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Bio-digital architecture

From Protobio (1974) to Virus Detection (1989), the background of a paradigm shift

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Abstract

The concept of “Bio-Digital Architecture” is not new and it is within an area of great speculation and few well-demarcated definitions. A key factor in the definition and practice of technology is the difference between its production and use. If we assume that forms of use are also technical, this distinction is intrinsic to countries based on economies without added value and their histories focused on reverting this situation. This article proposes the revision of a paradigm shift in South America that combined the sustainable “Bio Architecture” (Garciatello: 1948) background from the developmental state with a different economic model era. Through a historical review of the sociology of symbolic production, and the development of devices and interfaces, mechanisms are proposed to recognize paradigm shifts, in a context where technological utopias are associated with the materialization of new social utopias of developing. Focused on specific cases, this research explains the culmination of the principles of “Second-order cybernetics”, in the epistemological formulation of “Autopiesis”, and the early visualization of these principles through digital media in the experience of “Protobio” (Varela, Maturana, Uribe: 1974). Finally, this work concludes with the description of the concrete application of these principles, not in an illustrative way, but in the design of the electronic information architecture of the operating system, continuing with the challenge of translating the logic of the immune system into an economic, political and social context completely different from its predecessors, with “Virus Detection”—VirDet—and “Oyster 2.0” (Giacaman: 1988, 1994).

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File courtesy of Leonora Reyes

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Notes

  1. Humberto Maturana has mentioned this aspect on several occasions: “Without public medicine, I don't get better; Without public education I cannot get to university; without tuition-free university” (Maturana 2012). This system that was phased out in Chile, in the late 1970s, originally it was thought to strengthen valuable talents for the country, regardless of social class of origin. According to his own words with the current system, perhaps someone with the talent of Maturana could not achieve the achievements that he had, and this vision influences his conception of the scientific system as well.

  2. To understand the projection of the Tensegrity concept of Buckminster Fuller, made by Stafford Beer, it is recommended to read: “Origins of Team Sentegrity” (Beer 1993).

  3. Eliminated in 1981 according to the new university law that transferred the regional headquarters, and ruled that education should be a self-financed consumer good.

  4. Interview with professor Dionis Isamitt, 2019.

  5. Dissident students from the School of Design of the Catholic University of Chile. Founded in the 1950s with the influence of Joseph Albers' Vorkurs.

  6. Walker, Gómez, Capdevila, and Schultz were former dissident student leaders with teaching at the School of Applied Arts at the University of Chile. Founded in 1928 with the influence of the Russian Vkjhutemas.

  7. It is important to distinguish that the so-called neo liberalism is not the same everywhere, for example it is not the same as South Korea, where there was a strong impulse from the state for the development and consumption of national technologies, and strong control and investment in the quality of public education. On the other hand, in the Chilean model, from 1975 to 1980, Corfo lost the legal capacity to create national state industries such as Ecom or Intec, education became a consumer good with little quality regulation, and the economy was restricted to commodities and retail.

  8. National Computing Company of the Production Development Corporation (Corfo), in which the Cybersyn project (1971–1973) was developed, as a strategic axis of decentralized administration of the production of state companies, with a system transmission of information in real time (on-line).

  9. The one that was also branded as Oyster 2.0, insisting on its characteristics as a facilitator of shared information, interoperability, and user-centered design.

  10. The author thanks Miguel Giacaman for providing a copy of the contributions of Vir Det, later known as Oyster, included in his US Green Card application.

  11. It is important to remember the impact of this Shannon theory on interpretations of cybernetics by Max Bense, founder of the Information Department at HfG Ulm.

  12. Greek term used by Stafford Beer to refer to Decentralized Collaborative Independence, and alternative organization models to hierarchy.

  13. Teachers in charge of primary public education, who were trained in special schools between the ages of 12 and 18.

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  1. Architecture School, Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana UTEM, Santiago, Chile

    David Maulén de los Reyes

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Maulén de los Reyes, D. Bio-digital architecture. AI & Soc 37, 1191–1206 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-022-01405-2

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