The Field of Vegetable Operations

Abstract

In this short speculation, I imagine a future forest that has been disturbed by invasive species, a changing climate, and engineered plant sensors. By staging this encounter between a wandering hiker, who never quite realizes that he is being watched, and MetaBee™ #21783, a drone that watches over nanobionic spinach, I feel out the strangeness of this burgeoning mode of surveillance. In my own research, I term this operationalization of pollinator-plant relations, in which drones harvest information from engineered plants instead of pollen, a “vital informatics.” That is to say, I argue that current military research into nanobionic and genetically engineered plants constitutes a living information science that integrates organic systems into data collection, storage, and processing.