{"id":65004,"date":"2012-03-08T08:44:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-08T16:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/gnxp\/?p=15971"},"modified":"2012-03-08T08:44:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T16:44:00","slug":"not-just-genomics-the-creeping-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/2012\/03\/08\/not-just-genomics-the-creeping-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Not just genomics: the creeping future"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Reihan_Salam\">2007 Reihan Salam<\/a> asked me when the $1,000 genome was going arrive. On paper, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/03\/08\/technology\/cost-of-gene-sequencing-falls-raising-hopes-for-medical-advances.html?pagewanted=print\">probably around this year, or early next<\/a>. But as I&#8217;ve been suggesting it really isn&#8217;t that big of a deal (the sticker price isn&#8217;t real in any case, someone will want the publicity). Over at <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/crux\/2012\/03\/08\/bio-info-tech-the-cyborg-baby-of-cheap-genomes-and-cloud-data\/\">The Crux<\/a> I try and do my own <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/crux\/2012\/03\/08\/bio-info-tech-the-cyborg-baby-of-cheap-genomes-and-cloud-data\/\">impersonation<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Peter_Diamandis\">Peter Diamandis<\/a>. <strong>But I wanted to emphasize that genomics alone, ubiquitous as it will be, is not going to be the &#8220;real deal.&#8221;<\/strong> Rather, it has to be integrated into a much thicker and richer information environment plugged into more efficient analytic tools. Personal genomics is a visible manifestation of the likely revolution in the health information ecology which is <em>possible<\/em> just around the corner. As an example, <a href=\"http:\/\/snyderlab.stanford.edu\/\">Mike Snyder<\/a> starts out with his genome in his presentations on the outlines of this nascent revolution, but probably the more important aspects have to do with fine-grained tracking of his biomarkers (which resulted in actionable information for him personally). Imagine a daily check-up instead of a six month check-up (or a minute by minute tracking system for the hypochondriacs out there).<\/p>\n<p>With all that said, keep in mind the dynamic that <a href=\"http:\/\/agapakis.com\/index.html\">Christina Agapakis<\/a> highlights in <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/crux\/2012\/03\/06\/the-prozac-yogurt-effect-how-hype-can-affect-the-future-of-science\/\">The Crux<\/a>. The hype around some technologies always results in them being 10-20 years into the future.* Artificial intelligence is probably a case of this, but less commented upon is the similar phenomenon in humanoid robotics. And yet it is easy to &#8220;problematize&#8221; the contention that robotics hasn&#8217;t yielded anything; I put the qualifier <em>humanoid<\/em> there precisely because my understanding is that robotics is more pervasive away from prying eyes than we might think. Genetic engineering probably hasn&#8217;t hit people as being a revolutionary technology, but it is, in the form of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Genetically_modified_organism\">GMOs<\/a>. There are many ways that we don&#8217;t live in the world of the Jetsons, but there are many ways that the Jetsons could not imagine our own world. We see the visions of the future through a dark mirror.<\/p>\n<p>* Shiny <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Unitard\">unitards<\/a> are always in the future it seems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2007 Reihan Salam asked me when the $1,000 genome was going arrive. On paper, probably around this year, or early next. But as I&#8217;ve been suggesting it really isn&#8217;t that big of a deal (the sticker price isn&#8217;t real in any case, someone will want the publicity). Over at The Crux I try and [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[365,4,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism","category-genetics","category-genomics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65004"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65137,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65004\/revisions\/65137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}