A map of technopolitics: Deep convergence,platform ontologies,and cognitive efficiency

Abstract

This paper, based on an invited Thesis Eleven presentation (8 August 2019), provides a ‘map of technopolitics’ that springs from an investigation of the theoretical notion of technological convergence adopted by the US National Science Foundation, signaling a new paradigm of ‘nano-bio-info-cogno’ (NBIC) technologies. This integration at the nano-level is expected to drive the next wave of scientific research, technology and knowledge economy. The paper explores the concept of ‘technopolitics’ by investigating the links between Wittgenstein’s anti-scientism and Lyotard’s ‘technoscience’, reviewing the history of the notion in the work of the Belgium philosopher Gilbert Hottois. The ‘deep convergence’ representing a new technoscientific synergy is the product of long-term trends of ‘bioinformational capitalism’ that harnesses the twin forces of information and genetic sciences that coalesce in the least mature ‘cognosciences’ in their application to education and research. The map of technopolitics systematically identifies the political relations between Big Tech and ‘new digital publics’ to reveal that the new paradigm is based on the supreme value of cognitive efficiency. There are a closely-knit cluster of concerns that frame a map of political issues about the fifth-generation technological impacts on human beings, their bodies and minds, and public institutions, not least the logic of the distribution and ownership of data, information and knowledge, and its effects on democracy.

Keywords

bioinformation deep convergence ‘nano-bio-info-cogno’ (NBIC) technologies NSF technopolitics technoscience

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

AAS (Australian Academy of Science) (2016) Preparing for Australia’s Digital Future. Available at: https://www.science.org.au/files/userfiles/support/reports-and-plans/2019/preparing-for-australias-digital-future.pdf (accessed 28 May 2020).

AAS (2017) Synthetic gene drives in Australia: Implications of emerging technologies. Australian Academy of Science.

AAS (forthcoming) Bioscience. Available at: https://www.science.org.au/

ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) (2019) Digital Platforms Inquiry. Available at: https://www.accc.gov.au/publications/digital-platforms-inquiry-final-report (accessed 28 May 2020).

American Psychiatric Association (2013) In Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5. Arlington VA: American Psychiatric Publishing, 795–798.

Anderson

Subrahmanyam

(2017) Digital screen media and cognitive development. Pediatrics 140(Supplement 2): S57–S61.

Bachelard

(1986 [1934]) The New Scientific Spirit. New York: Beacon Press.

Bainbridge

Roco

(2006) Managing Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno Innovations: Converging Technologies in Society. Dordrecht, Springer, 3. Available at: http://www.wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies/3/NBIC3_report.pdf (accessed 28 May 2020).

Bainbridge

Roco

(2016) Science and technology convergence: With emphasis for nanotechnology-inspired convergence. Journal of Nanopart Research 18: 211.

10.

Beckert

Blu¨mel

Friedewald

(2007) Visions and realities in converging technologies. I nnovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research 20(4): 375–394.

11.

Berube

(2016) Book review. J. Craig Venter Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life. New York: Viking (2013) 187 pp. G. Church and E. Regis Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves. New York: Basic Books (2012) 284 pp., Risk Analysis, 36, 2, 2016. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/risa.12591

12.

Boisvert

(2015) RE-BECOMING HUMAN: Restoring Critical Feeling through Ludic Performance. A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Facultyof Rennselaer Polytechnic Institutein Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY. Available at: http://www.heidiboisvert.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Dissertation_Re-BecomingHuman_HeidiJBoisvert.pdf

13.

Carr

(2010) The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York: W.W. Norton.

14.

Dyson

(2007) Our Biotech Future, the New York Review of Books. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2007/07/19/our-biotech-future/

15.

Edwards

Hecht

(2010) History and the technopolitics of identity: The case of apartheid south africa. Journal of Southern African Studies 36(3): 619–639. DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2010.507568.

16.

Harari

(2017) Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. London: Vintage Penguin Random House.

17.

Harari

(2018) 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. London: Jonathan Cape.

18.

Haraway

(1985) A Cyborg Manifesto. In: Weiss

Nolan

Hunsinger

Trifonas

(eds) The International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments. New York: Springer.

19.

Heidegger

(1977) The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays, Trans & Introduction by Lovitt

William

. New York: Harper.

20.

Hottois (1978) Ethique at Techno-science, Philosophie et de morale morale laïque, included. In: Hottois

(ed.) (1996). Entre Symboles et Technosciences [Between Symbols and Technosciences]. Seyssel and Paris, France: Champ Vallon and Presses Universitaires de France.

21.

