...I was asked why I don’t blog much - if at all - on politics. At least where it does not impact on political economy questions like why if 35% of US voters do not believe in man-made climate change that it means it is unlikely that a carbon tax happens.

My answer is to do with the longevity or impact of a political moment versus the same for art, music or technology. Whether a politician calls someone scum or not - may be part of a social-political plan or not, but in the grand scheme of life is a forgotten moment.

This last few weeks I learned a lot speaking to scientists and biotech operators about the state of synthetic and computational biology in advance of Gingko Bio (a YC 14 biotech start up) listing publicly  and my continuing interest in the breakthrough the Deepmind team have done on protein folding.

I am 98% confident that while there are no front page stories or even any main stream news articles about what and how synthetic biology will change the world that synthetic biology will indeed be world changing within a decade or two (most likely on the early side) and that the current political noise mostly will not.   

Similarly, while I have a lot less confidence that the next Mark Ravenhill play will be world changing, the chances that Mark’s next work may still be regarded and thought about in 50 or 100 years is much much higher than the average “scum or no scum” politician.

The works of Bach (1685 - 1750) have around 6.7 million plays a month. I doubt 1 or 2 people reading this letter can name me the UK Prime Ministers* of the time let alone other politicians. Similar thinking for Shakespeare (died 1616). 

I’ve also been doing research and thinking on robotic surgery and again anyone reading this newsletter who is going for a prostate or a gynae surgery stands a >50% of going under robotic surgery and the first new type of robotic surgery equipment for many years is currently being installed in some of the leading UK NHS hospitals. My university friend helped found the company (CMR) that is doing it (Intuitive Surgical’s Da Vinci was for years the only robot available).

This is the quiet history in the making. This is the extraordinary progress of humanity.