Designing, Animating, and Repairing a Suitable Do-it-Yourself Biology Lab

Scroggins, Michael; Varenne, Hervé

doi:10.4324/9780429457470-5

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Detailed empirically grounded work on community biolabs has been provided by members and managers, such as the matter-of-fact recounting by Scheifele and Burkett [63] of the challenges involved in running a "community lab", and suggestions to others wishing to do the same. Scroggins and Verenne [65] highlight the centrality of "acrimony and dissension" as well as spotlighting the considerable work involved in the establishment of a new community biolab through the case study of BioCurious (www.biocurious.org). Asgarali-Hofman and Hamidi [4] have explored the nuanced relationship between bioartists and the organisms they work with, integrating the perspectives of community biolab organizers.…”

Section: What Do We Know About Community Biolabsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Short on time and big on ideas”: Perspectives from Lab Members on DIYBio Work in Community Biolabs

Lange

Dunn

Peek

2022

Designing Interactive Systems Conference

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DIYbio challenges the status quo by positioning laboratory biology work outside of traditional institutions. HCI has increasingly explored the DIYbio movement, but we lack insight into sites of practice such as community biolabs. Therefore, we gathered data on eleven community biolabs by interviewing sixteen lab managers and members. These labs represent half of identifed organizations in scope worldwide. Participants detailed their practices and motivations, outlining the constraints and opportunities of their community biolabs. We found that lab members conducted technically challenging project work with access to high-end equipment and professional expertise. We found that the unique nature of biowork exacerbated challenges for cooperative work, partially due to the particular time sensitivities of work with living organisms. Building on our fndings, we discuss how community biolab members are creating new approaches to laboratory biology and how this has design implications for systems that support non-traditional settings for scientifc practice. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI).

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Section: What Do We Know About Community Biolabsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Short on time and big on ideas”: Perspectives from Lab Members on DIYBio Work in Community Biolabs

Lange

Dunn

Peek

2022

Designing Interactive Systems Conference

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Detailed empirically grounded work on community biolabs has been provided by members and managers, such as the matter-of-fact recounting by Scheifele and Burkett [63] of the challenges involved in running a "community lab", and suggestions to others wishing to do the same. Scroggins and Verenne [65] highlight the centrality of "acrimony and dissension" as well as spotlighting the considerable work involved in the establishment of a new community biolab through the case study of BioCurious (www.biocurious.org). Asgarali-Hoffman and Hamidi [4] have explored the nuanced relationship between bioartists and the organisms they work with, integrating the perspectives of community biolab organizers.…”

Section: What Do We Know About Community Biolabsmentioning

confidence: 99%

"Short on time and big on ideas": Perspectives from Lab Members on DIYBio Work in Community Biolabs

Lange¹,

Dunn²,

Peek³

2022

Preprint

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DIYbio challenges the status quo by positioning laboratory biology work outside of traditional institutions. HCI has increasingly explored the DIYbio movement, but we lack insight into sites of practice such as community biolabs. Therefore, we gathered data on eleven community biolabs by interviewing sixteen lab managers and members. These labs represent half of identified organizations in scope worldwide. Participants detailed their practices and motivations, outlining the constraints and opportunities of their community biolabs. We found that lab members conducted technically challenging project work with access to high-end equipment and professional expertise. We found that the unique nature of biowork exacerbated challenges for cooperative work, partially due to the particular time sensitivities of work with living organisms. Building on our findings, we discuss how community biolab members are creating new approaches to laboratory biology and how this has design implications for systems that support non-traditional settings for scientific practice.

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“…Empirically, I draw on two years of dissertation fieldwork as a volunteer and member of the Silicon Valley DIY laboratory BioCurious, an archive of documents generated by BioCurious, and interviews (n = 32) with members and volunteers at BioCurious. Though my fieldwork encompassed two years of on-site work at BioCurious (Scroggins, 2017a; Scroggins and Varenne, 2019) , the ethnography presented here focuses narrowly on the 2012 FBI/DIYbio conference held at BioCurious and a small follow-up conference held two years later. In closing, I briefly address how the FBI came to be supplanted by the MIT Media Lab, which, like the FBI, has the reach and budget to assemble an international conference of DIYbiologists, but unlike the FBI, also seeks to convert DIYbio’s constant stream of feral deviations into a steady stream of biotech innovations.…”

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confidence: 99%

A feral science? Dangers and disruptions between DIYbio and the FBI

Scroggins

2023

Critique of Anthropology

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Building on theory within anthropology and associated fields, I develop feralness as a lens for understanding the complexity of technological afterlives. Conceptual development proceeds through a case study of the relationship between Do-it-Yourself Biology (DIYbio), nonprofessional scientists experimenting with the established technology of recombinant DNA in new contexts such as garages and kitchens, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Absent the institutional controls of academia or industry, DIYbio has been perceived by the FBI as a potential threat to national security and is policed by the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. Though the FBI has tried to contain the spread and reach of DIYbio, it has, ironically, came to be one of the main instruments of DIYbio’s global spread. In closing, I argue that feral technologies, those technologies with unexpected and potentially dangerous afterlives, are emblematic of the 21st century.

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Designing, Animating, and Repairing a Suitable Do-it-Yourself Biology Lab

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

“Short on time and big on ideas”: Perspectives from Lab Members on DIYBio Work in Community Biolabs

“Short on time and big on ideas”: Perspectives from Lab Members on DIYBio Work in Community Biolabs

"Short on time and big on ideas": Perspectives from Lab Members on DIYBio Work in Community Biolabs

A feral science? Dangers and disruptions between DIYbio and the FBI

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