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VU Research Portal Common Genomes Deibel, F.H.J. 2009 document version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication in VU Research Portal citation for published version (APA) Deibel, F. H. J. (2009). Common Genomes: on open source in biology & critical theory beyond the patent. Vrije Universiteit. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. E-mail address: [email protected] Download date: 04. Oct. 2021 Common Genomes on open source in biology & critical theory beyond the patent AMSTERDAM: At the request of Critical Technology Construction ; Department of Social Sciences, Wageningen University & the Athena Institute for research on innovation, communication in health and life sciences; Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam – MMIX Common Genomes: on open source in biology & critical theory beyond the patent Copyleft 2009 by Eric Deibel. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons license: “attribution-noncommercial-share alike 3.0 Netherlands”. An online version of the book is available under the same license. The Netherlands Graduate School of Science, Technology and Modern Culture (WTMC) and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam contributed financially to the publication of this volume. Printed by Ridderprint offsetdrukkerij B.V. VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT Common Genomes: on open source in biology & critical theory beyond the patent ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad Doctor aan de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, op gezag van de rector magnificus prof.dr. L.M. Bouter, in het openbaar te verdedigen ten overstaan van de promotiecommissie van de faculteit der Aard- en Levenswetenschappen op donderdag 19 november 2009 om 13.45 uur in de aula van de universiteit, De Boelelaan 1105 door Franciscus Hendricus Johannes Deibel geboren te Tilburg promotor: prof.dr. G.T.P. Ruivenkamp copromotoren: dr.ir. J. Jongerden prof.dr. S.G. Hughes Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgements Part One – the state of nature as a critical theory One – post & proto nature – a critical theoretical focus on the convergence of biology and open source informatics Two – the state of nature as a critical method – from life & nature in the natural law of Thomas Hobbes and Jean Jacques Rousseau to Marx’ critique as a method to study ownership in the life sciences. Part Two: Genomics, Economics and the Commons Three – the market beyond the patent on the convergence of biology with open source informatics Four - Gene regimes on intellectual property protections, their reform and access rearrangements Five - Open Variety Rights on the possibility for a free operating system for plant genetic material Six – a Free Market for Genetic Information on open source as an approach to biological modification in synthetic biology Part Three: genetic information economics Seven – from science fact to science fiction on the fading difference between science fact and science fiction in speculations about the convergence of biology and informatics. Eight – Open Genetic Code : on genetic information economics Closing remarks Bibliography Preface This dissertation has been written from 2004 to 2008 in Amsterdam, which I think of as one of the very few metropolitan towns on earth. It is a place of privilege; not because both the town and its country are small and wealthy – because they are not remarkably so and neither would such features necessarily make it a good place to live. What it offers me are the concentric rings of its old centre – like the rings of a tree, the city tells time by its filtering, folding and shaping of the layers of its history around the passers-by. The town is metropolitan in how it shows off its leisure and affluence in its disinterested absorption of contemporary cultures and life styles. This is my description for my years of circling the rings in between home, university and elsewhere even though these years began at the end of 2004 when there was an instant when it was not easy to identify with the town’s own notions of time and wellbeing. Just some days into the PhD., when almost everything in this text was still unknown, the good life within the concentric rings got interrupted by the second of two political murders in the country. The first, however, in the metropolitan town. To most, this event had something to do with strangers that failed to adjust to the wellbeing of this society. In my mind, however, town and country have gotten used to identify themselves and the others in terms of the standard of the facilities, social services, and human development. By that measure it looks as if the instant when the differences among its inhabitants become visible – that had been there all along – an escalation of catastrophic proportions has been set in motion. The concentration on material wellbeing is pervasive throughout the society and it comprises many other fields. For example it includes the domain that manages practical solutions to the problems that are raised by certain ‘new things’. There is quite some socially and policy relevant PhD research being done on “new things” – most of it in line with the well-being of this “Society” and its “People”. The descriptions and cases that the PhD candidate is supposed to look into are conveniently linked with the “new things” that this society has under development; why not, for example, study these in intricate detail or make a comparison of a handful of them? Or, why not select some that are close by and some others that are elsewhere but are obviously related? After having studied their various contexts in intricate detail, there might be, with the appropriate reservations, a practical observation or two to be made on safeguarding the wellbeing of this place. It would be entirely fitting that the PhD projects will end with a mere whisper about how the new things need to be dealt with by the same political society that set the terms of the investigation in advance. From the onset – when everything still has to be learned – this is the premise that saturates the desire to learn about new sciences and technologies with the terms for its preferred outcome. There are exceptions, of course, there might have to be exceptional cases where the prescribed methodology did not quite work in making the theme disappear in its particulars. In that eventuality there is always the appropriate shout to be heard: ‘the king is dead, long live the king!’ A change might be needed; the knowledge that ruled might need to be changed because the centre might otherwise not hold unless the most acute of measures is taken: incorporation of the catastrophic event as a new theme into the agenda managed by Dutch corporatism. In brief, a new seat is placed at the round table whereby ‘the new things’ are mediated on behalf of its ‘People’. Moreover the usual reflex in the Netherlands to this sort of change is to instantly add another bullet-point to the already absurdly detailed ‘what-to-do-list’ for less fortunate countries. It speaks for itself that this is only done on an explicit request coming from such places. In fact, this is what I found out: it is already quite something in social studies of technology if some sort of developmental consideration is taken into account. It quickly becomes quite unreasonable to require that investigation of the ‘new things to come’ is also critical of that development-practice. Before starting my PhD, however, I got to witness a few too many culturally blind development projects in various countries that made little sense and no difference beyond the technicalities of these countries’ ‘development aid games’. I got to appreciate that there are irreducible cultural differences in the world and spend my master’s thinking about the historical terms and conditions whereby certain groups get recognized as peoples while others do not. In brief, I came to think that the ‘aid game’ and the ‘great game’ are inseparable and what I quickly figured was that this also includes many of the ‘new things’ that I was going to study for the next four years. When digging only a little further than the international news on the range of catastrophes – those that I like to summarize as food, health, wealth, empty fuel tanks and the weather – there is a technology push and a development pull that presuppose each other. What is notable is not only that both are premised on the terms and conditions that are set by those that get to do the changing; more important to me is that, from the onset, my limited grasp of the history of political theory and international thought – my background – showed me that much more historical biases are being rehabilitated. I spend my time before beginning with this dissertation on thinking about the cultural origins to the contemporary international state system of geopolitics and I cannot ignore how these play out and are magnified when very ‘new things’ are being pushed as the solutions for the global problems of poor and unstable areas.

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