The games kids play... (Freeman Dyson)

Genetic engineering, once it gets into the hands of housewives and children, will give us an explosion of diversity of creatures, rather than the monoculture crops that big corporations prefer. New species will proliferate to replace those that farming and industrial development have destroyed.

Designing genomes will be a personal thing, an art form as creative as painting or sculpture. Few of the new creations will be masterpieces, but all will bring joy to their creators and variety to our fauna and flora.

The final step in the domestication of biotechnology will be biotech games, designed like computer games for children down to kindergarten age. But they will involve real eggs and seeds rather than images on a screen.

Playing such games, kids will acquire an intimate feeling for the organisms that they are growing. The winner could be the kid whose seed grows the prickliest cactus, or whose egg hatches the cutest dinosaur.

These games will be messy and possibly dangerous. Rules and regulations will be needed to make sure that our kids do not endanger themselves and others.