I first came to know of Sheila Jasanoff in July at the National Academies’ symposium on opportunities and challenges in synthetic biology. She eloquently opened the meeting by encouraging participants to consider whether the emerging field of synthetic biology might present an opportunity for a kind of second enlightenment that allowed us to “put science back into society in meaningful ways.” Who gets to imagine the scientific future? Who will give meaning to this future, and how? Who will be responsible for it? Thus Jasanoff began to “problematize” conventional wisdom about how biotechnology does and ought to advance.

Last night I read the first chapter of Dr. Jasanoff’s latest book, “Designs on Nature.” The book is a comparative analysis of how three political cultures (Germany, U.S., and U.K.) are trying to steer biotechnological development toward improving the human condition. It was an exhilarating read. It acquainted me with the constructivist approach to scientific meaning, the concept of “social kinds,” and the notion that natural and social meaning is “coproduced.” It affirmed many of the concepts and precepts I have learned from the Rabinow lab (no offense intended, Paul – just my personal measure of healthy skepticism). I can’t wait to read the rest of Jasanoff’s book.

As someone who usually “sides” with the natural scientists, however, I find myself anxious about some of these new ideas. For example, I was a little troubled by the implications of a constructivist view of science and technology. Jasanoff asserts that we must be “skeptical of absolutist claims about objectivity and progress” because terms as seemingly antipodal as “nature” and “culture” have different meanings in different social contexts that deny them universality. I agree with that notion as it relates to creating useful science policy in one political culture versus any other. But a purely constructivist view seems to overly discount the universal properties of scientific and technological knowledge. After all, science and technology does, in fact, demonstrate a converging, deterministic tendency (or else China would still be trying to independently develop PCR, right?). At its logical extension, the constructivist view seems to suggest that the empirical results of a biology experiment in Hong Kong are not the same as they would be in Canada or any other political culture. That’s hard for scientists at the lab bench to swallow.

It was also deeply discouraging to hear such a clear and reasoned voice implying what to me sounded creepily like, ‘Because of their realist tendencies, the biotechnologists working to expand our knowledge of and control over the natural world are especially unqualified to assess the meaning and significance of their own work.’ There, too, a big tension between “natural” and “human” scientists. Or perhaps I am reading the constructivist approach too literally?

If from venue to venue we could find the happy middle ground where humanist constructivism and scientific determinism can not just tolerate but function thoughtfully with one another, then we may do a better job of meeting Jasanoff’s challenge of putting science into the public in deeper, more meaningful ways than ever before.

Finally, though the actors and venues change slightly, it seems to me that the word “problematize” is nearly interchangeable with the word “politicize” in our context. (To problematize is to have experts make judgments about techno-scientific progress in more or less public venues, whereas to politicize is to do the same in a very public, democratic, and non-expert way.) Again, as one who tends to identify with the biotechnology community, I wonder what kind of burden “problematizing” daily research activities represents not just to the researchers themselves, but also to the publics that rely on continued discoveries for an improved quality of life. To put a cost around problematization is not to say it isn’t worth it, but rather to encourage us to think about how to engineer problematization into emerging fields like synthetic biology in order to reduce the time and effort needed to vigilantly examine and re-examine how we are or are not contributing to “the good life.” (For example, I have suggested to some within SynBERC that we build into our internal proposal process some means for operationalizing core values such as safety and security by requiring applicants to include meaningful activities that promote such values. The idea hasn’t exactly caught fire, yet.)

I am motivated by practical concerns that move research forward in the right direction. As I’m feeling my way through some of these concepts, which are new to me, I invite comments from those who have thought through these issues more carefully.

On July 24th, 2009, the Edge Foundation organized a forum for scientists, entrepreneurs, cultural impresarios and journalists to discuss synthetic biology from the perspective of George Church and Craig Venter. ¬?Look here for nearly six hours of lecture and discussion on their description of and vision for synthetic (and personal) genomics: ¬?Edge Master Class 2009.

Here’s a song called Ambien that my band and I wrote. It’s about the untoward effects of the green economy on one auto worker. In the story, he spirals out of control, finding himself no longer in demand and with little to cling to in life except his 2003 Ford Expedition. We wrote the song a couple of years ago, and with the subsequent collapse of GM and others, the song has gained an eery prophetic quality.

