I recently interviewed two titans of technology, each from different worlds. Both have been listed among the 100 most influential people by Time.
Eric Schmidt was CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, the decade the internet exploded. He also served as chairman of the board and later executive chairman of Alphabet, Google’s parent company. He remains a technical advisor to Alphabet, and serves on the board of both the Broad Institute and the Mayo Clinic. He’s also a science-focused philanthropist.
George Church is a geneticist at MIT. Having helped develop both the gene-editing tool CRISPR and the first method for sequencing a genome, his work has largely defined 21st-century biology. His current projects include growing human organs for transplant and resurrecting the woolly mammoth.
Our wide-ranging conversation centered on the intersection of synthetic biology and digital technology.
1