Synbiobeta Dreaming

Returning to the mecca of biodigital technopotheosis

Assuming that I can figure out a solution to a very complex logistical problem about which you may be hearing soon in a forthcoming Sundman figures it out! post, I will be attending the SynbioBeta conference in San Jose May 6 - 9.

I’ve attended several SynbioBeta events going back to 2014, when they were decidedly smaller affairs.

These conferences offer an intriguing mix of science, policy, futurism, industry boosterism and the occasional sideshow from outer space — the kind of thing you’d expect to see at DEF CON more than at a stolid scientific gathering.

I’m a self-publishing novelist who writes books that contain accurate depictions of how real science is done. Scientist who read fiction tend to appreciate that, so over the years I’ve sold books at scientific conferences — often from tables in out of the way corners that I obtained at discounted prices.

That’s how I met John Cumbers, the impresario behind Synbiobeta. When I first read about the conference ten years ago I wrote and asked if I could get a table cheap, and he replied, ‘OK, but it’ll be in the hallway outside.’ I said ‘fine,’ and off I went.

The conference that year was held at the UCSF Conference Center in Mission Bay, San Francisco. I flew out the night before & early on the first day of the con I set up shop a noisy, breezy hallway near the registration table. Cumbers stopped to say hello, but we only chatted for half a minute. The conference was fun and I sold enough books to cover my expenses so the next year I did it again, and again John stopped at my table and he & I chatted briefly — no more than two minutes. I didn’t think I had made any impression on him but I later found out that I had.

A Synbiobeta biohacker rubicon

(In)famous biohacker Josiah (now Jo) Zayner got a lot of notice, not all of it laudatory, for being the first person to use CRISPR in an attempt to edit their own genome. It happened during a workshop called “A step-by-step guide to genetically modifying yourself with CRISPR” at Synbiobeta 2017. I was there.

Although the event was live-streamed on Facebook and discussed in publications from Hacker News to the Wall Street Journal, there were only about 25 of us in the conference room at Synbiobeta 2017 in San Francisco to listen to Zayner’s talk and observe them inject themself with a cocktail of DNA, Cas9 protein and various enzymes. I observed the proceedings while sipping whiskey from a complimentary commemorative shot glass provided by Zayner and taking notes on a handout. The shot glass had the words “BioHack the Planet” written on one side and “Create Something Beautiful” on the other.

Biopunks around the world cheered Zayner’s bold self-editing gambit, while others — including me, as well as many sober scientists — thought it was mostly a poorly thought-out stunt. Josie Zayner herself later expressed second thoughts about the whole thing. Nevertheless there’s no doubt that it marked a kind of crossing-of-the-Rubicon in biohacking. Science fiction writers have been predicting genetic self-modification for decades, and Zayner made it real. This toothpaste is not going to go back into any tube.

I’ve never spoken to John Cumbers about the Zayner hack, but I expect that it is not the kind of thing he wants his Synbiobeta conferences to be known for. Nevertheless there’s no doubt that it was an historic event, and, given what I’m trying to do for a living, I’m glad to be able to say that I was there in the proverbial room.

‘The Biodigital Forum’ brought to life

As long-time readers of Sundman figures it out! know well, I’ve been writing novels and essays about the convergence of biological and digital technologies for more than a quarter century.

‘Biodigital’ is self-explanatory, and ‘technopotheosis’ is just a word I made up by combining ‘technology’ with ‘apotheosis,’ which means to raise something to a God-like status: technology as an object of religious veneration, technology revered as God

While my essays tend to look at both potential upsides and downsides of the synthetic biology revolution, my novels don’t. My books are downside-only. They’re thrillers; they’re supposed to be scary. They focus on the bad stuff, the potential for truly frightening futures brought to you by science. I offer refunds to anybody who reads my books and doesn’t get nightmares.

