Bio-Informational Capitalism and Biopolitics

• In Event: Bio-Informational Philosophy and Postdigital Knowledge Ecologies

Abstract

According to Freeman Dyson (2007), ‘the twentieth century was the century of physics and the twenty-first century will be the century of biology’. In our pandemic age, even those who succumbed to the capitalist fallacy of ‘bigger, faster, better’ computers, transportation, and economy, will now agree that 20th century focus to machinery needs to be succeeded by a focus to better understanding of living systems and their interactions with technology at all scales – from viruses, through human beings, to Earth’s ecosystem.
This change of direction cannot be made by simple relocation of focus and/or funding from one discipline to another. In our age of the Anthropocene, (human and planetary) biology cannot be thought of without technology. Today’s curious bioinformational mix of ‘blurred and messy relationships between physics and biology, old and new media, humanism and posthumanism, knowledge capitalism and bio-informational capitalism’ (Jandrić et al. 2018: 896) defines the postdigital condition and creates new knowledge ecologies which are mutually constitutive with bioinformational capitalism.
This paper brings together philosophical research about various techno-scientific convergences which constitute postdigital knowledge ecologies (Peters, Jandrić, and Hayes 2021a), emerging reconfigurations between the postdigital and the biodigital (Peters, Jandrić, and Hayes 2021b), and relationships between biodigital technologies and the bioeconomy (Peters, Jandrić, and Hayes 2021c). It links this research with recent theories of knowledge socialism (Peters et al. 2020) and pandemic education (Peters and Besley 2020), as well as with older theories of biopolitics (Foucault 2004). On that basis, the paper develops a theoretical background for explorations of new postdigital-biodigital knowledge ecologies and their politics.

References
Dyson, F. (2007). Our biotech future. The New York Review, 19 July. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2007/07/19/our-biotech-future/. Accessed 22 October 2020.
Foucault, M. (2004). Naissance de la biopolitique: Cours au colle`ge de France (1978–1979), E´ dition e´tablie sous la direction de Francois Ewald et Alessandro Fontana, par Michel Senellart, Paris, E´ ditions Gallimand et des E´ ditions du Seuill.
Jandrić, P., Knox, J., Besley, T., Ryberg, T., Suoranta, J., & Hayes, S. (2018). Postdigital Science and Education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50(10), 893-899. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2018.1454000.
Peters, M. A., & Besley, T. (2020). Pandemic Education and Viral Politics. London: Routledge.
Peters, M. A., Besley, T., Jandrić, P., & Zhu, X. (Eds.). (2020). Knowledge Socialism. The Rise of Peer Production: Collegiality, Collaboration, and Collective Intelligence. Singapore: Springer.
Peters, M. A., Jandrić, P., & Hayes, S. (2021). Biodigital Technologies and the Bioeconomy: The Global New Green Deal? Educational Philosophy and Theory. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1861938.
Peters, M. A., Jandrić, P., & Hayes, S. (2021a). Biodigital Philosophy, Technological Convergence, and New Knowledge Ecologies. Postdigital Science and Education, 3(2), 370-388. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00211-7.
Peters, M. A., Jandrić, P., & Hayes, S. (2021b). Postdigital-Biodigital: An Emerging Configuration. Educational Philosophy and Theory. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1867108.

Authors

• Michael A. Peters, Beijing Normal University

• Petar Jandric, Polytechnic of Zagreb

• Sarah Hayes, University of Wolverhampton