I attended a recent Washington, D.C. meeting on Opportunities and Challenges in the Emerging Field of Synthetic Biology, co-hosted by the National Academies, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Royal Society. The meeting brought together an international cast of scientists, policymakers, and social scientists to discuss the technical and social barriers to achieving the promise of this emerging field. Presentations, audio and transcripts from the meeting are available on the National Academies website. SynBERC investigators Drew Endy and Paul Rabinow were featured speakers, and here are two representative quotes from them:

“The question of what constitutes a good life today, and the contribution of the bio-sciences to that form of life, must be vigilantly posed and re-posed.” ?Äì Paul Rabinow

“Today, each biotechnology project requires a Hercules.” ?Äì Drew Endy

Here are four of several recurring themes I observed during the conference:

1. Funding agencies and universities tend to reward application-based projects over engineering projects. This leads to novel systems, but it provides little incentive for researchers to develop the engineering infrastructure needed to make biology easier to engineer for future generations.

2. Today?Äôs intellectual property environment threatens to stifle creativity and retard economic gains. New practices and models for protecting IP while allowing others to build on it are necessary for synthetic biology to achieve the ambitious promise envisioned its practitioners.

3. The synbio community needs to come together to solve the technical problems of standardization. It is a huge task.

4. The synbio community has done a good job of trying to engage citizens about the challenges and opportunities of the field, but it can and must do better. Citizens don?Äôt need to have a PhD to make intelligent judgments about science. New, more democratic forms of communication can help us overcome traditional boundaries to citizen participation in science and technology policy.

On July 9th and 10th at the National Academies’ Keck Center (500 5th Street NW) in Washington DC, the National Academies (CSTL, BLS, STEP, and NAE), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Royal Society will be hosting a symposium on synthetic biology entitled “Opportunities and Challenges in the Emerging Field of Synthetic Biology.” ¬?The symposium “has been organized to bring together the scientific, engineering, legal, and policy communities along with members of the public to explore the opportunities and challenges posed by the emerging field of synthetic biology.” ¬?Paul Rabinow and Drew Endy will be the event’s keynote speakers.

Go here for more information and for an unedited transcript of the event when it is available.

“The definition of synthetic biology depends on whether you’re trying to make money right now or not.” – An unknown synthetic biologist interviewed by Mark B?ºnger, Director of Research, Lux Research

If I could amend my last comments from yesterday’s session, my departing wish would be that the silent war between “social” and “natural” scientists would end. Then, finally, the north would talk to the south, the east to the west, and all points in between would be chattering.

I feel fortunate to participate in (or at least observe) a full-day meeting among several thinkers in the area of inquiry and capacity building into the biosciences. My first observation is that there are no biologists here. This is a disappointment to me, as I believe that the second-order observations that these human scientists are making about the physical scientists need to be heard, and then understood, by the physical scientists themselves. But as the meeting progresses, I’m increasingly convinced that a card-carrying biologist wouldn’t enjoy being here. A theme that came up more than once is that a biologist is trained to reduce complexity. Especially with synthetic biology, they are trained to “blackbox” complexity. This is directly at odds with ethical inquiry, which multiplies complexity. Furthermore, social scientists tend not to provide physical scientists with either the form for their ethical self-reflection (a problem of askesis) or a kind of reciprocal benefit in exchange for the increased complexity.

I identify a little more with the bioscientists than the social scientists, but I do wish there were scientists that were interested enough in critical ethical inquiry into their work to be here. I think they weren’t invited because the social scientists knew they wouldn’t have come. On the other hand, there’s only one of CP Snow’s cultures in this room.

In response to the first ARC exchange on bio-hacking ckelty, who has done extensive work on the politics and ethics of hacking and the free software movement (see his book Two Bits), offered the following. The original can be found here.

