the vegetarian protein product made form Fusarium
venenatum, a mold that is grown in vats until it
is mixed with egg whites and flour, and shaped
into ersatz chicken nuggets. With its conservative
critics who wax physic on the mold's gastrotoxicity,
and its liberal fans who insist that you try it in your
breakfast cereal, it's no wonder that Quorn has
captured the popular imagination.
But has anyone considered its potential for
use in online communication? The proteins
are manufactured in "two 150,000 l pressure-cycle
fermenters in a continuous process which outputs
around 300 kg biomass/h. The continuous
process is typically operated for around 1,000 h.
One factor which has limited the length of production
runs was the appearance of highly branched mutants
in the population. Several factors affect the time of
appearance of such mutants and a number of
strategies for delaying their appearance have
been investigated."
Ah, but there we must break with Dr Wiebe of
the Institute of Life Sciences, Aalborg University,
Denmark. Delay the production of mutants?
Pish posh. Our proposal is to accelerate the
production of mutants, and to form them into
specially-tailored hyper-textual nuggets.
What we need are (1) home fermentation
tanks; (2) integration with Twitter, so that
a text message sent from your cell phone to
your friend's fermentation tank will produce
a new strain of mold that will instantaneously
convey your sentiment in the form of a
semantic network or "bubble diagram".
In this way, the unassuming filamentous fungus
can help us "stay connected" with friends
far and wide, build meaning across language
barriers as easily as we ask for the salt
from across the table.
For further reading on Quorn, I recommend:
http://www.fungi4schools.org/Reprints/Mycologist_articles/Post-16/Foods/V18pp017-020_Quorn.pdf
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