the coming biotech age

[...]... am underestimating the scope, scale, and speed at which bioterials will change our lives Page 7 1— The Twenty-First Century: The Age of Bioterials The world is about to exit the Information Age and enter the new era of "bioterials." The marvels of the Bioterials Age will be more global in their impact than the Internet Its products will be more important than fire, the wheel, or the car, and faster... development in technology, and the commercial pursuits that followed, seemed almost manageable if we (the public and our elected policy makers) worked hard at them In the Industrial Age, the major issue was the impact its new technologies had on the Page 17 environment In the Information Age, with its pervasive and invasive technologies, individual privacy arose as the central issue of the times In both casesinvironmental... rather fashionable for commentators to extol the glorious future of these technologies and argue that we are "at the dawn of a new era of information." Page 8 They are wrong As we begin the new millennium, it is becoming more evident daily that we are at the end, not the beginning, of the Information Age Information is important, and always will be However, in the coming era information will be like electricity,... matter For the purposes of this book, then, I use the term bioterials to include the combination of the two fieldseiology and new materials sciences Taken together, the almost breathtaking advances of each of these disciplines in the past few yearshold the promise of nothing less than "conquering" matter GeneBanks: Dreams and Dollars Almost as fascinating as the new technologies themselves are the "architects"... many claims about the future The most important of those claims is that we are at the end of the Information Age and about to embark on a new economic and technological period, the Age of Bioterials Page 3 Cells Trump Electrons Central to this idea is that the economy and societal issues of the twenty-first century will be dominated by biology and the new materials sciences, rather than the chemistry... direct the function of a wide set of organic Page 13 cells, including plant, animal, and human The diversity in the use of the term can be seen most clearly in the wide array of areas studied in university, private, and governmental labs Or, in the equally wide array of organizations (some 2000 or more in the United States and about the same number around the world) that describe what they do as biotechnology... in the Biotech "Game" 163 Chapter 10 Betting the Farm: The Bionic Farmer 169 The Life Sciences 169 The Agbio Business 171 From Information Age Farmer to Bionic Farmer 173 Designer Seeds in the Race for Life 176 Designer Animals 180 Why Waste Waste? 182 BioFarm or BioGraveyard 183 Chapter 11 Financing the Dream: The BioCapitalists 191 Reaping the Rewards: From Few to Many 192 From Robber Barons to the. .. the "architects" of the new Bioterials Age, the scientists and engineers who are redesigning everything, animal, vegetable, mineral, and human, Page 15 and the financiers who are making it possible for the dreamers to dream big dreams I call the first group the "BioVisionaries" and have devoted several special sections to them throughout the book They come from countries around the world and work most... and private labs linked to other researchers around the globe The scope and scale of their efforts stand in sharp contrast to the heroes of the Information Age, who often worked alone or in small, highly motivated groups in the isolated "garage" incubators of Silicon Valley Interestingly, scientists who are at the cutting edge of biology use the term "GeneBank" to refer to the huge cache of information... Unity of Plant, Animal, Human and Mineral 142 Chapter 9 Betting the "Pharma": The BioMedical Complex 145 From Sci Fi to Reality 145 Challenging the Definition of Life 146 From Lab to Life Around the Planet 147 The Beginning of the Biotech Business 148 Like Fast-Mutating Cells, the Biotechs Explode 151 Biotech and the Big Pharma "Marriage of Convenience" 154 Time and Money: Everyday Challenges 156 . improve the quality of life for everyone." KEVIN HRUSOVSKY CEO Page ii The Coming Biotech Age Page iii Also by Richard W. Oliver The Shape of Things to Come: Seven Imperatives for Winning in the New World of Business Page. Lab to Life Around the Planet 147 The Beginning of the Biotech Business . . . 148 Like Fast-Mutating Cells, the Biotechs Explode 151 Biotech and the Big Pharma "Marriage of Convenience" 154 Time. Matter 4 The "Periodic Table" of Biology 5 Chapter 1 The Twenty-First Century: The Age of Bioterials 7 The End of the Information Age: Biology Trumps Electronics 7 Bioterials: The New