TY - JOUR
T1 - Realizing the promise of biotechnology
T2 - Infrastructural-icons in synthetic biology
AU - Mackenzie, Adrian
PY - 2013/4
Y1 - 2013/4
N2 - That part of synthetic biology concerned with engineering promises to make good on the potential of biotechnology to address problems of food, energy, health and environment. How do the synthetic biologists realise the promise of biology as technology? In analysing realisation of promise in synthetic biology, I suggest that we should pay close attention to different rates of realisation. Synthetic biologists have consistently focused on making particular kinds of devices such as oscillators, timers and clock that both address problems of control over rates, and that themselves resemble and link to other rate-controlling mechanisms such as the many clocks found in large technical systems. They have also, again in those parts of the field concerned with engineering, expended much effort in developing infrastructures, techniques, methods and systems for rapid assembly of parts and components. The clocks and assembly methods function as both as iconic signs and as infrastructural elements or practices that will realise the promise of biotechnology. The field has not only produced what we might call infrastructural-icons for biology as technology, but almost defined itself in terms of a promise of realisation. In analysing how synthetic biology or any other technological endeavour shows how things could be (icons), and makes operational connections between things (infrastructures), the main goal is not to situate field in social or economic contexts. Rather, it is to open a way to see how synthetic biologists and others - philosophers, social scientists, historians, artists, designers, scientists engineers, as students or consumers - manage to address the gaps that open up as the promise of biology as technology is realised at different rates.
AB - That part of synthetic biology concerned with engineering promises to make good on the potential of biotechnology to address problems of food, energy, health and environment. How do the synthetic biologists realise the promise of biology as technology? In analysing realisation of promise in synthetic biology, I suggest that we should pay close attention to different rates of realisation. Synthetic biologists have consistently focused on making particular kinds of devices such as oscillators, timers and clock that both address problems of control over rates, and that themselves resemble and link to other rate-controlling mechanisms such as the many clocks found in large technical systems. They have also, again in those parts of the field concerned with engineering, expended much effort in developing infrastructures, techniques, methods and systems for rapid assembly of parts and components. The clocks and assembly methods function as both as iconic signs and as infrastructural elements or practices that will realise the promise of biotechnology. The field has not only produced what we might call infrastructural-icons for biology as technology, but almost defined itself in terms of a promise of realisation. In analysing how synthetic biology or any other technological endeavour shows how things could be (icons), and makes operational connections between things (infrastructures), the main goal is not to situate field in social or economic contexts. Rather, it is to open a way to see how synthetic biologists and others - philosophers, social scientists, historians, artists, designers, scientists engineers, as students or consumers - manage to address the gaps that open up as the promise of biology as technology is realised at different rates.
KW - Biotechnology
KW - Infrastructure
KW - Promise
KW - Realisation
KW - Synthetic biology
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84877927411&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.futures.2013.02.003
DO - 10.1016/j.futures.2013.02.003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84877927411
SN - 0016-3287
VL - 48
SP - 5
EP - 12
JO - Futures
JF - Futures
ER -