Awards

• Nominated for Don K. Price Award 2010
• Nominated for Don K. Price Award 2011
• Nominated for Rachel Carson Prize 2010
• Winner of PROSE (Engineering/Technology) 2010
• Winner of PROSE Awards 2010

Overview

Technology is a process and a body of knowledge as much as a collection of artifacts. Biology is no different-and we are just beginning to comprehend the challenges inherent in the next stage of biology as a human technology. It is this critical moment, with its wide-ranging implications, that Robert Carlson considers in Biology Is Technology. He offers a uniquely informed perspective on the endeavors that contribute to current progress in this area-the science of biological systems and the technology used to manipulate them. In a number of case studies, Carlson demonstrates that the development of new mathematical, computational, and laboratory tools will facilitate the engineering of biological artifacts-up to and including organisms and ecosystems. Exploring how this will happen, with reference to past technological advances, he explains how objects are constructed virtually, tested using sophisticated mathematical models, and finally constructed in the real world. Such rapid increases in the power, availability, and application of biotechnology raise obvious questions about who gets to use it, and to what end. Carlson's thoughtful analysis offers rare insight into our choices about how to develop biological technologies and how these choices will determine the pace and effectiveness of innovation as a public good.

Full Product Details

9780674060159

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Reviews

In this new book, bioengineer Robert H. Carlson forecasts the rise of the cell and the subsequent emergence of biological techniques for making fuels, synthetic DNA that builds new organisms, and reverse-engineered viruses for making vaccines. Biologists, Carlson says, are the new engineers, and the future is in remodeling life as we know it. Wired 20100301 [Carlson] presents an informative view of the future prospects for biotechnology and its regulation. -- Michael A. Goldman Nature 20100422

Author Information

Robert H. Carlson is a Principal at Biodesic LLC.

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