Future Ben

Really I just wanted to get the Anarchy player running on the site. I can’t decide which is more obnoxious though. The Anarchy splashpage or the Youtube watermark.
Option A.
sany0076

Option B.

Blinkynoise boxes Right , so I was at the Bent Festival a few weeks ago, which turned out to be more of the Chiptune festival, since most of the stuff I saw was made from scratch. These little suckers you could actually buy. They make a nice coffee table item, or you can rock out with them.
Blinkynoiserock

While these were cute some stuff looked a bit dangerous. This was a biofeedback setup where the performer was literally electrocuting himself while he played an exposed circuitboard. Yikes!
Bioshock-rock

It suddenly occurred to me that one of the best support sources for open source biotech would be the open source software movement. Google offers scholarships to students to take on summer coding projects with open source foundations. Is there any Bioinformatics in there? Just two that I can see.

GenMAPP (Gene Map Annotator and Pathway Profiler):

an academically based organization that develops and supports GenMAPP (Gene Map Annotator and Pathway Profiler), a visualization and analysis tool for biological data. GenMAPP illustrates the relationships between various genes and proteins to help researchers understand their data in terms of connected, biological pathways. Over 18,000 people from >70 countries have registered to download the GenMAPP program. There are over 360 publications that reference GenMAPP or use GenMAPP to display data in the context of biological pathways. GenMAPP is 100% open source. All new development is in Java, MySQL, Derby, XML, and Web technologies such as MediaWiki in collaboration with the UCSF library, BiGCaT Bioinformatics, and the Cytoscape Consortium. Our development team is composed of individuals who are both biologists and programmers, providing a unique perspective on building and using open source tools.

The NESCent (National Evolutionary Synthesis Centre):

NESCent facilitates synthetic research on grand challenge questions in evolutionary biology and also works to address critical needs in software infrastructure and education through promoting open, collaborative development of interoperable and standards-supporting open-source software. The Center is located in Durham, North Carolina, is jointly operated by Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University, and receives its core funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Together with developers from open-source life-science programming toolkits (BioPerl, Biojava, Biopython, Bioruby, BioSQL; collectively referred to as the Bio* projects), evolutionary software packages, and recently developers of comparative phylogenetic methods NESCent has so far run two Hackathons, which continue to have significant and lasting impacts on the landscape of collaborative software development in our field. The Center is committed to FLOSS and sharing of scientific data (see for example the NESCent Data and Software Policy at http://www.nescent.org/informatics/data_software_policy.php); all software products of the Center are released as open source and established as collaborative projects on sites such as SourceForge. Members of the Center’s Informatics team are lead developers in several open-source projects, and one of our organization administrators has been active on the Board of the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (http://open-bio.org/), the umbrella organization for the Bio* projects, since seven years.

Well it’s a start. I need to look more into what these groups are doing.

I presented a talk to the NYU Biotechnology club today, Metabiotechnology: or Why Biotech Sucks Right Now. Attendance was low but the crowd was more bemused than offended at the title. Often as you put a presentation together your thesis develops. And feedback from your audience is even better for that purpose. Drew and Dusan were particularly helpful but I was surprised at what did and did not resonate.

I will try to post the talk if I can figure out how to get powerpoint into wordpress. Basicly my thesis is that the current hegemony of Biotechnology is Biobusiness. While there is nothing inherently wrong with a free market the system is monolithic and there are huge needs that are very poorly served. The most prevalent being the needs of developing nations.

As I was preparing and during the presentation I realized that it was worse than that. The science supporting Biotechnology is often undermined by profit motivation. My case study on this was the “Green Revolution.” Initially plant breeding and ecological management through pesticides and herbicides seemed like a good idea. It has become pretty clear in the past 20 years that this is not the case and that there are much more sound and sustainable practices. Yet people with access to all of the data pointing to the failings of previous generation technology continue use ultimately damaging methods. In fact they have subjugated Biotechnology to continue even farther down this destructive path. (Hence the subtitle.)

So the evils of greedy corporations aren’t all that new, as several people pointed out. But what surprised me was the audience response to my proposal. If Biotechnology is currently monolithic and profit motivated then the weaknesses of that system opens up the possibility of Biotechnology that is dynamic and either need, OR profit motivated.

Maybe I didn’t express that clearly enough, but I got a lot of knee jerk capitalism. “Technology has to have a product,” or “that system works a lot better than government funding.” Both true statements, but not in anyway an argument against need motivated Biotech. And I acknowledge that there are government grants to encourage people to develop need based technologies, but there has to be something more, something new.

