Troubleshooting: The Automation of Synthetic Biology and the Labor of Technological Futures

Abstract

Science and Technology Studies has long characterized the dynamics of imagining new technology as the primary driver of progress. Among these dynamics are the performative effects of the future, which have been characterized largely at the level of broader political economies. However, performative futures also operate at more intimate scales, like organizational work practices. So much is the case in the field of synthetic biology, which aims to advance biological research by making laboratory work more efficient with new digital and robotic infrastructure. This paper shows how these infrastructures have transformed laboratory work, drawing on interviews and observations with laboratory technicians in three synthetic biology facilities. These infrastructures have not eliminated laboratory work so much as introduced new kinds of skilled work. Much of this skilled work falls into the category of “troubleshooting:” the improvised correction of unexpected problems in a technical system. Organizational management treats the necessity of troubleshooting as a temporary stage in the development of its technology, while routinizing troubleshooting as a part of daily operations. This tension highlights how labor can be obscured not just by the materiality of infrastructures but by temporality—the possibility of skilled work’s obsolescence in an eventual future.