<nettime> make your dildo smaller!! gsidet [x3: navas, zehle, dominguez]

["nettime's_nano_pico_femto_atto_zepto_yocto" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>]

Re: <nettime> DNA and computers
     "Eduardo Navas" <eduardo@navasse.net>
     "Soenke Zehle" <soenke.zehle@web.de>
     "ricardo dominguez" <rdom@thing.net>

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From: "Eduardo Navas" <eduardo@navasse.net>
Subject: Re: <nettime> DNA and computers
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2003 03:51:15 -0600

Nano technology is just amazing.  I actually visited Cal Tech at one point
and was overwhelmed by the tour.  The research is mind blowing.  I do think
the future is in combining computer technology with DNA in a more direct way
as the article I forwarded mentioned.  Here is another interesting summary
on Slashdot on DNA, spaguetti code and computers:
http://science.slashdot.org/science/03/04/26/2131256.shtml?tid=134&tid=191
which some nettimers may already be aware of, but it is defintely worth
keeping in mind.

Eduardo Navas

----- Original Message -----
from: "Ognjen Strpic" <ognjen@mi2.hr>
to: "nettime" <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>
sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 8:44 AM
subject: Re: <nettime> DNA and computers

> Ryan Griffis <grifray@yahoo.com>:
> > ...talk about greening the "molecular invasion" we're made to
> > feel good about the "progress" while watching fantastic dystopias that
> > reafirm us as "human" (GATTACA, the Matrix, Terminator, etc.), meanwhile
> > no discussion in "public" arenas of current realities.
>
> well, Greenpeace recently produced an interesting report in that vein,
 <...>

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From: "Soenke Zehle" <soenke.zehle@web.de>
Subject: Re: <nettime> DNA and computers
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2003 13:46:45 +0200

ryan,

another group active on nano-tech issues is etc. check out there
nano-reports at <http://www.etcgroup.org/main.asp>. in cancun, there will be
a special panel on this stuff in cooperation with the transnational
institute et al:

THE NEW TECHNOLOGICAL WAVE

"New and merging technologies (Biotech, Informatics, Cognitive Sciences,
Nanotech) are slated to bring about the biggest industrial revolution the
world has known. New materials and nanomachines will profoundly change the
conditions for international trade and for our everyday lives. Proponents
say this new technological wave will bring a solution to every ill from
resource scarcity to disability and to global warming. Critics see a further
erosion of human rights and the unleashing of novel, toxic and potentially
self-replicating materials. Can we stop the wave before it crashes?"
September 11, 2003
18:00 -22:00
Casa de la Cultura de Cancun

<http://www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsid=404>

unfortunately, looks like the usual suspects will be there (shiva et al),
but could produce some good stuff regardless, esp. on nano-ipr issues,

sz

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From: "ricardo dominguez" <rdom@thing.net>
Subject: Re: <nettime> DNA and computers
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2003 08:54:21 -0400

----- Original Message -----
from: "Ognjen Strpic" <ognjen@mi2.hr>
to: "nettime" <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>
sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 10:44 AM
subject: Re: <nettime> DNA and computers

> Ryan Griffis <grifray@yahoo.com>:
> > ...talk about greening the "molecular invasion" we're made to
> > feel good about the "progress" while watching fantastic dystopias that
> > reafirm us as "human" (GATTACA, the Matrix, Terminator, etc.), meanwhile
> > no discussion in "public" arenas of current realities.
>
> well, Greenpeace recently produced an interesting report in that vein,
 <...>

Hola,

Thanks for passing the Greenpeace report on Nanotechnology. The public space
to speak about atom based tech has been slow to grow...I remember sitting
around
under the dark skies of Tallahassee, Fl with some of the old CAE crew
yakking about
the Engines of Creation when it first came out (1986-7):
http://www.foresight.org/EOC/index.html
I did think it was important to start disturbing these engines early...but,
the sense
was that the Public Ear was not ready to hear about it. That the focus had
to to be
on those spaces the Public Ear was getting ready to start listening too: the
rise of the digital
and later genetic trajectories. But, in the last few years more voices from
different sectors
have begun to put these nano-engines on the table.

