2-4: code and matter, continued
Perhaps the most extreme consequences of this notion of DNA as the source code for life can be seen in the overlapping biological, computational, economic, and political practices of the contemporary bio-tech industry. Although the early pioneers in molecular biology like Watson and Crick were primarily invested in a metaphorical comparison between the structural qualities of computers and biological life, with contemporary techniques in genetic engineering and other "big science" initiatives, the Cartesian basis of the notion of "life as information" is extended and translated into very real (im)material consequences. For instance, as Eugene Thacker notes, contemporary bio-tech consistently sees DNA as "being open to a series of cut-and-paste operations," as a kind of essential source code that can be "abstracted from a particular biological substance."[11] Further, because Thacker argues that DNA acts as an informational identity totally abstracted from the body of the organism, we might also argue that this allows genetic information to operate in what a media theorist might call a transmedia fashion - as genetic code transfers from the test-tube to the computer database to the human body, ostensibly without any sense of loss.[12] This notion of DNA as a biological code that is mobile across multiple platforms, and as information that can be copied and abstracted from the material substrate, attests to the total interpenetration of biological and information technology concepts in contemporary notions and practices of molecular biology. But, fascinatingly, these ideas of mobility, copying, and immateriality can apply equally to the history of modern media, in general; and, thus, it is only through investigating this parallel genealogy that can we better understand the intersection of traditional media studies [13] and biological threads in the popular perception and technological design of the computer virus.
![[11]](http://scalar.usc.edu/nehvectors/lipshin/media/copy-footnote-11.jpg){kind=link}
![[12]](http://scalar.usc.edu/nehvectors/lipshin/media/copy-footnote-12.jpg){kind=link}
![[13]](http://scalar.usc.edu/nehvectors/lipshin/media/copy-footnote-13.jpg){kind=link}
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