The Yearbook of Nanotechnology in Society, Volume I: Presenting Futures
The Yearbook of Nanotechnology in Society, Volume I: Presenting Futures
Erik Fisher Cynthia Selin Jameson M. Wetmore Editors
David H. Guston Series Editor
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Editors Erik Fisher Arizona State University Tempe, USA Cynthia Selin Arizona State University Tempe, USA Jameson M. Wetmore Arizona State University Tempe, USA
ISBN: 978-1-4020-8415-7
e-ISBN: 978-1-4020-8416-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008923729 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
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Preface
Welcome to the first volume of the Yearbook of Nanotechnology in Society! Nanotechnology, hailed as “the next industrial revolution” (NSTC 2000) and critiqued for being little more than “hype” (Berube 2006), is the site of a great deal of social and intellectual contest. With some ten billion dollars being spent worldwide on nanotechnology research and development annually and a market forecast of trillions of dollars in sales in the medium-term future (Lux Research 2006), nations and firms are pursuing nano-related goals with high levels of both effort and expectations. Yet according to the Woodrow Wilson International Center’s web-based Nanotechnology Consumer Products Inventory, most of the more than 500 nanoproducts on the market as of this writing are basic consumer items—cosmetics, clothing, athletic equipment and the like—with modest, incremental improvements on their non-nano counterparts. Nanotechnology is also the site of an increasing amount of scholarship dedicated to understanding the interactions between society and an emerging knowledgebased technological endeavor. Searching the Web of Science indices in social science and humanities for nanotech* and nanoparticle*, for example, yields 231 hits since 1990, but 75 percent of these occur in 2004 through 2007.1 This scholarship attempts to fathom the implications of nanotechnologies for society, as well as the implications for nanotechnologies of society. Some of it is also engaged in dialogue with both the public and with nanotechnology researchers about the hope and the hype described above. One of the remarkable aspects of the scholarship on the societal aspects of nanotechnology is how much it has been solicited by policy makers and nanotechnology researchers. In the United States, for example, the basic legislation (Public Law 108–153) authorizing much of the US National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) mandates that such research not only occur, but that it be done in close proximity to the nanotechnology research itself in the hope that it will influence the outcomes of such research for the more general benefit of the public (Fisher and Mahajan 2006). There have been similar calls for such research in Europe, and some research
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Thanks to graduate student Walter Valdivia for running this search for me.
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programs in the societal aspects of nanotechnologies have begun in Latin America as well (Barben et al. 2008). In 2005, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a set of major grants in nanotechnology in society, including the creation of Centers for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University (CNS-ASU) and at the University of California, Santa Barbara (CNS-UCSB), and additional funding for pre-existing, sponsored projects at the University of South Carolina and at a collaboration of Harvard and University of California, Los Angeles. These centers and projects, along with other small projects that NSF is sponsoring, represent a significant financial commitment—more than $15 million between 2005 and 2010. Despite this large absolute number, however, it represents only about 0.2 percent of the funds to be spent by the NNI over the period. From this array of sponsored research in the US, as well as through major research projects in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and elsewhere, the foundation of original, empirical scholarship on and methodological and theoretical approaches to the social studies of nanotechnology is emerging. The large-scale, conceptual goals of CNS-ASU are two-fold: to increase reflexivity within the nanotechnology enterprise and to increase the capacity in society more broadly to engage in anticipatory governance for nanotechnology and other emerging technologies. By “reflexivity” we at CNS-ASU mean a capacity of individuals and institutions within the nanotechnology enterprise specifically, but society more broadly, to learn in ways that expand the domain of, and inform the available choices in, decision making about nanotechnologies. By anticipatory governance, we mean a broad-based capacity extending through society that can help individuals and institutions act on a variety of inputs to manage emerging knowledge-based technologies while such management is still possible. Neither of these concepts, as such, is new, but the novelty lies in the broad research ensemble organized to accomplish the tasks (Barben et al. 2008). CNS-ASU pursues these goals through its implementation of two cross-cutting research programs. The first, a collection of several use-inspired or applied techniques, is called real-time technology assessment (RTTA) (Guston and Sarewitz 2002), organized into four areas of activity:
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Research and Innovation Systems Analysis, which investigates who is doing what kind of nanotechnology research and where, develops ways of measuring nanotechnology’s contributions to broad social goals, and attempts to discern what kind of training in nanotechnology some regional labor markets require; Public Opinion and Values, which surveys the public and nanotechnology researchers for their attitudes and understandings about nanotechnology and attempts to discern how the media frame these attitudes and understandings; Deliberation and Participation, which constructs scenes of plausible nano-enabled futures, envisions the possibility of creating responsible nano-products, explores the cultural resonances of such products, and creates opportunities for public participation in nano decision-making; and
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Reflexivity, Assessment and Evaluation, which attempts to understand at an empirical level what impact on the identity, knowledge, and practice of nanotechnology researchers CNS-ASU program activities are having.
The second program is a collection of more fundamental research in two substantive areas: Equity and Responsibility, and Human Identity, Enhancement, and Biology. In addition to these research projects, CNS-ASU also maintains a broad array of educational and outreach programs, including the lecture series that sponsored the creation of a number of the essays in this volume. Throughout, CNS-ASU offers major consideration to integrating social science work with natural science and engineering research in nanotechnology, and engaging the views of lay citizens. We at CNS-ASU have created this series in an attempt to consolidate the emerging scholarship on nanotechnology in society and provide a constructive overview of recent research and other activities in the field. We intend each volume in the series—and we hope many will follow—to represent not only a chronological slice of nanotechnology in society but a thematic one as well. Chosen by the editors—all of whom are affiliated with CNS-ASU—each volume’s theme will be a product of the center’s intellectual perspective. To this end, the editors of this first Yearbook have taken two routes: First, they have invited an esteemed group of scholars and practitioners to contribute perspectives on the societal aspects of nanotechnology, specially crafted for this volume. Second, they have selected from the recent literature relevant and revealing statements about nanotechnology in society. The result is a provocative collection of work that communicates both a certain currency in representing the state of research on societal aspects of nanotechnology and a more enduring perspective on the Yearbook’s overall theme—the future. The title of this first Yearbook is Presenting Futures. The future is a valuable resource for nanotechnology (Selin 2007). The future is also particularly valuable for CNS-ASU, as our concept of anticipatory governance relies on the idea of getting a sense of what has yet to happen. Anticipatory governance of a technology does not entail predicting the future—indeed, it is radical rejection of prediction. But it nevertheless entails a great deal of rigorous empirical and conceptual preparation, to which this volume contributes. One can think of anticipation in this sense the way one thinks of exercise. There are precious few if any futures in which we will be called upon to perform a bench press or an upright row, but we believe that together these various “unreal” physical exercises we practice combine to produce a substantive outcome—health—on which we place great value. Similarly, in our efforts to anticipate nanotechnological futures, we may not be predicting or even practicing any single activity that will occur in the future, but we are instead building a capacity for a valuable outcome—the governance of emerging technologies—in an anticipatory fashion. This volume explores the variety of ways social scientists, humanists, and public and private sector research planners engage an emerging technology like nanotechnology, including some more familiar science policy techniques as “constructive” technology assessment and roadmaps, but also techniques less familiar in
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this domain such as architecture and design. Particular themes within this volume include methods and techniques, participation and the roles of social groups, and the goals of such activities. Although the content of this Yearbook represents leadingedge scholarship and practice, the editors intend it (and subsequent volumes) to be accessible not only to scholars and students in the social studies of science and technology, but also to scientists and engineers and their students as well. We hope you find this Yearbook, and the others to follow, helpful for your part in constructing nanotechnological futures. Tempe, Arizona
David H. Guston Series Editor
References Barben, D., Fisher, E., Selin, C. and D.H. Guston. 2008. Anticipatory Governance of Nanotechnology: Foresight, Engagement, and Integration. In E. Hackett, O. Amsterdamska, M.E. Lynch, and J. Wajcman, eds., The New Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (pp. 979-1000). Cambridge: MIT Press. Berube, D.M. 2006. Nano-Hype: The Truth Behind the Nanotechnology Buzz. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Guston, D. and D. Sarewitz. 2002. Real-time Technology Assessment. Technology in Society 24: 93-109. Fisher, E. and R.L. Mahajan. 2006. Contradictory Intent? US Federal Legislation on Integrating Societal Concerns into Nanotechnology Research and Development. Science and Public Policy 33(1): 5-16. Lux Research. 2006. The Nanotech Report: Investment Overview and Market Research for Nanotechnology, 4th Edition. New York: Lux Research. National Science and Technology Council (NSTC). 2000, February. National Nanotechnology Initiative: Leading to the Next Industrial Revolution. Interagency Working Group on Nanoscience, Engineering, and Technology. Washington, DC: NSTC. Selin, C. 2007. Expectations and the Emergence of Nanotechnology. Science, Technology & Human Values 32(2): 196-220.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the following people for helping to make this book possible: Fritz Schmuhl and Marion Wagenaar, our editors at Spinger; David Guston, for his guidance; Regina Sanborn, Michelle Iafrat, Cory Dillon, Joy Trottier, and Melissa Cornish for administrative assistance; Roxanne Wheelock for cover design; Doran Hunter and Tara Egnatios for copy editing; and the participants of the seminar series, Studying the Future of Nanotechnology: Establishing Empirical and Conceptual Foundations, held at Arizona State University during the 2006-2007 academic year. The activities that led to this publication were supported by the National Science Foundation under cooperative agreement #0531194. Any opinions, findings and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Tempe, Arizona
Erik Fisher Cynthia Selin Jameson M. Wetmore
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Contents
1 Nanotechnology: The Future Is Coming Sooner than You Think . . . . . Joseph Kennedy
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2 The Workers’ Push to Democratize Nanotechnology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Guillermo Foladori and Noela Invernizzi 3 Thinking Longer Term about Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Christine Peterson 4 Constructive Technology Assessment and Socio-Technical Scenarios . 49 Arie Rip and Haico te Kulve 5 Information and Imagination: How Lux Research Forecasts . . . . . . . . . 71 Mark B¨unger 6 Designing for the Future: Nanoscale Research Facilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Ahmad Soueid 7 What Drives Public Acceptance of Nanotechnology? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Steven C. Currall, Eden B. King, Neal Lane, Juan Madera and Stacy Turner 8 Nanologue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Volker T¨urk 9 Anticipating the Futures of Nanotechnology: Visionary Images as Means of Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Andreas L¨osch 10 Winners of Nano-Hazard Symbol Contest Announced at World Social Forum, Nairobi, Kenya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 ETC Group xi
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11 Your Children, Their Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Agilent Technologies 12 Developing Plausible Nano-Enabled Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Ira Bennett 13 Nanotechnology for Chemical and Biological Defense 2030 Workshop and Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Margaret E. Kosal 14 Nanotechnologies for Tomorrow’s Society: A Case for Reflective Action Research in Flanders, Belgium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Lieve Goorden, Michiel van Oudheusden, Johan Evers, and Marian Deblonde 15 Communications in the Age of Nanotechnology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Griffith A. Kundahl 16 How Can Business Respond to the Technical, Social, and Commercial Uncertainties of Nanotechnology? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Hilary Sutcliffe 17 Manufactured Nanoparticle Health and Safety Disclosure [Draft Report] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 City of Berkeley Community Environmental Advisory Commission 18 A Framework for Responsible Nanotechnology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Scott Walsh and Terry Medley 19 Contemplating the Implications of a Nanotechnology “Revolution” . . 215 Georgia Miller 20 Nanotechnology: Challenges and the Way Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 Meyya Meyyappan 21 Technology Assessment of Nanotechnology: Problems and Methods in Assessing Emerging Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Ulrich Fiedeler
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22 Compressed Foresight and Narrative Bias: Pitfalls in Assessing High Technology Futures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Robin Williams 23 Science Fiction, Nano-Ethics, and the Moral Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . 291 Rosalyn W. Berne About the Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
Contributors
Ira Bennett is a post-doctoral researcher at the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes and the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University. He studies policies, politics, and educational challenges of emerging nanotechnologies. Bennett holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry. Rosalyn W. Berne is an associate professor in the University of Virginia’s Department of Science, Technology & Society. Her interest in exploring science fiction as an ethical tool was inspired in part by the research she did for her latest book: Nanotalk: Conversations with Scientists and Engineers about Ethics, Meaning, and Belief in the Development of Nanotechnology (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 2006). ¨ Mark Bunger, Research Director at Lux Research, has fifteen years of business strategy experience as a management consultant and technology analyst. In this time, he has advised more than 40 Fortune 500 corporations and authored over 60 reports and other publications. B¨unger and his work have been cited by leading media outlets in the U.S. and Europe, including CNN, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. Steven C. Currall is Professor and Chair of the Department of Management Science and Innovation in the Faculty of Engineering Sciences at University College London, and Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship and Faculty Co-Director of the Institute of Technology at London Business School. Marian Deblonde is a senior researcher at the Research Center on Technology, Energy, and Environment at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Deblonde studied physics and philosophy at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, where she earned her Ph.D. Her research interests include technology assessment, interdisciplinarity, sustainable development, and the social studies of science. Johan Evers holds a degree in Bioscience Engineering from the University of Leuven, Belgium. He is interested in the ethical aspects of nanotechnologies. Evers is conducting Ph.D. research at the Centre for Science, Technology and Ethics at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. xv
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Ulrich Fiedeler, at the time of writing, worked at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis at the Karlsruhe Research Center in Germany. He has since joined the Institute of Technology Assessment at Vienna, Austria. He has studied the role of nanotechnology in chemical substitution, social issues of neuronal implants, and naturalness and neuronal implants. Fiedeler holds a Ph.D. in Physics. Guillermo Foladori is an anthropologist with a Ph.D. in Economics who has published over fifteen books and one hundred articles. He is a professor and researcher at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Mexico, where he specializes in environmental, health, and nanotechnology studies. Foladori co-coordinates the Latin American Nanotechnology and Society Network. Lieve Goorden coordinates the NanoSoc project for the Research Center on Technology, Energy, and Environment at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. She has held positions at the Flemish Foundation for Technology Assessment (Stichting Technologie Vlaanderen) and with the Strategy, Technology, and Policy research group at TNO-Institute of Applied Physics in the Netherlands. Goorden holds a Ph.D. in Political and Social Sciences. Noela Invernizzi is an anthropologist who works at the Education Faculty of the Federal University of Parana, Brazil. She researches the impacts of industrial innovation on workforce skills and employment conditions and the development and potential positive and adverse implications of nanotechnologies for Latin American countries. She co-coordinates the Latin American Nanotechnology and Society Network. Invernizzi holds a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Policy. Joseph Kennedy is adjunct professor at Georgetown University where he teaches a course on law and economics. Kennedy has worked as an economist and attorney in Washington for over two decades. He most recently served as Senior Economist at the Joint Economic Committee in the U.S. Congress, where he researched communications policy and nanotechnology. Eden B. King is an assistant professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology at George Mason University. The goal of her research is to contribute to the effective and equitable management of diverse organizations. Margaret E. Kosal is a professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Institute of Technology. Kosal was previously the Science and Technology Advisor on Chemical and Biological Defense and Chemical Demilitarization in the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense. She has served as a liaison in the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and as a representative to the National Nanotechnology Initiative, the Nonproliferation and Arms Control Technology Working Group, and NATO’s Research and Technology Organization.
