Chapter 49 9.5 Ultimate Technology

One night in the spring of 1991, due to some administrative oversight, I was left alone in a nearly completed biosphere.At that time, the construction workers had already returned home, the SBV employees were turning off the lights on the top of the mountain, and I was alone in the first generation of Gaia.It's eerily quiet here, as if you're in a cathedral.As I wandered among the farming communities, I could hear the dull thud of the distant ocean, the crashing sound of a wave machine pumping up a wave every twelve seconds.The wave machine sucks in seawater and spits it out to create waves.As Linda Leigh said, the sound heard near the wave machine was like the sound of a gray whale jetting.Standing in the garden, the deep groans coming from afar sounded like Tibetan lamas chanting scriptures in the basement.

Outside, the brown desert at dusk.Inside, is a green world full of vitality. ——Tall grass, seaweed floating in the pot, ripe papaya, water droplets splashed by fish jumping.I breathed the smell of plants, a strong plant smell in jungles and swamps.The atmosphere flows slowly; the water circulates continuously; the framework supporting the space cools and rattles.This oasis is full of life, but it is silent, everything is quietly busy.There is no one to be seen here.But something is going on together, and I can appreciate the word "common" in the co-evolution of life. The sun was about to set.Soft and warm sunlight shines on this white cathedral.I thought, I could live here for a while.There is a sense of space here, a cave of warmth and comfort, yet at night it remains open to the stars, becoming a place for ideas.Mark Nelson said: "If we really want to live like humans in space, then we must learn how to build an ecosystem." He said that in the Soviet space laboratory, those big men who had no time to do boring things The first thing I do after floating up from the bed is to serve the little pea sprouts for "experiment".This close relationship with peas is crucial to them.We all need other lives.

If on Mars, I would only be living in an artificial biosphere.On Earth, however, living in an artificial biosphere is a noble experiment, undertaken only by the pioneers.I can imagine that it feels like living in a giant test tube.In Bio2, we will learn a great deal about our planet, ourselves and the countless other species on which we depend.I firmly believe that what we learn here will one day be used on Mars or the Moon.In fact, it has taught me, the bystander, that to live as a human being means to live with other beings.I no longer worry in my heart that machine technology will replace all biological species.I believe we will keep other species because Bio2 helped us prove that life is technology.Life is the ultimate technology.Machine technology is no more than a temporary substitute for life technology.As we improve our machines, they will become more organic, more biological, more like life, for life is the highest technology of living things.One day, most of the technosphere in Bio2 will be replaced by engineered life and life-like systems.One day it will be hard to tell the difference between machines and living things.Of course, "pure" life will still have its place.What we call life today will remain the ultimate technology because it is autonomous—it can stand on its own and, more importantly, it can learn on its own.Ultimate technology of any kind is bound to win over the engineers, corporations, bankers, visionaries, and pioneers who were once considered the greatest threats to pure life.

The glass spaceships anchored in this desert are called biospheres because the logic of the biosphere runs through them.The logic of the biosphere (biological logic, biology) is merging organisms and machines.In the factories of bioengineering companies and the chips of neural network computers, organisms and machines are merging.Nowhere, however, is the marriage of the living and the artificial as vividly displayed as in the Bio2 vessel.Where does the synthetic coral reef end, and where does the clattering wave machine begin?Where does the waste disposal swamp begin and where does the toilet drain end?Is it a fan or a bug in the soil that controls the atmosphere?

Most of the answers from the Bio2 trip were questions.I spend a few hours in it with gusto, and I get questions that have taken me years to think about.enough.I turned the huge handle on the airlock door and stepped out of the silence of Bio2 into the dusk of the desert.If you can stay in it for two years, it will definitely enrich your whole life.