It happens more quickly now. The it is an observation, conversation, published research, tweet, chance encounter that reveals yet another way that zeros and ones, the binary digital world, reveals itself changing our expectations. Yesterday afternoon it was the revelation of a library in a test tube. Thank you Watson and Crick.

The laboratory as a library?

And this wasn’t a trip into sci-fi literature. It was the Wall Street Journal – yes, the authoritative source of all news financial and not especially prone to flights of fancy other than an occasional gush over an impending IPO. With the low-key, but significant headline of Future of Data:Encoded in DNA, a story describes the successful efforts of a Harvard research team to translate a book on genomic engineering into actual DNA. The book would have required the digital space of a 3.5 inch floppy disk (if you immediately visualize this, realize that you are old), but instead fit comfortably into a small laboratory vial. After encoding the book into DNA, the words, illustrations and computer code all reducible to zeros and ones, the researchers read it back into a digital format ready for a print publisher.