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Haico te Kulve is a doctoral student in the Science, Technology, Health and Policy Studies Department in the School of Management and Governance at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. Formerly, he worked in the defense industry designing and manufacturing surveillance, fire control, and combat management systems. Griffith A. Kundahl, at the time of writing, was Vice President of the Convergence Group at Feinstein Kean Healthcare/Ogilvy PR Worldwide. He has since become the Director of Development at the University of Denver’s School of Engineering and Computer Science, and is a member of the Board of Directors and former General Counsel and Vice President of the Western Region of the NanoBusiness Alliance. Kundahl is co-author of The Handbook of Nanotechnology Business, Policy, and Intellectual Property Law (Wiley & Sons 2004) and an Associate Editor of Nanotechnology Law & Business. Neal Lane is the Malcom Gillis University Professor and Senior Fellow of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. From 1993 to 1998 he was Director of the U.S. National Science Foundation, and from 1998 to 2001 he served as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Lane holds a Ph.D. in Physics. Andreas L¨osch is a research fellow on the Models of Regulatory Embedding of Innovation Processes in Nanotechnology project at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Technology at Darmstadt Technical University, Germany. From 20032006 he was head of the Spaces of Medical Micro- and Nanotechnology project at the Institute for Sociology at Darmstadt Technical University. He co-edited Transforming Spaces: The Topological Turn in Technology Studies (2003). L¨osch holds a Ph.D. in Sociology. Juan Madera is a doctoral candidate at Rice University pursuing a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Terry Medley is Global Director of Regulatory Affairs at DuPont and leads DuPont’s nanotechnology environmental health and safety policy and regulatory efforts. Medley holds a Doctor of Jurisprudence Degree and was formerly the Administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Meyya Meyyappan is the Chief Scientist for Exploration Technology at the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Ames Research Center. Until mid2007, he was the Director of their Center for Nanotechnology. He has also been involved in technical work focused on carbon nanotubes and inorganic nanowires and their applications in sensors, instrumentation, and electronics.
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Georgia Miller has been the national coordinator of the Friends of the Earth Australia Nanotechnology Project since 2005. Miller has a strong interest in working towards technology development which prioritizes societal and environmental needs. She has worked with environmental and social justice organizations since 1994. Georgia has an Honors degree in Environmental Science. Michiel van Oudheusden is a doctoral student at Research Center on Technology, Energy, and Environment at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Oudheusden previously studied communications sciences, political philosophy, and international relations, and worked as a press officer in the Belgian Senate. Christine Peterson is a founder of and Vice President of Public Policy for the Foresight Nanotech Institute. Foresight’s mission is to ensure the beneficial implementation of nanotechnology. It seeks to educate the public, technical community, and policymakers in the U.S. on nanotechnology and its long-term effects. Peterson writes, lectures, and briefs the media on anticipated powerful technologies. Arie Rip, originally trained as a chemist, is a professor of philosophy of science and technology at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. He studies science policy and changes in knowledge production and developed the approach of Constructive Technology Assessment. He coordinates a program on technology assessment and societal aspects of nanoscience and technologies in the Dutch research consortium NanoNed. Hilary Sutcliffe, Director of Responsible Futures, runs the secretariat for the Responsible Nano Code and is also author of the paper, “An Uncertain Business, the Technical, Social and Commercial Challenges Presented by Nanotechnologies.” A specialist in corporate responsibility and multi-stakeholder processes, she has previously worked with businesses, government, and NGOs helping them to understand different stakeholder perspectives and develop practical, inclusive solutions. Ahmad Soueid, AIA, is a Principal and Senior Vice President of HDR Architecture, Inc. and focuses exclusively on the design and construction of advanced technology facilities. He is an internationally known leader in the design of nanotechnology facilities such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Advanced Measurement Laboratory, the Birck Nanotechnology Center at Purdue University, and the Center for Functional Nanomaterials at Brookhaven National Laboratory. ¨ managed Nanologue as a program coordinator at the Wuppertal InstiVolker Turk tute for Climate, Environment and Energy, an organization in Germany committed to application-oriented sustainability research and assessing the opportunities and challenges of new technologies. He is currently with E.ON Power and Gas. T¨urk also continues to work as Associate Director of Triple Innova, a Pan-European applied research and training organization.
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Stacy Turner was at Rice University when the article, “What Drives Public Acceptance of Nanotechnology?” was written. She has since joined the management consulting service Booz Allen Hamilton in the Strategic Human Capital Group. Scott Walsh is the Corporate Partnerships project manager at Environmental Defense (ED) and leads ED’s partnership with DuPont to ensure the safe development of nanotechnology. He has also worked on projects addressing sustainable seafood, antibiotic resistance, and fleet management. Walsh previously served as a business consultant with Boston Consulting Group, and as an environmental consultant with Jellinek, Schwartz & Connolly, and holds an MBA. Robin Williams is director of the Research Center for Social Sciences and codirector of Innogen, the European Social Research Council centre for Social and Economic Research on Innovation in Genomics at the University of Edinburgh, U.K. His research is focused on the interplay between social and technical factors in shaping technological artifacts and practices and their societal outcomes.
Introduction Erik Fisher, Cynthia Selin and Jameson Wetmore
Nanotechnology and the Future Since the mid 1980s, scientists, futurists, policymakers, business leaders, science fiction writers, and others have touted nanotechnology as the “next big thing.” Whether presenting this next thing as a cure for cancer, an investment opportunity, an ecological disaster, or a national competitiveness strategy, institutions and individuals tend to frame it in terms of envisioned outcomes. While presenters may have radically different ideas about the inevitability, desirability, or definition of nanotechnology, they often stage what they think should be done today against a backdrop of what could, should, or will happen tomorrow. This orientation to the future is characteristic of many new and emerging technologies. Yet, in the first decade of the 21st century, few technological domains are more saturated with expectations than nanotechnology. Many people associated with nanotechnology—including university researchers, government officials, corporate marketers, and environmental activists—use promises, projections, and expectations in an attempt to convince others that their particular views are important. And while such arresting visions as self-replicating nanobots and space elevators may presently be fading, global spending on nanotechnology continues to climb as governments jockey for position in anticipation of what many predict will be at least a US $1 trillion market. Thus, although the presently available products that include components engineered at the nanoscale are relatively mundane, the promise that further research and commercialization will yield a cornucopia of societal benefits continues to play a powerful role in generating the attention nanotechnology is receiving. The use of futures in the discourse and debates over nanotechnology is not, however, limited to those who wish merely to promote it. Individuals and organizations that want their perspective on nanotechnology to be heard often employ similar mechanisms. For instance, the promises of promoters are frequently countered by groups concerned about the possibility that the changes engendered by nanotechnology may not all be beneficial. Those who oppose the rapid pursuit of nanotechnology present their own visions of it polluting the environment or leading to inequities between countries and peoples. Even those people and institutions that cannot be simply classified as “for” or “against” nanotechnology often develop xxi
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scenarios and/or encourage others to think about and explore potential futures. In short, the ideas and imagery about the future that characterize much of the discussion about nanotechnology today are shaped by multiple values and agendas in an effort to influence numerous arenas including public investments, business strategies, infrastructure design, and dialogue among citizens. The premise of this book is that visions of and discussions about the future have become important political tools that can significantly influence decisions made today. It is based on the idea that analyzing and comparing approaches to the future is helpful for understanding how and why nanotechnology is being funded, researched, shaped, and challenged. To aid in this process, this book documents a variety of ways that nanotechnology actors think about, anticipate, and seek to shape the future. It provides an opportunity to examine side-by-side different conceptions of, reflections on, and preparations for the future in order to compare their differences and commonalities, critique their methods and strategies, and consider their potential effects.
Documenting Approaches to the Future As a yearbook, the contents of this volume are drawn from approximately a twelvemonth period spanning 2006 and 2007. This constraint did not prove to be an unnecessary burden. It does mean that the volume does not include a number of prominent and influential pieces that speak to the future of nanotechnology directly—most notably Richard Feynman’s 1959 lecture, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”; Eric Drexler’s 1986 Engines of Creation; Bill Joy’s 2000 Wired article, “The Future Doesn’t Need Us”; and Jean-Pierre Dupuy and Alexei Grinbaum’s 2004 “Living with Uncertainty: Toward the Ongoing Normative Assessment of Nanotechnology.” But a number of significant documents were produced and events occurred in this time period that clearly illustrate the important role that anticipation plays in debates over nanotechnology. For instance, the first seeds of nanotechnology regulation were sewn during this period. A risk assessment framework developed explicitly for nanomaterials was created through a partnership between an environmental organization and a major industrial chemical company. The government of a highly industrialized region in the European Union launched a participatory nanotechnology assessment program. And contentious debates and novel engagements focusing on the social implications of nanotechnology, its responsible development, and the role of publics, continued to intensify during this period. These events, which the Yearbook documents, provide examples of how those interested in nanotechnology mobilize and are motivated by ideas about the future. To illustrate a wide variety of the ways in which people employ futures, as well as the diverse goals they aim at, this collection includes chapters written by a wide array of actors. We have taken the somewhat unusual step of including not only scholarly articles, but also voices from government, industry, and civil society, in an effort to reveal the role that prospective thinking plays among practitioners who
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rarely have time to document and reflect on what they do. Accordingly, the book is at once a locus of academic analysis and a sourcebook of practices among private firms, think tanks, universities, and public institutes for comparison and further study. While we do not pretend to be fully inclusive, we have included an international set of scholars and practitioners that span nine countries on four continents. In addition to bringing together a diverse set of voices, we have also assembled some of the different formats that they employ. The book includes both documents and “artifacts” produced by governments, corporations, and non-governmental organizations that were designed to shape the direction of nanotechnology research and production. The artifacts illustrate approaches to the future in the form of words and images and include things such as press releases, government reports, and advertisements. This primary source material documents some of the future-oriented overtures to the imagination being presented in public forums. They suggest how varied and pervasive references to nanotechnological futures can be. Finally, in an effort to better understand how such events and artifacts come into being and, more generally, how the visions they carry are created, analyzed, and engaged, we include material that is meant to contextualize the activities of those involved in presenting nanotechnological futures. Most of these contributions are the result of a year-long seminar series sponsored by the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University during the 2006–2007 academic year. The series, entitled Studying the Future of Nanotechnology: Establishing Empirical and Conceptual Foundations, brought together leading scholars and practitioners. We asked them to explain and critique the approaches to the future in which they, or the organizations they represent, were engaged. We encouraged the authors to step out of their normal roles as analysts and practitioners in order to consider the assumptions, methodologies, and goals that underlie their work. In addition to the seminar contributions are a handful of academic papers produced during the same time period that provide a similarly reflective or contextualizing view. Ultimately, what distinguishes an artifact from its contextualization may be difficult to determine and may even collapse altogether. For instance, several authors describe programs of assessment that are meant not only to analyze artifacts and events, but also to engage actors associated with these artifacts and events in broader reflection. In this sense, then, the multiple layers of meaning found in each text serve as a commentary on the entanglement between those who make history and those who reflect upon it. The book is intended to provide a cross-section of these entanglements in order to help elucidate some of the foundational practices and operational concepts that are often taken for granted by those engaged in ongoing efforts to affect future outcomes.
