The Coming Biotech Age: The Business of Bio‐Materials

Citation

Achtenhagen, L. (2001), "The Coming Biotech Age: The Business of Bio‐Materials", Information Technology & People, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 321-326. https://doi.org/10.1108/itp.2001.14.3.321.2

In 1999 Andy Grove, the CEO of Intel Corp., stated that “in five years, internet companies will have ceased to exist. By then, every company will have to be an internet company to be able to survive”. Richard W. Oliver, the author of the book The Coming Biotech Age, goes a big step further. He claims that “in less than a generation, virtually every company will be a bioterials company” (p. 2) – Oliver is trying to predict the future (admitting his book to be only one of possible scenarios), building on the assumption that the information age is coming to an end, succeeded by the age of bioterials. Drawing on his readers’ emotions, he claims that this new age however would be much more powerful, more global, more persuasive and growing faster than the information age – ending in the hypothesis that the technologies of bioterials will challenge our very definition of life. Well, Oliver knows that he is neither the first nor the only one to claim the coming rise of the biotech age. Take, for example, the biotech critic Jeremy Rifkin, who has been discussing the potential impact of biotechnology since the 1970s. In his book The Biotech Century Rifkin (1998) discusses how the impacts of biotechnology will alter not only our definition of life but also our raison d’être. Rifkin strongly argues for the potential power of the convergence of different technologies, and mainly IT and biotechnology. For him, bioinformatics are the main driver and enabler of biotech’s rapid growth.

Oliver clearly builds on Rifkin’s influential work; however, he attempts to extend the ongoing discussion of biotechnology around three major issues:

First, Oliver broadens the focus from regarding only biology to including both organic and inorganic matter – the consideration of material science brings him to invent the name bioterials. The second extension of the current discussion can be seen in the attempted focus on the economics of bioterials, rather than on the technical, scientific, or ethical aspects. Thirdly, the author takes an outspokenly positive approach to the contribution of biotechnology – or bioterials – to our lifes. In this aspect, Oliver clearly takes a different stand from Rifkin who laments the low levels of critical voices against biotechnological advances. The three possible contributions made by Oliver will be discussed in more detail in the following.

The convergence of biology and material sciences, such as physics and chemistry, is a very compelling scenario. The close cooperation between, for example, physicists and biologists is in itself not new and has historically brought forward a number of interesting discoveries – just think about the physicist Max Delbrück, who won a Nobel prize for his fundamental work on genetic mechanisms and bacteriophages. However, it is the scope of this convergence for which Oliver argues that makes his book an interesting read. Oliver discusses in detail how biotech activities are conquering organic matters; e.g. at the intersection of biology and electronics, artificial noses, tongues and ears are being developed, whose components are primarily inorganic, but whose functions and applications are organic. To dramatise his argument and to distinguish himself from other authors in the field as being more visionary, Oliver argues that the end of the information age is already approaching, being outpaced by the “age of bioterials”. While the author’s lingo is somewhat exaggerated and annoying, the arguments themselves are provocative and stimulating.

Second, Oliver attempts to establish different economic laws of the bioterial age. The first one is the daily doubling of knowledge in the biotech industry, which is a commonly shared conviction. However, Oliver argues that if the different economic ages, such as the industrial and the information age, were depicted in life cycle curves, the bioterial age’s curve would be depicted as short and almost vertical in trajectory, compared to the longer and more horizontal growth rates of the earlier economic eras. This thought is interesting in two respects: it argues not only that biotech is taking over the lead from IT, but also that the duration of the biotech era will be very short – consequently leading us to the question of what would be next. Unfortunately, here the author fails to give hints at possible subsequent scenarios. Therefore, the question remains open – if the era of bioterials was so short, would the sustainable impact on our lives really be that big? Oliver argues that IT has already become ubiquitous and that on the basis of availability, cost, use, further development, or potential it could no longer be considered “high tech” – that, however, IT would continue to be important to the smooth functioning of economies and society, while bioterials would become the “engine” of the new economy. While the scenario might appear somewhat exaggerated, Oliver most likely does have a point – just consider the major contributions to the future advances of IT that might be expected from bioterials, e.g. by developing “intelligent” storage applications. Oliver’s second economic law states that the global scope of bioterials would be inversely proportional to its subatomic scale. The basis of this idea is that economic growth used to be limited by decreasing returns to inputs, while bioterials might modify the input‐output relationship and reduce raw material costs – thus leading to constant or increasing returns to inputs. Oliver even claims that biotech has the potential to create the most important spillover effects in history, starting from health care, moving to agriculture, and finally affecting industrial sectors. While the increasing influence of biotech on other industries can definitely not be neglected, the actual extent remains to be seen. However, in the author’s provocative vein it makes sense to establish this economic law. Even if the extent of emerging influence of biotech was lower than expected by Oliver, the insight that biotech will not only influence our health care system, but that rather a number of industries will change in their production techniques, e.g. by relying on bacteria‐based processes, would be quite compelling. The third economic law of bioterials is that of accelerating growth rates, which assumes that R&D results would spread over a number of different industries, with IT building the basis for rapid commercialisation of bioterials. Well, it remains unclear in which way this is really unique for the biotech industry rather than applying to modern business in general.

The third aspect in which Oliver’s book differentiates itself from others is by applying an overarchingly positive perspective. Fortunately, this does not result in a completely uncritical view, and some ethical considerations are being made. However, while the book claims to focus on the economic aspects of biotech, the resulting aspects for business are not critically assessed. On a societal level, Oliver argues that a new type of “literacy in biology” is needed which will allow people to make informed choices about their own genes and maybe that of others. He does have a point, as in many countries current discussions centre around computer literacy, while natural sciences are comparatively being neglected. The demanded bio‐literacy would also allow the increasingly important ethical discussion about biotechnologies and their potential impacts to take place on a broader scale and would facilitate its moving beyond emotionally driven arguments.

So, should you read the book? The discussion of the convergence of biology and material sciences is very convincing, and also the emerging dominance of the industry over IT is rather well‐argued. The first half of the book focuses on the influence of the emerging “bioterials” industry on the individual as well as on business. However, the second part of the book is more of a mainstream “introduction to biotech” book (though seemingly well‐informed), with chapters covering genetics, big pharma, agro‐biology, venture capital for biotech start‐ups, and ethics. The intial key word “bioterials” does not at all appear in this latter part of the book, and the changes beyond biotechnology are not addressed. Here, the book would have profited from Oliver’s maintaining his “astrological” vein of predicting the future, instead of falling back to describing the present and what we already know. For the reader with a profound interest in biotech, this second part of the book will probably not give many new insights, while as an easy read the book is clearly recommendable to those wanting to get quickly up to date in the field, not minding the enthusiastic involvement demanded from the reader. However, the book is definitely not for the highly critical thinker, as provided evidence is mainly anecdotal and driven by the personal beliefs of the author as a visionary – establishing the different ‘economic laws of bioterials’ could then be interpreted as an attempt to deviate from the non‐scientific character of the book by suggesting some “rigour”.

However, does Oliver really provide an answer to what our (private and corporate) lifes in the “age of bioterials” will look like? The answer is a clear no – nonetheless, while the book does not really fulfill its promise to discuss the economic consequences of the age beyond the information era, the feeling of “having learnt something” prevails. The first part of the book will make a good read for people interested in IT as well as in possible future scenarios beyond IT, while the second part of the book aims at people interested in learning more about biotech in general. However, while the first part attempts to depict the future in five years time, the second part only analyses developments so far and thus does not manage to greatly surprise the reader.