I am glad I used the agriculture case study because the great weakness of current agriculture is that it is monoculture based. And that is exactly the problem with Biotechnology and Big Pharma. Sure there are a lot of little Biotech companies, but they are all playing the same game. Especially since they all presumably follow the FDA rulebook. A true disruptive Biotechnology would bypass this whole system. Is paradigm shift old enough to be retro? It sounds stupid, but there were very intelligent people in the audience who couldn’t imagine that there could be an alternative to our current system.

If you equate it to other paradigms, Biotechnology is ready for it’s own version of the personal computer, model T, cotton gin. I think sequencing was the equivalent to the printing press or early computer. Biotech is fortunate in that it can take all of the lessons from the electronic and information technology fields. Open source, distributed systems and other meta-technologies. The question is, what will that technology be? If history is any teacher we won’t know until it becomes pervasive.

I went to one of Rhizome’s New Silent panel discussions at the New Museum. (Damn what a sexy marquee they have in the front!) Some of the presentations were pretty good. I liked the work of Caitlin Berrigan and Brandon Ballengee. What I appreciated the most from these two artists was that they were understated in an already controversial field. It takes a tremendous amount of integrity to let your art speak for itself.

Generally I have to roll my eyes at high concept bioart especially purely conceptual art like photoshopping a scrotum purple and calling it the future of humanity. That stopped being shocking a long time ago. None of this stuff is new, it’s just new to you. Any artist who thinks they can skate by on the wow factor of posthumanism is a sad relic of the 90’s

Bioartists need to realize that their art isn’t new. Gardening, bansai, body modification and even selective breeding are valid and often inspired art forms. As bioartists we must accept that we are simply painters with a new pallet to make art. If the art is good, it will speak for itself.

Why is it then that bioart is plagued by sensationalism? Obviously the many many demons that biotech plague biotech are present, but at least in that world there is an avoidance of sensationalism. It’s bad for business. In basic science if you were to even attempt the kind of grandstanding and egotism that permeates the art world you would be laughed out of your institution.

Granted artists are not scientists. It is their job to draw attention and to sometimes be outrageous. I applaud that when done properly but when I see artists taking everyday science and holding it up as if it were the greatest artistic achievement since perspective. Or using science to shock and awe the audience I can’t help but seethe.

I guess this harkens back to the early days of computer animation. Pretty much all of it sucked, but you saw it everywhere because it was new. It is going to take artists of true skill to take genetic based arts out of its Pong phase.

The ever enlightening site edge.org poses a question to noted thinkers every year. This year’s question is, “What have you changed your mind about? Why?”

Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?”

There is some really compelling stuff here. At first I thought everybody would just present whatever idea they were trying to push, but that wasn’t the case. I just finished Aubrey DeGray’s essay, and it had nothing to do with aging. In fact it helped me to solidify some notions I have had about science vs. technology. Do look it over if you have a few spare hours.

So started reading anAleister Crowley and honestly I am inspired. The poor bastard has so much about the universe and yet he admits that it is all just symbolism. He doesn’t even attempt to rectify astrology with astronomy. And honestly I don’t really care very much about either circa the 1920’s. The massive failing I see in Qabbalah or any occultism is the presupposition that the universe is crystaline and all we have to do is find the patterns. As if algebra could even get you past even the most basic model of nature.

So here is Crowley who can’t make it to trans-humanism because his cannon of reason and practice, the Qaballah, is based only on algebra and could never be a dynamic, ergo functional, model. Hence the inspiration. Trans-humanism is based on a dynamic model with complexity. But how to understand complexity. I don’t know enough about network theory or graph theory, or probability math, or statistics, or discrete, or any math really. I don’t have any sort of grasp on object oriented programming, or C for that matter. This is all foundation level stuff and I just don’t have it. I was too impetuous as a youth. Why oh why did I while away my time with RPG’s and hallucinagens? The rhetorical answer is so that I take the flights of fancy needed to ask that very question.

Is it too late to crack a book and actually get a grasp of the fundamental concepts behind all the junk that I know is important but I don’t really understand? I fear that impetuousness has never gone away. I spend my day worrying about viral gene transfer and T1 weighted images, why would I start on something that I won’t be good at for more than a year. And this is how the brain grows old dear reader. It isn’t that you can’t form new dendritic connections. You are just to lazy. If I really believed this was important I would stop reading this dull ass Aleister Crowley reader and go study the real secret language of the universe!

