semeiotica recombining contemporary art, design strategy and life science
Archive for semantics
July 25, 2008 at 8:04 pm · Filed under cognitive justice, community interaction design, critical theory, evolution, metaphors, semantics
I’m picky when it comes to using metaphors. They reveal so much about the biases and commitments that underscore our thinking and, more importantly, how that thinking gets translated into physical manifestations and action.
Cathy Davidson at HASTAC has written a sharp brief on the use of the word ’selection’ as it pertains to evolution and natural selection. She writes,
Having spent a day pulling book after book after book off my shelf, and looking at the proforma and obligatory evolutionary argument that almost inevitably comes in the final chapter of an otherwise careful description and discussion of brain functionality, I am convinced that the word “selection” has a lot to answer for.
The point she makes in the article is that the use of the word selection is directly linked to ideology. I think she is right here, and it should have been incumbent on the evolutionary biology community to recognize this and have proffered a solution early in its history. My fear is that, to do so, would be seen as a mocking retort to creationists that so recently cloaked their arguments in the guise of intelligent design. Well, maybe that a good thing.
Expanding on the relationship of the selection metaphor and its connection to ideology, Margret Evans, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, studies some of the ways that children, potential users of evolution, acquire evolutionist and creationist beliefs. Evans describes how Western religious and philosophical traditions emphasize essentialism, teleology, and intention, and in the process limit the cognitive appeal of natural explanations for the origins of species. She argues that because these ideas tend to show up repeatedly in public representations, they constrain the inferential reasoning capacities of the developing mind. It’s an observation that suggests science’s own predilection for categorization is at the root of evolutionary biology’s social friction.
Maybe we ought to have namethis.com come up with a new term.
November 28, 2007 at 12:32 am · Filed under biotechnology, genes, genomics, semantics
“Genetics Just Got Personal” is the new tagline for 23andme, a new start-up that aims to take people’s saliva samples, genotype them, and make their genetic “plot points” accessible and searchable. Individuals can compare their single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to identify ancestral locations, compare them with celebrities, and see what diseases are associated with these SNPs. If an entire family submits their samples for testing, each of them can compare themselves to each of their family members. 
In 23andme’s letter to the medical community, they state that “the information [23andme service] provides is tailored to genotypes, not to individuals”.
It’s surprising then, given the history of genetics, that 23andme decided to use the “Genetics Just Got Personal” tagline. When someone says that something just got personal, it usually points to conflict, and that a specific individual, rather than a group, stands to loose as a result. Likewise, when someone says it’s not personal, it often refers to some effect that has had an asymmetrical effect on an individual even though it was not directly intended for them. The 23andme tagline sounds like something Arnold Shartzeneggar would say. It does sound tough and too the point, but it also raises suspicions about what getting personal means. Does this mean that my SNPs, which were previously unknown to me, will enter the forefront of my individual decision-making and social interactions? Will it become a part of the design ecology that other will consider when making medicines, devices, or services?
If genetic information does enter our everyday decision-making processes, a central concern is how that information is conveyed and how the information design biases or constrains the decisions we make. Given that 23andme is providing incomplete information, should I make a health decision based on what’s available? I don’t think they’re advocating that anyone make health or reproductive decisions based on the information they provide. They do, after all, provide suggestions for a range of resources (including genetic counseling) for contextualizing the costs and benefits of these kinds of decisions.
Still, I’m left with questions about how the visual design of bioinformatic resources like 23andme creates and constrains different ways of thinking about and engaging with the information.
23andme’s stated goals include advancing research and being world’s most trusted source of genetic information. Can we imaging any scenarios where these goals would come into conflict?
Given that the value of the resource increases with each additional genotype, are those that contribute to the resource entitled to any of the database’s value over time?
November 16, 2007 at 9:31 pm · Filed under bioinformatics, genes, genomics, semantics
Well, it looks like 23andMe finally went online. It’s been over a year since I did this sketch (left) and less than that since Google invested heavily in their startup costs. So when I opened up the New York Times today and saw their article on 23andMe’s launch (that’s effective PR), I still couldn’t help but be surprised that they had gotten going so quickly.
