"In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human Nano-fest Destiny 3.0: beings, nature, and machines. I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, Fragments from the Post- is on the side of the Biotech Era machines." -George Dyson, Darwin Among the Machines

MNT("Molecular Nanotech- Recombinant society falls quickly few decades. While Biotech is car - nology") device designs before nano-fest destiny. bon-based, Nanotech is focusing on should incorporate provisions Biotechnology, like digital networks, carbon atoms. Life is carbon-based. for built-in safety mechanisms, becomes a side event before the next The atoms that make the molecules such as: state of command-and-control society. that structure DNA are carbon. Thus, 1) absolute dependence on a Each of us will rapidly become the by- Nanotech has the potential to encom- single artificial fuel source or product of artificial Molecular Nano- pass the entire Table of Elements. artificial "vitamins" that don't technology "vitamins," interdependent Biotech is just a backwater town com- exist in any natural environ- molecular subassembly engines, and pared to the command and control ment; inter-linked "termination dates." that Nanotech will be able to exploit 2) making devices that are We will become more than replicants for its own profit. Already several dependent on broadcast trans- and less than nothing. The cross-roads important connections between nano- missions for replication or in between the imaginary and all too real biology and nano-engineering are some cases operation; construction of MNT is perhaps already being installed in the hybrid venture 3) routing control signal paths behind us. capital market. Nanotech develop- throughout a device, so that ment is now about where biotech was subassemblies do not function Tactical media, bio-interventionist and a quarter century ago. This does not independently; critical theory sectors should have mean it will take 25 years before it 4) programming termination already been involved in disturbing starts to attract the kind of capital dates into devices, and nanotechnology by the late 1980s investment enjoyed by the Genome 5) other innovations in laboratory when it was first being defined for the market. Advances in other scientific or device safety technology de- engineering sectors as a sign moving fields, especially informatics, means veloped specifically to address from a speculative model to a sanc- that the acceleration of MNT will be the potential dangers of MNT. tioned exploratory zone. At this point rapid. in time, not even Bill Joy's (cofounder - Foresight Guidelines on and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsys- A Note About Post- Molecular Nanotechnology, tems) rant -- "Why the Future Doesn't Genomic Profits Today: (Revised Draft Version 3.7: Need Us," which appeared in Wired June 4, 2000). in 2001 -- about the ramifications of The Empire's New Genes molecular nanotechnology will do [Start Video Now] little more than alter a few micro- points of revised MNT Guidelines "In, 1492, Christopher Columbus was by the Foresight Institute. The term "Molecular blundering about the Caribbean in Nanotechnology" (MNT) refers search of India - he wrote home to to the ability to program matter Gone Nano say that the ancient mariners had with molecular precision and, erred in thinking the earth was round. at some point in the future, As the Biotech sectors gain command Rather, he said, it was shaped like a scale it to three-dimensional and control over 40 percent of the woman's breast, with a protuberance products of arbitrary size. world economy in the next few years, upon its summit in the unmistakable Nanotechnolgy is to inanimate the MNT or Nanotech sectors will seek shape of a nipple - towards which he matter what biotech is to ani- to grab hold of the rest of the 60 percent was slowly sailing." mate matter. of the material world during the next - Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather

Objectivity, for the native is established by Columbus. The value Dr. Stuart Newman, Professor of Cell always against him. of the New World is still bound by the Biology and Anatomy at New York -Frantz Fanon, "A Dying same dream of the Old World -- to Medical College notes, "Although Colonialism" carve out spaces for profit for the Old there are potentially beneficial uses World by mining the dark bodies and for the information gathered in the The conquest of woman and repro- lands for that new genetic gold. The Human Genome Project, there is also duction is at the core of the old difference -- between the old flag with the great threat that this information Empire -- the new land was to be its prayer to God and the new flag of will be used to persuade people that taken, raped, and made to give birth Genomics -- is that this new flag is they are not good enough, biological- to a new economy. The new Empire being planted on the bio-beach with a ly. This will be justified by promised of bio-colonialism is replaying the prayer to the Therapeutic State and improvements to human health, but same tale. Only this time Christopher its call for "Health for All." unless carefully monitored and regu- Columbus has not planted his flag on Dr. Jonathan King, Professor of lated, this emphasis on genetics will the beach of the Indigenous lands he Biology at MIT and a member of the have a divisive effect, whereby those accidentally discovered but on their board of directors of the Council for categories and groups of people that genes. Now the flag waves deep in Responsible Genetics in Cambridge, have traditionally been marginalized the pleats