Technology is operation according to the structural coherences of the different domains of doings in which one may participate as a human being. As such technology can be lived as an instrument for effective intentional action, or as a value that justifies or gives orientation to a manner of living in which all is subordinated to the pleasure lived through doing it. When it is lived in this last manner, technology becomes an addiction whose presence those addicted wish to justify through rational arguments founded on the historical reality of its great expansion in modern times. Lived as an instrument for effective action technology has lead to the progressive expansion of our operational abilities in all the domains in which there is knowledge and understanding of their structural coherences.
Biotechnology is a case in which such an expansion has had recursive consequences.
Thus, the expansion of biotechnology has resulted in an expansion of the knowledge of living systems as structure determined systems, and the reverse, the expansion of the knowledge of living systems as structure determined systems has lead to the expansion of biotechnology. However, the expansion of biotechnology has not expanded our understanding of living systems as systems, nor has it expanded our understanding of ourselves as human beings. Quite on the contrary. The expansion of biotechnology interlaced with the explicit or implicit belief in a reductionistic genetic determination, as well as our immersion in a mercantile culture that penetrates all dimensions of our psychic existence, has obscured our view of ourselves as living beings of systemic identity that can become one kind of being or another according to how they live. In these circumstances we modern human beings live under two basic and penetrating cultural inspirations, one is that the market justifies everything, the other is that progress is a value that transcends human existence.