Session Summary

Session Number:775
Session ID:S616
Session Title:Manufacturing Nature, Naturalizing Machines: Examining the New Age of Fusion Between Biological and Technological Systems
Short Title:The New Age of Biotech Systems
Session Type:Division Symposium
Hotel:Swiss
Floor:4
Room:Neuchatel
Time:Tuesday, August 10, 1999 2:00 PM - 3:20 PM

Sponsors

ONE  (John Jermier)jermier@groucho.bsn.usf.edu (813) 974-1752 

General People

Chair Forbes, Linda C. Marist College linda.forbes@marist.edu (914)-575-3000 
Presenter Best, Steven  U. of Texas, El Paso best@utep.edu (915)-747-5097 
Presenter Kellner, Douglas  U. of California, Los Angeles kellner@ucla.edu (310)-825-0977 
Discussant DiTomaso, Nancy  Rutgers U., Newark/New Brunswick ditomaso@andromeda.rutgers.edu (973)-353-5984 
Discussant Luke, Timothy  Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State U. twluke@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu (540)-231-6633 
Discussant Nord, Walter R. U. of South Florida wnord@coba.usf.edu (813) 974-1787 
Discussant Shrivastava, Paul  Bucknell U. shrivast@coral.bucknell.edu 717-524-1821 

Submissions

Abstract

Regarded as a contemporary prophet, widely acclaimed author Kevin Kelly argues that the realms of nature and human construction are becoming one. Human-made things are becoming more lifelike, and life is becoming more engineered. Advocating thinking fashioned on the paradigmatic logic of biological systems, Kelly envisions a future with radically different forms of social and organizational control. In this future world, control is dispersed in highly pluralistic, open, and decentralized systems. Natural, technological, economic, and social elements of the system co-evolve towards a superior, neo-biological civilization that (among other things) will foster bottom-up control, coordinated change, and cooperation among all elements. For Kelly, the new age is a pathway to an unfamiliar kind of utopian future, one in which the major forces of change are out of human control, and one in which the logic of Bios is being instilled into what were previously thought of as dead machines while the logic of Technos is being instilled into what were previously thought of as living systems. According to Kelly, insofar as this future neo-biological civilization depends initially on human understanding of nature's codes of life, it is essential that the plurality of ecosystems be preserved, at least until we can appropriate its treasures of metaphors, insights, and models. This symposium focuses on the work of Kelly as a basis for critically examining the contemporary movement towards complexity theory and holistic systems thinking. The symposium's participants provide an overview of Kelly's work and its corresponding new paradigm.