"The next major explosion is going to be when genetics and computers come together. I'm talking about an organic computer - about biological substances that can function like a semiconductor"
About this Quote
Toffler talks like a man watching the horizon from inside a speeding car: the point isn’t prediction as parlor trick, it’s forcing you to feel how close the guardrails are. His “next major explosion” frames innovation as shockwave, not upgrade. That word choice is classic Toffler: technology doesn’t politely arrive; it detonates, rearranging labor, politics, identity, and the everyday timetable of life.
The hook here is the marriage of two mythic 20th-century forces: genetics (life as code) and computers (code as power). By insisting on their convergence, Toffler isn’t just forecasting biotech. He’s collapsing the boundary that comforts modern society: the idea that machines are “over there” and bodies are “in here.” An “organic computer” doesn’t simply compute; it makes the self newly legible, editable, and therefore governable. The subtext is that once biology becomes a substrate for computation, the most intimate things - health, reproduction, intelligence, even desire - become sites of engineering and, inevitably, markets.
Context matters: Toffler came out of the late Cold War information age, when semiconductors had already reorganized economies and war-making. He’s extending that logic: if silicon transformed everything, what happens when the semiconductor is wet, living, and self-replicating? The real forecast isn’t a gadget. It’s a shift in who gets to write the code of life, who owns it, and what happens to everyone who doesn’t.
The hook here is the marriage of two mythic 20th-century forces: genetics (life as code) and computers (code as power). By insisting on their convergence, Toffler isn’t just forecasting biotech. He’s collapsing the boundary that comforts modern society: the idea that machines are “over there” and bodies are “in here.” An “organic computer” doesn’t simply compute; it makes the self newly legible, editable, and therefore governable. The subtext is that once biology becomes a substrate for computation, the most intimate things - health, reproduction, intelligence, even desire - become sites of engineering and, inevitably, markets.
Context matters: Toffler came out of the late Cold War information age, when semiconductors had already reorganized economies and war-making. He’s extending that logic: if silicon transformed everything, what happens when the semiconductor is wet, living, and self-replicating? The real forecast isn’t a gadget. It’s a shift in who gets to write the code of life, who owns it, and what happens to everyone who doesn’t.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
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