Hottois

(2018) Technoscience: From the origin of the word to its current uses. In: Sacha

Xavier

Bernadette

(eds) French Philosophy of Technology. Springer.

22.

Hottois

(2019) ‘Technoscience’, Encyclopedia.com. Available at: http://eproof.hurix.com/SAGE_HurixCMS/CMS.aspx?path=pVc4BzZryNcda4wzl9iTqhLI09EG/54RmoKCVZ1wr6OiqlfeHNl87wn1rUc3iBxP0Ce7RugiTjyy55v9URcz4w==.

23.

Hughes

(2006) Human enhancement and the emergent technopolitics of the 21st Century. In: Bainbridge

Roco

(eds) Managing Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno Innovations: Converging Technologies in Society. Springer, pp. 285–307.

24.

Kellner

(2001) Globalisation, Technopolitics and Revolution. Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 98:14–34. The West in Crisis: Technology, Reason, Culture.

25.

Kurban

Peña-López

Haberer

(2017) What is technopolitics? A conceptual scheme for understanding politics in the digital age. Building a European digital space. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Internet, Law & Politics , pp. 499–519. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308032014_What_is_technopolitics_A_conceptual_scheme_for_understanding_politics_in_the_digital_age

26.

Lyotard

(1984 [1979]) The Postmodern Condition. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

27.

Nordmann

(2004) Converging Technologies – Shaping the Future of European Societies. Available at: http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/12590/1/Converging%20Technologies.pdfhttp://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/12590/1/Converging%20Technologies.pdf

28.

Pamela Hurst-Della Pietra (2017) Introduction. Pediatrics 140(Supplement 2): S51–S56. DOI: 10.1542/peds.2016-1758B.

29.

Paolo

(1995) The Cyborg and Cyborgization. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/12457024/Cyborgizationhttps://www.academia.edu/12457024/Cyborgization (accessed 28 May 2020).

30.

Peters

(1989) Techno-science, rationality, and the university: Lyotard on the ‘postmodern condition’. Educational Theory 39(2): 9–105.

31.

Peters

(2012) Bioinformational capitalism. Thesis Eleven 110: 98–111.

32.

Peters

(2017a) Algorithmic Capitalism in the Epoch of Digital Reason, Fast Capitalism. Available at: http://www.uta.edu/huma/agger/fastcapitalism/14_1/Peters-Algorithmic-Capitalism-Epoch.htm

33.

Peters

(2017b) Technological unemployment: Educating for the fourth industrial revolution. Journal of Self-Governance and Management Economics 5(1): 25–33.

34.

Peters

Besley

(2018) Critical Philosophy of the Postdigital. Available at: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs42438-018-0004-9.pdf

35.

Peters

(2018) Posthumanism, platform ontologies and the ‘wounds of modern subjectivity’. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2019.1608690?src=recsys

36.

Peters

Roberts

(2011) The Virtues of Openness: Education, Science, and Scholarship in the Digital Age. Boulder: Paradigm.

37.

Rasmussen

(2007) Techno-Politics, Internet Governance and Some Challenges Facing the Internet. Oxford Internet Institute. Research Report 15, October 2007. Available at: https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/archive/downloads/publications/RR15.pdf

38.

Roco

(2017a) Overview: Convergence science for societal solutions and education. In: Global Perspectives in Convergence Education, Washington, DC, 2 November 2017.

39.

Roco

(2017b) Progress in Convergence: Basic Concepts and Applications. RED Convergencia Congress, Mexico City, 17 August 2017.

40.

Roco

Bainbridge

(eds) (2002) Overview. In: Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science, NSF/DOC-sponsored report, Springer. Available at: http://www.wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies/1/NBIC_report.pdf (accessed 28 May 2020).

41.

Thacker

(2003) Data made flesh: Biotechnology and the discourse of the posthuman. Cultural Critique 53: Posthumanism (Winter): 82–97.

42.

Toret

J (coord)

(2013) Tecnopolítica: la potencia de las multitudes conectadas. Elsistema red 15M, un nuevo paradigma de la política distribuida. IN3 Working Paper Series, UOC, Barcelona.

43.

Williamson

(2018) Brain data: Scanning, scraping and sculpting the plastic learning brain through neurotechnology. Postdigital Science and Education. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327651838_Brain_Data_Scanning_Scraping_and_Sculpting_the_Plastic_Learning_Brain_Through_Neurotechnology

44.

Wittgenstein

(1969) On Certainty [Über Gewissheit]. London: Basil Blackwell.

45.

Zuboff

(2019) The Age of Surveillance Capital: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: Public Affairs.