Post: ckelty

Ok friends. Before the discussion of Hackers gets too out of control, let me just say, there is empirical work to go on. I take Paul?Äôs point about analogies seriously?Äìthe analogy with computer hacking should be more carefully inspected, and treated circumspectly. There are a few old school hackers in the DIY Bio space, but there is mostly what I think of as the ?Äúconsumer?Äù-hackers (those who love Make magazine). What to make of this? Start asking about the relationship between liberalism and security. To that end, here is one of the best recent accounts of the diversity of computer hacking:

Hacker Practice: Moral Genres and the cultural articulation of liberalism. By Gabriella Coleman and Alex Golub

What I think bears investigation is the comparison along the axis of liberalism, on the one hand, and security along the other. The connection between liberalism and security that led Foucault to reframe biopolitics and start down the path of invesitigating liberalism has some obvious connections to what animates hackerdom. And it has its apotheosis in the case of Free Software (and I?Äôve been saying this for a long time, but either no one listens or I?Äôm wrong, and I actually hope it?Äôs the latter).

In any case, Coleman and Golub look at three cases, which I think of more or less as cypherpunks, free software geeks and the Def Con crowd. Each of these cases might bear on DIY Bio and synbio more generally, thus:

1) cypherpunks are all about privacy and government control of technology. the gov?Äôt classification of crypto as a munition for most of the 70s, 80s and 80s bears obvious comparison to the almost total lack of government control over diybio or synbio as it currently exist. The cases of Steven Kurtz and the right to tinker notwithstanding, it is clear that we live in an era of far less government control of high technology than only 20 years ago.

2) the free software geeks are all about freedom of tool-making. Here, and I keep saying this to the DIYbio people I meet (but no either one is listening etc. etc.) that the real free software group is Richard Jefferson?Äôs Cambia/BIOS group which actually understands the problem of liberating the operating system level of biology, and has a clear political stake in transforming the agro-biotech world. DIY Bio currently has almost none of that, nor does synbio?Ķ with a few minor exceptions like Meredith Patterson?Äôs attempt to create melamine-detecting bacteria, and of course the west coast Human Practices group in SynBERC. Word.

3) The underground is what people seem to fear. If this community exists w/r/t to bio, I haven?Äôt seen it yet. A better locus of comparison is probably the various bio-art groups like the tissue culture and art duo, Natalie Jeremijenko, etc. But these groups are not underground, and they don?Äôt really care about the CIA, FBI or NSA the way computer hackers of this ilk did.

So Golub and Coleman suggest that all three of these cases can be seen as active engagements with liberalism?Ķ liberalism-in-the-making as it were. I agree, but I think we can go further. What hackers of these various sorts represent, I think, are solvents of a sort: they reveal and dissolve certain sedimented understandings of governance. In the case of cryptography, the assumed power of the government to restrict and control a technology which allows people to communicate secretly with each other was experienced as an affront to liberal notions of freedom. Arguably, we have created less danger and more stability in our global networks by freeing up control over cryptography than by restricting it.

Similarly, free software has done this for intellectual property and underground hackers have done the same thing for what computer security researchers refer to as ?Äúsecurity by obscurity?Äù or security theatre. All these cases have reconfigured the limits of governance.

Will DIY Bio do the same? I doubt it very much, but there are elements there which could. Many of the discussions on the DIY Bio list have the same character as that amongst computer hackers; they divide into those who ?Äújust want to have fun?Äù and those who think there is something more important at stake. Somewhere along the line I expect there to be a split of the sort that severed Free Software and its explicit political stance from the ?ÄúJust for fun?Äù and just for profit open source people.

Comment: Rabinow

Recently, on the ARC blog The Assembly of Things, there were two worthwhile exchanges on the ethics and politics of bio-hacking. I’ve reconstructed the exchanges below. The source for this materals can be found here.

Original Post: rabinow

The synthetic biology community loves analogies (preferably unexamined ones). But the one analogy they want to avoid is with hacking on the internet. As any number of recent articles have shown, the internet is a playground for hackers. It is basically permeable including at the highest levels of security.

Does anyone really think sincerely that a ?Äúcode of conduct?Äù is going to be effective. Let?Äôs have one or ten who cares but seriously folks?Ķ

And then, when we start getting just a little bit empirical about all this?Ķ.

Comment: gaymon