Nano-Fest Destiny 3.0: Beings, Nature, and Machines
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"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.