Nature as a machine to be tinkered with…trust, distrust & language

Enjoyable session at the iGem Festival - an event opening this year's student competition to solve real world problems using synthetic biology (creating organisms from scratch that don't exist in nature applying engineering mindset & software techniques. Yes. Gulp.)

Reprising my concern about the implications of increasing beliefs that humans & nature are simply machines to be tinkered with & denoting a precision that is too simplistic & not the reality.

iGem stands for 'genetically engineered machines', the language is of bio bricks, biological parts, devices, terminology of cut and paste, re-writing. Technical, distanced language that detaches the work from the social, ethical & environmental implications.

But what I like about iGem is that unlike the rest of the synbio world, (& most other tech dev systems) the social purpose, values & ethics are right there up front & centre. They are sharing learning & co-creating an ethical system themselves in the absence of any other real guidance. Good on them.

More to come on this, a new area of research.

Check out the whole ‘festival’ on https://festival.igem.io (mine was presentation 16 in the horizontal scroll) - very cool interface - see all the little hearts that float up when you are talking. Quite fun to see, even tho probably 99% were from the organisers!