Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Christina Agapakis posts on Adrian Mackenzie paper: “Synthetic biology and the technicity of biofuels”

The first two sentences of the post Petroleum Replicas

The language of innovation often stresses disruption–eliminating inefficient industries and replacing them with more streamlined, technologically advanced versions. Nowhere is disruption more complex and important than in the energy industry, with implications for so much of the way that we live, affecting global industry, economics, and climate.

Pumping petroleum out of the ground less efficient, and less streamlined, than biofuels?
Don't think so. Agapakis tries to force-fit a view that does not apply.

Synthetic Genomics already had a significant staff cutback and changed its timescale.

Note the sentence: In thinking with biofuels and making visible the sources of the carbon molecules and the bond energy of fuel molecules we can ask new kinds of “what if…?” questions and begin to imagine new industrial ecosystems.

The bond energies within fuel molecules, like say ethanol, are well-worked out and are the same no matter what the source of the fuel molecule. No "what if" questions are needed.

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