I cover the business of technology as a staff writer for Wired Business, the business section of Wired.com. Before I joined Wired, I worked as a reporter in the San Francisco bureau of The Associated Press. I'm especially interested in stories about the democratization of technology and the power of networked knowledge. I also like to write about what happens when Silicon Valley's idealistic innovation culture collides with the world the rest of us inhabit.
"Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life" recounts my deep dive into the world of DIY DNA. My adventure took me from open-source software to bioterror to the quest to build new forms of life piece by genetic piece. At least as intriguing to me as the biology was the drive of these young scientists to forge new ways of thinking about how change and discovery happen in science, and about who gets to decide the way forward. Even after several years in the Bay Area, I had still thought of "innovation" and "entrepreneurship" as code words for "let's make lots of money." In the mouths of many, they still are. Among the biopunks, I discovered a community of idealists who believed that that entrepreneurial thinking joined with a desire for authentic innovation could be a strategy for dramatic social change.