Reading Futures Critically The collection, however, is meant to be more than a catalogue of visions and approaches to the future. It is intended to give the reader an opportunity to explore, reflect on, and ultimately critique nanotechnology futures. This can prove to be
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a challenge since the pieces not only present diverse and often conflicting social and technological standpoints, they also vary widely in terms of academic rigor, style, and rhetorical force. Some are theoretically complex and carefully clarify their concepts and assumptions, while others were designed to appeal to emotions to maximize political impact. Several contributions do both. While our role is primarily to present this rich and lively set of contributions to the reader, we do wish to offer some assistance in their interpretation. Therefore we include a brief introduction before each chapter to highlight the context in which it was created and to point the reader to other chapters in the Yearbook where particular discussions converge or diverge. We also include brief biographies of each author to give the reader some sense of his or her particular background. Additionally, the reader should bear in mind that there are multiple controversies surrounding the concept of nanotechnology—including its definition, novelty, and desirability. There are also many different potential ways of knowing the future—ranging from the fully predictable to the completely indeterminate. We encourage the reader to consider what each author counts as evidence and to observe the rhetorical strategies, logical tensions and agreements, and assumptions that underlie the various presentations. Yet while there are differences in perspective and format, often the authors who most sharply disagree still share some common assumptions. They are focused on the future because they believe that the modern world is on the verge of experiencing significant socio-technological change. Regardless of their particular understandings of such change, or of the abstract concept of nanotechnology itself, such authors are interested in nanotechnological futures insofar as they may be different from the present in meaningful ways. By and large, they work with the assumption that technology is a powerful force in society. Although some authors are more nuanced, this assumption can border on a technologically deterministic view in which new technologies drive social change. Another somewhat common assumption—although in tension with some versions of technological determinism—accords with the largely Western idea that the future is open for control, or at least negotiation. Either explicitly or implicitly, several contributors suggest that the actions of individuals, organizations, publics, and governments will play a decisive role in determining futures. This last point leads to a broader theme found within a number of the chapters in this volume. Many present futures in order to influence perceptions or mobilize action towards some end. In some sense, they can all be read as political documents. In lieu of factual certainty about the future, several contributors employ rhetorical strategies that directly or indirectly make claims about how the future might emerge, whether by suggesting that pursing nanotechnology is an economic imperative; by linking future technologies to images of social harmony or disharmony; or by playing on the universal concern for children by implying that certain steps are necessary to create a secure world for future generations. Others, mindful of the limited number of nanotechnology deliverables produced thus far, urge readers to be patient. Still others seek to provoke or facilitate the construction of nanotechnological futures in order to encourage deliberation or to harmonize disparate perspectives. In sometimes dramatically different ways, many of the pieces in this volume are
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designed to convince readers and viewers to endorse or to accept a specific vision or set of assumptions regarding the future of nanotechnology. Although a number of authors employ futures as political tools, this does not mean that they are similar in terms of political effectiveness. While academics by and large seek to develop informed arguments, their approaches may not translate quickly into social or political change. In a similar manner, the most vivid stories can have little effect if they are not accompanied by clear strategies for addressing problems. Such differentials in effectiveness can also be a function of the individual’s or institution’s resources and authority. As we have noted, not all authors locate themselves on one or another side of a simple debate. These contributors may be more concerned with social processes, political legitimacy, or decision dynamics— in short, with building general capacity for anticipatory governance—than with promoting or forestalling specific outcomes.
Presenting Futures The title of this first Yearbook of Nanotechnology in Society, Presenting Futures, is meant to signify three things. First, as Yearbook editors, we are presenting a collection of essays, articles, reports, images, and other “artifacts” in order to demonstrate and provide examples of the ways the future is being evoked in nanotechnology discourses. In bringing together these individual works, we offer a window into present forms of prospective discourse. Next, the authors of each chapter bring to light their modes of knowing, critiquing, and creating futures, and in this way make present their means of producing anticipatory knowledge. Finally, the title calls attention to the role of the reader, who is invited to critically engage with these presentations from the standpoint of the present. Thus, in exploring the presentations, we invite the reader to reckon with the instrumental and ideological implications they hold, both individually and collectively. It is our hope that through presenting the visions and practices of those attempting to shape the future of nanotechnology, this Yearbook will enhance the reader’s ability to critically attend to ongoing nanotechnologyrelated developments and discourses. Our principle intent is to go beyond asking what futures are being imagined and rather to ask how they are being imagined. This intent is in turn meant to enable greater reflexive awareness about what is occurring in the present. The Yearbook offers an opportunity to embark on an excursion, to reflect upon various futureoriented dimensions of contemporary nanotechnology-related endeavors. Reflecting on these varied and diverse approaches to the future, we hope, will provide those engaging in the debates about nanotechnology—whether as promoters, critics, facilitators, or observers—to take stock of the present and to reflect more robustly on how present ideas may—and may not—be collectively shaping tomorrow’s world. Depictions of tomorrow, whether taken to be the product of predictive certainty or mere conjecture, can serve as a powerful impetus for action. The combination of performance and argument can engender expectations and in turn garner support
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for specific ventures and agendas. Future talk extends beyond the halls of academic discussion. Individuals, communities, political parties, and national governments also mobilize it on an ongoing basis in order to accomplish specific objectives. Regardless of the prophetic value of thoughts about the future, how one thinks about and represents the future can influence actual events and conditions. By bringing together multiple perspectives, strategies, and agendas, the Yearbook offers an opportunity to explore the role of the future in the present. Visions of the future may appear to be rational alternatives, curious possibilities, or meaningless rhetoric, but they can all nevertheless do a great deal of work. By presenting various approaches to the future, this collection documents how contemporary cultural conceptions of science, technology, and society are created and ultimately influence our own cognitive frames, material practices, and social contests.
Chapter 1
Nanotechnology: The Future Is Coming Sooner than You Think Joseph Kennedy
This March 2007 report provides a broad overview of nanotechnology, including the promises and perils commonly associated with it, from the viewpoint of an economist employed by the United States Congress’s Joint Economic Committee. For the most part Kennedy endorses a highly optimistic set of expectations as the “most likely” future developments, going so far as to entertain an exotic—and controversial—prediction known as “the Singularity,” in which “most of today’s problems” are “solved by technology.” Kennedy implies that creating this future will be relatively straightforward. He presents a few short histories to argue that specific developments are almost inevitable because they follow from past events (compare Rip and te Kulve, ch. 4). He also suggests that those who “fear” nanotechnology need not be worried because “society has found ways to manage” problems associated with technologies (compare Sutcliffe, ch. 16), often through even newer technologies. Although Kennedy does not see a need for government to address potential “dangers” (unlike Miller, ch. 19), he does recommend government intervention to help ensure that the potential benefits of nanotechnology are realized (like Meyyappan, ch. 20). – Eds.
J. Kennedy Joint Economic Committee, Arlington, VA, USA Originally issued by the Joint Economic Council of the United States Congress in March 2007.
E. Fisher et al. (eds.), The Yearbook of Nanotechnology in Society, Vol. 1, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
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Nanotechnology: The Future is Coming Sooner Than You Think A JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE STUDY
Jim Saxton (R-NJ), Ranking Member Joint Economic Committee United States Congress March 2007 Abstract
Enhanced abilities to understand and manipulate matter at the molecular and atomic levels promise a wave of significant new technologies over the next five decades. Dramatic breakthroughs will occur in diverse areas such as medicine, communications, computing, energy, and robotics. These changes will generate large amountsof wealth and force wrenching changes in existing markets and institutions. This paper discusses the range of sciences currently covered by nanotechnology. It begins with a description of what nanotechnology is and how it relates to previous scientific advances. It then describes the most likely future development of different technologies in a variety of fields. The paper also reviews the governmentís current nanotechnology policy and makes some suggestions for improvement. Joint Economic Committee 433 Cannon House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Phone: 202-226-3234 Fax: 202-226-3950 Internet Address: http://www.house.gov/jec/
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In 1970 Alvin Toffler, noted technologist and futurist, argued that the acceleration of technological and social change was likely to challenge the capacity of both individuals and institutions to understand and to adapt to it.1 Although the world has changed a great deal since then, few would argue that the pace of change has had the discontinuous effects that Toffler predicted. However, rapid advances in a number of fields, collectively known as nanotechnology, make it possible that Mr. Toffler’s future has merely been delayed. In fact, some futurists now talk about an unspecified date sometime around the middle of this century when, because of the accelerating pace of technology, life will be radically different than at any prior time. This chapter discusses the range of sciences currently covered by nanotechnology. It begins with a description of what nanotechnology is and how it relates to previous scientific advances. It then describes the most likely future development of different technologies in a variety of fields. The chapter also reviews the federal government’s current nanotechnology policy and makes some suggestions for improvement.
What Is Nanotechnology? A nanometer (nm) is one billionth of a meter. For comparison purposes, the width of an average hair is 100,000 nanometers. Human blood cells are 2,000 to 5,000 nm long, a strand of DNA has a diameter of 2.5 nm, and a line of ten hydrogen atoms is one nm.2 The last three statistics are especially enlightening. First, even within a blood cell there is a great deal of room at the nanoscale. Nanotechnology therefore holds out the promise of manipulating individual cell structure and function. Second, the ability to understand and manipulate matter at the level of one nanometer is closely related to the ability to understand and manipulate both matter and life at their most basic levels: the atom and the organic molecules that make up DNA. Nanotechnology can be viewed on a variety of levels. The US National Nanotechnology Initiative defines nanotechnology as: [T]he science, engineering, and technology related to the understanding and control of matter at the length scale of approximately 1 to 100 nanometers. However, nanotechnology is not merely working with matter at the nanoscale, but also research and development of materials, devices, and systems that have novel properties and functions due to their nanoscale dimensions or components.3
A joint report by the British Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering similarly defined nanotechnology as “the design, characterization, production, and application of structures, devices and systems by controlling shape and size at nanometer scale.”4 The application of nanotechnology can occur in one, two or three dimensions. Thus it includes the use of an oxygen plasma twenty-five atoms thick to bind a layer of indium phosphide to silicon in order to make a computer chip that uses lasers to transmit data at one hundred times the speed of current communications equipment.5 In two dimensions it includes the manufacture of carbon nanotubes
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only one nanometer in diameter that may be eventually reach several centimeters in length. In three dimensions it encompasses the manufacture of small particles no more than a few nanometers in any dimension that might be used as an ingredient in sunscreens or to deliver medicine to a specific type of cell in the body. In a more general context nanotechnology can be seen as just the current stage of a long-term ability to understand and manipulate matter at ever smaller scales as time goes by. Over the last century, physicists and biologists have developed a much more detailed understanding of matter at finer and finer levels. At the same time, engineers have gradually acquired the ability to reliably manipulate material to increasingly finer degrees of precision. Although we have long known much of what happens at the nanolevel, the levels of knowledge implied by; (1) knowing about the existence of atoms, (2) actually seeing them, (3) manipulating them, and (4) truly understanding how they work, are dramatically different. The last two stages especially open up significant new technological abilities. At the nanolevel technology has just recently reached these stages. Two examples indicate the significance of current research. Biologists have known about the basic building blocks of DNA since 1953, but until recently did not know the exact DNA sequence of a human being. This occurred in the last decade. Viruses were another mystery, but now scientists not only know the DNA sequence, they have used this knowledge to build a virus that assembles a battery.6 As a second example, rather than just being able to see individual atoms with an electron microscope, scientists can now place a 20-nm indentation on a piece of material, creating a data storage system with the capacity to store 25 million printed textbook pages on a square inch chip.7 What makes work at the nanolevel more than just a natural progression of earlier work at the micro and macro levels of matter? For one thing the basic building blocks of matter and life occur at the nanolevel. Molecular chemistry, genetic reproduction, cellular processes, and the current frontier of electronics all occur on the nanolevel. Understanding how these processes work and, more importantly, being able to reliably manipulate events at this level in order to get specific outcomes, opens up the possibility of significant new advances in a wide variety of fields including electronics, medicine, and material sciences. Second, the nanolevel represents the overlap between traditional physics and quantum mechanics. At this scale the physical, chemical, and biological properties of materials differ in fundamental ways from the properties of either individual atoms or bulk matter.8 This makes the prediction of cause and effect relationships much more difficult and introduces phenomena such as quantum tunneling, superposition, and entanglement. As a result, material at the nanoscale can exhibit surprising characteristics that are not evident at large scales. For example:
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Collections of gold particles can appear orange, purple, red, or greenish, depending upon the specific size of the particles making up the sample.9 Carbon atoms in the form of a nanotube exhibit tensile strengths 100 times that of steel and can be either metallic or semiconducting depending on their configuration.
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Titanium dioxide and zinc oxide, common ingredients in sun screen, both appear white when made of macro particles. But when the particles are ground to the nanoscale, they appear translucent.
