HOUSE AS BIOREACTOR
It is remarkable that the name of the basic unit of life - the cell has a spatial and architectural connotation. But the living cell is not a chamber. It is clump of sticky liquid protoplasm in a nano-scale. It works not mechanically but as a chemical factory. In dynamic feedback correlations with the surrounding it produces and manages all processes that are needed for it to live.
Can life processes, which normally take place in the nano-scale, in proteins, acids and saccharides, happen in a macro-scale? We understand that a stretching of a living cell to the size of a house is not possible. It is necessary to develop new ways, until now not existing in nature, which would make it possible for the biological processes to occur in an architectural scale.
I can imagine a human habitat as a clump of liquid or jelly matter surrounded by a membrane with different compartments inside which would be acting as biological reactors.
Energy of the sun could activate information embedded in the compartments set in the protoplasm drops and start biological self-organization processes. The compartments acting as biofabricators will produce on the spot, in a decentralized way, all that the system needs: food, tools and energy.
The core of this mega “cell” will be a man as the holder of the genetic information and the creator of the cultural replicators - the memes. If in such a system the dynamic dance between genes and memes will develop symbiotic correlations, the whole could grow to a new kind of organism. More, it could become potentially a new replicator and open a biological future.
Copyright 2009 Zbigniew Oksiuta. All rights reserved