It’s too early in the 21st century to determine whether this long‑horizon prediction is right or wrong.

The claim is explicitly about what will happen “over the course of the century” and envisions synthetic biology becoming a general‑purpose technology that:

• completely reinvents industrial production across materials, food, chemicals, plastics
• substantially improves environmental sustainability
• becomes a primary enabler of long‑term human sustainability on Earth

As of 2025, synthetic biology has made notable but still partial and sector‑specific advances:

• Engineered microbes are used at scale for industrial biomanufacturing of enzymes, flavors, fragrances, and some materials, but they have not “completely reinvented” most of chemicals or materials manufacturing, which is still dominated by petrochemical and conventional processes.
• There is rapid growth in areas like precision fermentation, alternative proteins, and bio‑based materials, but these remain a small fraction of global food and materials markets relative to conventional agriculture, livestock, and plastics.
• While synbio offers tools for carbon capture, bio‑based fuels, and environmentally friendly processes, global environmental sustainability and human long‑term sustainability are still being driven mostly by policy, energy-system changes, and traditional technologies rather than by synthetic biology as a clearly dominant “savior” technology.

Because only about a quarter of the century has passed and synthetic biology is still in an early‑to‑mid adoption phase, there is not enough evidence yet to say the prediction has clearly succeeded or failed. The trajectory (growing investment, technology maturation, and early industrial adoption) is consistent with the possibility that it could become a transformative general‑purpose technology, but this remains speculative and unproven at this time.

So, the status of Friedberg’s prediction today is best classified as inconclusive (too early to tell).