Cellularity is a new project by James King, a speculative designer working on biotechnology and interaction design. The project focuses on the potential future of smart pharmaceuticals, drug molecules surrounded by membranes that over time as technology advances may come to more and more closely resemble actually living things. He proposes a cellularity scale from totally non-living to really alive artificial cells. This quantification of "aliveness" in a way is something that may need to be done if some of the proposals of synthetic biology come to fruition. When does a membrane surrounding a bunch of chemicals transition from chemistry to biology? How do we decide if something is alive, and what does that tell us about things that are already alive? These are interesting questions, and James addresses them in a really compelling and beautiful way.
(ht LabRat!)
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How is this being addressed in a 'really compelling way' and an even more impressive claim is a 'beautiful way'? - it's not at all. The notion might... could have been received as interesting, but the design is poor, dry and overall uninspired.
It's like watching another cliche, terribly made science animation, you were forced to watch in a school science lesson. With an even more impressively boring voice over.