From my “chronicler” essay:

If ‘cyberpunk’ is the genre that looks at digital systems from a hacker's point of view, then ‘biopunk’ looks at biological systems from a hacker's point of view.

Most non-biohacker/biopunk people make a distinction between, for example, living, carbon-based biological systems on one hand and silicon-based digital systems on the other. Biopunks don't make that distinction. A system is just a system, and the only question is, how do you hack it?

Now if the system is, for example, you — your brain, your mind, your essence, your soul — you may like it just fine the way it is, thank you very much, and you may not want somebody else (where "somebody" might be “the government” or some squicky corporation) to hack it. So your challenge becomes, How do I define who I am? How do I maintain the integrity of my system?

All my novels deal with themes like these. In Acts of the Apostles (1999), among other things, I imagined nanomachines analogous to bacteriophage that manipulate DNA and rearrange brains (and by rearranging brains, thus minds, and selves). In a lot of ways in Acts of the Apostles I anticipated CRISPR, the powerful new way of programming DNA that emerged about a decade ago. The plot of my novel revolves around how such a mechanism might work on the molecular level, and invites readers to ponder the ethical considerations that come with it.

A crucial scene in Acts of the Apostles takes place at a (fictional, of course) gathering of leading financial and technical lights from Silicon Valley and the biology labs of Stanford, MIT and Harvard, which I called ‘The Biodigital Forum.’¹

I wrote that scene, in 1998, with the intention making readers’ skins crawl. Synbiobeta is my ‘Biodigital Forum’ brought to life. It’s the mecca and Vatican of biodigital technopotheosis.

A phone call from John Cumbers

In the spring of 2016 I got a note from Cumbers’ administrative assistant asking me if I would take a call from him. I was surprised that he even remembered my name, but I said that I would of course be happy to talk to him. So at the appointed time John calls up and he says something to the effect that he’s frustrated by all the movies that come out of Hollywood about demented villains who use science to do evil things. What do we have to do, he asked, to get movies made that tell a more hopeful story, that show the real power of science to do good?

I told John that I didn’t know anything about getting movies made in Hollywood, but that I did, in fact, have a good friend who had a long career in Hollywood as an actor, director and producer — including producing some science-themed television series — and that I would be happy to make an introduction. Then our conversation went something like this:

Me: You know, John, I'm one of those people who so frustrate you. I write novels about demented villains who use science to do evil things.
Cumbers: Why is that? Why don't you write pro-science stories?
Me: I don't do polemical art. I don't push any pro or anti-science agenda. I just try to tell stories that will keep readers turning the pages. My job as an artist is to raise important questions, not to answer them.
Cumbers: [10 second pause.] How would you like to come to Scotland and give a talk? I can pay you $700.

Now as it turns out, my mother was an immigrant from Scotland who came to America after WW2. Her mother, brothers and sisters all eventually followed. I grew up in a family full of Scottish accents, but I had never been to Scotland. So of course I went to Scotland at John’s invitation. That June at the University of Edinburgh I gave a short talk: Art, Ethics and Synthetic Biology.

The $700 didn’t cover all of my expenses, but it helped a lot. I was there three days and I had an absolute blast. I should write about it sometime.

A year or two after I gave my short talk in Scotland, I was invited to be on a Synbiobeta panel on science and science fiction.

From the SBB18 program: 

Science fiction is a powerful inspiration to innovators like Elon Musk and countless others who use emerging technologies like synthetic biology in creating our shared future. This session focuses on science fiction as a tool for reflection, discourse, and inspiration, all of which are essential for synthetic biology to evolve in the most ethical, meaningful, and awe-inspiring ways.

Being on that panel was great fun. The room was packed and the discussion was lively. Cumbers sat in the front row.

