Fifteen years ago, Kelly helped launch a publication called Wired. He also set down his vision of a future based on biological models?a world of products that are grown rather than manufactured, and that sense and respond and co-evolve?in a book called Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World. Kelly’s thesis was that Darwinian evolution is not confined to living things. Once we can drill down deep enough, gene sequences, nanoparticles, and bits of information etched in silicon are all players in the same game. In time, the born and the made will converge, and new medicines, medical devices, and enriched foods will be the least of it. Biology will become the dominant force in shaping our economy, our social structures, our ideas about religion, ethics, art?the whole ball of wax.

To check in on the progress of this vision, I drive south from San Francisco, follow a convoluted route along a winding creek a mile or two from the Pacific, and eventually arrive at Kelly’s family compound. I enter and find a spacious, atrium affair, with Kelly, looking druidic in chin whiskers and casual in shorts, greeting me on the stairs to his personal work space in the loft above.

Kelly’s office is filled with examples of a supposedly obsolete technology?the book. On his desk are two large, caged tarantulas, pets that, despite their furry bodies, show no signs of being cuddly. Beside them are two terrariums, sealed with Saran Wrap, emblems of self-sustaining systems. “I’ve kept them going for years,” Kelly tells me.

We sit in easy chairs some distance from the tarantulas.

“You predicted this big shift almost 20 years ago,” I begin. “Shouldn’t we be seeing the change by now? A recognizable ‘biomolecular economy’?”

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