build sg from the bottom-up. So here is a how-to to my first installed low frequency, read-only RFID system hopefully followed by a more juicy stuff in the ultra high frequency range up to 9 meters.

Hardware:

Parallax RFID reader with 2 tags ($49.99+shipping, Radio Shack)

9-Position Female Crimp D-Sub Connector($1.99, Radio Shack)

4 hook-up wires

Arduino Diecimila microcontroller ($34.99)

Macbook, iBook

Software, code:

Code in C programming language for using the Arduino with the Parallax RFID reader but in order to upload it to the Arduino board and make it actually work I had to put the reader activator line:

 digitalWrite(2, LOW);                  // Activate the RFID reader

into the

 void loop()

function just like in the the sample Wiring tutorial

Arduino software: different packages for Intel based Macbook and PPC iBook

Here is a screenshot on the Serial Monitor reading the tags on iBook:

The conditions of a mass biotech DIY movement

The idea of doing biological experiments with current biotechnological methods and conducting research projects at home is quite new. There are already many names in use referring to the same concept: bioDIY, home biology, biotech DIY, garage biology.

We have a detailed case example which can be considered as the first registered, high profile biotech DIY activity starting the era of useful garage biology: Recently Hugh Rienhoff amplified his daughter’s DNA at home to help doctors figure out her genetic disorder. From the Nature cover article:

“So he bought a used PCR machine, a microcentrifuge, some small-volume pipettes and a brand new gel box. All told, the equipment cost him about $2,000. With these simple tools and some sequence-specific DNA primers of his own design, he could pick the relevant genes out of his daughter’s genome and amplify them enough for sequencing. Freezing the samples and packing the tiny tubes on ice, Rienhoff sent them off for sequencing at about $3.50 a pop. He prepared upwards of 200.”

Another suggested project was the How to isolate amniotic stem cells from the placenta, at home! but so far I haven’t heard of anybody who really did that at home and I only isolated the cells at the lab.

In my coming series I’d like to examine the following conditions of a mass biotech DIY movement: acquiring skills, affordable kits, tools, hardware, motivations, business opportunities and impact.

acquiring the how to skills:

- good education tools, protocols, videos, howto-s on the web

- short intensive academic or industrial lab courses available for every citizen

- self-education in community: forming Homebrew Biotech Clubs

available, affordable tools, hardware:

- cheap kits: based on the Rienhoff example, a very basic home lab can be set up out of 2-3000 dollars, which is the price of a good laptop.

says Mr. Rienhoff in an email: I bought all the equipment used from a local vendor who buys equipment at auction and from universities. All the gear is at least ten years old so it was very used and low throughput. But given that my project was incredibly focused I did not need the more sophisticated equipment.

- used equipment network:

Biotechies at O’Reilly ETech, March 3 - 6, San Diego

The O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (ETech) is on and this year they had a growing number of biotech related sessions. Fellow SciFoo Campers like Hugh Rienhoff and Timo Hannay, Makers like Phil Torrone and Limor Fried, Brain Hackers like Ed Boyden are visiting and many more.

The Spittoon: the eminent corporate blog of 23andMe and Consumer Enabled Research

The personal genomics service 23andMe just launched publicly a corporate blog called The Spittoon that has been internally up for a few weeks. It is a new chapter in biotech corporate blogging. Just like the web page of 23andMe, The Spittoon’s WordPress blog platform, the concept and design is excellent: amongst others you can find scientific blog posts written by Matt Crenson science writer and posts written by founders Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki in the name of radical transparency. As Wired fellow Clive Thompson wrote:

Radical forms of transparency are now the norm at startups - and even some Fortune 500 companies. It is a strange and abrupt reversal of corporate values. Not long ago, the only public statements a company ever made were professionally written press releases and the rare, stage-managed speech by the CEO. Now firms spill information in torrents, posting internal memos and strategy goals, letting everyone from the top dog to shop-floor workers blog publicly about what their firm is doing right - and wrong. Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, dishes company dirt and apologizes to startups he’s accidentally screwed. Venture capitalists now demand that CEOs be fluent in blogspeak.