Here is a gathering that will take place next week in Cacun that will add
atom tech to
the counter-globalization dialogue. These individuals and groups have been
doing
a great deal of fine activist work on atom based technologies for a number
of years:

THE NEW TECHNOLOGICAL WAVE

September 11,  2003
18:00 -22:00
Casa de la Cultura de Cancun
with

* Jerry Mander
International Forum on Globalization, USA
* Pat Mooney
Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration, ETC Group, Canada
* Vandana Shiva
Research Foundation for Science, Technology & Ecology, India
* Silvia Ribeiro
Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration, ETC Group, Mexico
* Andrew Kimbrell
International Center for Technology Assessment, ICTA, USA
* Caroline Lucas
Green Member of the European Parliament, UK

New and merging technologies (Biotech, Informatics, Cognitive
Sciences, Nanotech) are slated to bring about the biggest industrial
revolution the world has known. New materials and nanomachines will
profoundly change the conditions for international trade and for our
everyday lives.  Proponents say this new technological wave will
bring a solution to every ill from resource scarcity to disability
and to global warming. Critics see a further erosion of human rights
and the unleashing of novel, toxic and potentially self-replicating
materials.  Can we stop the wave before it crashes?

(Spanish-English translation provided)

September 11,  2003
18:00 -22:00
Casa de la Cultura de Cancún
Ave. Yaxchilan, Super Manzana 21
between Ave. Xpuhil and Ave. Labna

Also, it has been fun to follow the internal battles between Eric Drexler
(theory) and Richard E. Smalley (business)
over the future of nanotech - clash over cash and who will control the
"Nanhattan Project."

So much too do and no time left...well maybe a few picos.

ciao,
ricardo

ps As Don Durito says, "Smaller ain't always better!" And he is an invisible
bug!

pps Here is a little tale I did a couple of years ago that has floated
around...mostly recently
on http://www.intelligentagent.com


Nano-fest Destiny 3.0: Fragments from the Post-Biotech Era

"In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table:
human beings, nature, and
  machines. I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, is on
the side of the machines."

- George Dyson , Darwin Among the Machines.

MNT("Molecular Nanotechnology") device designs should incorporate provisions
for built-in safety mechanisms, such as: 1) absolute dependence on a single
artificial fuel source or artificial "vitamins" that don't exist in any
natural environment; 2) making devices that are dependent on broadcast
transmissions for replication or in some cases operation; 3) routing control
signal paths through out a device, so that subassemblies do not function
independently; 4) programming termination dates into devices, and 5) other
innovations in laboratory or device safety technology developed specifically
to address the potential dangers of MNT.

- Foresight Guidelines on Molecular Nanotechnology, (Revised Draft Version
3.7: June 4, 2000).

[Start Video Now]

The term "Molecular Nanotechnology" (MNT) refers to the ability to program
matter with molecular precision and at some point in the future scale it to
three-dimensional products of arbitrary size. Nanotechnolgy is to inanimate
matter what biotech is to animate matter.

Recombinant society falls quickly before nano-fest destiny. Biotechnology,
like digital networks, becomes a side event before the next state of command
and control society. Each of us will rapidly become the by product of
artificial Molecular Nanotechnology "vitamins",  interdependent molecular
subassembly engines, and inter-linked "termination dates."  We will become
more than replicants and less than nothing. The  cross-roads between the
imaginary and all too real construction of MNT is perhaps already behind us.

Tactical media, bio-interventionist and critical theory sectors should have
already been involved in disturbing nanotechnology by the late 1980's when
it was first being defined for the engineering sectors as a sign moving from
a speculative model to a sanctioned exploratory zone. At this point in time
not even Bill Joy's (cofounder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems) rant
"Why the Future Doesn't Need Us", which appeared in Wired in 2001, about the
ramifications of molecular nanotechnology will do little more than alter a
few micro points of a revised MNT Guidelines by the Foresight Institute.

