An Xbox made from skin and bone?

TechFinitive x FlashForward is our exclusive newsletter. Every month, we pick a technology featured in a classic movie and fast forward to where it’s at today. Subscribe to it on Substack so that you’re notified every time a new edition goes out. This edition was originally published on the 26th of January.

Flashback: eXisTenz is the latest immersive game coming soon to your gamepod. But these near-future gadgets are a little different from your Xbox: they’re alive. The gamepods are flesh and blood, grown from mutated amphibious creatures combined with synthetic DNA. They’re as susceptible to disease as any living being, and fixing them requires surgery. This is a world of blobby, gloopy, unnervingly throbbing devices that blur the line between technology and organic life – especially as they plug directly into the human body via a “bioport” and “umbicord” – a spinster-like hole in your back and a floppy umbilical cord.

Flashforward to today: Writer and director David Cronenberg loves delving into the icky, sticky insides of the human body. He’s the leading figure in the body horror genre with films like Scanners, Videodrome and The Fly. But is the grotesque vision of eXisTenz so far-fetched?

In the real world, advances have been made in biotechnology, synthetic biology, gene editing and bioinformatics. This research is looking to solve the limitations of technology as we know it, as silicon computer chips reach the limits of speed and tiny size. Living materials, such as DNA molecules, have the potential to be faster, smaller and more intelligent than the most powerful supercomputer.  

Perhaps more importantly, living materials will always be available. The manufacture of laptops, batteries and other gadgets depletes the all-too-finite supply of copper, nickel, lithium and other resources.

The science of using DNA for computing had already begun when the movie was made. In DNA computing, ones and zeros are replaced by molecules, enzymes and base pairs. Scientist Leonard Adleman of the University of Southern California demonstrated a proof-of-concept in 1994, mixing  DNA fragments in a test tube and solving the travelling salesman problem, which seeks the shortest route for a theoretical salesman travelling between cities.

As the field advanced, scientists figured out how to make DNA logic gates, which are crucial for computers to convert input into output. By 2002, scientists had developed a DNA computer that could ‘play’ noughts and crosses against a human (or at least respond to inputs in a way that looked like playing the game).

DNA computers have the potential for processing and storage that would put a silicone chip to shame. Where a microprocessor sequentially calculates one thing at a time, DNA is capable of parallel processing – working out a bunch of tasks at the same time. And DNA’s storage capacity is enormous – it is, after all, a hard drive for the genetic information that makes you, you. A cubic centimetre of DNA comprises 10 trillion DNA molecules, which could hold 10 terabytes of data. According to the journal Science, you could store 10 movies on a piece of DNA the size of a grain of salt.

The gene-editing technology CRISPR has already proved useful in this field, but it’s still early days. In 2017, scientists at Columbia University used CRISPR to store a simple 72-bit message in cells of E. coli bacteria. In 2024, scientists at Maynooth University in Ireland revealed an experimental DNA computer that could assemble itself and sort images into categories again, a pretty basic task. And there are challenges to be overcome, like the possibility of DNA mutating over time and corrupting data. 

Aside from the computing power of the movie’s gamepod, there’s its actual organic body. The movie shows a whole industry for rearing mutated creatures that give up their bodies to make gamepods. In real life, we haven’t yet reached artificial animals in the style of Blade Runner or resurrected extinct creatures as in Jurassic Park. But there have been experiments in creating man-made lifeforms, a field related to genome editing called synthetic biology. The idea is to redesign organisms at a genetic level for specific purposes.

 The field of synthetic biology leans less towards two-headed lizards and more towards modifying micro-organisms like bacteria and yeast. This could solve human or environmental problems like preventing disease, purifying water, boosting nutrients and vitamins in specific foods or creating sustainable lab-grown substitutes for endangered species. Man-made food including cell-cultured meats and plant-based meat alternatives are already on sale. And you probably heard about RNA vaccines specifically engineered to target Covid-19. 

These are relatively simple forms of life. In terms of larger creatures, pig organs have been genetically engineered for xenotransplantation: transplanting modifying animal organs into humans. But the possibility of creating multi-cellular life forms like those seen in eXisTenz is slim.And there are head-spinning ethical questions, such as the risk of introducing new types of living organisms into existing ecosystems. It’s likely that people would also object to the idea of inventing a whole new species just to cut it up and make game consoles.In a 2018 survey by Pew, 57% of Americans considered it a good idea to use bioengineering to create animals that could grow human organs for transplant. 41% were less keen to play god, worrying about ethical questions from animal welfare to long-term consequences. One thing eXisTenz gets right with its depiction of revolutionary ‘realists’ is that there will always be people uncomfortable with new technology.

Will it sell?

We’re a long way from consumer devices like the eXistenZ gamepod. Even if regulators untangled the ethics of growing, testing and selling artificial life forms, there’s also the safety question of plugging things directly into our bodies. The film portrays a major weakness of organic technology. The movie’s gamepods and bioports are susceptible to infection, which is transmitted to the human user. Probably most importantly, it would take a fairly major cultural shift to our collective gag reflex before the average person felt comfortable with fleshy, pulsing devices like the one in the film.

Fun fact

eXisTenz was part of a wave of late sci-fi movies made when Hollywood discovered cyberpunk in the mid-to-late-1990s. Johnny Mnemonic, Hackers and Strange Days (which this newsletter recently covered)  explored reality, technology and the questions thrown up by a newfangled thing called the Internet. Sadly, they were also box office disasters (apart from The Matrix, the blockbuster hit of this little group). But they’re all worth watching and have become cult classics, and have turned out to be pretty prescient too.

The David Cronenberg Award for Goriest Gadget

The film also features a bizarre organic gun that doesn’t trip a metal detector, because it’s made out of what appears to be bone and gristle and it shoots human teeth. If anyone is making those in real life, they should probably keep it to themselves.

Verdict

You won’t be buying a DNA computer any time soon, but CRISPR and other advances in genetics and biotechnology are coming up with slightly less gory uses for modified organic life. In the meantime, Cronenberg’s eXisTenz is icky, goopy fun that takes bioengineering to its absurd extremes. You might not want a flesh-and-bone games console, but the movie is a thought-provoking look at how far we’re willing to go with technology that challenges the boundaries of the human body.

Links, implanted

eXistenZ trailer

How DNA computers will work

What can synthetic biology do?

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