If your corn has a herbicide-tolerant gene, it means you can pray your herbicides and kill the weeds; you won't kill your corn.

Can we reach biosphere consciousness and global empathy in time to avert planetary collapse?

Back in 1983, the United States government approved the release of the first genetically modified organism. In this case, it was a bacteria that prevents frost on food crops.

We were making the first step out of the age of chemistry and physics, and into the age of biology.

The public should know that the liability issues here have yet to be resolved, or even raised. If you're a farmer and you're growing a genetically engineering food crop, those genes are going to flow to the other farm.

It is not uncommon to suppose that the free exchange of property in markets and capitalism are one and the same. They are not. While capitalism operates through the free market, free markets don't require capitalism.

With the communication internet, whole industries have been disrupted. You're in the publishing industry, you understand that. Before, we had newspapers, magazines - now you're on the web. I'm in book publishing. I don't have to tell you what's happened to us. Television has taken a hit. The music industry. But, thousands of new businesses have emerged on this new communication revolution platform. Not just Google, Facebook, and Twitter. There are thousands of operations. Businesses that are doing the platforms, the apps. They're mining the big data. They're creating the connections.