Oh look at me! I am putting Crowley on a shelf and replacing it with a review paper of BAC transgenics and on Melanosomes. That is a start, but where to begin on network theory? Oooh a hyperlink!

Somehow I stumbled across this beginners guide to transhumanism. I skimmed it. What do you want? I just finished Ray Kurzweil’s “The Singularity is Near” I get it!

So what is transhumanism to me? It begins with the idea that we are less that we can imagine ourselves to be. In Kurzweil’s book he cites how the creation myths of most religions involve humans descending from greater beings. This is a cop out on becoming something greater than what we are. Icarus falling to earth Aracne challenging the gods and being turned into a spider. The ongoing lesson is that ascension will only ever end in disaster.

Through science we have begun to see ourselves as rising from less complex origins. The implication is that we are moving towards a state of greater complexity and something greater than deemed possible by humanity. Does this mean transhumanism is Neitzche’s overman? I’m not entirely sure. The idea is that one day we will all become transhuman which kind of defeats Neitzche’s whole thesis. Or maybe not. When the day comes that a pill will make you immortal the people who take it aren’t necesarily transhuman because suddenly immortality becomes the new status quo. Maybe if you are first in line.

Transhumanism is pushing the boundaries of what is human. So while technology is certainly a part of it, following the doctor’s orders is just being human. The transhumanist was taking the immortality drug before it was approved and then moved on to melding their brain with an AI. In a more modern context the transhumanist must break free of the bonds he or she can which are largely psychological.

It’s funny that at the bottom of this little primer there are a number of links to alternative lifestyle pages. Perhaps breaking free of psychosexual moors of society is the most a transhumanist can muster these days. Yikes! Does this mean that in order to really call yourself a transhumanist you have to be a liberal intellectual smart drug taking body modified BDSM polyamorous freak? Maybe instead of Ray Kurzweil I should be reading Alistair Crowley.

Man I’ve done nothing but crew other people projects for the past year. I’ve been busting ass on the Madagascar spider, Image Node and Tod’s LED sign. All of these are worthy projects, and I learned a lot working on them, but in the end they don’t go into my portfolio. I think I am ready to start working on my own stuff. (Like my graduate school thesis perhaps?) At some point I need to stop being crew and start becoming talent.

Q. “But isn’t ‘talent’ arrogant and generally useless without the crew?” A. Well yes, but usually that’s because the talent was never crew. Often talent is recognized early and saved from grueling labor to live a life of pampering and luxury that ultimately destroys them. But once you have faced all that grunt work that you will one day inflict on the rest of humanity, you feel genuine empathy and are therefore not a total dick.

Q.”Doesn’t talent just party all the time and show up barely able to perform?” A.Of course that’s true, but I have been working myself to the limit and still performing, and the protestant work ethic is anything but punk rock.

Q.”Are you even talented? What the hell do you think you even do.” A.Hey stop yelling at me! I do lot’s of stuff, I just don’t flaunt it. I’m going to go be a mad scientist/dreamer/poet who will resculpt the the world in MY image!

Q. “FutureBen, have you been drinking?!” A. Maybe

It’s that time of year again, when the many people’s of Burning Man do what they do best. That is simultaneously begging for money to whilst thumbing out nose at capitalism. That being said…
—————

Camp Image Node presents
The Mini Mad-Scientist’s Ball

Cosmonauts unite! And join us once again in our ambient wonderland! We
have grown to love our miniaturization, chilling in a Petri dish while
sipping an extremely tiny space-Daquiri. Relax to dub, ambient, and
nerdcore/glitch-hop as our skilled technicians take you away to Space
Station Prog, our 400 sq ft mylar-lined inflatable in a beautiful loft
in the West Village. Let a thousand blinkies bloom! Only 100 tickets
will be sold, so make sure to RSVP.

DJs:
Rhizome
Borne
Morgan Packard (Microcosm)

Live PA:
Autophage & Prototype
Zemi17 (http://www.zemi17.net – http://myspace.com/zemi17/)

Vjs:
SeeJ
Animatron
nobody.but.yours

Saturday June 9
10 PM – 5 AM

Tickets $10 presale via Paypal, $15 @ door.
RSVP to madscience@imagenode.org
Buy presale tickets via Paypal at http://www.imagenode.org/msb2007.html
Location provided only to RSVPers the week of the event.

Costume ideas: Beep bloop blorrp, tiny space monkey, Zergling, mini-Mars
rover, Cory Doctorow’s homunculus, bearstronaut.