Sputnik Futures - Thriving with Microbes: The Unseen Intelligence Within and Around Us

Thriving with Microbes

The unseen intelligence within and around us

Alice in Futureland

From the Minds of Sputnik Futures

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First Tiller Press trade paperback edition October 2021

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Interior design by Jennifer Chung

Cover design by Luis Blanco

Microbes by Shutterstock, Woman by Adobe

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Futures, Sputnik, author.

Title: Thriving with microbes : the unseen intelligence within and around us / Sputnik Futures. Description: New York, NY : Tiller Press, 2021. | Series: Alice in futureland ; book 3 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021005833 (print) | LCCN 2021005834 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982172640 (paperback) | ISBN 9781982172671 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Bacteria. | Microorganisms. Classification: LCC QR74.8 .F88 2021 (print) | LCC QR74.8 (ebook) | DDC 579.3dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005833

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005834

ISBN 978-1-9821-7264-0

ISBN 978-1-9821-7267-1 (ebook)

To the past, present, and future visionaries who fearlessly explore the beautiful and the beastly microbes in our world. And to the microbes that make us human.

Hello, I am Alice, and I am always in a state of wander.

Alice in Futureland is a book series that asks you to wander into possible, probable, plausible, provocative futures.

Consider this book a guide.

Inside, you will discover extraordinary ideas: a cross-pollination of art, science, and culture. Alices aim is to give the future a platform for expression, so everyone can make sense of itand help create it.

When speculating about the future, its easy to get lost in the volume of information. Thats where this book comes in. Alice is designed to break the static flow with a dynamic reading experience, where experimentation and exploration meet.

The ultimate purpose of the Alice series is to foster curiosity.

To enliven our present.

To be accessible to everyone.

To allow for exploration.

And to incite optimism.

So, wheeeeeeeeeee, down the rabbit hole we go!

Microbes rule the world, so much so that saying the word microbes is like saying lightthere are so many different forms and varieties in it, and all are essential to life. The term microbes refers to any small organism that is microscopic and generally unseen by the human eye. Microbiology is the study of these microorganisms; some are friendly but seem to have evil twins, and others are still a mystery. Microbes include the beautiful and badass bacteria that live in and on us (and just about everything else on the planet); fantastic fungi that communicate to one another, and that we manipulate for food, medicine, and materials; the (sometimes) yummy yeast we have cultivated for fermented foods; and even the pretentious and often freeloading parasitic protozoa, which we try to avoid. Much like a pop star today, microbes have many followers, admirers, frenemies, and haters.

Microbes are a magical kingdom coexisting with us in every aspect of life. And we are harnessing them to become our factories and engineers; our personalized medicine; both our chefs and our food; our architects and designers; and our partners in fighting climate change and cleaning up the environment. We are inextricably bedded with microbes, you see. We are their spaceshipsthey are our fellow travelers here on Earth, and we in turn will bring them to the new habitats we jet toward in the cosmos (trip to Mars, anyone?).

You and I, and every pet and animal and plant are made of microbes. Tens of trillions of them, and still counting, comprise our very beings and the environments we live in. Yet humanity has had a love/hate relationship with these remarkable invisible organisms. To anti-bac or not has been the question of the last ten years since the microbiome, the colony of bacteria that lives within and on us, became the talk of gut health, immune boosting, mood disorders, energy, and possibly cognitive disorders like ADD and dementia (more on that in chapter 2). Books, nutritionists, and Instagram feeds became flooded with diets, supplements, and lifestyle routines to balance your microbiome and help you hack your way to better health.

And then in the fall of 2019, along came a novel (new) coronavirus, challenging our view of microbes, putting us into sterilization overdrive, masking, and social distancing from one another and the invisible virus. One day we may look back in wonder at how something so small as a virus nearly silenced and stilled our world, and in its aftermath, reset how we socialize in a new normal. Virtual or remote life became the foundation of the way we worked, celebrated, and learned, and in the wake of the pandemic, we will perhaps weigh the risks of the one sense that helps us feel our world: touch. Many of us will hesitate with any casual, emotional, and physical contact. But we humans are social beings. We crave connection, we like to touch, and we like to be touched. Our emotional ties will get us through the new normal, and the services we seek for our health, wellness, and entertainment will recover with us. And that goes the same for our current relationship with microbes. During social distancing, our microbiome became a closed community as well, and we will need to rewild our microbiome and resocialize with the outside world again to build up the resilience of the microbes we carry.

Some microbes can be our enemies, and bacteria, the largest member of the microbial community, have a bad reputation lately. But they are also family. All life on Earth is said to derive from a common ancestor: bacteria. Most of lifes history is microbial. Bacteria have a remarkable capacity to combine their bodies with other organisms, forming alliances that may or may not be permanent. This concept is called symbiogenesis and is a major source of evolutionary change on Earth. Acknowledging that bacteria are our ancestors and are in fact essential to our survival as organismsfor example, without the bacterially derived mitochondria that live in our cells we cannot breatheproves how interdependent and interconnected life on Earth really is.