Some Context

This writing outlines my view of - and initial framework for - humanstic speculative biodesign. This is the value framework I endorse, but it’s curiously culturally divergent — explicating it and building it into a method is hard. I attempt to characterize an approach which encourages beautiful biological imaginings, designs, or interactions expressly and exclusively on the basis of human safety, health, and enjoyment. I investigate what this position ‘looks like’ in practice and how it contrass with other popular value frameworks and approaches.

All of my writing on this topic may be considered a retrospective self-critique and a pursuit of a clearer philosophical basis for my own future work. It is also something of an outward critique of 3 existing approaches (accelerationism, naturalism, stewardship), to which I have varyingly subscribed or worked within during the process of developing my own thought. That said, my main objective in referencing popular frameworks is to afford clarity through contrast and differentiate my view.

Speculative Design

When I refer to speculative design, I mean a specific existing field that is used to imagine or investigate possible experiences, interactions, or futures which — whether plausible or not -- change how you think about what is and what could be.  I’m operating on the impression that speculative design is fairly influential (if sometimes obscure or simply odd).

I will sometimes also shift into referencing the much much broader category of how people generate and select from the range of possible biological creations - nearly all of which exceeds formal categorization as speculative design. This might include a child’s daydreams or nightmares after watching Alien, the solarpunk sketches of a production designer, some house-plant featured in the background a science fiction author’s new world-build, or the long-term visions of a startup working on pet longevity or glowing plants. I’ll call these ‘biological imaginings’.

Challenges and Opportunities

On Fiction

Fictional portrayals of human creativitiy in, or augmentation of, the biological realm are quite dark. It’s easy to find dystopic content generally (in any age), but biology affords particular grotesqueness and uncanniness. I consider these engaging and, to some extent, useful warnings about the particular hazards of recklessness and malignant uses of biological technology. Yet, I deeply miss their neutral or positive counterparts.

In telling contrast, some of the most wondrous biological imaginings in fiction support narratives of non-impact or non-intervention. Consider Pandora’s (Avatar) glowing plants, animals with inbuilt neural interfaces, and a planet-regulating conciousness, all of which set the stage for a narrative condemnation of spaceships, mining, and technology broadly as the exclusive and inferior tools of invaders. Similarly, the ethereal beauty of the forest in Princess Mononoke triumphs over grimy industrial encroachemnt. The message is not subtle: nature knows best. Seemingly (and ironically) fantastical biology can only be employed to re-inforce that message.

The worlds of Avatar and Princess Mononoke are, of course, romanticizations. Our planet is, by default, quite brutal, hazardous, dynamic, and indifferent to our well-being. The standards of safety enjoyed by significant portions of the world today (which still have much need of improvement) require immense industrial infrastructure, including the augmentation of other species into more hospitable forms, notably crops and work animals. In developed countries, shows like ‘Alone’ or ‘Naked and Afraid’ exist as entertaining novelties.

Of course, human augmentation of biology can be dangerous to us (e.g. considder repeated Russian lab leaks, or, see Biohazard by Ken Alibek). Aesthetically, biology can be deeply grotesque (see any biopunk horror). So I see why there are opportunities for entertaining, scary, or despairing content. However, our (all of human civilization) track record of agriculture, gardens (think hanging gardens of Babylon), pets, game management or fishery management, food (think of Noma's fermentation lab, industrial flavor labs, or culinary modernism), and vaccines yielding massive improvements in human health - would certainly suggest room a more positive trajectory than our aesthetics tend to offer.

One telling partial-exception to this wariness of human creativity in the biological realm is in the world of speculative bio-design.

Speculative Bio-Design

There’s a ton of creativity here that affords me more optimism than fiction like Black Mirror.  Neri Oxman’s Silk Pavillion, Aki Inomata’s Hermit Crab Shelters, and student works at the Biodesign Challenge offer fantastical delight.

Notably, the narrative justification for much of this work is oriented towards increasing human respect for nature’s existing ecosystems. This flavor of moral grounding is similar that of Avatar or Princess Mononoke's wondrous worlds: creativity in the biological realm is sometimes more endorseable if it promotes a naturalistic worldview and prioritizes pre-existing ecologies -- less so if it prioritizes human flourishing.

Paula Antonelli (Senior Curator of of Architecture and Design and Director of R&D at the MoMA) discovered and popularized several of my favorite projects in this realm. She spoke at UT Austin on life design while I was a graduate student in the MFA program. Her view of our interactions with other species is focused on stewarding our unavoidable decline: "I believe that our best chance is to design our own really elegant exctinction, so that we will leave a legacy that means something, and remains, in the future,” (Dezeen). "That is our task. Our task is not to live forever. Our task is to leave the planet in a better condition than we found it, or at least as good as possible” (Dezeen).

To folks in the progress movement, or in the Edge City ecosystem, or perhaps in the governance futurism world, I imagine this sounds decidedly (and familiarly) declinist. It’s important to be aware however, that this “slowing the decline” is a comparably optimistic approach in the immediate intellectual environment (i.e. in contrast to accelerating the decline).

As Paula Antonelli is a leading curatotial and cultural figure in art and design, Donna Haraway is a foundational intellectual contributor to academic (and beyond) thought in this sphere:

I am a compost-ist, not a posthuman-ist: we are all compost, not posthuman. The boundary that is the Anthropocene/Capitalocene means many things, including that immense irreversible destruction is really in train, not only for the 11 billion or so people who will be on earth near the end of the 21st century, but for myriads of other critters too.

from Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin

In this framing, humans are, at best, self-aware stewards of their own (irreversible) decline, seeking to remedy the damaging impact that human life has on the world. Designs which augment the natural world purely for the purpose of human betterment are morally aversive. Human creativity in biology is called for primarily or exclusively in service of other organisms or the existing dynamics of the ecosystem. If a design is also beneficial, neutral, or detrimental to human life, then that is only evaluated with relevance to the larger ecocsystem and is, at best, nice to have.

My Approach

As someone who…

A) derives deep enjoyment from safe interactions with other species - including both mutualistic relationships as well as utilitarian benefits (lumber, pets, work animals, food, supplements, medicines, medical research) and who wishes that the same benefits to many more people, for many many many more years

B) does not think human decline is inevitable (let alone a reasonable default projection of current and historical trends).

C) thinks that understanding the biological world and the landscape of risks and benefits afforded by augmenting it could reduce the likelihood of human decline and enhance current  benefits

D) and takes seriously that ecosystems can be fragile critical infrastructure of human life, yet also often have and can still be substantially improved in service of human health, safety, & enjoyment

…the prevailing intellectual foundations in this sphere deeply dis-cohere with both my consdiered philosophical perspective and my view of humanity's current condition.

To be clear, I do not think broad biological accelerationism is a suitable antidote (two sides of the same coin). Instead, I want to know (and through my work investigate) what the tools and methods of biodesign could be employed to create, if motivated through a more humanistic philosophy, such as pointed to by Jason Crawford's techno-humanism or Vitalik's d/acc, and in line with the sense of reasonable hope and ambition exemplified in Samo Burja’s perspective on desalination, in Casey Handmer’s terraforming concept, in the possibility of using gene drives to eradicate malaria carrying mosquitos, in the prospect of superior silk for broader uses, or in the pursuit of expanded biomanufacturing capabilites.

What would it look like to make these outcomes feel real? Feel plausible? What would it look like to elucidate other, as-yet-unidentified prospects? In short, what would it look like to build on this philosophy with the (still under-utilized) tools of speculative design?