Bardini, Thierry

Biography

My research focuses on the history and sociology of science and technology, and more particularly, since 1990, on the history and sociology of cyberculture. I first did some background work on the origins of personal computing by describing the future of Douglas Engelbart's lab at Stanford Research Institute.and the migration of his ideas and artifacts (mouse, proto graphical interface, hypertext) to Xerox PARC and Apple. Since 2001, I have extended this work by researching the other fundamental becoming of cybernetic synthesis, molecular biology, by reconstructing its recent history from its dark side, the "non-coding" part of DNA that the American researchers have dubbed "junk DNA". This research was published in 2011 at the University of Minnesota Press, under the title Junkware . Since 2008 my work attempts to bring together these analyzes on the two cybernetic fates, computer science and molecular biology, for a study of the post-humanity question, or more generally of the creature's engineering (post-human certainly, but also post-animal and post-machine). I am currently finishing a research program funded by the Canadian Council on Human and Social Sciences research entitled "Post-animals: what technologically modified animals can reveal to us about the (post) human future. It is actually a "detour by the animal" to develop an ethnographic view of the practices of life engineering without going through the analysis of essentially discursive practices of bioethics and science -fiction.

Research Interest

Communication Studies, sociology of science and technology .