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Short abstract:

This paper analysis the making of science cooperatives in the field of biotechnology through the concept of asset. It contributes to the understanding of the engineering of social-economic epistemologies and ontologies through digital technology and suggests a critical turn in market design.

Long abstract:

The global science organization is undergoing major shifts. The emerging regime is characterized by the political epistemology of neoliberalism, the cross-institutional arrangements of technoscientific capitalism, and a heightened reliance on advanced digital technology. This paper explores the making of digital science cooperatives in the field of biotechnology through the concept of asset. Drawing on a two-year ethnographic study, I examine how the DIY and hacker inspired science reform movement Decentralized Science envisions to reengineer the coproduction of technoscientific knowledge and value. To showcase how designing technology for organizing science entails the continuous planning of systems that couple knowledge and value management and production, I will focus on these cooperatives as instruments that allow to govern heterogeneous actors and distributed resources. By analyzing the making of such digital-native entities, I show how expertise, labor, and research results are purposefully forged into interdependencies by turning them into actionable assets. I identify two salient design elements of science cooperatives: collective intelligence characterized by transepistemic forms of valuation and common ownership enabled by systematic incentivization. Concluding from the case, I argue that the concept of asset is essential for understanding the engineering of expansive and extractive social-economic networks like science cooperatives. Furthermore, I argue that the concept of asset is a key building block for critical market design suggesting a turn from market fundamentalism to market instrumentalism and the need to actively empower and involve individuals and collectives for making and maintaining the calculative environments that shape their thoughts and actions.