Genes of a Dangerous Kind

Abstract

The joint forces of information and biological technologies are shaping us in ways that defy our traditional views about the figures of the human. Moreover, determinist tendencies favoured by scientists and the seemingly autonomy of technology development are creating a conceptual framework that privileges the search for technological answers concerning many of the human problems, keeping at the margin questions pertaining to the symbolic realm. The prevailing atmosphere nurtures the emergent composition of the natural and the artificial. It is this reconfiguration that needs to be deconstructed. In the present situation we must take the problem of the public understanding of science and technology very serious and, in particular, we must develop a critical stance in order to uncover problematic presuppositions and expose to view the idea that technoscientific development is, in its nature, inevitable and desirable. Technoscientific development and its social and cultural consequences are neither facts inscribed in nature nor results strictly produced by technical reasoning. As social and cultural subjects and objects, they must be under the scrutiny of all interested and debated in the public sphere.