Genesis Machines

This book about the new science of biocomputing explains what we can expect in the new generation of computers, where scientists are moving from silicon chips to using living systems to build machines. Amos explains that cells, gels and DNA strands are of the new wetware for the 21st century at the interface between mathematics and biology. The new field is called the synthetic biology or molecular computing. The reader is encouraged to think of the implications of programming cells from a cancer patient to prompt the body to cure itself, but this vein of rhetoric is familiar. The language is still mechanistic and manipulative, charged with machismo, but the book is informed by a wide sweep of historical and technological understanding.