Archival Cockroaches: How to turn junk DNA into a repository of Western Culture
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Archival Cockroaches: A Proposal for a Time Capsule by Jaron Lanier (2002)
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A proposal from 2002 by Jaron Lanier
Transcript of Archival Cockroaches: How to turn junk DNA into a repository of Western Culture
Archival Cockroaches: A Proposal for a Time Capsule
byJaron Lanier (2002)
A human being can withstand at most 5-10 grays (units of dose of radiation). It will take over 1,000 grays to kill a cockroach.
Proposal: Turn “junk DNA” into something useful
Most animals contain some DNA that has no function. Jaron Lanier (with David Sulzer & Lisa Haney) proposed putting junk DNA to good use. They want to translate the contents of all knowledge from a 2-digit computer code into the 4-digit DNA language, and then splice this information into pieces of nonfunctional DNA of a cockroach.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity . . .
Through careful interbreeding, after 14 years, every cockroach in New York would be an archival cockroach.
Cockroaches could be carry the “Bible” or “The Catcher in the Rye.” Stepping on one, then, would be tantamount to crushing a piece of Western Culture.
Periplaneta americana: Useful for storing books by the likes of Mark Twain, John Dos Pasos, Edgar Allan Poe, & Philip Roth.
Blattela germanica: Useful for storing books by the likes of Günter Grass, Heinrich Mann, Stefan Zweig, & Rainer Maria Rilke.