The Progression of Nanotechnology Why now? If it seems that nanotechnology has begun to blossom in the last ten years, this is largely due to the development of new instruments that allow researchers to observe and manipulate matter at the nanolevel. Technologies such as scanning tunneling microscopy, magnetic force microscopy, and electron microscopy allow scientists to observe events at the atomic level. At the same time, economic pressures in the electronics industry have forced the development of new lithographic techniques that continue the steady reduction in feature size and cost. Just as Galileo’s knowledge was limited by the technology of his day, until recently a lack of good instrumentation prevented scientists from gaining more knowledge of the nanoscale. As better instrumentation for observing, manipulating and measuring events at this scale are developed, further advances in our understanding and ability will occur. One leader in nanotechnology policy has identified four distinct generations in the development of nanotechnology products, to which we can add a possible fifth.10
Passive Nanostructures (2000–2005) During the first period products will take advantage of the passive properties of nanomaterials, including nanotubes and nanolayers. For example, titanium dioxide is often used in sunscreens because it absorbs and reflects ultraviolet light. When broken down into nanoparticles it becomes transparent to visible light, eliminating the white cream appearance associated with traditional sunscreens. Carbon nanotubes are much stronger than steel but only a fraction of the weight. Tennis rackets containing them promise to deliver greater stiffness without additional weight. As a third example, yarn that is coated with a nanolayer of material can be woven into stain-resistant clothing. Each of these products takes advantage of the unique property of a material when it is manufactured at a nanoscale. However, in each case the nanomaterial itself remains static once it is encapsulated into the product.
Active Nanostructures (2005–2010) Active nanostructures change their state during use, responding in predicable ways to the environment around them. Nanoparticles might seek out cancer cells and then release an attached drug. A nanoelectromechancial device embedded into construction material could sense when the material is under strain and release an epoxy
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that repairs any rupture. Or a layer of nanomaterial might respond to the presence of sunlight by emitting an electrical charge to power an appliance. Products in this phase require a greater understanding of how the structure of a nanomaterial determines its properties and a corresponding ability to design unique materials. They also raise more advanced manufacturing and deployment challenges.
Systems of Nanosystems (2010–2015) In this stage assemblies of nanotools work together to achieve a final goal. A key challenge is to get the main components to work together within a network, possibly exchanging information in the process. Proteins or viruses might assemble small batteries. Nanostructures could self-assemble into a lattice on which bone or other tissues could grow. Smart dust strewn over an area could sense the presence of human beings and communicate their location. Small nanoelectromechancial devices could search out cancer cells and turn off their reproductive capacity. At this stage significant advancements in robotics, biotechnology, and new generation information technology will begin to appear in products.
Molecular Nanosystems (2015–2020) This stage involves the intelligent design of molecular and atomic devices, leading to “unprecedented understanding and control over the basic building blocks of all natural and man-made things.”11 Although the line between this stage and the last blurs, what seems to distinguish products introduced here is that matter is crafted at the molecular and even atomic level to take advantage of the specific nanoscale properties of different elements. Research will occur on the interaction between light and matter, the machine-human interface, and atomic manipulation to design molecules. Among the examples that Dr. Roco foresees are “multifunctional molecules, catalysts for synthesis and controlling of engineered nanostructures, subcellular interventions, and biomimetics for complex system dynamics and control.”12 Since the path from initial discovery to product application takes ten to twelve years,13 the initial scientific foundations for these technologies are already starting to emerge from laboratories. At this stage a single product will integrate a wide variety of capacities including independent power generation, information processing and communication, and mechanical operation. Its manufacture implies the ability to rearrange the basic building blocks of matter and life to accomplish specific purposes. Nanoproducts regularly applied to a field might search out and transform hazardous materials and mix a specified amount of oxygen into the soil. Nanodevices could roam the body, fixing the DNA of damaged cells, monitoring vital conditions and displaying data in a readable form on skin cells in a form similar to a tattoo. Computers might operate by reading the brain waves of the operator.
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The Singularity (2020 and beyond) Every exponential curve eventually reaches a point where the growth rate becomes almost infinite. This point is often called the Singularity. If technology continues to advance at exponential rates, what happens after 2020? Technology is likely to continue, but at this stage some observers forecast a period at which scientific advances aggressively assume their own momentum and accelerate at unprecedented levels, enabling products that today seem like science fiction. Beyond the Singularity, human society is incomparably different from what it is today. Several assumptions seem to drive predictions of a Singularity.14 The first is that continued material demands and competitive pressures will continue to drive technology forward. Second, at some point artificial intelligence advances to a point where computers enhance and accelerate scientific discovery and technological change. In other words, intelligent machines start to produce discoveries that are too complex for humans. Finally, there is an assumption that solutions to most of today’s problems including material scarcity, human health, and environmental degradation can be solved by technology, if not by us, then by the computers we eventually develop. Whether or not one believes in the Singularity, it is difficult to overestimate nanotechnology’s likely implications for society. For one thing, advances in just the last five years have proceeded much faster than even the best experts had predicted. Looking forward, science is likely to continue outrunning expectations, at least in the medium term. Although science may advance rapidly, technology and daily life are likely to change at a much slower pace for several reasons. First, it takes time for scientific discoveries to become embedded into new products, especially when the market for those products is uncertain. Second, both individuals and institutions can exhibit a great deal of resistance to change. Because new technology often requires significant organizational change and cost in order to have its full effect, this can delay the social impact of new discoveries. For example, computer technology did not have a noticeable effect on economic productivity until it became widely integrated into business offices and, ultimately, business processes. It took firms over a decade to go from replacing the typewriters in their office pools to rearranging their entire supply chains to take advantage of the Internet. Although some firms adopted new technologies rapidly, others, lagged far behind.
The Structure of Nanotechnology Nanotechnology is distinguished by its interdisciplinary nature. For one thing, investigations at the nanolevel are occurring in a variety of academic fields. More important, the most advanced research and product development increasingly requires knowledge of disciplines that, until now, operated largely independently. These areas include:
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Physics—The construction of specific molecules is governed by the physical forces between the individual atoms composing them. Nanotechnology will
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involve the continued design of novel molecules for specific purposes. However, the laws of physics will continue to govern which atoms will interact with each other and in what way. In addition, researchers need to understand how quantum physics affects the behavior of matter below a certain scale. Chemistry—The interaction of different molecules is governed by chemical forces. Nanotechnology will involve the controlled interaction of different molecules, often in solution. Understanding how different materials interact with each other is a crucial part of designing new nanomaterials to achieve a given purpose. Biology—A major focus of nanotechnology is the creation of small devices capable of processing information and performing tasks on the nanoscale. The process by which information encoded in DNA is used to build proteins, which then go on to perform complex tasks including the building of more complex structures, offers one possible template. A better understanding of how biological systems work at the lowest level may allow future scientists to use similar processes to accomplish new purposes. It is also a vital part of all research into medical applications. Computer Science—Moore’s Law and its corollaries, the phenomena whereby the price performance, speed, and capacity of almost every component of the computer and communications industry has improved exponentially over the last several decades, has been accompanied by steady miniaturization. Continued decreases in transistor size face physical barriers including heat dissipation and electron tunneling that require new technologies to get around. In addition, a major issue for the use of any nanodevices will be the need to exchange information with them. Finally, scientific advances will require the ability to manage increasingly large amounts of information collected from a large network of sensors. 15
Electrical Engineering—To operate independently, nanodevices will need a steady supply of power. Moving power into and out of devices at that scale represents a unique challenge. Within the field of information technology, control of electric signals is also vital to transistor switches and memory storage. A great deal of research is also going into developing nanotechnologies that can generate and manage power more efficiently. Mechanical Engineering—Even at the nanolevel issues such as load bearing, wear, material fatigue, and lubrication still apply. Detailed knowledge of how to actually build devices that do what we want them to do with an acceptable level of confidence will be a critical component of future research.
Unfortunately, most of academia and the research community do not facilitate this type of multidisciplinary research. Work often tends to be compartmentalized into disciplines and subdisciplines with their own vocabularies. Research proposals are evaluated by experts within one area who neither understand nor appreciate developments in other fields. Young people coming into a field are usually rewarded for extending existing lines of research and take a risk if they try to look at the unexamined gaps between academic fields.
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Yet in nanotechnology most of the great possibilities are precisely in these gaps. In 2002 the National Academy of Sciences listed several important areas for investment in nanotechnology. All of them involved interdisciplinary research.16 The National Science Foundation is trying to encourage such research by awarding grants specifically for it. With so many sciences having input into nanotechnology research, it is only natural that the results of this research are expected to have a significant impact on a similarly broad range of applications. Ray Kurzweil labels these applications genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR),17 to which one can add information technology (GRIN).18 The National Nanotechnology Initiative has adopted the similar classification of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science (NBIC).19 These sciences interrelate in a number of ways: Nanotechnology—Nanotechnology often refers to research in a wide number of fields including the other three listed below. But in its limited sense it refers to the ability to observe and manipulate matter at the level of the basic molecules that govern genetics, cell biology, chemical composition, and the current and future generations of electronics. Researchers can then apply this ability to advance science in other fields. The broader definition of nanotechnology applies throughout most of thischapter, but it is worth remembering that advances in other sciences depend on continued improvements in the ability to observe, understand, and control matter at the nanolevel. This in turn will require more accurate and less expensive instrumentation and better techniques for producing large numbers of nanodevices. Biotechnology (Genetics)—Nanotechnology promises an increased understanding and manipulation of the basic building blocks underlying all living matter. The basic theory of genetic inheritance has been known for some time. But biologists do not fully understand the details of how life goes from a single fertilized egg with a full set of chromosomes to a living animal. Questions exist on exactly how the information encoded in DNA is transcribed, the role of proteins, the internal workings of the cell and many other areas. Basically DNA consists of a long string of four molecules; adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine. Since these molecules are read off in units of three (called codons), there are 64 possible combinations. Each combination corresponds to one of 20 amino acids. The amino acids in turn form proteins that fold in unique three dimensional ways and perform many of the functions within individuals cells. On a basic level, research is allowing us to tease out the genetic basis for specific diseases and in the future may reliably allow us to correct harmful mutations. But what would a full understanding of the genetic process give us? Could we develop DNA that uses a fifth and sixth molecule? Could the existing process be reprogrammed to code for more than 20 amino acids? To what extent is it possible to create brand new proteins that perform unique functions? A better understanding of biological processes is obviously needed in order to deliver the health benefits that nanotechnology promises. But it is also important for many reasons outside of biology. Those used to traditional manufacturing
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techniques may at first have difficulty with the concept of building a product up from the molecular level. Biology offers a template for doing so. A single fertilized egg in the womb eventually becomes a human being; a system of incredible complexity from a simple set of instructions 2.5 nm in diameter. Scientists are hopeful that similar processes can be used to produce a range of other products. Information Technology—Progress in information processing has depended on the continued application of Moore’s law, which predicts a regular doubling of the number of transistors that can be placed on a computer chip. This produced exponential improvements in computing speed and price performance. Current computer technology is based on the Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS). The present generation of computer chips already depends on features as small as 70 nanometers. Foreseeable advances in nanotechnology are likely to extend CMOS technology out to 2015. However, at transistor densities beyond that several problems start to arise. One is the dramatic escalation in the cost of a new fabrication plant to manufacture the chips. These costs must be amortized over the cost of the transistors, keeping them expensive. Second, it becomes increasingly difficult to dissipate the heat caused by the logic devices. Lastly, at such small distances, electrons increasingly tunnel between materials rather than going through the paths programmed for them. As a result of these constraints, any continuation of Moore’s Law much beyond 2015 is likely to require the development of one or more new technologies. Future advances will also bring us closer to a world of free memory, ubiquitous data collection, massive serial processing of data using sophisticated software, and lightening-fast, always-on transmission. What happens when almost all information is theoretically available to everyone all the time? Cognitive Sciences (Robotics)—Continued advances in computer science combined with a much better understanding of how the human brain works should allow researchers to develop software capable of duplicating and even improving on many aspects of human intelligence. Although progress in Artificial Intelligence has lagged the expectations of many of its strongest proponents, specialized software continues to advance at a steady rate. Expert software now outperforms the best humans in a variety of tasks simply because it has instantaneous access to a vast store of information that it can quickly process. In addition, researchers continue to develop a much better understanding of how individual sections of the brain work to perform specific tasks. As processing power continues to get cheaper, more and more of it will be applied to individual problems.
Does Nanotechnology Represent a Danger to Society? Few people would doubt that technology has brought great benefits to human society. Even those who are often the most vocal in shunning it are usually quick to adopt those aspects, such as better health and communication, which suit their purposes. In spite of these benefits, society has a love/hate relationship with new advances.
