transitlab

Remember how I was saying the other day that this was the year of DIYbio? You don’t? Well you weren’t at scibarcamb? You missed the new debate between scientists that do stuff at uni/industry labs all the time and those that don’t.

Anyway it definitely is the year of DIYBio….. for me and at least 20 or so people around the world. In no order (off the top of my head) here are some of the people I have talked to around DIYBio

• Andy Gracie(UK)
• Marc Dusselier(CH)
• Yashas Shety(IN)
• Cathal Garvey (IE)
• Mac Cowell (US)
• Jason Bobe(US)
• Asa Calow(UK)
• Hwa Young(UK)
• Lisa Thalheim(UK)
• Bryan Bishop (US)
• Denisa Kera (CZ/SI)
• The guys at HONF Indonesia(Akbar, Venza and Togar)
• Tito(US)
• Meridith(US)
• Helen Bullard(UK)
• Anna Dumitriu(UK)
• tbc

Should you be on the list? Probably we haven’t had a long talk yet.

Did I get your geotag wrong? let me know, plus a link.

http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/panel/hackerspaces-diybio-and-citizen-science-rise-tinkering-and-prototype-culture
BioMaker Communities and Projects I have known and love
Maker culture and the arts are embracing biology as a new frontier for
exploration and innovation. This area is made more accessible through
the availability of open source equivalents of common lab equipment,
online recipes and commodity sequencing and synthesis. However
accessible these technologies and recipes are, there remains the
problem that ‘do it yourself(DIY)’ may not be enough to make it work.
Through a number of recent events, networks or spaces this problem of
DIY is being addressed by involving people in a ‘Do It With Others’
approach. Here, groups of people can collaborate and discuss, trouble
shoot and formulate affordable homebrew solutions. These spaces allow
the sharing of expertise through workshops, introduction of
‘amateurs’ to the materiality of biotechnologies, and critical
discourse around science and society. Outcomes of this process range
from more scientifically literate citizens, to new lab equipment,
recipes, and work be that scientific or artistic. The talk will cover
projects such as DIYBioMCR, Interactivos’10, Hackterialab’11 and
LabLife and this DIWO methodology.

I have been influenced by a few people talking about the “internet of things” (Notably Rob Van Kranenberg http://www.theinternetofthings.eu/content/rob-van-kranenburg) and the many issues that arise once everything has an ip address (ie privacy/control/affordances). This is not simple, and if not discussed, and not given a chance to chose it very likely we will get a ‘bad’ system. It is more than just the technology or protocol, it is the culture behind the technology. Is there flexibility for people to extend, hack and enhance it?

In the paper “For a Comprehensive Citizen Appropriation of Information and its Technologies | Information Personnes / Persons Information”: http://pierrot-peladeau.net/en/archives/2196 the importance of choice is demonstrated. The concept in the paper that really made me think of Internet of Things was Social Appropriation.

social appropriation, which is the process by which people integrate innovations into their lives to empower themselves, adapting and even hijacking them from their initial control or purposes to fit their needs and interests.

The world is filled with technologies that went through a process of social appropriation, think telecommunications, the phones original purpose was to transmit concert performances into your house, sms was for diagnostic tests by engineers. These are the killer apps that are game changing. In the web world, flickr originally was set up for dating(anyone got a reference). Although the big appropriations are impressive, the smaller ones are more intrigueing

Take thimbl  http://www.thimbl.net/ This is a project based on an old computer service called finger, finger was used to check the details of a user on a computer. So you could read the .plan of  joeblogs@gamgee.uni.edu. The twist is that they want to take this decentralised service and knit it together into a web2 micro blogging application like twitter.

(Just noticed this draft blog, hope you enjoy it)

Nordt labs were resident in Newcastle over April. I managed to catch them at their final talk at ISISArt’s and at their temporary workspace at CultureLab. As you would know, lasersaur is one of a few open source projects (part)funded by a kickstarter call.

Having read about the project, it was great to get a better understanding of what motivates the development.

From my understanding, the lasersaur is quite easy to build many different dimensions as it uses standard railings. This is different to other laser cutters that use specialised rails for the dimensions. The first prototype is big enough to do panels of cloth and leather for making clothing and shoes. At their time at Culturelab/ISISarts they concentrated on getting starter kits together for their community and beefing up the documentation. In the last few days they put together a lasersaur for the SF maker faire(now been).