Gone Nano

As the Biotech sectors gain command and control over 40 per cent of the
world economy in the
next few years. The MNT or Nanotech sectors will seek to grab hold of the
rest of the 60 per cent of the
the material world during the next few decades. While, Biotech is
carbon-based, Nanotech is focusing
on carbon atoms. Life is carbon based. The atoms that make the molecules
that structure DNA are carbon.
Thus, Nanotech has the potential to encompass the entire Table of Elements.
Biotech is just
a backwater town compared to the command and control that Nanotech will be
able to exploit for
its own profit. Already several important connections between nano-biology
and nano-engineering
are being installed in the hybrid venture capital market. Nanotech
development is now about where
biotech was a quarter century ago. This does not mean it will take 25 years
before it starts to
attract the kind of capital investment enjoyed by the Genome market.
Advances in other scientific fields, especially informatics, means that the
acceleration of MNT will be rapid.

A Note About Post-Genomic Profits Today: The Empire's New Genes

"In, 1492, Christopher Columbus, was blundering about the Caribbean in
search of India - he wrote home to say that the ancient mariners had erred
in thinking the earth was round. Rather, he said, it was shaped like a woman
's
breast, with a protuberance upon its summit in the unmistakable shape of
a nipple - towards which he was slowly sailing."
- Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather

Objectivity, for the native is always against him.
- Frantz Fanon, "A Dying Colonialism"

 The conquest of woman and reproduction is at the core of the old Empire -
this new land was to be taken, raped, and made to give birth to a new
economy. The new Empire of bio-colonialism is replaying the same tale. Only
this time Christopher Columbus has planted his flag not on the beach of the
Indigenous lands he accidentally discovered but on their genes. Now the flag
waves deep in the pleats of matter. The fast-forward future is now a
rewinding of the past into the present of post-genomic profits.

The Human Genome Project and genetic research generally, "raises serious
issues of concern to indigenous peoples", states Debra Harry, Executive
Director of the Indigenous Peoples Council on Bio-colonialism. She says,
"Now that the sequencing project is complete more scientists will turn their
attention to human genetic diversity, which includes the collection and
study of the DNA of indigenous peoples. This is likely to result in patents
on the genetic inheritance of indigenous peoples, and possible manipulations
of their DNA, which violate the natural genetic integrity of their ancestry"
.

The Indigenous are the first markers of the complex territories of what will
become the growing question of bio-rights for all. Bio-colonialism breaks
down the walls between the outside and inside, blood and soil,
micro-ecologies and global economies - but, the flag of the recombinant
Empire still waves between the two worlds established by Columbus. The value
of the New World is still bound by the same dream of the Old World - to
carve out spaces for profit for the Old World by mining the dark bodies and
lands for that new genetic gold. The difference between the old flag with
its prayer to God and new flag of Genomics - is that this new flag is being
planted on the bio-beach with a prayer to the Therapeutic State and its call
for "Health for All."

Dr. Jonathan King, Professor of Biology at MIT and a member of the board of
directors of the Council for Responsible Genetics in Cambridge MA, states
"We are concerned that the emphasis on gene sequences will be used to imply
that genes are at the basis of a variety of human disease and conditions,
when in fact the great body of evidence, establishes that the majority of
human ill health is not inherited but is due to external insult including
pollution, infection, inadequate or in appropriate diet, physical accident,
or excess stress or social disruption such as wars". King further adds, "We
note that preventing damage to human genes from carcinogens is a far more
effective public health strategy than allowing the disease to develop and
then attempting gene therapy."

 Both, colonialism and bio-colonialism, pray for the poor dark ones. One
prayed for their souls and that the power of the Empire would be able to
save them from themselves. The other prays that they will be able to save
the natives from the poor genes they have been born with and that the power
of the Empire will be able to save them from themselves. Dr. Stuart Newman,
Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy New York Medical College notes,
"Although there are potentially beneficial uses for the information gathered
in the Human Genome Project, there is also the great threat that this
information will be used to persuade people that they are not good enough,
biologically. This will be justified by promised improvements to human
health, but unless carefully monitored and regulated, this emphasis on
genetics will have a divisive effect, whereby those categories and groups of
people that have traditionally been marginalized will now learn that their
genes are inferior and need to be improved." In each instance those who have
crossed the unknown seas dreaming new lands for the Empire fall back on the
"genomic space" of the dark Other as the reason for life itself as conquest.

