Introduction to the State of Cultural Biology

Abstract

Biology has been forgotten. The rise of the machinic State since the industrial revolution has seen increasing emphasis on the final products for the purpose of capitalist exploitation, at the expense of considerations of process, i.e. how things are made, used, and interpreted. The rise of ‘intellectual property’ is a move that replicates the machinic productions of industrial invention. The development of newer technologies challenges this product-based approach. Digital technologies, in particular, have led to a machinist style approach from regulators; but the ‘turn’ of the law with regard to those technologies has led to an increasingly machinist, colonising, form of regulation. With the development of alternate newer technologies, that in all likelihood will supersede current digital technologies, the current approach of the law could lead to an inadvertent misbalancing of the law. In particular, the rise of quantum and biological compute could lead to a considerable strengthening of legal rights without any legal reform taking place – which would in turn lead to a self-destructive amount of machinist regulation. The monograph proposes reform to address this issue, thereby more broadly seeking to reinstate a cultural State that is process based, and thus more sustainable model of existence.