In the 1960s computer chips were still largely hand built, just as—until recently—most biotech research was still a manual process, slow, unpredictable, messy in every sense. Now semiconductor fabrication is a hyperefficient atomic-scale manufacturing process churning out some of the world’s most complex products. Biotech is following a similar trajectory, only at a much earlier phase; organisms will soon be designed and produced with the precision and scale of today’s computer chips and software.