of matter. The fast-forward MA, states "We are concerned that will now learn that their genes are future is now a rewinding of the past the emphasis on gene sequences will inferior and need to be improved." In into the present of post-genomic prof- be used to imply that genes are at the each instance, those who have cross- its. The Human Genome Project and basis of a variety of human disease ed the unknown seas dreaming of genetic research in general "raises and conditions, when in fact the great new lands for the Empire fall back on serious issues of concern to indige- body of evidence, establishes that the the "genomic space" of the dark Other nous peoples," states Debra Harry, majority of human ill health is not as the reason for life itself as con- Executive Director of the Indigenous inherited but is due to external insult quest. Peoples Council on including pollution, Bio-colonial- Another infection, As it was the case in the days after ism. She link between the Old Empire inade- Columbus, so it unfolds in the days says, and the New Empire is the vision that after the Human Genome Project -- the slave ships and their gold are now the New World is full of animal people -- dark beginning to cross back into the treas- people who have been breeding with the native uries of the New Empire. Each day, the genetic wealth of the New World creatures since the time began. This belief allows is being added to the coffers as new the New Empire, as was the case with Old biological "truths" to be patented in Empire, to rape and reconfigure the dark the name of Empire's historically given rights to scientific research. As native as animals -- first in the name of we all know, the human Genome can "Now God and now in the name of quate be privatized, not to benefit people's that the or in- health for corporate profits. Already, sequencing pro- Genomics. appropriate patents have been filed, and then ject is complete, more sci- diet, physical accident, or later abandoned, on the DNA of entists will turn their attention to excess stress or social disruption indigenous peoples from the Solomon human genetic diversity, which such as wars." King further adds, Islands and Panama. The U.S. Patent includes the collection and study of "We note that preventing damage to and Trademarks Office (PTO) actually the DNA of indigenous peoples. This human genes from carcinogens is a approved a patent on the cell lines of is likely to result in patents on the far more effective public health strate- a Hagahai man from Papua, New genetic inheritance of indigenous peo- gy than allowing the disease to devel- Guinea. The patent was granted to ples, and possible manipulations of op and then attempting gene therapy." the U.S. Department of Health and their DNA, which violate the natural Human Services and the National genetic integrity of their ancestry." Institutes of Health in March 1994. In Both colonialism and bio-colonialism late 1996, the NIH abandoned the The Indigenous are the first markers pray for the poor dark ones. One patent. However, the Hagahai cell line of the complex territories of what will prayed for their souls and that the is now available to the public at the become the growing question of bio- power of the Empire would be able to American Type Culture Collection as rights for all. Bio-colonialism breaks save them from themselves. The ATCC Number: CRL-10528 Organism: down the walls between the outside other prays that they will be able to Homo Sapiens (human) for $216 per and inside, blood and soil, micro- save the natives from the poor genes sample. This trend is likely to continue ecologies and global economies - but, they have been born with and that the as new potentially profitable genes the flag of the recombinant Empire power of the Empire will be able to are identified in indigenous popula- still waves between the two worlds save them from themselves. tions. now the only "truth" of this Empire. It did not help the outcome. Another link between the Old Empire This time, the local natives won't be and the New Empire is the vision that silent and will slowly surround the New World is full of animal people Columbus as he prays and send him Gray Gooing the Universe -- dark people who have been breed- back naked, wearing only his own ing with the native creatures since the genes. Do not adjust your mind - there is time began. This belief allows the a fault in reality. New Empire, as was the case with [Fast Forward] -Easy Rider (The Movie, 1971) Old Empire, to rape and reconfigure the dark native as animals -- first in the What Are Nanos Good For On the other side, objective scientific name of God and now in the name of speculations from exploratory engi- Genomics. Maori activists have neers have a number of 'End of Not much difference History' scenarios available. One, pri- already had to take a very active between a banana and a stance on this concern. Donna mary assemblers will achieve A.I. level Gardiner, a Maori researcher, has human. Same Atoms, just rapidly and displace humanity as the written extensively on the movement arranged differently. dominant species. The MNT guide- -K. Eric Drexler, Engines of of Selbourne Biological Services and lines call for the containment of the Creation: The Coming Era of PPL Therapeutics in the Tauranga primary assemblers with specific Nanotechnology (1986) area of Aotearoa, New Zealand. types of command and control Selbourne Biological Services impor- spaces, like the Double Security Nanotechnology is said to offer us an ted human DNA for insertion into Sphere Protocols (DSSP). The DSSP unprecedented new set of technical sheep -- those sheep