The ego-belittling truth the Internet makes visible is that none of us is as unique as we’d like to believe. - Peter Diamandis

In the next century, planet earth will don an electric skin.

Henry Ford agreed: "None of our men are 'experts.' We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job … Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible."

Synthetic biology56 is built around the idea that DNA is essentially software — nothing more than a four-letter code arranged in a specific order. Much like with computers, the code drives the machine. In biology, the order of the code governs the cell's manufacturing processes, instructing it to make specific proteins and such. But, as with all software, DNA can be reprogrammed. Nature's original code can be swapped out for new, human-written code. We can co-opt the machinery of life, telling it to produce — well, whatever we can think of.