If you’re in the area why not head down to the Herbst Theater, San Fransisco this coming Monday (Feb 25) to hear revolutionary synthetic biologist Craig Venter discuss his work and his latest findings for the LongNow’s latest Seminar About Long Thinking.

Here’s a taste of what he might say (from Steward Brands SALT email):

Last month in Germany he said, “In one milliliter of sea water, there’s a million bacteria and ten million viruses. In the air in this room—we’ve been doing the air genome project—all of you just during the course of this hour will be breathing in at least 10,000 different bacteria, and maybe 100,000 viruses…. This is the world of biology that we live in, that we don’t see, where evolution takes place on a minute-to-minute basis…. The air that we breathe comes from these organisms. The future of the planet rests with these organisms. And the question is: If we take over the design of these organisms, does that really shift the balance in any way? Or is it such a small portion of what’s out there that we’ll only affect industrial processes, not the living planet?

Even if you can’t make it there, you still might be able to check it out. According to the LongNow website they’ll be webcasting the whole deal.

Last October Venter’s colleague Juan Enriquez spoke for SALT on Mapping the Frontier of Knowledge (audio). I’m still trying to process some of the things Juan said. I’m sure Venter’s words will be no less stimulating.