are bred in call for the building of double spheres and economic opportunities. The Tauranga. Donna outlines the manipu- that will enclose all primary assem- opportunities include: the develop- lative practices of the company to blers within an imploding event hori- ment of inexpensive and abundant gain access to Tauranga. Her zon both within and without: if the diamond-like building materials with a research found that the company containment sphere senses external strength-to-weight ratio 50 times asserted by letter to the Ministry of rupture, it automatically implodes; if greater than titanium; the possibility of Environment that five members of the the internal sphere senses a distur- widespread material abundance for all Ngati He/Ngai Te Ahi tribes had for- bance, it automatically implodes. the Earth's people; the development malized approval of the company's of revolutionary new techniques in application. Four of the five tribal Two, History as Assembler, could end medicine; and the opening of the members identified in the letter stated as a gray goo syndrome (GGS) -- the space frontier for development. that they had not given any such reverse-engineering of secondary Nanotechnologists also admit that approval. After some probing, they assemblers towards the negation of along with these new capabilities realized that one of their members all molecular programs and into an come new risks, and new responsibili- had indeed signed a letter composed endless gray biomass sea consuming ties. Drexler states that those working by the company, after being con- everything -- and would finally encom- with nanotechnology must accept that, vinced the research was for the pass the moon after a few months of "…the future capabilities of MNT also "greater good of mankind." Gardiner replication. This would occur if sec- raise an unprecedented set of military, states that "The thought of human ondary assemblers or stage-two self- security and environmental issues. and animal genes being mixed was replicating nanobots are built to func- Dealing with these issues proactively totally abhorrent and offensive both tion autonomously in the natural envi- will be critical to the positive develop- culturally and morally." The issue ronment. They could quickly convert ment of the field." That's what scien- is not that we, as humans, are part that natural environment (e.g., "bio- tists said when talk of splitting the of the same Genome as all the rest of mass") into replicas of themselves atom was contemplated as possibility. the species on the genetic beach -- because we are and have always been -- but that profits are now 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 des- tiny. 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 genet- ic beach planting its flag. The symbol on this flag is "TM." The trademark is (e.g., "nanomass") on a global basis, time the most developed MNT coun- lion in 2000 and US $460 million in a scenario usually referred to as the try. In the U.S., research expenditures 2001. The U.S. Navy is creating an "gray goo syndrome" but perhaps on nanotechnology have soared from Institute for Nanoscience, which will more properly termed "global US$ 116 million (1998) to US$ 220 mil- open in Washington D.C. in March ecophagy." An Interruption: The New Luddite Challenge As Drexler first warned in Engines of Creation: First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelli- gent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. The Coming Era of In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized sys- Nanotechnology (1986): tems 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 deci- sions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines "Among the cognoscenti of nanotech- might be retained. nology, this threat has become known as the 'gray goo syndrome.' Though If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make masses of uncontrolled replicators any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such need not be gray or gooey, the term machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race 'gray goo' emphasizes that replica- would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human tors able to obliterate life might be race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the less inspiring than a single species of machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntar- crabgrass. They might be superior in ily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize an evolutionary sense, but this need power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself not make them valuable. The gray to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have goo threat makes one thing perfectly no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. As society clear: We cannot afford certain kinds and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines of accidents with replicating assem- become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of blers. Gray goo would surely be a their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring depressing ending to our human better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at adventure on Earth, far worse than which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex mere fire or ice, and one that could that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage stem from a simple laboratory acci- the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the dent." machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide. Gray Gooing Capital with Anti-Market On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be Science 