A George Church conundrum

George Church, a professor at MIT and Harvard, is a rock star in the world of synthetic biology, known for his work on the Human Genome Project including breakthroughs in DNA sequencing, for his work on CRISPR, for dozens of other significant scientific discoveries, for his efforts to bring the wooly mammoth back from extinction, and more. He’s famous enough to have been a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. A few years ago the headline event at Synbiobeta was George Church being interviewed by Vinod Kholsa, a Silicon Valley venture capital billionaire.² That interview turned out to be a real snooze-fest³, but the point is that Church is famous enough among biologists that just having him on stage being interviewed is enough to fill a large auditorium to standing-room-only.

In recent years Church has become known for less savory things, including reputation-laundering for the serial child rapist, pimp, and (I presume) blackmailer Jeffrey Epstein, and for espousing a transhumanist philosophy which, depending on how you look at it, is either very close to, or outright is, a very ugly eugenicism.

George Church is, or was, a friend of mine. I have interviewed him for my youtube channel. He came to Martha’s Vineyard to give a lecture as part of a series that my wife organized at the Vineyard Haven Public Library. Church wrote a very generous introduction to my books, which I include below. I even got permission to take him 100 feet aloft in the bucket of a ladder truck when I was a Tisbury firefighter.

But that was all before I became aware of the Epstein stuff, or of the eugenic stuff. I’m removing his introductions from my books and taking his name off the cover. He has apologized for the Epstein relationship, but really, I, like many people find his explanation hard to swallow. And the (quasi?) eugenic stuff? Ugh.

So now, in truth, I don’t know what the hell to think about him. If I ever see Church again I don’t know what I’ll say to him. It’s so monstrously disappointing. I would appreciate hearing your thoughts in the comments.

The life-changing power of fiction

At Synbiobeta 2016 I sold a copy of my book Biodigital to a biology undergrad . A few weeks later a review was posted on Goodreads, which I’ve lightly edited & excerpted below.

I met John Sundman at the Synbiobeta 2016 conference in San Francisco, where he was selling his books. As a book snob, I have always been wary of authors I haven't heard of. However, I decided to go with my gut and buy "Biodigital." [. . .]

Before I say anything about the book, I have to mention that "Biodigital" persuaded me to apply for PhD programs at Tufts University after hearing about the character Bartlett's career at Tufts. I am now beginning my PhD program at Tufts University in biomedical engineering this fall (2017). Biodigital has made a 5.5 year impact on my life.

This book had me hooked. Hooked. I dropped everything else I was reading (which is saying a lot for me; I am currently reading 10 books) to read Biodigital. The science is sound--I have done years of research in organic chemistry and was happily surprised when hearing Sundman's description of Diels-Alder adducts for a specific technology mentioned in the book. Everything else is scientifically feasible as far as I can tell, and the scientific descriptions were a true pleasure to read. The story line is engrossing and still leaves me wary of the motives of some real biotech companies. This book really makes you think about the role of industry in science in the 21st century.

Even if you don't consider yourself tech-savvy, this novel is probably the most interesting mystery/cerebral book you'll read all year.

Isn’t that grand? Wouldn’t you like to write a book that had a 5.5 year impact on someone’s life? It’s a great feeling, I assure you.

George Church’s foreword to the novels of John Sundman

As a child, like many children, I wanted to be a fireman, construction worker or paperback-writer when I grew up.  John Sundman is all that and much more. He lived for four years with subsistence farmers in Senegal and wrote world-class technical manuals for Sun Microsystems. He modestly claims to have done the latter without understanding the underlying ware (a refreshing alternative to manuals lacking knowledge of any human language).  Like Clemens, Rowling, Clark Kent, and other greats, Sundman uses pseudonyms (changing his middle names) to protect his secret identity.   He is a master of machines —computing, biological and political —and his books include details that will convince an expert, and yet enchant a distant outsider with a compelling page-turner plot. Not just plot and mechanisms, but unforgettable personalities that haunt us long after the pages stop.  

