Edison's electric lights, transistors in the 1950s, then integrated circuits and now the explosion in communications and computational power. Scientists of the 19th century would be stunned by what they set in motion. Biology is now about where physics was 100 years ago.
Biologists are now at the turn of their century.
An emblematic event will occur in the first year of that new century, an event that dwarfs in significance the moon landing, the exploration of the planets, and the creation of the world wide web. This event is the completion of sequencing the entire human genome. This will change the biological sciences forever. It's time to prepare for the near future, which will be remarkably different from now, in both basic science and in its applications to medicine, health care and many other areas. The collision of the computer age and the biology century provides an unmatched opportunity for understanding inherently complex biological systems.