The introduction above is full of errors. First, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) piece falsely claims that the Watanabe paper describes taking "genes from the deadly human 1918 Spanish Flu and insert[ing] them into the H5N1 avian flu to make a new virus." Rather the paper, with the title "Circulating Avian Influenza Viruses Closely Related to the 1918 Virus Have Pandemic Potential", describes assembling a new virus from genes similar (displaying homology) to the 1918 virus. This may be scary in itself, but it is nothing like what either the BAS or the slashdot piece describe.
Second, the slashdot post asserts that "in 2009, a group of Chinese scientists created a viral strain of flu virus that escaped the lab and created a pandemic, killing thousands of people." To my knowledge, this is A) completely wrong, and B) appears to be based on a misunderstanding of the BAS text. The Dando and Novossiolova piece in BAS uses the following verbiage "a team of Chinese scientists [created] a hybrid viral strain between the H5N1 avian influenza virus and the H1N1 human flu virus that triggered a pandemic in 2009 and claimed several thousand lives." The naturally occurring H1N1(2009) strain killed people; the laboratory hybrid did not. Again, creating that hybrid might be scary, but the slashdot post gets the facts completely wrong.
For those who are interested, the official position of the US Government on garage labs can be found in The National Strategy for Countering Biological Threats (PDF), signed by the President. Paraphrasing, the report says 'Garage biology is good and necessary for the future physical and economic security of the United States.' Also, in a shameless plug, here is a link to the book mentioned in the article, Biology is Technology.
Region blocking or other barriers to access are the equivalent of infinite price. I can't tell whether Mr. Newell is mincing words or just doesn't get this. Barriers to access tend to incentivize the very behavior they are supposed to stop, namely black markets, and are therefore often counterproductive. This is true for games, for books, for drugs (legal and otherwise). See Adrian Johns' "Piracy" (http://www.amazon.com/Piracy-Intellectual-Property-Gutenberg-Gates/dp/0226401197/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322280844&sr=8-1).
As the Carlson in question, let me add the following thoughts.
First, to what physical limits are you referring? It's worth considering what the physical limits of biological technology might be. I don't think the answer is simple.
Second, a note on "Carlson Curves" (this is Oliver Morton's phrase, not mine): The plots were meant to provide a sense of how changes in technology are bringing about improvements in productivity in the lab, rather than to provide a quantitative prediction of the future. I am not suggesting there will be a "Moore's Law" for biological technologies. Although it may be possible to extract doubling rates for some aspect of this technology, I don't know whether this analysis is very interesting. I prefer to keep it simple. As I explain in the paper, the time scale of changes in transistor density are set by planning and finance considerations for multi-billion dollar integrated circuit fabs. Biology, on the other hand, is cheap, and change should come much faster.
The paper, which was slashdotted when it came out last yeaer, and related writings, are available at www.synthesis.cc.
Slashdot Mirror
The introduction above is full of errors. First, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) piece falsely claims that the Watanabe paper describes taking "genes from the deadly human 1918 Spanish Flu and insert[ing] them into the H5N1 avian flu to make a new virus." Rather the paper, with the title "Circulating Avian Influenza Viruses Closely Related to the 1918 Virus Have Pandemic Potential", describes assembling a new virus from genes similar (displaying homology) to the 1918 virus. This may be scary in itself, but it is nothing like what either the BAS or the slashdot piece describe. Second, the slashdot post asserts that "in 2009, a group of Chinese scientists created a viral strain of flu virus that escaped the lab and created a pandemic, killing thousands of people." To my knowledge, this is A) completely wrong, and B) appears to be based on a misunderstanding of the BAS text. The Dando and Novossiolova piece in BAS uses the following verbiage "a team of Chinese scientists [created] a hybrid viral strain between the H5N1 avian influenza virus and the H1N1 human flu virus that triggered a pandemic in 2009 and claimed several thousand lives." The naturally occurring H1N1(2009) strain killed people; the laboratory hybrid did not. Again, creating that hybrid might be scary, but the slashdot post gets the facts completely wrong.
For those who are interested, the official position of the US Government on garage labs can be found in The National Strategy for Countering Biological Threats (PDF), signed by the President. Paraphrasing, the report says 'Garage biology is good and necessary for the future physical and economic security of the United States.' Also, in a shameless plug, here is a link to the book mentioned in the article, Biology is Technology.
Region blocking or other barriers to access are the equivalent of infinite price. I can't tell whether Mr. Newell is mincing words or just doesn't get this. Barriers to access tend to incentivize the very behavior they are supposed to stop, namely black markets, and are therefore often counterproductive. This is true for games, for books, for drugs (legal and otherwise). See Adrian Johns' "Piracy" (http://www.amazon.com/Piracy-Intellectual-Property-Gutenberg-Gates/dp/0226401197/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322280844&sr=8-1).
This story should be filed under sciencefiction.slashdot.org.
As the Carlson in question, let me add the following thoughts.
First, to what physical limits are you referring? It's worth considering what the physical limits of biological technology might be. I don't think the answer is simple.
Second, a note on "Carlson Curves" (this is Oliver Morton's phrase, not mine): The plots were meant to provide a sense of how changes in technology are bringing about improvements in productivity in the lab, rather than to provide a quantitative prediction of the future. I am not suggesting there will be a "Moore's Law" for biological technologies. Although it may be possible to extract doubling rates for some aspect of this technology, I don't know whether this analysis is very interesting. I prefer to keep it simple. As I explain in the paper, the time scale of changes in transistor density are set by planning and finance considerations for multi-billion dollar integrated circuit fabs. Biology, on the other hand, is cheap, and change should come much faster.
The paper, which was slashdotted when it came out last yeaer, and related writings, are available at www.synthesis.cc.