Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology

HISTORY AND HYPERBOLE

DEMOCRATIC AND MORAL RESEARCH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Nanotechnology, or nanotech, is a collective term for several dozen related techniques that manipulate and manufacture molecules that are measured by the nanometer (one-billionth of a meter, or 10^-9m, in scientific notation). Instruments invented in the early 1980s now enable scientists to observe and rearrange molecules and atoms as never before, thereby enriching our knowledge of the world of the nanoscale. Viruses and atomic surfaces, for example, are understood much better than before, while carbon atoms are arranged into new shapes, including spheres and tubes. Because of its ability to rearrange the building blocks of matter, nanotech has great potential to affect medicine, information technology, materials science, the environment, and other areas. Developments in medical diagnostics and therapeutics, along with smaller, faster computers, are especially exciting, while toxicity and threats to privacy are uncertain but worrisome. Social scientists are interested in nanotech because it also affects economic, cultural, social, and political conditions.

While the scientific basis of nanotech is many decades old, the policy framework emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s as governments organized public-sector funding and encouraged private-sector investments. Some social scientists began to study nanotech at that time. Many had previously studied biotechnology or information technology, so they brought mature research methods and sophisticated insights to nanotech. Their work consisted not only of observing the emergence of a new technology, but also of trying to influence its direction before society became locked into an unfortunate trajectory of technological determinism. Furthermore, the status of the scholarly literature has been dynamic. Commentaries on nanotech in the sciences, the humanities, or the social sciences become outdated very quickly.

HISTORY AND HYPERBOLE

Four kinds of issues are especially prominent in social science research on nanotech. First there are several contested histories of nanotechnology. One version says that nanotech began with a prescient talk in 1959 by Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988), the 1965 Nobel laureate in physics. Another points to the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope by IBM scientists Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer in 1981. A third narrative emphasizes the vision popularized by K. Eric Drexler in his 1986 book Engines of Creation. A fourth indicates that the underlying science was well established but intellectually diffuse until January 2000 when President Bill Clinton gathered many strands into one agenda called the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI).

In weighing these narratives, the critical perspectives of the social sciences reveal an ideological landscape of explicit and implicit discourses, with much competition to establish definitions, iconic images, and authoritative meanings, not to mention priorities for government funding. The Feynman origin theory appeals to quantum physicists and some people in the California Institute of Technology community, where Feynman taught for more than thirty years. The account that begins with the scanning tunneling microscope is preferred by the IBM community and most nanoscientists other than quantum physicists. The Drexler story is more credible outside of scientific circles than within because it delivers limitless promises of technological salvation, although several scientists credit Drexler for inspiring their scientific work. Finally, the NNI version demands that nanotechnology produce tangible products quickly, which justifies generous government support for science and technology, plus government cheerleading for private-sector developments. It also draws upon a sense of economic nationalism: The NNI is a way for the United States to maintain economic and technological leadership. This story has parallel versions elsewhere, particularly in a series of European Union plans to unify European nanotechnology.

A second set of issues involves the power and consequences of hyperbole, both for and against nanotechnology. Nanotech evokes some intense interpretations of culture and technology: The so-called nano visionaries describe a magical set of tools that will transmute matter, end death, and perform other amazing changes, while their counterparts on the other end of the ideological spectrum preach that nanotech leads to the end of humanity, the end of our environment, and other evils.

These forms of hyperbole cause one to wonder whether they are grounded in the scientific and technical realities of nanotech. Or, do they express hopes and fears unrelated to nanotech reality, but gratuitously superimposed on nanotech? Another question is the changing relation between the technology and the hyperbole. Is the antinano hype discredited when beneficial applications come into our lives? Is there a nanophobic backlash: Do policymakers and nonexperts feel deceived by extravagant promises that turn out to be unrealistic? Social scientists have been tracking these questions of hope and trust. Furthermore, changes in relations between the technology and the hyperbole do not necessarily constitute a victory of one form of hype over another. They can also take the form of centrist positions displacing either form of hype.

DEMOCRATIC AND MORAL RESEARCH

The third cluster of questions appeals to the conscience of the social sciences, for these are the issues of justice and the common good. Nanotechnology has consequences for power, wealth, privacy, trust, discrimination, and other moral questions that animate social scientists. One topic is especially salient, namely, the longstanding problem of how a democratic society uses democratic processes to make science policy. The philosopher and educator John Dewey (1859-1952) argued that when a democratic society makes science policy, it needs many citizens who are well informed about science. Jon D. Miller pursued this by measuring civic scientific literacy beginning in the early 1980s, and he found consistently that it was dreadfully low. In a parallel development in the United Kingdom in 1985, a program for public understanding of science took the form of a simplistic agenda in which scientists talked and nonscientists listened and then passively internalized what they had been told. This is entirely unrealistic.

