Conference Agenda

There is clearly an audience for movies about machines, for movies where flesh and blood has been replaced by metal and circuitry. So the question that I want to ask in this project is: Why?Why does this audience exist? Why do people want to see movies about humans fighting robots (Terminator), about robots fighting robots (Terminator 2), about robots fighting to protect humans so they can grow up to fight robots (Terminator 3)? If these movies are indeed exploiting the audience’s desires, then what are the desires that are being exploited in these movies? If a traditional sexploitation movie is about offering audiences a way to watch pornographic sex scenes surrounded by just enough plot to avoid the accusation of being a pervert, and if a traditional blaxsploitation movie is about offering audiences a way to watch racist stereotypes surrounded by just enough plot to avoid the accusation of being a racist, then what is it that a “techsploitation” movie would be offering audiences?

To answer these questions, this project will explore the movies that I have already identified and many, many others that similarly seem to cater to audiences who want nothing more than to see machines try to kill humans (e.g., Westworld), machines try to enslave humans (e.g., The Matrix), and machines try to become humans (e.g., Demon Seed). This exploration though won’t just be about investigating the technological world of cinema, but also about investigating the technological world in which we live. For just as exploring sexploitation movies and blaxploitation movies have helped us to better understand gender dynamics and racial dynamics at play in society, I believe that exploring techsploitation movies will likewise help us to better understand the dynamics at play in society in the relationship between humanity and technology.

Researchers from diverse disciplines within nanobiology and biotechnology across the Netherlands are collaborating on an ambitious endeavor: the development of the first living synthetic cell. Their approach is characterized by a bottom-up methodology, which integrates various components of biological cells to determine the minimal conditions necessary for life. This groundbreaking initiative raises profound ethical and philosophical questions. This paper addresses two central issues: first, how to conceptualize and define life itself, and second, how to design a living organism through a semi-rational design framework responsibly.

The ontological status of life remains a deeply contested topic, with no universally accepted definition across scientific disciplines. Biologists, for instance, often emphasize different characteristics of living systems than chemists or physicists. In this context, constructing a living cell invites reflection: can this endeavor contribute to a deeper understanding of life’s essence? Might Richard Feynman’s motto—"What I cannot create, I do not understand"—serve as an apt heuristic for this project? Possibly the creation of a living cell will indicate that we do not require one overarching definition, but rather that it is more useful to have several definitions next to each other.

The second issue concerns the conceptual framing of synthetic cell construction as a design process. While researchers describe their work in terms of design, they acknowledge the inherent limitations of imposing total control over a living entity. By its very nature, a living cell must possess elements of unpredictability—such as so-called "junk" DNA with functions not yet fully understood—to enable evolution and adaptation. Designing life necessitates relinquishing some degree of control. This tension raises critical questions: can the resulting entity still be considered a designed artifact? Who, ultimately, assumes responsibility for and control over this synthetic organism? How to guarantee the safety of such an entity?

To navigate these challenges, we propose a Value Sensitive Design (VSD) framework, which is adapted to synthetic cell research to integrate the semi-rational nature of the design process explicitly, accommodating the need for indeterminacy while ensuring that ethical and societal values remain central to the development of synthetic life.