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 Everything that can be invented today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques, the elite will have has been invented. greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be -Charles H. Duell, Commissioner necessary, the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If of the US Office of Patents (1899) the elite is ruthless, they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane, they may use propaganda or other psychologi- Economy as we know it will come cal or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity to an end. No more scarcity. becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft- -K. Eric Drexler, Engines of hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the Creation: The Coming Era of rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are Nanotechnology (1986) satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone In mid-1999, Business Week who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem." Of announced that Nanotech will turn course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or "matter into software." Right now, both psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process Japan and the European Union are on or make them "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless hobby. equal footing in government support These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they of MNT growth. Britain has estab- will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of lished a Nanotechnology Link domestic animals. Program and the French and Germans have created 'Nano-valley' The Unabomber, 1994 on the upper Rhine. Japan is at this 2002. affected South American marsupials enable the use of them. The market containment of MNT is (and as humans have affected count- now under a double re-configuration: less species). Robotic industries [Rewind to Clone Capitalism] first, the economic enclosure of scien- would compete vigorously among tific speculation as a new market themselves for matter, energy, and An Intervention: engine and, second, a technological space, incidentally driving their price displacement of economy as a histori- beyond human reach. Unable to The End of the Gene or cal drive. At the same moment where afford the necessities of life, biological Artist as I-biology Tool MNT is being embraced as part of the humans would be squeezed out of general economy, its internal objective existence. When the circuit learns your trajectory aligns it with a vision of job, what are you going to do? material scarcity -- scarcity as the gov- GNR: Genetics, -Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is erning doctrine of Capital finally end- the Massage (1967) ing. Capital under the sign of MNT Nanotechnology, and enters slow eraser. The exploratory Robotics The gene is a concept past engineers working on Nanotech see We're in a war…We're going its time. the end of Capital. Indeed History as to bury this first wave of Capital will now be re-shifted into -William Gelbart, molecular History as Assembler. The historical biotech. The first battle is geneticist, Science (1998) shift of an economic embrace of an labeling. The second battle is anti-market science will expand into banning it. DNA as data is now staged as a "cir- assembler networks -- exchange will - Activist at a protesters' gather- cuit" that performs you as gene. The become based on design values as ing, November 1999 World Trade question of performance as a function distribution and not as Capital. Organization meeting in Seattle. between software and wetware

breaks down with the Human Machine Meat The technologies underlying the Genome Project. Data harvesting with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) I-biology tools displaces the perform- Biological species almost never sur- -- nuclear, biological, and chemical ance of DNA as an invisible engine of vive encounters with superior com- (NBC) -- were powerful, and the wetware. The gene has now been petitors. Ten million years ago, South weapons are an enormous threat. But spliced into data and distributed for and North America were separated by building nuclear weapons required, at profit. The gene has collapsed under a sunken Panama isthmus. South least for a time, access to both rare -- the weight of data. We are now truly America, like Australia today, was indeed, effectively unavailable -- raw data bodies down to our genes. populated by marsupial mammals, materials and highly protected infor- including pouched equivalents of rats, mation; biological and chemical The time between emergence of "the deers, and tigers. When the isthmus weapons programs also tended to gene" and extinction of "the gene" connecting North and South America require large-scale activities. was quick and efficient. Under the rose, it took only a few thousand hyper-Darwinism of Clone Capitalism, years for the northern placental The 21st-century technologies -- the gene becomes a concept of the species, with slightly more effective genetics, nanotechnology, and robot- past before we can even understand it metabolisms and reproductive and ics (GNR) -- are so powerful that they in the present. It will be important and nervous systems, to displace and can spawn whole new classes of acci- necessary to trace the process of this eliminate almost all the southern mar- dents and abuses. Most dangerously, disappearance, to document the supials. for the first time, these accidents and moment when the circuit became the abuses are widely within the reach of gene. The moment when our DNA In a completely free marketplace, individuals