 As was the case in the days after Columbus, so it follows in the days after
the Human Genome Project - the slave ships and their gold are now beginning
to cross back into the treasuries of the New Empire. Each day the genetic
wealth of the New World is being added to the coffers as new biological
"truths" to be patented in the name of Empire's historically given rights to
scientific research. As we all know, the human Genome can be privatized, not
to benefit people's health for corporate profits. Already, patents have been
filed, and then later abandoned, on the DNA of indigenous peoples from the
Solomon Islands and Panama. The U.S. Patent and Trademarks Office (PTO)
actually approved a patent on the cells lines of a Hagahai man from Papua
New Guinea. The patent was granted to the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services and the National Institutes of Health in March 1994. In late
1996 the NIH abandoned the patent. However, the Hagahai cell line is now
available to the public at the American Type Culture Collection as ATCC
Number: CRL-10528 Organism: Homo Sapiens (human) for $216 per sample. This
trend is likely to continue as new potentially profitable genes are
identified in indigenous populations.

Another link between the Old Empire and the New Empire is the vision that
the New World is full of animal people - dark people who have been breeding
with the native creatures since the time began. This belief allows the New
Empire, as was the case with Old Empire, to rape and reconfigure the dark
native as animals - first in the name of God and now in the name of
Genomics. Maori activists have already had to take a very active stance on
this concern. Donna Gardiner, a Maori researcher, has written extensively on
the movement of Selbourne Biological Services and PPL Therapeutics in the
Tauranga area of Aotearoa-New Zealand. Selbourne Biological Services
imported human DNA for insertion into sheep, those sheep are bred in
Tauranga. Donna outlines the manipulative practices of the company to gain
access to Tauranga. Her research found that the company asserted by letter
to the Ministry of Environment that five members of the Ngati He/Ngai Te Ahi
tribes had formalized approval of the company's application. Four of the
five tribal members identified in the letter stated that they had not given
any such approval. After some probing, they realized that one of their
members had indeed signed a letter composed by the company, after being
convinced the research was for the "greater good of mankind". Gardiner
states that "The thought of human and animal genes being mixed was totally
abhorrent and offensive both culturally and morally". The real question is
not that we as humans are part of the same Genome as all the rest of the
species on the genetic beach - because we are and have always been. But,
that now  profits are being extracted from the links between human cells and
those of animals.

The New Empire wears genes as a sign of wealth and objective "truth", and as
a re-play of its historical destiny. As Hegel decreed, progress in the realm
of history was possible because it has always already been accomplished in
the realm of "truth". The New Empire is now on the genetic beach planting
its flag. The symbol on this flag is "TM". The trade mark is now the only
"truth" of this Empire. This time the local natives won't be silent and they
will slowly surround Columbus as he prays and send him back naked, wearing
only his own genes.

[Fast Forward]

What Are Nanos Good For

Not much difference between a banana and a human. Same Atoms, just arranged
differently.
- K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology
(1986)

Nanotechnology is said to offer us unprecedented new set of technical and
economic opportunities. The opportunities include: the development of
inexpensive and abundant diamond like building materials with a
strength-to-weight ratio 50 times greater than titanium, the possibility of
widespread material abundance for all the Earth's people, the development of
revolutionary new techniques in medicine, and the opening of the space
frontier for development. Nanotechnologist also admit that along with these
new capabilities come new risks, and new responsibilities. Drexler states
that those working with nanotechnology must
accept that, ".the future capabilities of MNT also raise an unprecedented
set of military, security and environmental issues. Dealing with these
issues proactively will be critical to the positive development of the
field." That's what scientists said when talk of splitting the atom as
possibility was contemplated.
It did not help the outcome.

Gray Gooing the Universe

Do not adjust your mind - there is a fault in reality.
-Easy Rider (The Movie), 1971

On the other side, objective scientific speculation from exploratory
engineers, have a number of end of History scenarios available: one, primary
assemblers will achieve A.I level rapidly and displace humanity as the
dominant species. The MNT guidelines call for the containment of the primary
assemblers with specific types of command and control spaces, like the
Double Security Sphere Protocols (DSSP) . The DSSP call for the building of
double spheres that will  enclose all primary assemblers within an imploding
event horizon both within and without - if the containment sphere senses
external rupture it automatically implodes - if the internal sphere senses a
disturbance it automatically implodes.

