The world is bumpy

What shape the world? First, it was flat, then round, then flat. And now, in a book being lauded by Bill Clinton it’s curved.

As the 20th century came to a close and a young arrogant country decided that it was the American century, Milton Friedman told us the world was flat. Friedman’s book extolled the virtues of the internet and how it made the business world a level playing field.

Now, it turns out it isn’t flat, but curved, so says financial expert David Smick. That is, sort of flat but with unexpected downsides that might make you slip off the edge.

Is this really where the world’s best minds can take us? Doesn’t it sound a bit like Francis Fukuyama’s idea about the end of history? That everything is headed towards the mid-American dream because it’s version of libertarian capitalism has won in the big cold war against communism. Didn’t it occur to him that something else might come along, or that things might change? Which civilization hasn’t thought it’s own to the world’s best/strongest/biggest/most likely to last forever? Is this not a least a little bit naive?

It’s amazing that supposedly very clever people can’t see that their pronouncements are intimately linked with their own experiences, with the Zeitgeist. Why are they not able to take themselves out of their current, blinkered situation and have a proper perspective on things? Isn’t that what being smart is all about?

Or perhaps it’s me who’s ridiculously naive, and they’re just saying all this stuff to sell books, get famous and make money.

In which case, I think the World Is Bumpy. Now, on to selling the idea, getting famous and making money.

Sydney in 30 minutes

My mother grew up in Croydon, England after World War II, on a new estate built by the Attlee government where the roads were named after Great British authors. They lived on Coleridge Road, named after the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. By the mid 1950s her father bought a car, his pride and joy. Each Sunday, especially when the weather was nice, they would do something no-one would consider any more: they’d go for a drive. Half a century later what they used to do seems quaint. What has this got to do with going from London-Sydney in 30 minutes?

Soon, probably by 2011, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic will take its first astro-tourists into sub-orbital space – where people are high enough to feel weightlessness and get that Neil Armstrong view of the Earth. A big aircraft will take off from the Mojave Desert, Nevada, USA, carrying a space ship on its back, and that space ship will take off from the aircraft in mid-air. Then, another two years later, E.A.D.S., the European equivalent of N.A.S.A., will launch its first astro-tourist mission. There are a number of differences. For one, Philippe Starck is with Virgin Galactic, Marc Newson with E.A.D.S.. But the major difference is that astro-tourists who go with E.A.D.S. will go into sub-orbital space not in a spaceship, but a spaceplane.

The E.A.D.S. Astrium spaceplane will take off and land on a runway. In fact, on a conventional runway, the same sort that a normal airline jet, such as a 747 or an Airbus, uses. This means, E.A.D.S.’s Director of Communications, Jeremy Close told me, that it could in theory take off and land anywhere there’s a decent runway. In practice the world’s current commercial airports may be unsure of allowing it to, as the highly flammable liquid fuels the spaceplane uses may be considered unsafe, at first, to be near large numbers of people.

But the theory is good. And since the Earth is turning, the Astrium spaceplane could take off, go into space, let the Earth turn, and then land – anywhere. Which means that what will begin as sightseeing, will eventually become a faster more convenient way to get from A to B. In another fifty years, the first steps in space tourism will be seen as going for a drive. And we may be getting from London – Sydney in 30 minutes.

Lego of what you know

You know you’re dealing with a hot scientific topic when you keep coming across the phrase “orders of magnitude”, as in something is going to change the world by orders of magnitude. It’s a favourite phrase of people in lab coats when they’re all shivery about something and want you to know it could be a really big deal.

Well, take it from me, synthetic biology is this century’s hot topic by orders of magnitude. It’s the closest we’ll ever come to playing God. Annoyingly, it isn’t quite playing God because, after all, the big man started with a squeaky clean slate. But thanks to synthetic biology we can now tinker with His toys at the deepest level. Our chance, if you like, to right the wrong designs of the past and create an upgraded Universe 2.0.

Since the dawn of science, biologists have looked behind nature’s curtain to work out what’s happening back there. Their 21st-century cousins, synthetic biologists, don’t just look behind the curtain to ask “what is it?”, but also “what can we do with that?” They’re rummaging around re-engineering what nature intended and making artificial versions of life’s basic building blocks. And then they use these like genetic Lego, called BioBricks, to make new stuff.

So far, using this genetic Lego, synthetic biologists have made an essential part of an anti-malarial drug. They’re creating “bactoblood“, an E. coli-haemoglobin mash-up which works like freeze-dried soup – just add water to make blood. They’re working on a renewable biofuel, made from E. coli and sugar, that outperforms petrol. And in Japan they’ve mixed a fish with a highlighter to make a fish that glows in the dark.

And there are many other, less worthy but far more fun ways to re-create nature. Council workers won’t have to wipe graffiti off walls anymore. They’ll have to kill it. Tomorrow’s “Cock Piss Partridge” will be a living organism that grows on Alan Partridge‘s car.

Can’t decide whether to get a dog or a cat? With synthetic biology you can spec out the exact personality you want for your pet. “So you could have a cat that would be more obedient and do tricks like a dog,” says futurologist Ian Pearson.  “Or a dog that was a bit more independent so less need for walkies.”

Your mobile phone will be photosynthetic and charge up from the sun. And then there’s the iPhone that’s never out of date. Tom Knight at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) told me: “One day when you go to the store to buy the latest iPhone, what comes in the package will be not just the iPhone but a factory that makes more iPhones.”

When will that happen? “I’ll be surprised if it isn’t with us within 30-40 years,” he says.

And then we get to have some real fun. One of the aims of Knight’s Synthetic Biology Working Group is to grow a house, that is, reprogram an acorn so that it grows oak floors and a roof instead of trunk and branches. “There’s nothing that should stop us from doing that,” says Knight.

Synthetic acorns that grow into houses? Now that’ll be a different world by orders of magnitude.