The Genesis Machine

Synthetic biology will revolutionize how we define family, how we identify disease and treat aging, where we make our homes, and how we nourish ourselves. This fast-growing field-which uses computers to modify or rewrite genetic code-has created revolutionary, groundbreaking solutions such as the mRNA COVID vaccines, IVF, and lab-grown hamburger that tastes like the real thing. It gives us options to deal with existential threats: climate change, food insecurity, and access to fuel.

But there are significant risks.

Who should decide how to engineer living organisms? Whether engineered organisms should be planted, farmed, and released into the wild? Should there be limits to human enhancements? What cyber-biological risks are looming? Could a future biological war, using engineered organisms, cause a mass extinction event?

Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel's riveting examination of synthetic biology and the bioeconomy provide the background for thinking through the upcoming risks and moral dilemmas posed by redesigning life, as well as the vast opportunities waiting for us on the horizon.

About the Author

Amy Webb is an author, futurist and founder of the Future Today Institute, a leading future forecasting and strategy firm that researches technology and answers "What's the future of X?" for a global client base. Her future forecasting work has been featured in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Fast Company and more. Her research has also been cited in several academic papers. She is a lecturer on the future of media at Columbia University, and this fall, she will join NYU's Stern School of Business as an adjunct professor to teach a new course on forecasting the future of technology. She was a 2014-15 Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

She founded Webbmedia Group (FTI's predecessor) co-founded Knowledgewebb Training, which facilitates hands-on workshops and co-founded Spark Camp, a next-generation convener that facilitates important conversations on the future of a better society. Data is being adapted as a feature film, which is currently in production. Her previous book Data, a Love Story is being adapted as a feature film, which is currently in production.