Two, History as Assembler, could also end as a gray goo syndrome (GGS) by
the reverse engineering of secondary assemblers towards the negation of all
molecular programs into an endless gray biomass sea consuming everything and
would finally encompass the moon after a few months of replication. This
would occur if secondary assemblers or stage-two self-replicating nanobots
are built to function autonomously in the natural environment they could
quickly convert that natural environment (e.g., "biomass") into replicas of
themselves (e.g., "nanomass") on a global basis, a scenario usually referred
to as the "gray goo syndrome" but perhaps more properly termed "global
ecophagy."

As Drexler first warned in Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of
Nanotechnology (1986):

"Among the cognoscenti of nanotechnology, this threat has become known as
the "gray goo syndrome." Though masses of uncontrolled replicators need not
be gray or gooey, the term "gray goo" emphasizes that replicators able to
obliterate life might be less inspiring than a single species of crabgrass.
They might be superior in an evolutionary sense, but this need not make them
valuable.
The gray goo threat makes one thing perfectly clear: We cannot afford
certain kinds of accidents with replicating assemblers.
Gray goo would surely be a depressing ending to our human adventure on
Earth, far worse than mere fire or ice, and one that could stem from a
simple laboratory accident."

Gray Gooing Capital with Anti-Market Science

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
-Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of the US Office of Patents, 1899

Economy as we know it will come to an end. No more scarcity.
-K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology,
1986.

In mid-1999 Business Week announced that Nanotech  will turn 'matter into
software.' Right now both Japan and the European Union are on equal footing
in government support of MNT growth. Britain has established a
Nanotechnology Link Program and the French and Germans have created
'Nano-valley' in the upper Rhine. Japan is at this time the most developed
MNT country. In the US research expenditures on nanotechnology have soared
from US $116 million 1998 to US$220 million in 2000 and US$460 million in
2001. The US Navy is creating an Institute for Nanoscience, which will open
in Washington D.C on March 2002.

The market containment of MNT is now under a double re-configuration: first,
the economic enclosure of scientific speculation as a new market engine and,
second, as a technological displacement of economy as a historical drive. At
the same moment that MNT is being embraced as part of the general economy,
its internal objective trajectory signs it speculations with a vision of
material scarcity as the governing doctrine of Capital finally ending.
Capital under the sign of MNT enters slow eraser. The exploratory engineers
working on Nanotech see the end of Capital. Indeed History as Capital will
now be re-shifted into History as Assembler. The historical shift of an
economic embrace of an anti-market science will expand into assembler
networks - exchange will become based on design values as distribution and
not as Capital.

An Interruption: The New Luddite Challenge

                     First let us postulate that the computer scientists
succeed in developing
                     intelligent machines that can do all things better than
human beings can do them.
                     In that case presumably all work will be done by vast,
highly organized systems
                     of machines and no human effort will be necessary.
Either of two cases might
                     occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of
their own decisions
                     without human oversight, or else human control over the
machines might be
                     retained.

                     If the machines are permitted to make all their own
decisions, we can't make any
                     conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible
to guess how such
                     machines might behave. We only point out that the fate
of the human race would
                     be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued
that the human race would
                     never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to
the machines. But we are
                     suggesting neither that the human race would
voluntarily turn power over to the
                     machines nor that the machines would willfully seize
power. What we do suggest
                     is that the human race might easily permit itself to
drift into a position of such
                     dependence on the machines that it would have no
practical choice but to accept
                  all of the machines' decisions. As society and the
problems that face it become
                     more and more complex and machines become more and more
intelligent, people
                     will let machines make more of their decisions for
them, simply because
                     machine-made decisions will bring better results than
man-made ones. Eventually
                     a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary
to keep the system
                     running will be so complex that human beings will be
incapable of making them
                     intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in
effective control. People won't
                     be able to just turn the machines off, because they
will be so dependent on them
                     that turning them off would amount to suicide.

