define: biopunk
Posted by razor | Filed under Agymenés, Biotech, English
I was digging into the interwebz for some more information on biopunk, how to define it, or is it even a living subculture, and found the following, besides the obvious stuff listed in the sidebar, or in wikipedia.
There is a short story in Nature (yes, Nature occasionally publishes short sci-fi stories, even Warren Ellis wrote one) from 2000, which mentions biopunks. It was written by Paul McAuley, and called “Danger – hard hack area”.
Many people predicted that VirCon 2010, the first open meeting of the biopunk movement, would end in a riot. In truth, it was as privately exciting and as publicly dull as any science conference.
Another long essay, also from 2000, deals with the cultural and sociological aspects of biopunk, published in the M/C Journal.
This article briefly samples the work of the British writers Jeff Noon and Michael Marshall Smith to argue that in the rapidly-approaching era of a fully-mapped human genome, biopunk provides a much-needed cathartic imaginative outlet for our growing confusion about the status of the physical in our brave new digital world.
Also, there is the fine blog called Mutate!, which describes another, darker aspect of biopunk, the biotechnology black market.
I’d like to throw a new meaning for the concept out there: the near future (already here?) biotechnology black market.
Tags: biopunk, Biotech, subculture