Team:St Andrews/project/ethics/community

From 2010.igem.org

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Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project is considered the father of Free Software however he does not believe that at the current stage of development that Free Software principles can be applied to synthetic biology. Quoting from [http://www.reddit.com/tb/cv7sw an interview with reddit.com] Mr Stallman said the following:
 
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<h1>A Study of Community</h1>
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How can we apply the concepts of free software development to the
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upcoming biological revolution of synthetic and hybrid organisms?
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RMS: I don't think these ideas are applicable to biology at our current
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technological level.
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==Introduction==
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The free software movement is based on the recognition that nonfree
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===One person, many communities===
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software gives the program's developer unjust power over the users.
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Within our iGEM team we have individuals belonging to the biology community, the physics community and the computer science community. In this context we use community to refer to a community of interest - a group of likeminded individuals operating within the same field of knowlege. We are all members of the St Andrews community, some of us are also members of the London community, the Edinburgh community and the Aberdeenshire community. Here we describe a community of place, a group of people living in close proximity and sharing the same enviroment. These two seperate notions of community both share very similar underpinnings. In any context of community the common denomonator is groups of people. Traditionally all communites were bound by some form of geographical limitations.  For instance for the longest time eastern and western mathematics developed within seperate communies, however both communities devleoped convergent ideas. Today, largely thanks to mass communication, we live in global communities, as a part of the iGEM community our team has ties with people all around the world.  
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Free software prevents that by giving the users control over the
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software they use.
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Free software achieves this because users can change the software and
 
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recompile it, then use their own versions. Even in 1969, when
 
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computers were rare and only a few people used them, we who used them
 
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had the practical means to change and compile software, not merely to
 
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run it.
 
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This page represents our work in attempting to understand how the iGEM and synthetic biology community works and opearates and draws comparisons with earlier models of community. Our findings are presented in the following essay:
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The situation for genetically modified organisms is totally different.
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===Essay===
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There is no general tool for performing a genetic modification
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[https://2010.igem.org/Image:StA_community_essay.pdf Read the full text here]
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comparable to using a text editor (or a 1960s card punch) to alter the
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source code of a program, then compiling it and running it. Today's
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genetically engineered organisms were made by the equivalent of using
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`sed' to patch an executable which was mostly a black box.
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We can understand and change programs because they were designed.
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==Addendum: Free Software, The Original Open Community==
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Good designers know how to make a design understandable so others can
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Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project is considered the father of Free Software however he does not believe that at the current stage of development that Free Software principles can be applied to synthetic biology. In [http://www.reddit.com/tb/cv7sw an interview with reddit.com] Mr Stallman claimed that realistically we are decades off being able to full comprehend the base genetic code behind both humans and bacteria and as such until we reach that point we will be unable to generate a Free Software like community around synthetic biology. The reason for this Stallman suggests is that genetic code is akin to a compiled binary, a program ready for execution on the computer hardware which is optimized for machines to understand and not humans. Stallman asserts that until individuals are able to easily modify and redistribute changes to organisms there is little hope for a Free Software like community. The argument proposed here is quite valid, the Free Software community has its roots in academia where in the 1960s hackers from various US institutions improved and redistributed each others software and this notion of sharing and cooperation served as the basis of a community. If synthetic biology wishes to generate an identically styled community to the Free Software community then there is the required prerequisite of being able to easily modify and redistribute artificial organisms. At present this is a difficult task which requires expensive equipment and supplies. Does this therefore sound the death knell of a potential synthtetic biology community? It certainly dimishes the possibility of any Free Software style community it does not however disallow the existence of alternative styles of open communities.
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change it later. Natural organisms are a mess; any designer, seeing
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the myriad kludges, each one different, recognizes these systems were
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never designed.
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Natural organisms never had anything like source code. The genetic
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code of an organism is more comparable to a binary (in fact,
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quaternary) executable. Imagine a C compiler made by patching the
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binary of hello.c a billion times in a genetic algorithm and you'll
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see how hard this is to understand.
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Now that we have a quaternary dump of the human genome, it will take
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decades of reverse engineering by tens of thousands of biologists to
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figure out what it does.
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If some day the technology for changing organisms predictably is as
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mature as changing programs predictably was in 1958, then the freedom
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to change and share and use genomes will be an important political
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issue comparable to that of free software today. As long as large
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research teams struggle with tasks a little beyond "Hello World",
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whether we are allowed to change the organisms we use will be a
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question of little practical significance.
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Genetically modified organisms today raise totally different issues:
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for instance, damaging human health, damaging the environment, and
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polluting other farms with patented genes through natural
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cross-pollination.
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Latest revision as of 15:32, 27 October 2010


St Andrews from East Sands

University of St Andrews iGEM 2010

Welcome!

The Saints

University of St Andrews iGEM 2010

Our first year at iGEM!


A Study of Community

Contents

Introduction

One person, many communities

Within our iGEM team we have individuals belonging to the biology community, the physics community and the computer science community. In this context we use community to refer to a community of interest - a group of likeminded individuals operating within the same field of knowlege. We are all members of the St Andrews community, some of us are also members of the London community, the Edinburgh community and the Aberdeenshire community. Here we describe a community of place, a group of people living in close proximity and sharing the same enviroment. These two seperate notions of community both share very similar underpinnings. In any context of community the common denomonator is groups of people. Traditionally all communites were bound by some form of geographical limitations. For instance for the longest time eastern and western mathematics developed within seperate communies, however both communities devleoped convergent ideas. Today, largely thanks to mass communication, we live in global communities, as a part of the iGEM community our team has ties with people all around the world.


This page represents our work in attempting to understand how the iGEM and synthetic biology community works and opearates and draws comparisons with earlier models of community. Our findings are presented in the following essay:

Essay

Read the full text here


Addendum: Free Software, The Original Open Community

Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project is considered the father of Free Software however he does not believe that at the current stage of development that Free Software principles can be applied to synthetic biology. In [http://www.reddit.com/tb/cv7sw an interview with reddit.com] Mr Stallman claimed that realistically we are decades off being able to full comprehend the base genetic code behind both humans and bacteria and as such until we reach that point we will be unable to generate a Free Software like community around synthetic biology. The reason for this Stallman suggests is that genetic code is akin to a compiled binary, a program ready for execution on the computer hardware which is optimized for machines to understand and not humans. Stallman asserts that until individuals are able to easily modify and redistribute changes to organisms there is little hope for a Free Software like community. The argument proposed here is quite valid, the Free Software community has its roots in academia where in the 1960s hackers from various US institutions improved and redistributed each others software and this notion of sharing and cooperation served as the basis of a community. If synthetic biology wishes to generate an identically styled community to the Free Software community then there is the required prerequisite of being able to easily modify and redistribute artificial organisms. At present this is a difficult task which requires expensive equipment and supplies. Does this therefore sound the death knell of a potential synthtetic biology community? It certainly dimishes the possibility of any Free Software style community it does not however disallow the existence of alternative styles of open communities.

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