                     On the other hand it is possible that human control
over the machines may be
                     retained. In that case the average man may have control
over certain private
                     machines of his own, such as his car or his personal
computer, but control over
                     large systems of machines will be in the hands of a
tiny elite - just as it is today,
                     but with two differences. Due to improved techniques
the elite will have greater
                     control over the masses; and because human work will no
longer be necessary
                     the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the
system. If the elite is
                     ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass
of humanity. If they are
                     humane they may use propaganda or other psychological
or biological
                     techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of
humanity becomes extinct,
                     leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite
consists of soft-hearted liberals, they
                     may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the
rest of the human race.
                     They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are
satisfied, that all children
                     are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions,
that everyone has a
                     wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who
may become
                     dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his
"problem." Of course, life will be
                     so purposeless that people will have to be biologically
or psychologically
                     engineered either to remove their need for the power
process or make them
                     "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless
hobby. These engineered
                     human beings may be happy in such a society, but they
will most certainly not
                  be free. They will have been reduced to the status of
domestic animals.

                     The Unabomber, 1994

Machine Meat or Cut and Paste Robotics

Biological species almost never survive encounters with superior
competitors. Ten million years ago, South and North America were separated
by a sunken Panama isthmus. South America, like Australia today, was
populated by marsupial mammals, including pouched equivalents of rats,
deers, and tigers. When the isthmus connecting North and South America rose,
it took only a few thousand years for the northern placental species, with
slightly more effective metabolisms and reproductive and nervous systems, to
displace and eliminate almost all the southern marsupials.

In a completely free marketplace, superior robots would surely affect humans
as North American placentals affected South American marsupials (and as
humans have affected countless species). Robotic industries would compete
vigorously among themselves for matter, energy, and space, incidentally
driving their price
beyond human reach. Unable to afford the necessities of life, biological
humans would be squeezed out of existence.

GNR: Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics

We're in a war.We're going to bury this first wave of biotech. The first
battle is labeling.
The second battle is banning it.
- Activist at a protesters' gathering, November 1999 World Trade
Organization meeting in Seattle.

The technologies underlying the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) - nuclear,
biological, and chemical (NBC) - were powerful, and the weapons are an
enormous threat. But building nuclear weapons
required, at least for a time, access to both rare - indeed, effectively
unavailable - raw materials and highly protected information; biological and
chemical weapons programs also tended to require large-scale activities.

The 21st-century technologies - genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics
(GNR) - are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents
and abuses. Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses
are widely within the reach of individuals or small groups. They will not
require large facilities or rare raw materials. Knowledge alone will enable
the use of them.

[Rewind to Clone Capitalism]

An Intervention: The End of the Gene or Artist as I-biology Tool

When the circuit learns your job, what are you going to do?
-Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage, (1967)..

The gene is a concept past its time.
-William Gelbart, molecular geneticist, Science, (1998).

DNA as data is now staged as a "circuit" that performs you as gene. The
question of performance as a function between software and wetware breaks
down with the Human Genome Project. Data harvesting with I-biology tools
displace the performance of DNA as an invisible engine of wetware. The gene
has now been spliced into data and distributed for profit. The gene has
collapsed under the weight of data. We are now truly data bodies down to our
genes.

The time between emergence of "the gene" and extinction of "the gene" was
quick and efficient. Under the hyper-Darwinism of Clone Capitalism the gene
becomes a concept of the past before we can even understand it in the
present. It will be important and necessary to trace the process of this
disappearance. To document the moment when the circuit became the gene. The
moment when our DNA became a distributed network for the market and it no
longer resides in our bodies.

"i-Biology Patent Engine (i-BPE)" and "Memoryflesh: Harvesting the Net" by
Diane Ludin stages the end of the gene.  She behaves as the "circuit" that
has learned "your job." She takes on the task of a search engine, a
"reflective performance system", in order to trace the collapse of the gene.
She becomes an information bot, she performs as a network spider, as an
automated search engine harvesting the net for the last genetic traces and
the first signs of the post-Genomic system. Her auto-organic parameters seek
out points of market growth and intensification around "system based
 biology", not only as it functions within the scientific testing and
speculation, but from the spillage of economic hype surrounding the
I-biology tools and software on Wall Street.

