UtrechtToParis

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From Utrecht (Wilfried Hou Je Bek // socialfiction.org ) to Paris (Jelle Feringa // EZCT // URL: http://www.ezct.net )

Wilfried

I have just been reading your report on the Biocapitalist landscape, (is it online anywhere?) a somewhat disturbing overview of research on geneticly modified trees and the prospects this brings for forest-optimisation. What also attracted my attention is what you call biomatter: the fusion between plastic and wood to form new materials. Can you tell me some more about the objectives of this research.

From Paris (Jelle Feringa // EZCT // URL: http://www.ezct.net ) to Utrecht (Wilfried Hou Je Bek // socialfiction.org )

Jelle

Most of the research on the biocapitalist landscape is to be found at www.ezct.net. I think you defined the objective of this research quite well; the distinction between what is technological and what is artificial, is fading. The biocapitalist landscape is addressing those issues indicating the tranformation of nature to an instrumentalized nature, the product of techniques and concepts now being developed in genetic and biotech research. The link you pointed out to earlier this week ( http://www.aresa.dk/ applying biotechnology for landmine discovery ) is a good example of instrumentalized nature.

Right now we're preparing a workshop dealing on the topic of computing and language. I remember you mentioned this book by Eco dealing with the topic of the language, also relating to Leibniz' idea of the alphabet of human thought. Seems like this could be an interesting read in preparation of this workshop. This past week I've been reading (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_paradigm) which is the most interesting site on the differences in programming languages I've found so far. But could you outline the point Eco is making in his book?