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This chapter investigates investigations in artificial life, exobiology, and bioinformatics. It claims that the technical constitutes the instruments and mediation of how we think and inquire. It reviews the intensified politicization of scientific research in the United States, specifically of NASA. It contextualizes the search for forms of life on Mars and elsewhere within developments of the technosciences and global capital markets. Reading the place of technics in contemporary research programs, it challenges the premise of disinterested "blue sky" projects. The role of technology is critiqued on the basis of Heidegger's questioning the primary frameworks for representations in their capturing "pictures" of the world. This chapter further develops the question of the limits of epistemic curiosity with regard to the question of what constitutes forms of life and emergent systems. It considers the embodied problems and possibilities now encountered by these novel fields of inquiry. The chapter and text conclude with a critical appreciation of technics as the means by which limits are contested. The technosciences are the primary arena of contemporary thinking, cultural change, and theoretical forays. Theoretical curiosity as it is now conducted through technical forms must remain critically engaged in order to think everyday life and its potentials for creating a habitable future.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-2117-3_7

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