Genomics and an Emerging Biodigital Public

Seattle.
The final speaker in this AoIR 2011 session is Kate O’Riordan. Her interest is in the biodigital sequencing of the human genome and its representation in digital culture. Genomes are ‘born-digital’ artefacts, and have become a widespread trope in digital culture; a substantial number of Websites provide information on human genomics through databases, browsers, sequences, scans, wikis, and blogs; genome stories told by emerging celebrities in the field are coming to increasing prominence.

Genome sequences are generated through very abstract computational processes; how is such information made meaningful, and by whom? This is a story of the construction of a specific technocratic elite, offering a promise that everybody might some time soon be equally empowered; it’s a story of genetics and behaviour. Genomic research is now also shifting towards the analysis of multiple genomes, and celebrity (auto)biographies are attached to this shift.

Such biographies are mostly of men, and focussed on scientists, journalists, and other celebrities; women appear mainly as turning to genomics in a quest for self-knowledge, mainly focussed on health. Prominent writing on genomics discusses the potential of personal genomics services (which provides information on inherited genetic diseases and other indicators of future health); the consumer interface (i.e. shopping) is expected to democratise a once elite technology. A key analogy here is with the early Internet, which (it is claimed) was similarly popularised through consumer culture.

There are also cautions against using genome sequencing too immediately as a source of self-knowledge, however – too much remains unknown, and too much in life remains influenced by factors other than inherited genetic factors. This is also a question of expertise in reading genomes, which remains unevenly distributed and defined by an technological elite. While an invitation is extended to general consumers, therefore, strongly elite aspects remain if real meaning is to be extracted from the sequencing process.

So, obvious contradictions emerge here – democracy in genomics is constructed through both shopping and elite rule, and while the eventual mass market is invoked, current users are still cast as early adopters of the technology. At the same time, publicity also opens the space to a new biodigital public; this traction, and the frictions in current stories, may be liberating in this context.