Viruses - Batteries Now Included | Hacker News Reader

Viruses - Batteries Now Included

singularityhub.com

11 pointskkleiner6 comments

Wow, I think this is the first article I read on singularity-hub that's so blithely stupid (either that, or it's written for idiots).

Whilst I'm sure this is useful technology, underplaying the risks like that is not respectful to your audience. Paragraphs like:

But wait, you say, you’re afraid of what these viruses might do if unleashed on the world. Can’t they mutate into a terrible disease? Might they stop building batteries and start building weapons of mass destruction? Couldn’t these little electronic-minded viruses one day develop into gasp* Decepticons™?*

...are stupid and seem to disregard 50 years of science fiction authors thinking about this problem. No, Mr Saenz, that's not the main worry with these - the main worry is that eventually a virus of this kind might mutate into a "gray goo" plague. If you don't know what that is, you have no business writing articles on a site called "singularity hub".

Let’s get the facts straight. These viruses are bacteriaphages, meaning they hunt down and eat bacteria, not humans.

That's deeply worrying. Bacteria and humans are not all that different, and the human body harbours large quantities of friendly and essential bacteria.

In short, there’s no reason to be afraid of these engineered viruses, they just want to build you batteries. Won’t you let them try?

Well, that really depends on which bacteria they want to make batteries out of. My bacteria? Buzz off.

Now, I'm sure the scientists behind these are aware of this risk and are taking every reasonable precaution, so this is not an attack on the technology itself - just on this badly written article.

this is why on a previous post about bioinformatics, i suggested that although this field is highly interesting, if you get involved, please, don't kill us all. the potential for disaster here is much larger than a nuclear disaster, caution needs to be very important as our species marches on, especially when it comes to coupling nanotech with biotech, specifically nanotech that alters biologies.

Yes, sometimes I think that people get so carried away with trying to infuse their writing with character that they forget to check if they have one first! I just found the piece annoying, myself.

Though snide remarks aside, while I agree that the tone of the article is patronising and not at all befitting of even a semi-serious piece of writing, I think too much has been made of the dangers of genetic engineering in the past, and actually find myself appreciating the implied "It's still just a blooming virus!" stance. I mean, surely a virus with altered genetic material is about as likely to wildly mutate as one that's entirely 'natural' (whatever that means)?

There is no doubt that such a virus could be dangerous if it had been engineered, say, to be more resilient or to reproduce very rapidly, but I think people get so worried about the scary things that genetic engineering could do (if it wanted to) that they expect it to do so regardless of what is intended. The same could be said of the public perception of science in general, sadly enough - look at the way people have reacted to the LHC.

Sometimes I think that people get so carried away with trying to infuse their writing with character that they forget to check if they have one first.

Brilliant quote, love it.

You're right on the money. Granted, it's a movie - but that's exactly what happens in I Am Legend. They modify viruses to cure cancer, and because of the perceived benefit, the risk is overlooked. The virus is tried, and it turns out to be highly contagious and deadly.

Moving back to the battery, what if there was an accident / spill, and the same genes that made the battery acids causes some infection in humans or even live-stock? Doesn't that come to the writer's mind at all?

The concern when writing general interest stories about scientific topics is that you will either a) alienate an unsophisticated reader by maintaining a serious tone or b)alienate sophisticated readers by trivializing a serious topic using a whimsical tone. I am not sure an idealized middle ground really exists. That we are discussing the article on ycombinator probably reveals that we can only speak to the interests of one of those two groups (presumably b).

I am unsure whether Swombat is more infuriated with the general unconcerned tone of the article or the actual paragraph (s)he dissects. In either case, the concerns for this particle application of virus-based technology are minimal. As pointed out, the genetic modifications are small, the viruses are fragile, and the materials used are ions in water. Though we (humans and most mammals) live in symbiosis with many types of bacteria, bacteriaphages are generally a species-specific predator. M13 will not consume your digestive bacteria any more than a polar bear would hunt krill.

Gray goo, though a well used and thought-out science fiction conceit, is about as likely as the Decepticons in this case. Again, most gray goo concepts (there are dozens) require a fairly resilient mechanism that consumes a wide-variety of materials and converts them into more goo (or goo-related materials). The M13, modified and self-replicating though it may be, has a narrow range of consumables (iron phosphate and SWNTs) and is fairly easy to kill off. In fact, it is unclear whether M13, when modified, is sustainable outside of lab conditions.

In general, I feel that most media are too quick to produce alarmist articles in relation to new technology, and that anti-alarmist articles (even ones lacking character) are a welcome balance to the discussion.

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