Esther Dyson: The woman who knows her future
You send her an email, ask when she has time, when to accompany her for a few days, and Esther Dyson sends her annual planner with her appointments, conferences, Munich, Moscow, Washington, New Delhi. Choose something new. One chooses, surprised at how frankly she grants insight into her private plans, Munich; she writes: well, next Sunday, at noon. And when asked if she might not go Monday, she writes: The following situation: I'm in India, and I'm going to bed now. See you Sunday.
Sunday, Munich, an international conference on the digital future. People from Apple and Google are there, the vice president of Facebook, the Wikipedia founder, the entire IT jet set. Dark suits, dark rollis. And a pink hippie blouse in the front row, Esther Dyson, 57, sitting cross-legged on her chair, her glasses slipped into fuzzy reddish-blond hair, her laptop unfolded on her lap, typing, pensive; in the front, where everyone can see it. Does she care? It leads a public life, in the middle and yet for itself. Conferences are her living room and the Internet her chair by the window.
And while discussing social networks on the podium, Esther reads her emails; She predicted social networks twelve years ago. Esther Dyson: investor and intellectual of the IT scene and at the same time her mascot. On the way, everywhere, present, mostly one step ahead. Once she says - in her friendly way, that covers any arrogance, which can also be in such sentences: "When others start to get interested in something, it bores me already," and she dares to think very hard.
So she kept thinking. Followed their interests and their sense of humor. As an investor and consultant for start-ups, she has to recognize technology trends - medicine, biology - but also set trends. Dopplr, for example, an Internet company that publishes its members' travel plans; The airlines have access to them and can offer their customers individual offers - they sell their private plans, but get better and cheaper tickets.
She brings people together, she loves that: being in touch with everyone at all times, as a virtual link between money, ideas and expertise. She is there when someone wants to cross a new border. So she met the molecular biologist George Church. "Someone said: You'll find it interesting," she says in a conference break, again cross-legged, this time on one of the noble armchairs in the lounge of the "Bayerischer Hof". "So I met him, he mentioned his project and people putting their personal genome on the internet, and I said: If you want, I'll do it. Maybe one day my data will be useful."
Church is a Harvard professor and founder of the Personal Genome Project (PGP): the world's first gene decryption project where participants publish their genetic material and highly personal information on diseases, medicines and lifestyle; it is the most candid presentation of what makes a person so far. Church wants to determine the extent to which external factors influence genes. There are now around 6,000 genes that may be responsible for the development of diseases, but little is known about whether and how environment and habits trigger their mutations. Also, because there is too little comparison data. That's why Church wants to build a huge gene database of at least 100,000 volunteers. Esther Dyson and her nine colleagues make the start.
In them, the world should learn what really happens when you make your genetic make public. How do employers, health insurers, friends react? Although there has been a law in the US since May that prohibits people from discriminating against their genes; but what can a law really buffer? And how do the participants themselves experience, what is the feeling of putting an overview of their genetic material on the Internet with everything that can be read from it: equipment for getting fat and for hair loss - or worse, Alzheimer's, cancer? Does it make it vulnerable to give so much privacy? Is the genome as intimate as a nude photo? Like the excerpt from the diary? How the protocol of a meeting with the psychologist? What relationship do you have to your genes - or do you only have a relationship to your power? Maybe fear, awe? Trust in God? And it disenchants this power when the genes at once look like what they are: mere nucleotide chains, deciphered in endless rows of letters, numbers, and abbreviations. Esther Dyson's genome, numbered 21660, is available for retrieval at http://www.personalgenomes.org/public/3.
She says, "I'm not afraid of my genes.Most people say: We prefer to talk about inheritance and hereditary diseases in the family. But actually they have no clear attitude to it. Many are afraid that their genes tell them when and where they die. I want to explain to them that there is also a chance in that. For example, there are different types of diabetes mellitus. Type 1 is 80 percent genetically determined, Type 2 is 25 percent; When you learn that you have this type 2 disposition, and eat properly and exercise, the disease is preventable. With more knowledge you can make better decisions. Genes tell you how you can live longer if you follow a few rules. "
Nine researchers, scientists and intellectuals collaborated with Esther Dyson"George Church himself is in, the well-known psychologist Steven Pinker, people who are able to understand what the project is all about. That's what the Harvard Ethics Commission demanded. Eight men, two women. "We met in July of 2007, all smart people, many better at genetics than me," says Esther. "I attend, because I want to understand genetics, I realized I was interested, and the more I understood, the deeper I got into it."
