39fortuitously “discover” long-lost rela-
tives because they are likely to be in the
database already. Indiscretions that might
lead to obfuscated paternity will be im -
possible to hide. If a child has a genetic
mutation that causes illness later in life,
the parents will have the choice to know
beforehand. And then they can choose to
tell their child, or not.
When you begin dating someone, it
is very likely that some exchange of
genetic information will be the norm.
After all, you may find out early on that
there are mutations that both of you
carry that might lead to disease in your
children. Or you may discover that vari-
ous immune incompatibilities mean the
probability of miscarriage is high.
Questions and decisions that now
emerge organically over time will soonbe present from the initial stage in the
digital age.
The genetic revolution of the past few
decades has been enabled by advances
in science and technology and by the
laws of capitalism. Supply and demand
have worked to bring costs down, and
consumer genomics is being trans-
formed from a niche noveltyinto the sort
of thing that drives conversations at
Thanksgiving dinner. It can aid in solv-
ing crimes, foster good health, and allow
one to understand one’s genealogy.
But technology can also impact soci-
ety, reshaping values and priorities.
Capitalism is an engine of cultural
“creative destruction.” Secrets and
hypocrisies that maintained the good
health of a family might not be viable in
the age of transparency. The sweet and
innocent courtship that defines the
early stages of a relationship may
immediately be subject to the cold
glare of genetic permutations.
Genetics is a powerful informative
tool. But what we do with that tool is up
to us.t
Osee the future of energy innova-
tion, we need look no further
than two iconic Silicon Valley
inventions of our century: the
Tesla and the iPhone. Both products were
launched circa 2007 and catalyzed entire
industries. And both were made possible
by an energy-centric discovery. As the
Nobel committee enthusiastically noted
last year, neither would have been possible
but for the discovery, a half-century ago,
of the nearly magical value of lithium-
battery chemistry.
If it were not for lithium, a “fuel” tank
for a single Tesla would weigh more than
two entire cars. Odds are that parking
lots in California today wouldn’t be
filled with Teslas. And if we were still
stuck with yesteryear’s battery tech, your
smartphone would still look like Gordon
Gekko’s two-pound brick-sized cell-
phone in the 1987 movie Wall Street.
Instead, a series of scientists, engi-
neers, and innovators discovered and
commercialized a game-changing energy
technology. In a little more than a decade
after the iPhone’s introduction, smart-
phone ownership went from practically
zero to 3 billion. That technology now
has over 60 percent of the global market
for personal communication devices.
On the other hand, in the same period,
the number of electric vehicles (EVs)
grew from zero to some 4 million on the
world’s roads. EVs now have less than 0.4
percent—that’s not a typo—of the global
market for personal mobility devices.
Despite billions of dollars in subsidies
and mandates for EVs, the smartphone
revolution achieved more than a hundred-
fold greater market penetration. That, in at e c h n o l o g y s e c t i o nMr. Mills, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute,
is the author of Digital Cathedrals: The
Information Infrastructure Era.Innovation
And ‘New
Energy’
Batteries are great, but we still
need petroleumB y M a r k P. M i l l sinformation that is returned to individu-
als, the greater the consumer demand
will be. And so a virtuous cycle estab-
lishes itself.
The drive for sequencing will also be
driven by public-health concerns.
Today newborns in the United States
are tested for a few significant child-
hood diseases and conditions automat-
ically. In some cases the diseases never
present themselves if the child’s diet is
immediately altered. But these sorts of
tests have clear limitations, and many
hospitals now make recourse to rapid
whole-genome sequencing for new-
borns who are not “flourishing.” These
infants cannot tell a doctor how they
are feeling, making them difficult to
diagnose. The new genetic technology,
which searches through the wholesequence for problem segments, has
allowed for much better diagnosis of
idiopathic conditions in newborns.
The path forward, then, is clear: With -
in a decade it is likely that all newborns
will be sequenced. It will be cheap and
quick, and it will need to be done only
once. It also means a whole generation
will grow up without ever having to do a
genetic test. Their whole sequence will
be somewhere in the cloud, at the ready.
It will be like having a genetic Social
Security card.
The development of genomics is
somewhat like what has happened in the
banking business. Before there were
Social Security cards and credit agen-
cies, obtaining loans involved more
effort and relied on intuitive methods.
J. P. Morgan famously stated that “the
first thing is character.” Today credit is
based on a variety of measurements of
your history and your demographics.
The intuitive has been made precise; the
opaque, transparent.
Genetics will bring transparency; that
much is clear. Future generations won’tSupply and demand have worked to bring
costs down, and consumer genomics is
being transformed from a niche novelty into
the sort of thing that drives conversations at
Thanksgiving dinner.3col - TECH_QXP-1127940387.qxp 3/4/2020 1:01 AM Page 39
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