Craig Venter

As the Industrial Age is drawing to a close, I think that we're witnessing the dawn of the era of biological design. ”

Your age is your No. 1 risk factor for almost every disease, but it's not a disease itself. ”

The Anthropocentic Age - the first age in which humankind is the dominant species on the planet - cuts both ways: it is up to us to destroy or save the planet. We certainly have the ability. ”

Bloomberg's, you know, for people who don't use the service, provides through the Internet - through specialized computers - information about the financial world. It's a very large data base. I think they have on the order of a billion dollars or more a year in revenue. ”

Now that we can read and write the genetic code, put it in digital form and translate it back into synthesized life, it will be possible to speed up biological evolution to the pace of social evolution. ”

One of the challenges with a government health system, like in the UK, with all of this data, is that you have a government making decisions on which treatments they'll pay for and which ones they won't. That's a dangerous, dangerous, place to get into society. ”

Space X's Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars with modules where earthlings can live. My teleporting technology is the number one way those individuals will get new information, new treatments of diseases that will occur on the planet, and new food sources. ”

Cells will die in minutes to days if they lack their genetic information system. They will not evolve, they will not replicate, and they will not live. ”

My greatest fear is not the abuse of technology but that we will not use it at all. ”

In a biological system, the software builds its own hardware, but design is critical, and if you start with digital information, it has to be really accurate. ”