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This is partially because new technology always creates new economic possibilities, which upset those benefiting from the status quo. Luddites destroyed the first weaving machines because they threatened their existing jobs. The protesters gave little thought to the masses of people who might, for the first time, be able to purchase a second set of clothes at an affordable price. Perhaps deeper is an uneasiness with the uncertainty of where technology might ultimately take us. Is there such as thing as too much progress? Who exactly will benefit? What possible problems lurk and how will we deal with them? What are the social implications? These and other unanswerable questions have often been used as excuses to forego technology’s benefits in favor of the comfort of today’s problems. Nanotechnology has generated similar concerns. In perhaps the best known example, Bill Joy, former chief technology officer for Sun Microsystems, wrote an article in which he seriously questioned the wisdom of going forward with current research.20 Mr. Joy’s fears revolved around three possible threats:
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Nanodevices that get out of control. The minuteness of the nanoscale and the vast number of nanoorganisms or devices that are needed to be effective at a macroscale implies a certain loss of control once they are released into the environment. We will have created a lot of them and we will have trouble knowing exactly where they are or what they are doing. Some have expressed the fear that self-replicating nanobots might multiply out of control, eventually consuming all matter and covering the world in a “grey goo.” This threat, first raised by Eric Drexler in his book Engines of Creation and later the subject of a novel by Michael Crichton has since been widely discredited by most scientists. Beyond the issue that no one now knows how to make self-replicating machines, there are serious questions about how such a process could sustain itself without any clear source of energy. Even Eric Drexler has testified that the grey goo scenario is the wrong issue to focus on.21 The rapid proliferation of the knowledge and equipment needed to create new biological life forms. Mr. Joy is especially concerned that this knowledge intentionally will be used to create and release new pathogens. Unlike nuclear technology, the capacity to create biological weapons of mass destruction requires far less capital investment and is much easier to conceal. This concern is one that will have to be addressed. However, it is very hard to see how society can totally avoid this risk without at the same time giving up on technologies that promise to cure cancer, correct genetic defects, and create new organisms capable of cleaning up toxic chemicals.22 Mr. Joy’s final concern was that advances in information technology and artificial intelligence will eventually create an intelligence superior to ours, which may not act solely in our interest. Again Mr. Joy is far more likely to be right about the direction of technology than about its evil effects. The history of technology is that its benefits have vastly outweighed its dangers and that society has eventually found ways to manage even the worst dangers, often using further advances in technology. As with biotechnology, it is hard to see how society could avoid
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the possibility of running this danger without at the same time giving up all the benefits that greater automation promises. Some applications will be harmful and good science is needed to detect and respond to these harms as early as possible. Any broad technology brings both benefits and dangers. As discussed below, certain applications of nanotechnology do present serious environmental and health issues. These applications will have to be monitored and, if the harm outweighs the benefits, curtailed. But such decisions should be made on the basis of sound science, not emotional appeals about the dangers of the unknown. And government policy should reflect the fact that on the whole nanotechnology is expected to bring large net benefits to society and should be encouraged. Yet, the fear of technology displacing humans runs deep in the human psyche and explains events as diverse as the persecution of Copernicus and Galileo, the Salem Witch Trials, and the continued popularity of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein over a century after it was first written. There is also a strong tradition of Luddite opposition to any technology that threatens the existing market of any special interest. Presently, universities, optometrists, realtors, car dealerships, and others are all scrambling to protect themselves from competition enabled by the Internet. The special interests that seek these protections almost always try to justify them as efforts to protect consumers or society. Any application of technology that causes large costs quickly draws society’s attention to it and the costs it imposes provide a strong incentive to correct them. There are therefore reasons to think that, with careful monitoring any product that actually causes severe harm to the environment or health can be removed relatively quickly. Although there are legitimate issues about nanotechnology’s effects, any proper discussion of regulation should explicitly acknowledge the danger of letting special interests on either side hijack the process by using legitimate concerns as a pretext for barriers whose main purpose is really to satisfy the interests of narrow groups or to fan unfounded fears. Regulation should also explicitly weigh the risk of inhibiting beneficial uses against the benefit of preventing harmful applications.
Government Policy Toward Nanotechnology We should view government policy in this context. As explained above, nanotechnology is still in its early stages. Many of the most valuable commercial applications are decades away and require continued advances in basic and applied science. As a result, government funding still constitutes a large proportion of total spending on research and development. Within the United States, this spending is guided by the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI).23 The NNI coordinates the policy of twenty-five government agencies, including thirteen that have budgets for nanotechnology research and development.24 It has set up an infrastructure of over thirty-five institutions across the country to conduct basic research and facilitate the transfer of technology to the private sector.
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The NNI’s strategic plan sets out four main goals:25 Maintain a world-class research and development program to exploit the full potential of nanotechnology. Facilitate the transfer of nanotechnology into products for economic growth, jobs, and other public benefits. Develop educational resources, a skilled workforce, and the supporting infrastructure to advance nanotechnology. Support responsible development of nanotechnology.
The NNI is clearly geared toward developing the technology on a broad front, correctly seeing it as the source of tremendous benefits to society. Its mission is not to see whether we should go forward with research and development. It is to go forth boldly, while trying to discover and deal with possible risks. Despite the fears expressed by Bill Joy, there is relatively little serious debate among policymakers over possible long-term existential threats to mankind. The main topics of discussion are the possible health risks associated with nanoparticles and the need for greater public participation in the development of the technology. Each of these topics is worthy of discussion, but their implications for public policy are much more nuanced than many of their proponents realize. Neither is likely to seriously affect the broad development of these new technologies although they could improve the net benefits that society realizes from them. A number of concerns have been raised about the effect nanoparticles might have on human health. Precisely because of their small size, there is some fear that they might unintentionally penetrate the normal biological barriers that protect human health. For instance, could a certain particle penetrate human skin, from there cross tissue protecting the brain from foreign chemicals and finally migrate through cell walls to interfere with cell function? Note that in the future, some particles might be specifically designed to do exactly that in order to deliver medication to patients with brain tumors. The concern here is with unintentional exposures. The human body has already evolved defenses against constant exposure to a large variety of nanoparticles, including soot and bacteria. However, in the future many nanoparticles will have novel structures that neither our immune systems nor the environment have ever come into contact with before. Several animal studies show that certain exposures can lead to health problems, but it is far from clear whether the results have much relevance to the expected exposures humans will face. The central fear is that an engineered particle that is widely used could turn out to be like asbestos or PCBs and have serious long-term health consequences that are recognized only after thousands of people have suffered or large costs have been incurred. In fact, some scientists claim that carbon nanotubes exhibit properties similar to asbestos fibers at the nanoscale. A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that: “for now there is very little information and data on, or analysis of, [environmental health and safety] impacts related to nanotechnology” and that “the body of published research addressing the toxicological and environmental effects of engineered nanomaterials is still relatively small.”26 As a result, there has been a widespread call for more
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greater [sic] federal action to address possible health concerns before they arise. Some researchers have called for increasing the government’s power to regulate nanoproducts, arguing that existing laws such as the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and the Occupational Safety and Health Act are inadequate to deal with potential problems.27 Others have called for significant increases in research on the health effects of nanoparticles and a beeter prioritization of federal spending.28 A better understanding of how specific particles affect human health would be enormously valuable. But realizing this will not be as easy as many people would like. First, much knowledge will have to wait for the development of better equipment and facilities capable of measuring quantities and events on such a small scale. The National Academy of Sciences concluded that “[t]he ability to carry out comprehensive EHS R&D requires that techniques and instrumentation for characterization and measurement be developed that will enable determination of the exact composition of a nanomaterial in a substance or product, as well as the physicochemical properties of specific nanomaterials.”29 Equipment to accurately measure and observe events at the nanoscale is still relatively primitive compared to where it is likely to be in ten to twenty years. Second, spending more money on research does not necessarily mean that the research will be worth the money. Proponents of additional spending are right to point out that, given the relatively small amount currently being spent, the marginal benefits from spending are likely to be high, at least for the next few years. The National Academy of Sciences recommended increasing research on the environmental, health and safety effects of nanotechnology.30 Although the Academy did not cite a figure, others have called for spending $50 million to $200 million annually.31 Although this would represent a large increase from the approximately $35 million that the NNI claims to devote to the area now, if properly allocated through peer-reviewed grants by agencies such as the National Science Foundation, such a sum should produce large benefits for several reasons. First, once the results are published they will provide a good base for the private sector to build off of in evaluating the safety of proposed products. Second, the studies should further the knowledge of how engineered nanoproducts interact with biological systems at the cellular level. In addition to making it easier to avoid the production of harmful materials, this general knowledge should make it easier to engineer nanomaterials that accomplish beneficial health purposes. To a large extent, EHS research is a natural complement to efforts to use nanotechnology to combat diseases such as cancer. But rapid increases in funding do not automatically guarantee rapid increases in results. One important issue is the degree to which agencies should pursue a central list of research priorities. At present, although agencies coordinate through the NNI, each agency retains full control over its own budget decisions and sets its own priorities for research. The National Academy of Sciences concluded that “the NNI is successfully establishing R&D programs with wider impact than could have been expected from separate agency funding without coordination. . . .The committee believes that federal agencies have been motivated by their participation in NNI activities to establish priorities, coordinate programs, and leverage resources to a degree that has proved very effective.”32
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Although centralization might produce a consistent list of priorities, it does not always produce the best one. If centralization might steer funding toward important areas that the agencies might normally view as being outside their narrow areas of concern, it might also fail to fund some areas of research that are central to an agency’s mission. Centralized priorities are only as good as the process used to establish and implement them. Given that the NNI is presently based purely on collaboration, the best alternative would probably be to give the NNI a significant portion of independent budgetary authority that it could use to fund research in areas that fall in between or overlap the interests of the separate agencies. An independent budget would also give the NNI greater weight in guiding the agencies toward consistent progress on developing a coordinated nanotechnology policy but still leave the latter free to pursue their own mandates. It is also very clear that health research must be better coordinated with the private sector and government agencies at the state and international levels. Experiments done in one part of the world have immediate relevance to all other areas and there is great benefit in avoiding duplication and spreading research findings widely. The benefits of coordinating research among domestic and international laboratories are significant. A final issue concerns the obligations that private companies should face in ensuring the safety of the products they sell in the market. In many cases, such as cosmetics, these products face very little regulatory scrutiny prior to reaching consumers. The combined lack of testing and oversight has led at least one organization to call for a moratorium on the further commercial release of personal care products that contain engineered nanomaterials and the withdrawal of products currently on the market.33 The general issue of risk is discussed in greater detail below. But one legitimate concern is a lack of information on the amount and type of testing that testing companies perform in order to ensure that their products are safe. Under current law, companies are not required to disclose the results of any safety testing and many companies consider such research proprietary. The debate on the safety of using nanotechnology would be improved if three changes were made governing the use of nanotechnology in products. First, the use of nanotechnology should be clearly labeled on products so that consumers can make an informed choice about whether to use a particular product. At present, manufacturers are split on the marketing value of nanotechnology. Some tout it in their advertising even if their product does not technically contain nanoparticles, on the theory that consumers are attracted to new technology. Others, fearing a consumer backlash if consumers develop a negative view of nanotechnology, omit any mention of the word. Clearer labeling of exactly what ingredients are used and of the particle size would give consumers accurate information and reduce the possibility of a sudden backlash if there is a problem with one or more specific products. Consumers ought to have the ability to make independent judgments about whether to purchase products with nanoparticles. Second, private companies should be required to disclose to the Food and Drug Administration the results of any safety testing that they conduct and the FDA should immediately publicize any results that show a clear negative health effect. Companies would then probably find it in their interest to publicize neutral or
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positive findings. Disclosure of test results does have important strategic implications for companies that compete for market share. But, since most safety testing will be done by the private sector, members of the public should have the right to see what steps companies are taking to protect their health. This would also ensure that the debate over safety occurs in public with full information. While this might subject companies to some discomfort in the short-term, it will make it much more difficult for opponents of the technology to use public distrust to exploit any negative stories. Congress could encourage additional safety testing by making it easier for companies to collaborate on precompetitive research into the environmental, health and safety impact of nanomaterials. Additional efforts to identify the environmental, health and safety risks of nanoparticles will bring clear benefits. But the need to conduct these studies should not be used to prevent the introduction of new products. Science and technology have always involved a leap into the unknown, bringing with it an assumption of unforeseen risks. Opponents of technology can always point to examples of innovation gone bad such as asbestosis, DDT, PCBs. But their analysis of this risk omits three important facts. First, each of these products brought with them significant benefits which, at least for a while, could not be duplicated by other products. Indeed DDT has recently been reapproved for limited use to combat malaria. Second, even if the total cost of these products outweighed their benefits, the former were unnecessarily increased by a lack of full disclosure about research into their health effects. That is why an open debate about EHS testing is so important. It allows society to improve the cost/benefit equation of any given product. Third, and by far the most important, any testing policy that significantly delayed the use of these products might have also delayed the use of thousands of other products that did not prove to pose significant health risks. This would have had major impacts on economic growth and consumer welfare. Any policy that tries to stop harmful products from entering the market must try to do so without significantly delaying the vast majority of products that bring net benefits. One environmental group has made clear its position on nanotechnology. It calls for a moratorium on all products containing nanomaterials. In their words: “We believe that ethical concerns and the likely far-reaching socio-economic impacts of nanotechnology, must be addressed alongside concerns over nanotoxicity before the commercialization of nanotechnology proceeds.” One of the many criteria that they require to be met before nanomaterials can be commercially released is that “safety assessments are based on the precautionary principle and the onus is on proponents to prove safety, rather than relying on an assumption of safety.34 Rather than being an impartial look at the possible health risks of using nanoparticles in cosmetic products, the report is a biased swipe against a broad category of consumer products. In the case of sunscreens there is no discussion of the possible benefits that might occur if more people either use more sunscreen or find its use more enjoyable because standard ingredients such as zinc oxide and titanium dioxide appear clear rather than white at the nanoscale. This sort of possible benefit is simply assumed not to be important. Having established that the benefits are zero, the report then looks at the risks. Here its discussion is similarly one-sided. Although
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it cites the 2004 report of the Royal Society at least 14 times, it never mentions the report’s discussion of the regulatory approval for titanium dioxide. Nor does it point out that the Royal Society specifically found that a moratorium on nanotechnology was not justified. Of course, it is unclear how the standard advocated by Friends of the Earth could ever be met. Few products come with an absolute guarantee of safety for all portions of the population. Under this standard it would not be enough if a product’s cost/benefit ratio was positive or even very high. The question would be whether the product imposed any risks to society at all. And if there was even the possibility of a risk (and there would almost always be at least the possibility) then the product could be rejected. Proponents of growth should always remember that there is a certain section of the population that argues against the introduction of peanuts because exposure can be deadly to those with a strong allergic reaction to them. Similar arguments can and will be made against nanotechnologies even when an impartial cost/benefit evaluation shows that the technology will probably bring net benefits to society. The requirement to address “the far-reaching socio-economic impacts” also imposes an almost insuperable barrier. First, many of these impacts are unknowable because they depend on a variety of other events in the future. Widely used technologies do not impact society as single items. They combine to constitute a web of technology that changes the entire social system. It is usually meaningless to pick out one possible application of the technology and evaluate it apart from all the complementary and competing technologies that affect its impact on society. Second, many of the most significant impacts will occur because nanotechnology brings with it large benefits and therefore becomes infused into a wide variety of products in many industries. Most of those who are negatively affected by it will be so because the technology opens up new production, distribution and profit opportunities. They will quickly use arguments against the technology to seek competitive protection. There is a widespread desire to avoid repeating the mistakes of biotechnology, a technology whose advance has been substantially slowed by political opposition that has little scientific basis. But it is not really clear what the mistakes of biotechnology are. No human deaths can be attributed to genetically modified organisms. Nor has any product of biotechnology ever resulted in significant environmental harm. The potential health and environmental benefits of biocrops in the form of reduced use of pesticides, fertilizer, and fuel and improved vitamin delivery are totally discounted in favor of vague warnings against Frankenfood. One might wish that companies like Monsanto had been more open about their research and intentions, but this research surely would have been used against them by environmental groups who intentionally distort the debate by exaggerating any dangers and denying any benefits. It is far from certain that better studies and more open debate would have produced a more reasoned policy. Much of the reaction against nanotechnology is based solely on the fact that even if it has benefits, these benefits will change society in substantial ways. This is why opponents often mention the need to look at “socio-economic effects”. Similar
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arguments are being used today against the expansion of the Internet. Realtors have argued that home searches done over the Internet are not really the same as those done by a licensed professional and that the industry therefore should not have to open up its listing services to discount brokers. Optometrists have argued that contact lenses purchased over the Internet are not really as safe as those that they sell and that therefore they should be allowed to write prescriptions for brands that promise not to make their products available to Web stores. Of course, in neither of these arguments is there room for the consumer to determine what actually does or does not benefit him. Rather, the strategy is for the incumbents to make the decision for the individual. Had the development of the World Wide Web waited for a full understanding of its “socioeconomic effects” it would probably not exist today. In this context it is worth discussing what role the public should play in guiding the progress of nanotechnology. The NNI has defined seven Program Component Areas under which it groups related projects and activities. One of the Program Component Areas is devoted to the societal dimensions of nanotechnology. Within this category the NNI intends to foster the following activities:35
r r r
Research on the environmental, health and safety impacts of nanotechnology; Educational activities including the development for materials for schools, technical training and public outreach; and Research on the broad implications of nanotechnology, including social, economic, ethical, and legal implications.