At the same time, however, social scientists in the United States observed stakeholder democracy in which the general population may be uninterested and inert about scientific policy, but those who see themselves as being affected by a given policy will take an active interest. Participatory democracy is the label for the activism of nonexperts who take part in making science policy. Case studies include AIDS activists playing constructive roles in clinical trials, or environmental disputes in which nonexperts become important actors, or laypersons serving on advisory committees for the National Institutes of Health. The ideas of stakeholder democracy and participatory democracy are corroborated by observations that show that nonexperts can acquire, understand, and deploy technical information when they have to. Meanwhile, social scientists in the United Kingdom advocate something similar called upstream public engagement in nanotechnology policy. This is meant to be an antidote to the simplistic plan of public understanding of science.

Nanotech is not necessarily more suitable to participatory democracy and upstream engagement than other technologies, but it gained attention among nonexperts at the same time that these discourses matured. And so, by historical coincidence, nanotechnology became a platform for experimenting with mechanisms and processes by which nonexperts have active and constructive roles in the creation of science policy. This is likely to be among the most important forms of social science activity concerning nanotechnology.

The fourth area of interest is a soul-searching debate about the moral value of a program named SEIN, which stands for “societal and ethical implications of nanotechnology.” This is a priori problematic. Implications usually suggests that when the new technology arrives, it changes the society, and the consequences are understood after the fact. But if one wants to advocate one policy or another before nanotech causes major disruptions, it is necessary to revise the meaning of SEIN. Societal interactions with nanotech suggests that society coevolves with the technology, in which case stakeholders can make decisions about nanotech before technological change becomes a fait accompli.

This leads to an argument about the connection between SEIN and ELSI, the program to study the “ethical, legal, and societal implications” of the Human Genome Project. ELSI was generally recognized as a successful effort to describe and communicate those topics from the Human Genome Project, but many social scientists felt that ELSI constituted an uncritical acceptance of the agenda of the project. If SEIN is a child of ELSI, does this mean that social scientists are censoring themselves when they receive government funding to do SEIN research?

The U.S. Congress had ELSI in mind as a model when it included a program for SEIN in the Twenty-first Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2003. For this reason, some social scientists conclude that SEIN is not meant to raise social or ethical questions in government-funded nanotechnology research. They say that SEIN is intended to lubricate popular acceptance of nanotech, that is, to eliminate the social frictions that frustrate technological determinism.

The U.S. government’s programmatic documents on nanotechnology often reveal a spirit of technological determinism, but that does not necessarily mean that there is a coherent plan for SEIN that conforms to that spirit. SEIN is very vaguely described in the 2003 act and related documents. Furthermore, the idea of participatory democracy for nanotech—that nonexperts will have active and constructive roles in nanotech policy—is at least as credible among those who are doing government-funded SEIN work as the manipulative view of SEIN. One reason is because much of nanotech is meant to lead to tangible consumer products, and it would be a major disaster for industry and government to misread consumer concerns and values, especially after investing billions of dollars to create those products.

This is not to claim that government science bureaucrats have become leftists. The point rather is that the future and the value of SEIN research are far from determined. There is neither documentation nor experience to conclude that SEIN is intrinsically corrupt for social scientists.

Nanotechnology derives from multiple strands of scientific work, some of which are many decades old. It also evokes numerous everyday issues concerning economy, culture, society, and power, and it is strongly shaped by visions of what will happen in the near future. To a social scientist, this is worth noting: a culture whose past, present, and future are interesting and problematic.

SEE ALSO Microelectronics Industry

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baird, Davis, and Tom Vogt. 2004. Societal and Ethical Interactions with Nanotechnology. Nanotechnology Law and Business 1 (4): 391-396.

Binnig, Gerd, and Heinrich Rohrer. 1987. Scanning Tunneling Microscopy: From Birth to Adolescence. Reviews of Modern Physics pt. 1, 59 (3): 615-625.

Drexler, K. Eric. 1986. Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology. Garden City, NY: Anchor.

Feynman, Richard P. 1960. There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom. Engineering and Science 23: 22-36.

Fisher, Erik. 2005. Lessons Learned from the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications Program (ELSI): Planning Societal Implications Research for the National Nanotechnology Program. Technology in Society 27: 321-328.

Guston, David, and Daniel Sarewitz. 2002. Real-time Technology Assessment. Technology in Society 24: 93-109.

Macnaghten, Phil, Matthew Kearnes, and Brian Wynne. 2005. Nanotechnology, Governance, and Public Deliberation: What Role for the Social Sciences? Science Communication 27 (2): 268-291.

Munn Sanchez, Edward. 2004. The Expert’s Role in Nanoscience and Technology. In Discovering the Nanoscale, eds. Davis Baird, Alfred Nordmann, and Joachim Schummer, 257-266. Amsterdam: IOS.

Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering. 2004. Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies: Opportunities and Uncertainties. London: Royal Society.

Toumey, Chris. 2005. Apostolic Succession: Does Nanotechnology Descend from Richard Feynman’s 1959 Talk? Engineering and Science 68 (1): 16-23.

Chris Toumey