Radical transparency could be standard in the case of Silicon Valley tech startups but in the Biotech Industry the standards are light years away from that. For instance the 23andMe research team communicates publicly on the biparental inheritance of mitochondrial DNA which is a sensitive issue concerning their genealogy service. The reason why Spittoon is so web-friendly and uptodate and is in fact a paradigm corporate blog for every other biotech company in the future is its web-based business model and Google-like corporate culture thanks to its networking background.

For instance, Anne Wojcicki co-founder introduces the concept of Consumer Enabled Research in her introductory blog post The Power of We:

Our goal at 23andMe is to enable individuals to form communities around shared interests and to empower those communities to be actively involved with research. We call it Consumer Enabled Research. We don’t just want communities to have a voice, we want to provide a platform for them to collectively aggregate their genetic information. One of the significant bottlenecks in research is the lack of data. Researchers and physicians rarely have enough of it to really understand a disease or how to treat it. Our goal is to change that.

After registration readers can make comments and I strongly hope that the comment system will not be shut down (just like in the past at BoingBoing), but for that commenters should be on-topic and moderate. I’ve just commented Wojcicki’s post, but I’d like to share it with you here too:

The Bubble City Experience: a contemporary paranerd classic

When I first wrote about Aaron Swartz’s unfinished nervous nerd novel, Bubble City, I had just been through chapter 1 and 2. But at the Dallas International Airport, waiting for the London connection on December 22 I had no choice but quickly finish the other 9 chapters posted so far under the pressure of the compelling narrative. Bubble City turned out to be my biggest literature experience of this year and the emphasis is on “literature” here.

The plot in one sentence based on the 11 chapters so far: Jason Barsto (an alternative Swartz) coder of a San Francisco news aggregator startup, called Newsflip (an alternative Reddit) gets hunted down by Google (an alternative Google) because he explores a backdoor in the tricky S-boxes behind the Notated News Analysis (NNA) system of the aggregator code at Newsflip (developed formerly at an alternative Yahoo), by which alternative Google or alternative others can manipulate and dangerously homogenize news recommendations for users.

It is a paranoid parody, a contemporary classic hacker fiction: it is crime and anti-crime, it is love and anti-love, it is real and anti-real but most importantly it is about Google or rather it is the best artistic expression of the emerging Hassliebe to Google so far, that every well informed and networked, responsible alpha geek (like Swartz) feels today. I suspect that even Google employees can feel the same way toward their own company.

Everybody in the tech world has plans with Google and Google has plans with almost everybody.

Boo, our XO laptop shipped to our home and its twin to a child somewhere

In November we participated in the “Give One Get One” program in which people can donate an XO laptop to a child in the developing world and receive one. Yesterday we got ours, named Boo and Anna recorded the first moments of Boo at our home and published it on her blog Videovoo with detailed account. Unfortunately we don’t have information on where our “Give one” laptop has been landed and who (and how old) is the happy owner of it from now on.

“Give One Get One” starts today at the One Laptop per Child project!

I’ve just ordered 2 more laptops, although we already have 3, why? Because starting today you (in the U.S. or Canada) can donate an XO laptop to a child in the developing world and receive one for $399+24.95 for shipping. And Anna, the better half of my family in New Orleans, alarmed and convinced me to participate in the program. Lastly, I’ve played with one XO laptop at the SciFoo camp (picture on the right) and I loved it, the concept, the implementation and the intuitive interface. The “Give One Get One” program is the best way ever to persuade geeks to donate.

Here are the details:

From all of us at One Laptop per Child, thank you for your interest in our mission. Today marks the first day of our limited-time “Give One Get One” program. Starting today, when you donate an XO laptop to a child in the developing world, you’ll receive one for the child in your life. The price for the two