I remember someone talking about the rationale behind the Ansari X-Prize. The reasoning was like this; People think governments are working on private space flight but in reality no one is. If we want this to happen we have to do it ourselves, and the Ansari X-Prize is a way to focus private enterprise on this feat.

I sometimes feel the current citizen biohacker debate gets unnecessarily stuck on issues that have nothing to do with biology per se. But have more to do with managing public beliefs. For academics in the field especially this can be a bit tricky. So right now there is are a lot of discussions in the community about running gels and how to explain to the general public that this is safe.

I'm making a generalization here but I think people know what I mean.

I think an X-Prize could be helpful. A prize to solve some deserving problem withing well defined parameters. Life science is the next high-tech industry. It needs its Steven Jobs and Bill Gates characters. People who start out building biology from kitchens and garages and end up building industries. We need those. There is too much territory to cover for gov and existing big pharma. Many territories that no one is exploring. There is much to be done and those guys are old and slow.

-Splicer