🍄 Here Come the Biotopians!

Next-generation biomanufacturing market worth $43.16 Billion by 2030. We are on the cusp of a new frontier, and it is one that is biodesigned. Watch us grow the future…

Jun 23, 2023

From the minds of Sputnik Futures. Exploring every rabbit hole there is. For more wanderings, become an Alice in Futureland subscriber—it's free.

🍄 AudioDose: this is Alice on Sonic Mushrooms. Eavesdrop on micro-designers here.
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📘 ALICE book Thriving with Microbes: The unseen intelligence within and around us.

Hello, we’re Alice, and we are always in a state of wonder.

We are excited about a bioimagined future and the visions of student teams of the Biodesign Challenge (BDC) Summit 2023, live-streamed today from MoMA NYC.

Biotopians and solarpunks will share their visions of new possibilities and solutions via biodesign. Finalists showcase their projects before esteemed judges from academia, the arts, and industry to compete for prizes, including the coveted Glass Microbe. Teams were chosen from over 500 students from 15 countries who worked throughout the academic year to develop their visions.

True solarpunks, alumni of Biodesign Challenge continue to grow their concepts, often with the help of BDC. Since 2016, alumni have gone on to start companies, raise $20M+ in investment, win business competitions, and exhibit in global museums and design festivals.

Joining the Biodesign Challenge Summit 2023 as guest speakers:

🧠 Suzanne Lee, designer turned pioneer of biotechnology for fashion. She started growing materials from microbes for the fashion industry in 2002, coining the term “Biocouture.” Today Suzanne is the founder of Biofabricate, a global network serving the needs of biomaterial innovators, consumer brands and investors through events, advisory and learning resources.

🧠 Mitchell Joachim, an architect and urban designer, the Co-Founder of Terreform ONE and an Associate Professor of Practice at NYU. Previously he was the Frank Gehry Chair at University of Toronto and a faculty member at Pratt, Columbia, Syracuse, Washington, The New School, and the European Graduate School.

🧠 Kim Stanley Robinson, an acclaimed science fiction author who has published more than twenty books, including The Ministry for the Future (2020) and the bestselling Mars trilogy. In 2008, he was named “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine and is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards.

📘 And for a deep dive into the perspectives shaping biodesign, check out the BDC book Grow the Future: Visions of Biodesign.

Reinventing Everything

As we better understand the molecular biology of life, there’s really no limitations as to what we can get living things to do. You see, living things can be used as factories to create any molecule. Yes, any molecule. And since molecules are the basis for everything we construct, biodesigners are engineering technologies for every single purpose they can imagine—constructing new materials, new substances, new foods.

Not since the dot-com boom has there been such excitement about future pockets of rapid growth. Welcome to the “bioeconomy.” The bioeconomy is a term experts use to describe all the new and innovative ways we are producing food, products, and energy, using biology as our tools, including the handiwork of microbes.

We’re not just talking about better packaging for our products. We’re talking about reimagining some of the basics of what it means to be human, some of the most foundational things about our lives, our rituals, the way that we think about death, the way that we think about life, the way that we think about our relationships with each other, the way that we identify ourselves. All of these are really under question when you start to think about how biology can affect those states of being, those relationships. —Daniel Grushkin, executive director, Biodesign Challenge

Designing with Microbes

Biodesign is the twenty-first-century equivalent of UX (user experience) design. Their toolbox? Microbes.

Microbes rule the world, so much so that saying the word “microbes” is like saying “light”—there are so many different forms and varieties in it, and all are essential to life. The term “microbes” refers to any small organism that is microscopic and generally unseen by the human eye. Microbiology is the study of these microorganisms; some are friendly but seem to have evil twins, and others are still a mystery. Microbes include the beautiful and badass bacteria that live in and on us (and just about everything else on the planet); fantastic fungi that communicate to one another, and we manipulate for food, medicine, and materials; the (sometimes) yummy yeast we have cultivated for fermented foods; and even the pretentious and often freeloading parasitic protozoa, which we try to avoid. Much like a pop star today, microbes have many followers, admirers, frenemies, and haters.

Microbes are a magical kingdom coexisting with us in every aspect of life. And we are harnessing them to become our factories and engineers; our personalized medicine; both our chefs and our food; our architects and designers; and our partners in fighting climate change and cleaning up the environment. We are inextricably bedded with microbes, you see. We are their spaceships—they are our fellow travelers here on Earth, and we in turn will bring them to the new habitats we jet toward in the cosmos (trip to Mars, anyone?)

A Possible Future Scenario
Superbugs Spawned Superhumans and They All Lived Happily Ever After

We have heard the warning many times! The world is going to be in trouble if we don’t tackle the growing problem of climate change, food scarcity, and drug-resistant microbes. If nothing was done, infections caused by antimicrobial resistant “superbugs” would kill an extra 10 million people each year worldwide by 2050, over-taking cancer. Not only that, but it would cost the world an estimated $100 trillion.

We are here to say “good job, humans.” The news that alerted us to the scale of this looming problem kick-started researchers to investigate how these doomsday issues could be tackled. Humans concluded that solving these issues would be significantly cheaper than ignoring them, and entrepreneurial optimism propelled a concerted global effort. Short and sweet: ingenuity and science saved the day.

Still, let’s show some humility— you humans had help. A lot of help. I mean, like trillions of microbial forces came to the rescue. From energy, to agriculture, to human health, we witnessed how beautiful and elegant bacteria can be.

After following all the buzz about the microbiome, the science finally caught up and caught on. After all, humans, you are a walking mountain of bugs. This is a microbial world, and you are what you digest and more importantly what your bacteria digest.

Microbes are not just “germs,” they are lyricists. They are the words, the rhyme, and the rhythm for all life on Earth. Being super-social microorganisms, bacteria possess a type of altruism that may have a connection to our very own altruistic behavior, to think of the benefit of others over ourselves. Some may describe this as the foundation of our (human) social contracts. Bacteria are our lifeline to this day, from the bacteria in our gut that help digest our food to the microbes in the ocean that produce most of the oxygen we breathe. The best part is that in 2050 science has still barely scratched the surface in studying the mysteries of the microbial world. Microbes will drive our scientific, spiritual, and spatial frontiers. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that we uncovered that human beings are just intelligent bacteria. Superbugs can create superhumans.

So that begs the question: Are humans derived from ancient colonies of bacteria? Is human thought viral? I know their social media is. And if that’s the case, are humans simply the spaceships for bacteria? Perhaps, paranormal author Brad Steiger was on to something when he said that “we have met the Martians and they are us.”

Hmmm, does that mean that humans are the aliens on earth? Wow! Tell me about panspermia again . . .

Craving more?

📘 Alice in Futureland books
🎧 Alice in Futureland Podcasts
🎧 Solarpunk AgTech with Agam Khare, CEO & founder of Absolute
👁‍🗨 Mars Habitat and Microbes with Freeman Dyson, theoretical physicist (1923-2020)