This implies an intent to educate the public about the benefits (or costs) and progress of nanotechnology. Proponents of public education and EHS research frequently point to biotechnology as a lesson of why such efforts are needed. The belief is that after a very promising start, progress in biotechnology has been slowed, and in some cases even halted, due to a broad public reaction that is fueled by:
r
r r
r
Public health scares, although in most cases these had nothing to do with biotechnology. A good example is the damage caused by mad cow disease in England and the rest of Europe. Government delay and deception in dealing with this issue led to a significant decline in the public’s confidence about the government’s commitment to safety regulation, which opponents of biotechnology exploited. The lack of outreach and openness on the part of biotechnology companies such as Monsanto. These companies took the lack of public opposition for granted and did not respond rapidly to questions about the safety or economic benefits of their products. Lack of general public education about either the science or the economic benefits of genetically modified crops. This lack of knowledge provided little perspective with which to judge conflicting health claims. Since consumers did not know of any benefits biotechnology might bring, they had little reason to miss them. A determined opposition by some environmental groups that were adamantly opposed to the use of genetically modified crops under any conditions, regardless of the science. These groups engaged in a determined campaign to convince the
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public that biotechnology represents a grave threat to the public health and the environment. They took legitimate questions and expanded them into worst case scenarios and then made those scenarios seem like a certainty if a complete ban was not enforced. They often used violence to enforce their beliefs and gain publicity for their cause. It is hard to argue against public education. The public should have a voice in how public money is spent, and it should be an informed voice. Even within the NNI budget, allocations between theoretical research, medical applications, and EHS studies are subjects of legitimate debate. But it is important to have a realistic view of what public engagement can accomplish. As we go forward, an increasing proportion of investment in nanotechnology will come from the private sector. As a result, government will gradually lose much its ability to shape the direction of in which the technology advances. Decisions will increasingly be made by a decentralized collection of international businesses, universities, consumers and investors. Any attempt to subject these decisions to a collective decision process in order to manage broad “socioeconomic effects” is almost certain to do far more harm than good. But because the harm from overly stringent regulation will come mainly in the form of future beneficial technology that will be delayed or stopped altogether, it may not be immediately apparent. Government should, however, be involved in monitoring technological developments, identifying any specific environmental risks, holding manufacturers responsible for any harm that their products do cause, and, where appropriate, implementing carefully designed regulatory systems justified by careful cost/benefit analysis. Nanotechnology must be allowed to proceed as other transforming technologies such as chemistry, steam power, and electricity have done. It must proceed at its own pace and in its own direction. Better dialogue and research can help society deal with specific problems as they become apparent. It can also address the inevitable economic dislocation that will affect specific markets. But policymakers should not fool themselves into thinking that a collective political process can guide the future any better than the market can. Regulations need to be based on clear cost/benefit calculations supported by scientific evidence. And regulations to address specific identified risks should not delay the advancement of a broad range of products that will surely bring large social and economic benefits. The world in which our children live will surely be a different one. Whether it is a better one is largely up to them to decide. Continued technological advancement, including on the nanoscale, will not automatically make the world any fairer or safer, but it will increase the resources available to those who want to ensure that it is.
Notes 1. A. Toffler, Future Shock, Amereon Ltd., 1970. 2. Small Wonders, Endless Frontiers: A Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, National Research Council, Washington D.C., 2002, p. 5.
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3. The National Nanotechnology Initiative at Five Years: Assessment and Recommendations of the National Nanotechnology Advisory Panel, President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Washington, D.C., May 2005, p. 7. 4. Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies: Opportunities and Uncertainties, Royal Society and The Royal Academy of Engineering, UK, July 2004, p. 5. 5. J. Markoff, A Chip That Can Move Data at the Speed of Laser Light, New York Times, September, 18, 2006, p. C1. 6. K. Bullis, Powerful Batteries That Assemble Themselves. Technology Review, September, 8, 2006. Available at: http://www.technologyreview.com/read article.aspx?id=17553. 7. R. Booker and E. Boysen, Nanotechnology for Dummies, Wiley Publishing Inc., 2005, pp. 142–4. 8. The National Nanotechnology Initiative Strategic Plan, National Science and Technology Council, Washington D.C., December 2004, p. i. 9. M. Ratner and D. Ratner, Nanotechnology: A Gentle Introduction to the Next Big Idea, Prentice Hall, 2003, p. 13. 10. M.C. Roco, Nanoscale Science and Engineering: Unifying and Transforming Tools, AIChE Journal 50, (5): 895–6. Until recently, Dr. Roco chaired the US National Science Technology Council’s Subcommittee on Nanoscale Science, Engineering and Technology. 11. M.C. Roco, International Perspective on Government Nanotechnology Funding in 2005, Journal of Nanoparticle Research 7(6): 707. 12. M.C. Roco, Nanoscale Science and Engineering: Unifying and Transforming Tools, AIChE Journal 50(5): 896. 13. Ibid. 14. R. Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Viking Press, 2005. 15. See, Microsoft Corporation, Toward 2020 Science, http://research.microsoft.com/towards2020science/ background overview.html. Last accessed on March 20, 2008. 16. National Academy of Sciences, Small Wonders, Endless Frontiers, Washington, D.C., 2002, pp. 36–45. 17. R. Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Viking Press, 2005, pp. 205–98. 18. J. Garreau, Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—And What It Means to Be Human, Doubleday, 2005. 19. M.C. Roco, The Emergence and Policy Implications of Converging New Technologies, In W.S. Bainbridge and M.C. Roco eds., Managing Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno Innovations: Converging Technologies in Society, Springer, 2006, pp. 8–22. 20. B. Joy, The Future Doesn’t Need Us, Wired, April 2000. 21. The Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering, Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies: Opportunities and Uncertainties, RS Policy Document 19/04, July 2004, p. 109. 22. See also, M. Williams, “The Knowledge,” Technology Review, March/April 2006, p. 44. 23. Significant legislation governing the NNI includes the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act (P.L. 108–53). Interagency coordination is managed by the Nanoscale Science, Engineering, and Technology Subcommittee within the National Science and Technology Council. 24. For a good description of the NNI, see, National Science and Technology Council, The National Nanotechnology Initiative: Supplement to the President’s 2007 Budget, Washington D.C., July 2006, Available at: http://www.nano.gov/NNI 07Budget.pdf. 25. National Science and Technology Council, The National Nanotechnology Initiative, Strategic Plan, Washington D.C., December 2004. 26. National Research Council, A Matter of Size: Triennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, Committee to Review the National Nanotechnology Initiative, National Academy Press, Washington D.C., 2006, p. 78. 27. See, J. Clarence Davies, Managing the Effects of Nanotechnology, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, Washington D.C, Available at: http://nanotechproject.org. Last accessed on March 20, 2008. 28. See, A.D. Maynard, Nanotechnology: A Research Strategy for Addressing Risk, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, Washington D.C., July 2006, Available at: http://nanotechproject.org. Last accessed on March 20, 2008.
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29. Committee to Review the National Nanotechnology Initiatives and National Research Council, A Matter of Size: Triennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, Committee to Review the National Nanotechnology Initiative, National Academy Press, 2006, p. 80. 30. Id. p. 92. 31. See, A.D. Maynard, Nanotechnology: A Research Strategy for Addressing Risk, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, July 2006; Testimony of Matthew M. Nordon, President, Lux Research Inc., September 21, 2006, US House of Representatives Committee on Science. 32. National Research Council, A Matter of Size: Triennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, Committee to Review the National Nanotechnology Initiative, National Academy Press, 2006, p. 6. 33. Nanomaterials, Sunscreens, and Cosmetics: Small Ingredients Big Risks, Friends of the Earth, May 2006. 34. Id., p. 17. 35. National Science and Technology Council, The National Nanotechnology Initiative, Strategic Plan, Washington D.C., December 2004, Available at: http://www.nono.gov/NNI Strategic Plan 2004. pdf. Last accessed March 20, 2008.
Chapter 2
The Workers’ Push to Democratize Nanotechnology Guillermo Foladori and Noela Invernizzi
The optimism about the future of nanotechnology that Kennedy embodies in the previous article is not shared by all. The same month that the Kennedy report was published, the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF)—a federation representing 12 million workers from 120 countries—issued a resolution strongly critical of the rapid pace of nanotechnology development in light of potential social, economic, and safety implications for workers (see also ETC Group, ch. 10). In this chapter, Foladori and Invernizzi offer a commentary on the IUF resolution. Their analysis, which is clearly sympathetic to the resolution, elaborates upon the rationale behind the IUF stance on issues such as public participation (T¨urk, ch. 8; Currall et al., ch. 7), patent granting (Kundahl, ch. 15), and research into the effects of nanotechnology on employment conditions. Thus while Foladori and Invernizzi share Kennedy’s (ch. 1) conviction in the revolutionary implications of nanotechnologyenabled products and capabilities (as does Miller, ch. 19), they have a very different set of opinions about why and how nanotechnology should be pursued. – Eds.
G. Foladori Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Zacatecas, Mexico Originally posted online by the authors at: http://estudiosdeldesarrollo.net/relans/documentos/ UITA-English-1.pdf
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Introduction Nanotechnologies are the next industrial revolution. In the years to come the application of these technologies will be extended to most, if not all, productive sectors. Like any other technological revolution, this will be accompanied with deep changes in social and economic structures. Many technologies, raw materials, and existing products will become obsolete, forcing enterprises to restructure their plants and productive processes. The demands of the work force will change both qualitatively and quantitatively, provoking profound readjustments. Society will have to confront and adapt itself to new patterns of consumption, production, and ways of living. These potential changes have brought into the debate economic, social, and ethical issues related to the use of nanotechnologies and have also generated concerns about the emergence of new risks. In this article we analyze the resolution of the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) on nanotechnologies, contextualizing it in the current debate on the social and economic implications of nanotechnology and its potential risks to health and the environment. The IUF resolution carries considerable political weight, considering its global scope, as it represents about 12 million workers from more than 120 countries. This resolution is the first one to come from the core of a mass movement expressing the interests of the working class in relation to the use of nanotechnologies before it is apparent exactly how workers will be affected. This should be welcomed, as it represents an active participation of a fundamental sector of society in the discussion about the paths that science and technology are taking. In recent decades, public participation in science and technology has been sought as an expression of democracy and citizenship. Most public participation experiences have been developed via mechanisms in which a group of citizens, as representatives of society, discuss and debate a given topic. However, in this case, we are seeing a mass organization taking a collective position that explicitly represents the interests of a particular sector of the society. The future of nanotechnologies, and their role in development, would better reflect social needs if, as with IUF, different organized groups would take part in the discussion. Further study is required to evaluate the future development of a new technology. To think that only scientists have that knowledge is to forget and leave aside the fact that technologies are developed within a social and economic context, denying the historic experience accumulated by individuals and social groups. The evaluation of the development and impacts of past technologies is one method to analyze what can happen with the implementation of future technologies. The IUF’s declaration is based on the historic experience of the workers, from the industrial revolution to the most recent wave of automation. At first glance, it could be concluded that, in such a historic process, labor and living conditions of the working class have improved. However, technologies haven’t brought such consequences by themselves; they were the result of significant social struggles. The working class has been repeatedly affected by the introduction of new technologies into the labor process,
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going through the consequent elimination of jobs, unemployment, migration of labor, and the obsolescence of skills and professional training. For that reason, the current preoccupation contained within the IUF’s declaration resulted from an analysis of the possible impacts of using nanotechnologies, such as the changes in the international division of labor, the increase in unemployment, the emergence of new health risks for workers, and the concentration of wealth, all factors that are within the logical expectations of the working class.