or small groups. They will became a distributed network for the superior robots would surely affect not require large facilities or rare raw market and no longer resides in our humans as North American placentals materials. Knowledge alone will bodies. tools in order to create new specula- mechanisms, or diagrams, necessary "i-Biology Patent Engine (i-BPE)" and tion bubbles. The intersection to send and receive, translate, and "Memoryflesh: Harvesting the Net" by between the "gene" as data and the archive the input and the output Diane Ludin stages the end of the bio-tech market volatility may offer us defined by the maps. gene. She behaves as the "circuit" an important circuit to shift the social that has learned "your job." She takes teleology that is mining our bodies for While the force of scientific mapping on the task of a search engine, a profit. Ludin's "i-BPE" and is difficult to re-define or displace, "reflective performance system," in "Memoryflesh" project traces the pos- the diagram function of "exploratory order to trace the collapse of the sibility of understanding this brief win- engineering" offers segmentations gene. She becomes an information dow of opportunity for network_art and visibilities to create counter- bot, she performs as a network spider, and tactical bio-media in the future. diagrams. Inside the diagram, know- as an automated search engine har- ledge is a practical assemblage, a vesting the net for the last genetic i-BPE http://w3.thing.net/~diane/ mechanism of visibilities and traces and the first signs of the post- thresholds for re-drawing the lines. Genomic system. Her auto-organic Memoryflesh The space of exploratory engineering parameters seek out points of market http://memoryflesh.walkerart.org creates a possible space for tactical growth and intensification around assemblages for change and resist- "system-based biology," not only as [Fast Forwarding to the ance to the Nanotech diagram. they function within scientific testing End of Nano History] Critical interventionists need to develop and speculation, but from the spillage community research initiatives for of economic hype surrounding the I- No Longer Science or counter-diagram constructions and biology tools and software on Wall distribution of counter-top-down or Street. Forget Mapping bottom-up diagrams. Counter-MNT interventions cannot not stop the With the E-commerce market falling Science aims to understand mapping process, but they can create into the black hole of a present which how things work; engineering limited tactical actions to re-shift the could not meet the demands of the aims to make things work. diagram of Nanotech. Tactical actions future, the market is looking at Clone will have to be developed based on Sciencetakes the thing as Capitalism as the next hype-zone. finding the points of visibilities and "Memoryflesh" crawls and gathers the given and studies its behavior; thresholds within the emerging inflated discourse that is being manu- engineering takes a behavior Nanotech diagram. factured by the Wall Street media net- as given and studies how to works for the promotion of Clone make something that will act Bad Nanos in the Genes Capitalism: "Point-and-Click Genes, that way. Genetic Landlords, Genetic Profits, -K. Eric Drexler,"Exploratory If it's new, they hate it. Genetic Rents, Impulse Buy Genes, Engineering" (1988) -Ronald Bailey "Rebels Against the Selling Rights To Mine The Gene, and Future," Reason Magazine (2001) I Own You_Therefore I Am." Each one The diagram is highly unstable or of these headlines are brought back fluid, continually churning up mat- by the artist as search engine into a ter and functions in a way likely to Imagine if young Nanos (or Nannites) counter database. The database is create change…but, first one must become nostalgic and desire body the staging area for the performance. fine visibilities and thresholds. architectures for themselves. Ludin becomes a primitive circuit -Gilles Deleuze, Foucault (1988) Using genomic transitivity, the learning its job and offering the har- Nannities can create the DNA of their vest for access and distribution. She With MNT, we are no longer in the desired representations. Perhaps the becomes her own I-biology tool, her space of science, but in the space of latest fads at the end of 3000 A.D. own disappearance engine, and engineering, two very different condi- among young Nannites will be coagu- deposits the documentation for all to tions and goals. Science is about lating as Elvises and Madonnas. witness. mapping the process, the transmis- Conservative Nanos would be unable sion, the in-between state between to stop the rage for gene replication of While it may not be possible to fully the message sent and the message popular human icons. No longer perform within the scientific networks received. Engineering, on the other would the small and invisible reign, the that float in the inaccessible atmos- hand, is about building diagrams. A body Nannites gangs would call for a phere of "scientific objectivity," one diagram is a layered mapping, a brave new world of big genes. Bad possible zone for intervention and re- transparent map floating between a Nanos would become human, party reading by artists and activists is the number of maps. A Naval prison hos- all night, and forget to rearrange reali- space between "system-based biolo- pital is a diagram of multiple maps at ty the next day. gy" and the networks that Clone work within one space. Engineering Capitalism is now interlocking into the does not seek to map, but to build the [Video Fades to Black] old E-Capitalism database sharing