Evolution Isn't What It Used to Be.

• Author: Benford, Gregory

Does the convergence of biological and computer technology promise a radically different age? Yes, says futurist Walter Truett Anderson - but the synergistic convergence of these two, remaking ourselves, matters even more.

He sees a growing bio-info complex wrapping itself around our planet, beginning with gene banks, satellite monitoring of ecosystems, and "smart maps"; he envisions nothing less than a wired bio-world. Our current focus on the Internet forgets that the next century's premier emergent technology will be biological. Policy mavens looking only at information density and flow are missing a crucial element, says Anderson.

Enzymes - plainly the most important biotechnology of our era - already permeate many industrial processes. Unlike fossil fuels, they carry chemical programming which drives complex reactions, are renewable, and work at ordinary pressures and temperatures. But many biotech wonders to come will be surprises. Reminding us that "Bell Labs hesitated to apply for a patent on the laser because they couldn't see how it had any relevance to telephones," Anderson notes that even many of those driving the biotech industry do not see that there is no longer a clear boundary between biotech and plain biology.

Without much better handling of the rising tide of bio-info, we cannot possibly manage our world, warns Anderson, neatly extracting the principal lessons policy managers must grasp.

First, all information - defined as facts organized until they have relevance and purpose - is incomplete. Hoping that more data will resolve an issue and force a decision is just wrong: Information always widens the range of choices, rather than narrowing them.

Worse, bio-info won't be enough. It must be ramified into knowledge (information internalized, integrated) and brewed into wisdom (knowledge made super-useful by theory).

Finally, says Anderson, we should recognize that most people aren't policy wonks, and won't see the world as the info-suppliers do. Most see wilderness as the home of Bambi, not as a complex weave where bugs are as vital as beautiful mammals.

Hence, public controversies frequently pit people talking statistics against those talking myth. The result: "Rationalists with their hard disks full of economic or scientific information bump against invocations of Frankenstein and Gaia."

Once created (and contrary to conspiracy theorists), information both leaks and cannot be called back. This is especially true of bio-info. Vaccination, whereby "we routinely have our immune systems remodeled," has transformed population profiles, letting...