Glowing Plants and Living Machines. Towards a Critique of Synthetic Biology

This article criticly engages with 1) synthetic biologys’ technoscientific specifica, 2) the role of biotechnical and biopolitical promises of perfectibility of‚ life itself’, and 3) the problematic notion of ‘digital biology’. Synthetic biology dismisses the idea of an already given nature: ‘life itself’ is conceptualized as a field of potentialities, with adaptable materials and flexible structures that can be used for re-engineering to ‘perfect’ nature. Bioengineers claim to create new living organisms from scratch, using genetically standardized parts and computer-based design: ‘Living machines’ which do not exist in nature are supposed to serve human purposes. Beyond its actual (and limited) state of research, some voices of synthetic biology offer bold claims of socio-technical scenarios, imagined objects, and future biotechnical experiments, which take place in society rather than behind laboratory doors. With their visions, synthetic biologists are becoming engineers of future societies. Synthetic biology develops a ‘biotechnologization of collective futures’ and it is part of a technoscientific ‘promise- economy’ that aims on colonizing the future - which demands to rethink Foucaults the question of biopolitics. Crucial for synthetic biologys’ promise of ‘digital biology’ are script-centered, bio-cybernetic, and even transhumanist figures of thought that fuel new visions of ‘life and nature’ as a field of potentials and even limitless treasures that can be programmed and produced by computational procedures: ‘writing’ the code of life