Christina Agapakis – (Natural) Intelligence
"The future is synthetic." How do you feel about synthetics? Are you thinking about a wildly sticky, static electric, polyester shirt right now? Many of us have negative connotations of synthetics as something unnatural, artificial and based on ancient fossil fueled techniques. The history of science up until now has placed nature by definition as separate and below humans, thereby creating a division between nature and technology. Christina Agapakis from Gingko Bioworks introduces in her talk the “meatverse”, her vivid vision for society, where we (re)unite technology and nature. She asks big questions like how might we create a new kind of culture around biological development with nature? How might we design biological tools regenerative for all beings without the use of fossil fuels? How might biological programmers log into the ‘wood wide web’ to help co-create new forests? She closes her talk with a call to celebrate nature and technology and to reflect how we might use nature without filling the world with garbage.
