ABSTRACT
Most of the excitement about the information and communications technologies has to do with their well-documented impacts on cultural evolution—the ways they transform social systems such as businesses, markets, and governments. The world's most powerful computer, the one they call Blue Gene, is a hundred times faster than any computer that came before it. And unlike previous supercomputers used mainly for military, economic, and astronomical applications, it was designed for biologists. Biotechnology has generated a lot of controversy around such issues as food safety, environmental dangers, the use of human embryos in research, and the ethics of patenting genes. It will probably generate a lot more, even while it becomes a ubiquitous element of twenty-first-century life. Over the course of the twentieth century, as scientists and government officials became more aware of the value of genetic resources, a global network of gene banks took form.