She is a small, wiry, remarkably pliable woman, unadorned, she wears what is currently in the suitcase on top, short-sleeved T-shirt in winter, fleece inlet in the Edel-Hotel, sometimes the promo shirt from the last conference. She comes from a talented family, her father Freeman Dyson is a famous physicist. She studied economics and worked as a reporter for Forbes; For 20 years she wrote the internet scene forward with her newsletter "Release 1.0"She also ran her own company EDventures, where she handled her risk finance. She earned a lot of money, but she also says that money is not her drive. Behind her is no corporation, she decides alone and more for interest than for the market, where she invests it, "you do not want anyone else playing tennis for you". Today, she blogs in the Huffington Post, the main US online political commentary service, where she's called the "jester of the Internet scene," the fool who is the Wise. In her blogs, she thinks about whether privacy is still a modern concept or whether the urge for individuality - as people today portray the Internet with its special features - has long since become more important.
Esther Dyson has a special prominence because she is relevant and original. A private life that is good for gossip does not exist, no husband, no children. She lives in Manhattan, she has a small office on Fifth Avenue that has a reputation for redefining the word chaos. Her daily routine consists of meetings with people from start-ups like non-profit organizations and think tanks, she has advised the Democrats under Bill Clinton like the government of South Africa. She travels to Monte Carlo when Prince invites Albert and to Kampala for the ASEA conference. She is on the road for four out of five days.
Nothing to pay attention to. Nothing to protect. Nothing private. "Oh, yes," she says, "there are also private things in my life, just my genes just do not belong to it, everyone should define themselves what is private and my limits are somewhere else." And where? She shoves the glasses in her hair. "Everything that has to do with emotions, that makes feelings visible, I took my stepmom to a flight in weightlessness, I was fascinated by the astronaut training, we had a lot of fun, but I did not want any pictures of it Mother should not see that I had a good time with my stepmother, it is a highly emotional thing and therefore private, because it is important to keep control over the distribution of your private data, and if that is the case, personal information can also be public his."
On flickr.com she uploads photos of her everyday life almost daily, usually snapshots from her travels. She photographs hotels, bizarre, bent water bottles and nonsensical warning signs, her eyes wander around, her mind is always working on many levels, she chooses a striking detail, adds a note, she comments humorously, never angry, as if she finds the world far too interesting to consider cynical. But it's never personal, she stays outside of her own observations, sometimes it seems that their public privacy is just the wrong track to keep out of the world.
Most of all, she photographs pools, her favorite pool is at "Radisson Slavyanskaya" in Moscow, "warm at minus 20 degrees outside"; or she shoots two frogs in a pool in India to the point, "indian wildlife" calls them the picture. She swims daily for an hour, for 20 years, often books her flights after the pool hours of the hotels. It seems almost obsessed with how she seeks a swimming pool all over the world. A coup is for her if she brings out a few extra minutes. Like today, "80 minutes," she says, in a good mood, "swimming all the time, and the water here is great."
A colleague is sitting on the sofa in the lobby, the jacket over her head, Esther jumps up and grabs her camera, bad behavior actually - he wakes up, laughs, says something that sounds like: Oh, Esther, you are it, all right.
"By the way," she says, "I find that my medical record says a lot more about me than genes, because it does not show what I was born with, but what I made of it For a while with a psychologist, she was shocked when I told her that I wanted to publish her opinion on the PGP and it was like a religious dogma that what she learns about a patient is and remains private. "
When they were given the results of the gene analysis in mid-October and were about to press the button to unlock their genome on the PGP website, some of their colleagues were reluctant. The geneticist Misha Angrist reserved the right to withdraw his contribution in case of a hereditary disease so that his children would learn it from him and not from the Internet. Esther Dyson did not hesitate. "I'm 57, if I had anything serious, it would have been shown long ago, it's interesting for very young people, who know what's going to happen to them, I've already experienced it, besides," she says, "I'm swimming 400 Meter in 7.5 minutes. " She found a few benign vascular tumors. Then nothing. I also want to find out what genetic engineering really is, the limitations of research, where are they? One day mass testing may help to find complex relationships, even for rare, or most importantly, diseases concern the poor who can not afford genetic testing. "
She unfolds her laptop, its cover covered with stickers like a colorful exercise book, and logs in to 23andMe, a California-based company that offers commercial genetic testing for $ 399. You get to know what your own gene structure looks like, and you can network your gene profile with others, just as you network your Facebook profile. You can, if you like, press the friendship button and meet people in the net who have similar genes. Esther had so excited the business idea that she invested in and advised the company. Some people see potential in 23andMe which will change their life as Google once did. At the Wirtschaftsforum in Davos, they won the Innovation Award. She clicks through the pages to a chromosome scheme with the names of her relatives listed next to herFather Freeman, her mother - she left the family when Esther was five - her stepmother, a German; her four half-siblings, nieces and nephews. She had persuaded them all to give a saliva sample. Also there are photos on flickr.com: Freeman Dyson in his kitchen, about to spit in the tube.
