Rosen Bogdanov presented a paper with the title “Technocratic utopia or its subversion in the openness of biohackers” at the biennial conference of the Danish Association for Science, Technology and Society Studies (“Interpelating Future(s)” link here –http://sts.au.dk/dasts16/) in Aarhus, Denmark.

In his presentation, Rosen outlined the historical context and development of emerging views of biology as “the next information revolution”, as a case of technocratic utopianism. In particular, he outlined the numerous actors, practices and artefacts that constituted this utopian dream, tracing its development from visions to networks and
the effect this has had on institutions from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the European Union, to universities and civic organizations.

He further focused on the way dreams are constructed into artefacts and infrastructures, showcasing contingencies in different groups’ framings – i.e. as a dream of emancipation through engineering matter or as a critique of contemporary technoscientific progress. This can serve to contest the constructivist approach to visions of emerging technologies as “irreversable” and moving towards standardization. On the contrary, by envisioning openness in their practices and artefacts, biohackers
test this exact obduracy in the development and subsequent governance of science, and so present an intervention in the process of technocratic utopianism.