The Nanotechnology Revolution Nanotechnologies are the most important technological revolution of our times. The technical characteristic that distinguishes them is the production of new materials and the fact that known materials have been given new uses. This is feasible because nanotechnology manipulates material at the atomic, molecular, and macromolecular level, which results in new properties for the material, different from those known in the size in which they appear in nature (RS & RAE 2004). Carbon, in its known form as graphite, is soft and an electric conductor; as a diamond, also a natural form, it is the hardest substance and does not conduct electricity. However, fullerenes, created with nanotechnology, form fullerite crystals which, mixed with elements such as rubidium and potassium, are converted into superconductors. Furthermore, carbon nanotubes, also created using nanotechnology, are very hard, up to a hundred times more resistant than steel, and at the same time six times lighter, and are electric conductors and superconductors (Terrones 2005). At the same time that elements on the nanoscale provide us with new properties that can be used to our advantage, they may also generate new and unknown types of toxicity (Bartis & Landree 2006, 6). To this end, current regulations are in no way adequate or sufficient and new evaluations are required, a fact which is recognized by American and British experts (Food navigator.com 2006; Carlstrom 2005). As a result of the new materials and properties that can be found in materials that are already known, it is possible to bring together in one single product functions that used to require a number of products. Australia’s TipTop bread, for instance, contains Omega 3 nanocapsules (www.tiptop.com.au). Therefore, in addition to its ordinary purpose as a foodstuff it is also a food supplement, something that used to be obtained through pills, olive oil, etc., which had to be packaged, commercialized, and sold separately. Nanotech Inc. produces paint with different functions such as significantly increasing thermal insulation while acting as an anticorrosive and antifungicide (Barra˜no´ n 2007). Again, several existing products are combined into one. Clothes that do not get wrinkled, are stain free, and can maintain body temperature irrespective of external temperatures is another example of this same tendency to combine different functions into one product by way of nanotechnologies. In other cases, the new nanotechnology product replaces the old because it carries out the same function more efficiently. A sunscreen that can penetrate deeper into the skin and totally block ultraviolet rays could quickly substitute its predecessors
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(BusinessWeek 2005). Packaging that issues a warning when the validity expires and which can prolong the life of its contents would do away with a great deal of supervision and maintenance work and the products currently used to carry out these functions. In terms of capital accumulation, nanotechnologies may be considered as the equivalent of conquering a new world as the enabling character of these technologies means they can be applied to practically any production process with a resounding victory over old technologies and products. Given their disruptive characteristics, and the fact that they are arising in a highly globalized world market, it is foreseeable that the speed with which they reach the market on a worldwide scale and the scope of their diffusion will be larger than any previous technological revolution. It is clear that this will have deep hitting effects on the social division of labor. New industrial lines will appear and others will vanish. Vegetable textiles, iron, copper, coffee, and tea, and many other natural products, could find themselves reduced as merchandise imported by developed countries and, as a result, whole sectors of the world economy as we know it today will be torn apart (ETC Group 2005b). Nanotechnologies will have a deep impact on the working classes. On the one hand, this is because the multiplication of functions that will be a characteristic of nanotechnology products will significantly reduce the workforce required for the manufacturing process, handling, storage, transport, and commercialization of older products which will be disappearing off the market. On the other hand, this will happen because it is likely that lower dependence on environmental contingencies and natural resources will mean a change in the geographic location of industries, consequently displacing the workforce and leading to labor migration. Cient´ıfica, a company that provides consultancy and information on nanotechnology, published a report early in 2007 (Cient´ıfica 2007), which concludes that there is an ongoing centralization process in companies that produce nanomaterials, reducing small firms and concentrating production in large multinational chemical corporations. At the same time, the report highlights that the production of nanoparticles will allow many lines of production to incorporate nanocomponents into their products, thus projecting a market for products with nanoparticles at 1.5 trillion (1012 ) dollars for 2015. While this opens up many opportunities for the accumulation of capital, the outlook is not so good for the working classes and the underprivileged, who will bear the brunt of the impact of these changes in production. The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) is an international federation of trade unions of workers in agriculture and crops, the preparation and processing of food and drinks, hotels, restaurants, and catering services, and all phases of the production and processing of tobacco. It is a huge federation with a long history, stretching back to 1920. Today its membership is made up of 365 unions from 122 countries, representing a total of 12 million workers (IUF n.d). The Latin American Regional Secretariat of this federation (Rel-UITA) met in October, 2006, in Santo Domingo, for its 13th regional conference. With the presence of thirty-nine workers’ organizations from fourteen countries and ninety-five delegates, a resolution was passed on nanotechnologies (Rel-UITA 2007). In general
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terms, the declaration called for public debate, warning that products containing nanocomponents were being launched onto the market before civil society and social movements had a chance to assess their possible implications in economic, environmental, and social terms and their effect on human health. Furthermore, the declaration warned of the need to make sure that the debate of a matter that will lead to deep social changes should not be left to the “experts.” This is possibly the first declaration issued at a continental level by a federation of trade unions. Months later, in March, 2007, the 25th Congress of the IUF was held in Geneva. Rel-UITA introduced the Santo Domingo resolution into the talks, and it was approved, thereby extending its impact to all 122 countries and over 12 million workers. A resolution of this nature, clearly questioning the way nanotechnologies and their products are being introduced, certainly means that reflection on this issue is necessary.
The IUF Resolution on Nanotechnologies There are six points in the IUF resolution. In the following sections we analyze each of these points. 1. To mobilize our affiliated organizations and urge them to discuss with the rest of society and governments the possible consequences of nanotechnologies. In developed countries there is an attempt to bring public debate and participation into the development of nanotechnologies. Several countries have a great deal of experience in the mechanisms of the participation of the layman in the evaluation of technologies and decision making on science and technology. These mechanisms recognize the need to democratize decision making in science and technology, going beyond the evaluation of “experts.” The level of democratization varies depending on the concrete goals that are sought through public participation. When the aim is to detect potential negative implications of a given technology, which can range from risks to ethical dilemmas, this opens up the possibility for social intervention in the design and regulation of this technology. When the goal is to assess the reactions of consumers to new products, to provide guidance for companies to improve their image, democratization is restricted to the sphere of consuming. The level of democratization also depends on the design of methodologies of participation. Most are aimed at the “general” public and directly involve a small number of citizens. This leads to questioning whether society is effectively represented and its real power to influence decisions. Although a handful of citizens can gauge public perception of a technology, citizens, taken as individuals, have no political power to mobilize and negotiate in the way that civil organizations and organized social movements do. Although social organizations defend the interests of specific sectors and class interests and their position on a certain technology tends to lean towards their interests, this tendency should not be seen as an obstacle to democracy but rather as part of the rules of the democratic game.
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The IUF resolution, adopted by and directed towards hundreds of unions, also follows this trend in that it analyzes the issue from the point of view of its workers in this debate. The IUF is not opposed to nanotechnologies in principle, nor does it discuss the technical potentials. However, the IUF raises the issue of its speed, consequences, and social implications. The IUF resolution, besides its explicit contents, plays an important social role: that of warning, not only its members, but also governments, industry, and international organizations that this sector of the civil society is alert when it comes to the development of nanotechnologies. 2. To demand that governments and the international organizations concerned apply the Precautionary Principle, prohibiting the sale of food, beverages, and fodder, and all agricultural inputs which contain nanotechnology, until it is shown that they are safe and to approve an international system of regulation specifically designed to analyze these products. The history of the Precautionary Principle, referred to here by the IUF, stretches back to the 1970s and has been used in some international agreements and legislation. The Montreal Protocol (1987), dedicated to the substances that can reduce the ozone layer, refers to precautionary measures that must be taken. The Rio Declaration of 1992 also advises countries to take precautions to protect the environment. In 2000, the European Commission issued a communiqu´e on the Precautionary Principle. This principle consists, in general terms, of a measure of public policy to be applied when there are potential serious or irreversible risks to health or the environment, and before such risks become real dangers. This policy assumes, among other things, that there will be research and monitoring mechanisms so that dangers can be detected in advance (EEA 2001). The Precautionary Principle assumes that measures to protect health and/or the environment will be taken before there is any solid scientific evidence that the risks do indeed exist; in other words, products subject to the Precautionary Principle must offer “reasonable scientifically grounded assurance that they pose no danger.” In this way, the Precautionary Principle contains a scientific basis (there is no danger) and a political and general basis (reasonable assurance) (Groth III 2000). Although there already are some proofs, and all governmental risk assessment institutions recognize that nanoparticles have different toxicity, the scientific evidence concerning the risks of nanotechnology products is still rather thin on the ground. Owing to the lack of methods and the scarce scientific data, a preventive and cautious policy would be to put a stop to research (the workers, scientists, and laboratory technicians could come to harm) and the commercialization of nanoparticles (consumers could come to harm) until scientific proof is given that shows there are no risks or that if there are risks, they can be reverted. This latter statement reflects the IUF resolution, being against the tendency of businesses to launch nanoparticles on the market before sufficient research has been done to evaluate their potential dangers. From the financial viewpoint, there are those who argue that regulation can only stand in the way of the development of nanotechnology and point to the information technology revolution as an example, as it thrived in an unregulated environment
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(Wolfe 2005). But it is obvious that workers have no need to be concerned about the growth of business, but rather with the need for regulation. The case of the United States shows that regulating new technology is no simple task. A document from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS) analyzes a regulation guideline, the Toxic Substance Control Act of the United States, and concludes that this does not take into consideration the difference in the behavior of substances between the macro level and the nanoscale. This is fundamental, since the properties of a chemical substance change depending on the scale. The Toxic Substance Control Act also fails to consider the possible new functions of nanoparticles. Therefore, to give an example, not always are the results of carbon nanotubes clear as they are used in dozens of different circumstances and carry out new functions (WWICS 2003). In a more detailed document, the same institution analyzes all the legal instruments of the United States concerning the toxicity of nanoparticles. It concludes that, despite there being a number of laws which provide a basis for regulating nanotechnologies, all of them are flawed due to the novel characteristics of the substances involved; therefore, it is doubtful that they can protect the public from potential risks (Davies n.d.). Another difficulty that faces regulation is the shortage of funds for research into risks. It is estimated that of all the resources given to nanotechnology worldwide, less than 4 percent is set aside for researching possible health and environmental risks or their legal, ethical, social, and economic implications. When the IUF calls for international regulations, it is a few steps ahead of industry and government proposals. While industry, business, and the financial sector concentrate on research and regulations to lower the “negative risk perception,”1 they are leaving open the possibility that corporations will move their capital from country to country, seeking those nations where regulation is weakest. It may not be a coincidence, for example, that in Mexico, on the border with the USA, what is being called the largest industrial estate for nanotechnologies in Latin America is being built (Foladori & Zayago 2007). An international regulation, as proposed by the IUF, could put an end to these business “labyrinths.” 3. To demand that national and international patent offices, like the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), decline to register all patent applications utilizing nanotechnology in the food industry and agriculture, until larger issues such as their social and environmental impact have been assessed with the participation of all stakeholders. Patents are a form of intellectual property rights along with brand names, copyright, and business secrets. Over the last few decades, knowledge as intangible capital has been substituting physical capital as a source of profits. It is supposed that patents guarantee innovation by allowing their owner to set monopolistic prices on products that are patented for twenty years. However, patents also play a fundamental role in the financial markets. Even though only about 2 percent of patents end up being applied to a product, their potential can raise their prices and the value of the patent-holding companies, creating bubbles of economic growth that are not always based on the material economy.
