Abstract
This chapter engages with (1) synthetic biology’s technoscientific specifica, (2) the role of promises, and (3) the problematic notion of ‘digital biology’. Synthetic biology dismisses the idea of an already given nature: ‘life itself’ is conceptualized as a field of potentialities, with adaptable materials and flexible structures that can be used for re-engineering to ‘perfect’ nature. Bioengineers claim to create new living organisms from scratch, using genetically standardized parts and computer-based design: ‘Living machines’ which do not exist in nature are supposed to serve human purposes. Beyond its actual (and limited) state of research, some voices of synthetic biology offer bold claims of socio-technical scenarios, imagined objects, and future biotechnical experiments, which take place in society rather than behind laboratory doors. With their visions, synthetic biologists are becoming engineers of future societies. Synthetic biology develops a ‘biotechnologization of collective futures’ and it is part of a technoscientific ‘promise-economy’ that aims to colonize the future. Crucial for synthetic biology’s promise of ‘digital biology’ are script-centered, bio-cybernetic, and even transhumanist figures of thought that fuel new visions of life and nature as a field of potentials and even limitless treasures that can be programmed and produced by computational procedures: ‘writing’ the code of life.
Keywords
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- 1.
Also outside academic and industrial framework of synthetic biology ‘biopunks’ and ‘do-it-yourselfs-biologists’ are actively engaging in contemporary challenges and call for a ‘democratization’ of biotechnology (Wohlsen 2011, p. 8).
- 2.
The academic field of synthetic biology is heterogeneous and multifaceted. Certainly there are researchers, who do not want to engage in contemporary challenges and whose approaches are not ‘purely’ technoscientific. For a general overview of the different approaches and research fields in synthetic biology: see Acevedo-Rocha, in this book.
- 3.
Synthetic biology is widely considered a technoscience, but unfortunately there has been very little theoretical work done to verify this assumption. An example is Schmidt et al. (2009) where the term technoscience is mentioned only once and there is no description of what it means.
- 4.
Under the term ‘biocapital’ there has been some critique of the commodification of biology. See Rose and Rose (2012, p. 12): “In the process the life sciences have been transformed into gigantic biotechnosciences, blurring the boundaries between science and technology, universities, entrepreneurial biotech companies and the major pharmaceutical companies, or ‘Big Pharma’.”
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Müller, M. (2016). “First Species Whose Parent Is a Computer”—Synthetic Biology as Technoscience, Colonizing Futures, and the Problem of the Digital. In: Hagen, K., Engelhard, M., Toepfer, G. (eds) Ambivalences of Creating Life. Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment, vol 45. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21088-9_5
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