Biotechnology is going to "govern the next decade of thought" at research institutions like the MIT Media Lab, says its founder Nicholas Negroponte.
Credited as the first to predict the impact of the digital age, Negroponte used his opening speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Being Material symposium last week to lay out his forecast for the next stage in technological advancement.
"Biotech is the new digital," he proclaimed. "That world is coming together."
Negroponte attributed Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman's research in nanotechnology ? first presented in 1959 ? as the trigger for developments in this field, which are now beginning to affect the way we live.
The use of living systems and organisms to make or develop products has increased dramatically in recent years. Clothing created by bacteria, buildings powered by algae and engineered glow-in-the-dark plants are just a few examples. Negroponte believes we've now reached a stage when the natural and the artificial have blended.
"I grew up with the working assumption that ? I'll use an old-fashioned, politically incorrect term ? the 'manmade' world, and the natural world, were orthogonal," said Negroponte. "From this point on, they're the same. They're not different."
Recent developments in this field include advances in synthetic biology, with scientists like Tal Danino ? who also presented at the symposium ? now able to alter t...