The Banana Peel Project

Lately we’ve been hearing more and more about the feasibility of creating “artificial” life in test tubes.

I think it’s absolutely fascinating that despite the human obsession with creating life–that is, with becoming gods–and all the research money poured into creating synthetic self-sustaining biological or computational systems, we still tremble when we consider the possibility that they will escape from their test tubes and take over the world.

Is Hollywood to thank for the paranoia?  Or is it really a fundamental human fear that the living technologies we create will some day be greater than us?