With the E-commerce market falling into the black hole of a present which
could not meet the demands of the future, the market is looking at Clone
Capitalism as the next hype-zone. "Memoryflesh" crawls and gathers the
inflated discourse that is being manufactured by the Wall Street media
networks for the promotion of Clone Capitalism: "Point-and-Click Genes,
Genetic Landlords, Genetic Profits, Genetic Rents, Impulse Buy Genes,
Selling Rights To Mine The Gene, and I Own You_Therefore I Am." Each one of
these headlines brought back by the artist as search engine into a counter
data base. The data base is the staging area for the performance. Ludin
becomes a primitive circuit learning its job and offering the harvest for
access and distribution. She becomes her own I-biology tool, her own
disappearance engine, and deposits the documentation for all to witness.

While, it may not be possible to fully perform within the scientific
networks that float in the inaccessible atmosphere of "scientific
objectivity", one possible zone for intervention and re-reading by artists
and activists is the space between "system based biology" and the networks
that Clone Capitalism is now interlocking into the old E-Capitalism data
base sharing tools in order to create new speculations bubbles. The
intersection between the "gene" as data and the bio-tech market volatility
may offer us an important circuit to shift the social teleology that is
mining our bodies for profit. Ludin's "i-BPE" and "Memoryflesh" project
traces the possibility of understanding this brief window of opportunity for
network_art and tactical bio-media in the future.

i-BPE
http://w3.thing.net/~diane/

Memoryflesh
http://memoryflesh.walkerart.org

[Fast Forwarding to the End of Nano History]

No Longer Science or Forget Mapping

Science aims to understand how things work; engineering aims to make things
work. Science
takes the thing as given and studies its behavior; engineering takes a
behavior as given and
studies how to make something that will act that way.
-K. Eric Drexler ,"Exploratory Engineering", 1988.

The diagram is highly unstable or fluid, continually churning up matter and
functions in a way
likely to create change.but, first one must fine visibilities and
thresholds.
-Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, 1988

With MNT we are no longer in the space of science, but in the space of
engineering, two very different conditions and goals. Science is about
mapping the process, the transmission, the in-between state between the
message sent and the message received. Engineering on the other hand is
about building diagrams. A diagram is a layered mapping, a transparent map
floating between a number of maps. A Naval prison hospital is a diagram of
multiple maps at work within one space. Engineering does not seek to map,
but to build the mechanisms, or diagrams, necessary to send and receive,
translate, and archive the input and the output defined by the maps.

While the force of scientific mapping is difficult to re-define or displace,
the diagram function of
"exploratory engineering" offers segmentation's and visibilities  to create
counter-diagrams. Inside the diagram, knowledge is a practical assemblage, a
mechanism of visibilities, and thresholds for re-drawing the lines. The
space of exploratory engineering creates a possible space for tactical
assemblages for change and resistance to the Nanotech diagram. Critical
interventionist need to develop community research initiatives for
counter-diagram constructions and distribution of counter-top-down or
bottom-up diagrams. Counter-MNT interventions cannot not stop the mapping
process, but they can create limited tactical actions to re-shift the
diagram of Nanotech. Tactical actions will have to be developed based on
finding the points of visibilities and thresholds within the emerging
Nanotech diagram.

Bad Nanos in the Genes

If it's new, they hate it.
- Ronald Bailey "Rebels Against the Future", Reason Magazine, 2001.

Imagine if young Nanos (or Nannites) become nostalgic and desire body
architectures for themselves.
Using genomeic transitivity, the Nannities can create the DNA of their
desired representations. Perhaps the latest fads at the end of 3000 A..D.
among young Nannites will be coagulating as Elvises and Madonnas.
Conservative Nanos would be unable to stop the rage for gene replication of
popular human icons. No longer would the small and invisible rein, the body
Nannites gangs would call for a brave new world of big genes. Bad Nanos
would become human, party all night, and forget to rearrange reality the
next day.

[Video Fades to Black]

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