John’s “Mind Over Matter” trilogy began with his first novel, Acts of the Apostles, in 1999, (significantly reworked as Biodigital in 2014).  His second was Cheap Complex Devices and his third, The Pains.  These books get the reader amazingly quickly into a jarringly jamais vu/deja vu world — especially for aficionados of Orwell’s 1984 and Christian doctrine.  While refreshing style changes occur among them, you can find a consistent “meta” component that adds to the puzzles in each one.  We must now suffer the pain of waiting for his next books Creation Science and Meekman Rising.

Long before synthetic biologists were quoting the bongo physicist, Sundman’s 1999 novel Acts of the Apostles was about  “The Feynman Nine” a programmable nanoscopic machine described as “a device for finding a DNA sequence and converting it into another sequence.”  Sounds a lot like the CRISPR craze of genome editing.  As Joe Davis, a ‘hybrid’ artist at Harvard and MIT, might remind us, the best conceptual art (including novels) prods us to visualize vital issues that are lurking at, or far beneath, the surface of our science and cutting edge engineering.  My lab specializes in the subset of topics pejoratively classified as sci-fi/impossible, which, sometimes, turn out to be relatively easy.  For this we need a constant stream of challenges and inspirations.  A very rich source of such challenges lies at the interface between “bio” and “digital” – the realm of synthetic genomics, virus-resistant recoded organisms and Obama’s BRAIN initiative. It is precisely this biodigital interface that lies at the heart John Sundman’s novels.  Read them and you may find yourself challenged as well.

George Church

Harvard & MIT, 2015

I’m a hypocrite, I guess, for repudiating Church and continuing to trade on his name as I am here. But I do find it hard to let this go. I so wish the guy hadn’t slimed himself.

Coda: The Apotheosis of Biohacking

This guy, Brian Johnson, gave the opening keynote at Synbiobeta 2018. I’m out of space for this post so I’ll just let you google him yourself. After seeing the rapturous reaction to his opening remarks and then attending his workshop on ‘How to future-proof yourself’ I really truly felt like I was living in one of my novels. It was a trip.

In his ‘future-proofing’ workshop, Johnson told us how, first thing every morning, he ‘cleanses his mind’ of ‘18 cognitive biases’. In the Q&A after his presentation, he and I had this exchange:

Me: You spoke about your new way of imagining possible futures. But you didn't mention the people who've been doing exactly that for 100-plus years. I'm thinking of futurists and writers of science fiction, for example.
Johnson: No, no, not science fiction. I'm talking about something different. New philosophies, new epistemologies, new morality, entire new modes of cognition.
Me: I think that perhaps that speaks more to your ignorance of science fiction than it does to the concerns of the genre.
Johnson: [Short pause as he checks his cognitive biases, then smugly, dripping with condescension] No, I don't think so.

It was hysterical; it was absolutely perfect! It was all I could do to keep from laughing. His actual bio-digital brilliance (he is a really smart guy, with genuine accomplishments in both digital & biological realms) combined with his impermeable narcissism! The brilliance! The colossal arrogance and self-satisfaction! What a joy to behold! Here before me stood my own character Monty Meekman, made flesh! What a gift!

Synbiobeta never disappoints. If you go to San Jose, when I’m not attending a presentation I’ll be in the exhibitors’ hall selling books. I hope you’ll come say hello.

1. The name ‘Biodigital Forum’ was a spoof of a regular Silicon Valley event of the 1990’s called ‘The Digital Forum,’ hosted by Esther Dyson. To make the satire as unsubtle as I could, I named the host of The Biodigital Forum ‘Rachel Tryson.’

2. Khosla was a founder of Sun Microsystems, which was the quintessential Silicon Valley computer startup of the 1980’s. I worked at Sun for nine years during its heyday. I’ve never met Khosla but I know a fair bit about him. I can’t stand the guy; I think he’s just awful.

3. I think my hour-long interview with Church in his office in 2015 is much more enlightening than the Church/Khosla conversation. In 4 easy to digest segments: