...I apologize. On the other hand, you rarely say much about [personal political work and the interface of science, tech and politics]. Although, thinking back, your notes on surveillance and uses of information tech were certainly hints.
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Apology accepted.
I'd hoped that posts such as this one:
"Windows Vista as Neoliberal Instrument"
<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2007/2007-February/002241.html>
demonstrated that I wasn't a tech-head alone, but a person who tried to understand the social and political implications of technology. I haven't posted more about this because I'm not sure there are many people interested in the topic, though it deeply affects our lives.
C. Grimes wrote:
The same sort of neoliberal concept, or privatization was making itself felt even in the small bio-science lab where I was working. The market connection in this case was the vast biosci-medi-agri-pharma complex. The link to biomass (at LBL) in this context was corn and other seed crop genetics.
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The Lab's fixation on corn and crop genetic manipulation was a direct result of the deep agri-business involvement you noticed. But cellulosic biomass does not need corn and can be created from, as its name suggests, a wide variety of plant material (with varying amounts of success).
As you mention in your "Helios at LBL" post, the state of the art and the design philosophy underpinning current efforts are, in many ways, orders of magnitude more sophisticated -- more subtle -- than what you recall from the 1990s and before. The introduction of nanomaterials and recent developments such as 'black silicon' are opening up dramatically new possibilities.
.d.