She clicks on her half-sister Dorothy, and about half of the chromosome bars turn blue, "that's how our genes match," she says, turning the laptop so she has a clear view of her family's genetic pool. "Fascinating, is not it?", She keeps clicking, now completely absorbed in the possibilities. "And here, my brother-in-law Tim, with whom I have little more in common than that we both like my sister Emily ..." Then she closes the laptop, "This is just bauble," she says. "I wanted to know what it's like to genetically match your entire family, But if I agree with someone 47 percent or 57 percent, the relationship does not change. "And then what's the data for?" Because it's intriguing, "she says." It's like the time the PCs came out. They helped with the office work, they put on a few lists of cooking recipes, more you did not know to start with the computers. Now they are giving you huge amounts of data, and they can do more and more. The data generates the possibilities. "
Then she tells her that she wants to fly into space soon, while she already packs the laptop, in a kind of carrying bag, which suggests that order is not their greatest strength. One asks politely, but in truth, one thinks, probably only a fantasy, consistently actually that someone who has his private life in the network world and leaves his innermost structure of research finally wants to leave this world completely - someone who is in the virtual materialized, makes in the real world completely from the dust. One thinks, oh Esther, clearly.
And some time later, you click on Flickr and see her floating in a weightless photo in a jumpsuit somewhere in Star City, Kazakhstan, She explains that at a moment when she could not decide between appointments, she suddenly wished to quit for a while. She contacted Microsoft billionaire Charles Simonyi, who spent two weeks on the ISS in 2007 as the fifth space tourist and plans a new flight - booked through space travel agency Space Adventures, in which Esther invested.Agreed to do the complete cosmonaut training as his replacement wife: Should Simonyi not fly, Esther flies in his place. The Russians examined them, found only one hole in the tooth and included them in the program. The backup training costs $ 3 million and 35 to 40 million flights to space. "There's only a small chance that I will actually fly," she says, "and I would have to raise a lot of money quickly, but it's a lottery ticket: if I do not buy it, I can not win, other people go in mine I'm going to college again, I'm going to be an astronaut. "
Since autumn, she has split her time between Russia and her other activities. As of January, she is in Moscow for almost three months, in preparation, in a building called Prophi 1. The flight into space is scheduled for March 25th. She says, "I'm looking forward to the psychological clarity of having a single mission for a while." In Prophi 1 there is no internet access.
Genetics - what research knows today
The human DNA exists u. a. of four nucleobases (A, C, G and T). They are arranged in pairs. Genes are specific parts of these pairs.
Who at the Personal Genome Project as a volunteer, receives a free sequencing of his genome and can decide whether he wants to make the data available only to scientists or the Internet. Just two years ago, the cost of complete sequencing was over $ 1 million, today it's $ 5,000.
DNA co-discoverer James Watson and biochemist J. Craig Venter are the first to be in 2007 complete genetic material published, but without medical data.
Only a few diseases can be clearly identified by a genetic test - such as Huntington's disease, which goes back to a special gene. Often, tests only provide probabilities. This is where critics start: what's the use of knowing that you have an Alzheimer's risk of 1: 2000?
In addition to the PGP, geneticists from the US, China and England have been researching for a year now "1000 Genomes Project" the complete genome of 1000 people from different ethnic groups. In parallel, the "Cancer Genome Atlas" attempts to map the genes of cancerous tumors.
The Federal Government has 2008 the Genetic Engineering Law decided: Everyone should decide for themselves whether he makes a genetic test, no boss and no insurance may request the result.
