Best quote from Sergey: "If what you're doing is not seen by some people as science fiction, it's probably not transformative enough"
Perhaps ironically, by this criteria the iPad was transformative, since it appeared in Star Trek. :)
Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef
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Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Synthetic diamonds are actually not cheap at all, maybe third of the price of the real ones. I expected them to be dirt cheap when shopping for the wedding ring.
Diamonds are supposed to be status object, allowing the owners to display their wealth. They wouldn't fulfill the goal if they were cheap.
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Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef
#73We have a lot of entrepreneurs here. Why don't we start with an easier lab-grown animal product than something we ingest? How about lab-grown fur coats (EDIT from evilduck's comment: or lab-grown leather for clothing, furniture, shoes, etc)? Who wouldn't want to wear a "mink" coat created with no animal pain? Develop the technology on something we don't have to eat, along with the associated health risks and sensitiv…
Lab grown fur seems a lot harder to do than lab grown meat. Skin is an incredibly complex organ. Especially if you want to grow hair on it.
Maybe the first step would be developing the ability to grow hair on existing skin. That would be a very popular breakthrough, curing baldness and patching up scar tissue that cannot grow hair anymore. Then it's a matter of getting that to grow on synthetic skin.
Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef
#74Best quote from Sergey: "If what you're doing is not seen by some people as science fiction, it's probably not transformative enough"
Perhaps ironically, by this criteria the iPad was transformative, since it appeared in Star Trek. :)
No, the first tablet was transformative. Here the quote means achieving something, not necessarily making it widespread.
Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef
#75While it's more ethical for the animal, I must question the carbon footprint and efficient and effective use of resources to make synthetic beef. Firstly, to make it scale you'll need a lot of machinery. Then you'll need the right nutrients. It will need a lot of technology, because to make beef grow it will need to have everything maintained and provided for it. In nature, beef cattle can be run on reasonably unprod…
The thing is, having an actual cow means making a ton of methane. The unproductive land is actually questionable, also, we actually need that unproductive land to stay unproductive. And, finally, there's than small "sentient being" issue.
I think I did mention it would be kinder to the animal.
Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef
#76> a history of backing projects that sound as though they belong in science fiction movies.... mining asteroids... trips to the moon... driverless cars and... green energy projects. So green energy is on par with trips to the moon?
> So green energy is on par with trips to the moon?
Providing renewable energy on the same scale as fossil fuels is at least as hard a problem as the Apollo program. We've got a long way to go. Graph for the US: http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec1_6.pdf
Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef
#77How about a return to traditional agriculture, which would provide more jobs, cleaner food, and decentralization and localization of food infrastructure? Why the relentless pursuit of industrialization and homogeneity at any cost?
Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef
#78I've been following this topic for a while, and the interesting thing is that synthetic beef still has to be "fed". What its fed is stem cells and cow fetal materials. So its not "vegan" per-se.
One of the synthetic meat companies switched to leather products as they found out no one wants to eat bio-engineered lab grown steak (also it didn't taste very good)
Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef
#79While it's more ethical for the animal, I must question the carbon footprint and efficient and effective use of resources to make synthetic beef. Firstly, to make it scale you'll need a lot of machinery. Then you'll need the right nutrients. It will need a lot of technology, because to make beef grow it will need to have everything maintained and provided for it. In nature, beef cattle can be run on reasonably unprod…
Did you read the article? 55% energy usage, 4% greenhouse gas emissions, relative to the real thing.
I did read the article. Where did they get these figures? It says these findings aren't published.
Re: Sergey Brin invests in synthetic beef
#80> a history of backing projects that sound as though they belong in science fiction movies.... mining asteroids... trips to the moon... driverless cars and... green energy projects. So green energy is on par with trips to the moon?
What the...? Going to the moon is science fiction? I guess the 20th century didn't exist.