The key question for me is about their interface and interaction design. Will it compare to the same old bioinformatic machine style gene representations (square genes; primary colors), or will there be evidence of a concerted effort to push the visual language of the genome into something that connects with the wide array of meaning associated with genes? After I’ve had a chance to browse their site a bit, I’ll
report back with some visual analysis. One thing is certain; they’ve definitely internalized the web 2.0 visual style of rounded corners and big type!
July 4, 2007 at 12:49 pm · Filed under biotechnology, semantics
In her New York Times column, Re:framing, Denise Caruso addresses recent discoveries in human genetics as they relate to the current platform for biotechnology and gene patenting guidelines.
The article begins by stating that:
THE $73.5 billion global biotech business may soon have to grapple with a discovery that calls into question the scientific principles on which it was founded.
Over at Evolgen, many commentators debate the scientific accuracy of Caruso’s arguments. I think it’s a mistake to make the argument that the scientific accuracy of her article is what’s at stake. Caruso’s point is that there is a gap between the science, the policy, and the biotech industry’s tactics. We’ve known for awhile that genes are not discrete entities. Unfortunately, it takes a direct hit to the human psyche for people to realize that the biological world applies to them too.
I’m not out to defend Caruso, but I do share her perspective that many perspectives are needed to address these issues. In response to what I thought was a fairly limited set of responses to her article, I contributed my own comment to the Evogen blog:
I agree that it’s easy to misunderstand Caruso’s arguments, especially if one takes a linear perspective towards them. I would have definitely preferred more background on the ENCODE project, but given the nuance of the science involved, perhaps her tactic of stating that the landscape (pun intended) is more complex than public policy reflects is more appropriate for the Times.
For one thing, Caruso’s argument doesn’t seem to be based at the molecular level at all. Caruso takes a population level perspective that’s needed to recognize and understand what is relevant to ownership and commodification of genetic processes. Genomics is only the vector; what she’s really talking about is capitalism.
Though it’s not clear if she is using “network effect” to refer to intragenomic interactions or intergenomic ones, her examples of bacterial resistance and malaria suggest that she’s referring to intergenomic interactions. My take on what she is reacting to is the observation that genetic interactions have many epistatic or non-linear effects while the prevalent assumption for biotech and policy-makers is that that genes are predominantly additive and that a predictable relationship exists between gene identity and outcome.
Starting with popular science is enough. The way genes are portrayed in popular culture suggests that there are genes for heart disease and genes for aggression and so on. That’s how biotech gets funded, no? By stipulating that specific genes have appreciable effects on health, the value of those genes can be measured, built, and sold as a product. This is misleading. Yes, we can associate disease variation with specific loci, but it’s is never the case that genes cause anything. Genetic material is one component of a very non-linear system that includes developmental timing and environmental interactions. As every evolutionary geneticist knows, selecting on a single trait often results in correlated responses across many other traits. Given that traits are based on the interactions of many genes, moving genes among individuals doesn’t bring the whole system along in the manner that, say, artificial selection does.
By stating that a gene has a distinct function, we are in essence naming it and categorizing it according to that function. For genes to be patented, a recognizable function has to be ascribed to them. We can say that the “terminator gene” has a protein binding function, but can’t we also say that the “terminator gene” also has a social unrest function if we expand our observations beyond the lab? Though we can’t directly establish a cause and effect relationship between large-scale social interactions and political protests and the gene, we know intuitively that the effect of of this transgene isn’t limited to corn or cotton.
It’s true that the science isn’t particularly new. What’s new is that people are starting to ask relevant questions about how the ownership and practices of industry takes into account the mechanistic possibilities for creating value as well as the relevant downstream biological and social process. This is not something that any single individual or profession can either validate or invalidate.
I’ll agree that “the economic and regulatory foundation on which the entire biotechnology industry is built” is probably a mix of a lot of different factors. But why isn’t it based on “the presumption that genes operate independently”? When was the last time you heard a company say that a disease was attributed to many genes and only in certain contexts and we’re not entirely sure how and when, but please still buy our product? People want certainty and hope, especially when their health is involved. Reducing the message down to single genes does that. All that Caruso is saying is that this may mean bigger problems down the line if we don’t actually revise our policy and language to match what we actually know about the world.
A correction to the original article at the HybridVigor blog
January 13, 2007 at 12:06 pm · Filed under critical theory, digital design, semantics
digital print on silk
8 1/2″ x 14″
2006
