Say Hello to My Nerdy Side! Fascination with the Emerging & Living Technologies

My father professor Steen Rasmussen and I at The Santa Fe Institute

As some of you might know, I’ve been working on a documentary with my father about him, us, the emerging technologies (as in artificial life) and how these new living technologies are going to shape us, the next many generations and our World. I’m fascinated by the thought of synthetic biology and what can come of it.  And of course the relationship with my father has been interesting as well to develop together i this movie.

The movie is still developing and I am amazed how much has happened since I began this journey back in July 2013. The technology has evolved faster than we imagined and society and the press is slowly waking up and seeing that there are in fact real changes happening. It’s scary and fascinating at the same time. Technology is helping us with a lot now and we are experiencing less and less jobs in the World, which is why, I guess the term ‘basic income’ was coined and is being tested and discussed in certain countries.

Library at The Santa Fe Institute

I read somewhere (Oxford and Berkley studies) that in about 15 years time approximately 50 % of the job functions as we know them today will have disappeared. I’m not only talking about automation of manual labor. Also jobs that demands a thinking and decision making mind. Drones and cars without drivers are both examples of this trend. The computers, machines, or new technology if you will, is beating us to the punch here. In most cases they are better than us. This sounds scary. And it is. Because what should we do? Will our lives become just like in the movie ‘Humans need Not Apply’? Or will we figure out new job options that can keep us fed and happy?

But on the other hand, check this thought out: What if we regard these new technologies as our children? I’m not talking about robots that we build. I think robots are sort of ‘last season’ and a little bit uninteresting. No, I’m talking about synthetic biology. Artificial life. Cells like ours that are made of non living materials, but work like our biological cells. The artificial cells (Proto Cells) can undergo evolution and give ‘birth’ to new cells. Daughter Cells. Our hardware (our bodies and minds) are not the best fit for the future. In my dreams we are going to create a new generation somewhere down the road, that is way more fit hardware wise to exist and live on this Planet.

Anyways, these thoughts and much, much more is something we are discussing in the movie directed by Pernille Rose Groenkjaer and produced by Sigrid Dyekjaer both from Danish Documentary.

This 15 minutes video is from the BIO FICTION festival in Vienna 2014, where my dad and I were invited to talk about our movie and what we do. This video and the trailer in the video is NOT from the actual movie. The trailer was shot before Pernille Rose Groenkjaer got attached to the project. Pernille is an extremely competent film director and I’m excited to have her add even more layers to this movie and tell our story through her optic.

Click on this LINK to watch the video