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The race for nanotechnology patents began in the mid 1990s, when only two thousand or so nanotechnologies patents had been registered worldwide. Since then, the growth in the registration of patents has been geometric, and ten years later there were six thousand registered patents (Regalado 2004). Whoever controls the patents will control the new technology. Even when few of them will actually materialize into marketable products, the fact is that patents are the battle horse of companies these days. Patents can be used as a barrier against entry into a certain area of business, they can do away with competitors, serve to obtain profits through their sale, increase the value of a company’s shares, and bring extraordinary profits when applied to market products. Nevertheless, nanotechnology patents face many practical difficulties. The classification systems of patents are not adapted to the specific nanotechnology properties, nor is there any specific classification for them in a way that is arguable if a great deal of inventions enters the nanotechnology field. The enabling characteristic of many nanoproducts, such as carbon nanotubes, which can serve many uses means that the same patent can be applied to many different products; as a result, the patent could reach a high market price. These difficulties have generated in the USA a legal dispute surrounding patents, legally contested patents, high legal fees, and uncertainty on the part of judges. The ETC Group published a document in which it argues that to patent the basic elements and the devices of nanotechnology could monopolize any possibility for research and development (ETC Group 2005a). As many of the elements invented by nanotechnologies can have many different uses, whoever acquires the patent for a carbon nanotube or a fullerene could close the doors on research into the potential uses of the products. Another problem is the patents filed on the nano version of products that are traditionally used. One person in China has nine hundred patents on products related to the nanoscale version of traditional medicine. Furthermore, the ETC Group document points out that most patents are already concentrated in the United States, Japan, Germany, Canada, and France, in the hands of large multinational corporations such as IBM, Micron Technologies, Advanced Micro Devices, and Intel. Although small or developing countries may patent some inventions, it is clear that the new nanotechnology revolution will give an advantage to the corporations and countries that own most of the patents and can exercise their monopolistic power. The impacts could be devastating for many businesses and countries. Nanotechnology in agrifood is a dynamic field for patents. In the agricultural sector, large corporations such as BASF, Bayer Crop Science, Syngenta, and Monsanto are patenting nanoencapsulated pesticides that dissolve in water with greater durability, require a lower quantity of active product, and are more lethal or only affect their target, without any announced side effects (ETC 2004). The nano version of an old pesticide, in some cases, can lead to the creation of a new pesticide and as a result extend the lifespan of the original patent. In the field of food and nutraceuticals, nanocapsules are also used and nanocochleates for the provision of food supplements and/or for changes to the flavor, texture, and color of food. Many of these procedures have been patented. Aquanova patented a solution that combines a reduction of fats and satiety in one package (NovaSOL); Unilever has patents for
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nanoemulsifiers that are applied to food and cosmetics. Along with Nestl´e, Unilever has patents for nanocapsules for food and food supplements. Kraft also has patents on nanocapsules and nanoparticles for food. In agriculture, the revolution of nanotechnologies may be as devastating for peasants and small farmers as the introduction of mechanized farming. In the food industry, the substitution of the labor force, the obsolescence of many branches of industry and services, and the rise of new branches with no union or organizational precedents is without doubt a worry for many workers. The demand of the IUF to halt granting international patents touches on the nerve center of the nanotechnology business since, otherwise, business would come before the needs of and risks to consumers and workers, as is already happening. 4. To demand that the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) update the Codex Alimentarius, taking into account the use of nanotechnology in food and agriculture. The Codex Alimentarius is a set of standards, practices, and recommendations concerning the production of food and its handling, the purpose of which is to provide safety for the consumer. It was created in 1963, and in the Commission whose task is to keep it up to date are the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). As this code is recognized by the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a reference point for the solution of disputes, the call from the IUF on this point will also affect international transactions. The application of nanotechnologies to agriculture and food is increasing rapidly. Estimates of the Helmut Kaiser consultancy place the branch of nanofood among those which will most grow in the short term, its market going from 7 billion dollars in 2006 to 20.4 billion dollars in 2010 (Kaiser 2004). Nanoforum.org (The European Nanotechnology Gateway) published its report Nanotechnology in Agriculture and Food in early 2006 (Joseph & Morrison 2006). In this report, these activities were updated on a worldwide scale; the same activities had already been set out and identified in greater detail in the ETC Group document (2004) entitled Down on the Farm. Nanotechnology deals with precision agriculture, in which many variables are monitored and in which inputs such as water, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc., are applied in the specific quantity and place where they are needed. The “intelligent” distribution of inputs in vegetables, utilizing systems that detect the health of each one of the crops, warns farmers of imbalance even before they notice it and provides nanocapsules that avoid secondary effects and limit the amount to what is necessary. There are also other applications, such as the cultivation of gold nanoparticles through their capture by certain plants that absorb them from the soil that contains them, or the cleaning of soil and water courses. If these nanoparticles have secondary effects during their production, their use, or where they end up at the end of their life cycle, is something that science does not know for sure. This is the basis for the demands of the IUF. Among the many possible applications of nanotechnologies in the food industry, the revolution of packaging is possible the closest. Intelligent packages can warn
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the consumer when its content has expired or contaminated; they are capable of responding intelligently, adapting to changes in the environment or their own deterioration, fixing openings or tears; they are antimicrobial; and microchips can be incorporated into the product itself, not only the packaging, microchips which track the product until it has been consumed. All these are innovations which will replace jobs, instruments, and machinery and redesign the social division of work (ETC Group 2004). Interactive food and nutraceuticals are other areas of great interest. Interactive food contains nanocapsules with colors and flavors which are only released when the consumer, or his organism, demands them. Nutraceuticals are foods which contain food supplements, medicaments, or cosmetics, like the Australian bread TipTop that we mentioned above. In 2002, Nestl´e and L’Oreal, two well-known companies, the former in the food industry and the latter in cosmetics, announced that they were setting up a joint venture called INNEOV to produce cosmetic food that improve the quality of the skin, nails, and hair (Nestl´e 2002). Several nanotechnology techniques enable these combinations, like the nanocapsulate which, along with nanosensors, would allow the “cosmetic part” of the food to remain inactive but liberate it should deficiencies be detected in the organism. 5. To request the WHO to initiate short and long-term studies into the potential effects of nanotechnology—especially nanoparticles—on the health of the technicians and workers that produce them, users and consumers. For decades now there have been regulations for safety in the workplace and safety for the consumer. Why can the same criteria not be used for work with nanotechnologies and the consumption of products containing nanotechnology? Andrew Maynard, a specialist on safety and occupational health for the Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in the United States, explains that the conventional form in which eventual risks of materials, liquids, gases, and vapors are analyzed is by their mass and composition. The problem with nanoparticles and nanodevices is that their small size means that they are far more reactive because they have a greater exposed surface area. In an article in the British magazine Nature, in November 2006, fourteen leading researchers in the field of toxicology called attention to the potential risks of nanoparticles, warning about the need to take into consideration these dimensions of nanoparticles: Recent studies that examine toxicity of nanomaterials produced in cultures of cells and animals have shown that the size, surface area, surface chemistry, solubility and possibly the form, all play a role in determining the potential of the nanomaterials produced to cause damage (Maynard et al. 2006, 267).
Therefore, nanotechnologies are a challenge to the traditional methods of evaluating occupational health and risk assessment and measurement instruments currently in use. Therefore, it is important that new technologies should be designed bearing in mind the criteria of size, shape, surface area, activity area, and structure, and that new instruments should be made for detecting and monitoring.
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The problem here is the little importance that is given to researching risk. For the fiscal year of 2006, the United States earmarked a mere 3.7 percent of the federal budget for the National Nanotechnology Initiative for research into the health and safety of workers; and a further 4 percent for the ethical, legal, and social implications of nanotechnologies (NanoWerk 2006). If we add to this the fact that the sale of products with nanoparticles is growing geometrically and that, as a result, the number of workers involved in these processes that produce or utilize nanoparticles and nanodevices has increased, we can see the urgent need for preventive measures. More seriously still is the fact that, although the budget for risk research is insignificant compared to the challenge posed by the increasing number of new and unknown elements, research has already been carried out in laboratories with animals which has proven that there are potential health risks. We know that some nanoparticles can penetrate the natural barriers of the organism like the blood barrier in the brain and placenta and penetrate the skin and enter the body, become lodged in the lungs, and do harm to DNA, etc. Friends of the Earth Australia, published a document in 2006 on the risks of cosmetics that made use of nanocomponents (Miller 2006), and, in March 2007, another specifically concerned with the potential toxicity of silver used on the nanoscale, one of the most commonly used products as bactericides in refrigerators, washing machines, and food packaging (Senjen 2007). The silver solutions or the titanium or silicon dioxide bypass many regulations. In the United States, for instance, the Food and Drug Administration uses mass criteria to indicate the potential toxicity, but on the nanoscale this is not enough (Senjen 2007; ETC 2004). 6. To request the International Labour Organization (ILO) to carry out an urgent study into the possible impact of nanotechnology on conditions of work and employment in agriculture and in the food industry. Following completion of the study, a Tripartite Conference on the subject must be convened as soon as possible. There is no doubt that a technological revolution that creates new materials and revitalizes old ones by joining them to new functions will have profound implications for the social division of labor. It is quite likely that some products and branches of production will be substituted by others, as has already happened in previous technological revolutions. In a document drafted for the South Center, the ETC Group (ETC Group 2005b) analyzes the potential impacts of nanotechnologies on the markets, especially those that affect developing countries. Studying the case of the market for rubber, platinum, and copper, the document shows that there are nanotechnological procedures which could improve the durability of the rims of automobiles, which is the main market for rubber, and this could significantly reduce the demand for this product worldwide. Furthermore, carbon nanotubes could become a serious competitor of copper cables, affecting the demand for this product on a worldwide basis. Platinum could be replaced by nanotechnology as a catalyst in converters and batteries. These are but a few examples of the pressure that some countries which export these raw materials could face when they begin to feel the
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effects of the substitution of their products for products of nanotechnology. The ETC Group estimates that textile fibers such as cotton and jute could be among the first for which nanotechnological substitutes will be found. As a result, thousands, maybe millions, of farmers and agricultural wage earners would be deeply affected, with many of them facing economic ruin and poverty. Another important impact will stem from compacting several activities into just one, motivated by the new nanotechnology products, as is the case with intelligent packaging, which we referred to earlier on. The reduction in the number of functions leads to the convergence of several branches of production which are different today into only one. The fusion of the cosmetics and food industries is on the horizon. These changes, besides economic consequences, will have profound political implications. Will the economic unification of cosmetics and food lead to the unification of the workers and their unions? More qualified sectors will also suffer devastating impacts. One of the more dynamic branches of medical nanotechnology is that of diagnostics. Miniature laboraties on chips that are attached to the body or traveling in it, as if they were a virus, will be able to analyze dozens of biomarkers in seconds and send their signals to external computer systems. The work of laboratory workers and nurses, and even a significant part of the work of a doctor, will be made automatic, greatly reducing labor costs in these fields and likely making certain professions obsolete.
Conclusions Nanotechnologies are an ongoing technological revolution. Given the globalized nature of the economy, the impacts will hit the whole world at the same time. Owing to their highly disruptive nature, given that they bring new functions to materials and create new materials, it is likely that this revolution will occur much more rapidly than previous revolutions. Furthermore, due to their enabling essence, in that nanotechnologies can be applied to practically all branches of economic activity, it is possible that they will appear horizontally in different sectors of the economy. The above would not be a problem if the course of events were dealt with in a planned and precautionary manner. Nevertheless, this growth is geometric in that it means new products with nanocomponents and nanodevices and their incorporation into the market, but when it comes to research and precautionary measures against risk, the dynamic is very slow and restricted. Furthermore, governments are doing very little about researching the potential impacts to their economies and how to make up for the unemployment of workers when their jobs become obsolete or the branches of industry that they work in disappear. There is also not much worry about people’s qualifications and those of the workers when the time comes to meet the requirements that the new technological revolution will surely bring. The general conclusion that these tendencies show is clear: The pace of development of nanotechnology, the fields in which it is being researched and produced, the countries and regions where it is gaining force, and the financing for it are all under the command of large corporations that hold most of the patents and concentrate most of the research.
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While for big capital this is a vast new frontier that is ripe for the picking of profits, for the civil society and the workers there is a great deal of uncertainty and a lack of transparent information. It is clear, however, that if organized labor does not apply pressure for the course of this process to be addressed, they and the rest of the civil society will bear the brunt of all the possible consequences, unforeseen results, and scientific errors that may come. It is vital that labor unions follow the path set by the IUF and press international organizations to take on the tasks of assessing the risks, planning activities to address the economic and social impacts, and seek international regulation of the process of developing nanotechnologies. The participation of labor organizations, as far as it gains a place in the debate, is a decisive factor in encouraging the democratization of science and technology, especially for the benefit of the poor majorities and the workers.
Note 1. According to Lux Research, the total number of products with nanocomponents that will be on the market by 2014, 25 percent will pose real risks during manufacture; 7 percent will pose real risks for the user of the products; and 14 percent will be exposed to perceived risks resulting from the expiration of products with nanocomponents; but it warns that 40 percent will be exposed to perceived risks (Lux Research 2005).
References Barra˜no´ n, A. 2007. Penetraci´on incipiente de mercados globales por las nanotecnolog´ıas pasivas. Ponencia presentada a la Octava Convenci´on Anual de la Media Ecology Association. Ciudad de M´exico, Junio 6–10, 2007. Bartis, J.T., Landree, E. 2006. Nanomaterials in the Workplace: Policy and Planning Workshop on Occupational Safety and Health. Arlington, VA: RAND Corporation. BusinessWeek. 2005. Nano, Nano, On the Wall. . . . L’Or´eal and Others are Betting Big on Products with Microparticles. BusinessWeek, December 12. Carlstrom, P. 2005. Nanotech Material Toxicity Debated. More Oversight Being Urged by Environmentalists. The Chronicle, September 12. Cient´ıfica. 2007. Half Way to the Trillion-Dollar Market? A Critical Review of the Diffusion of Nanotechnologies. http://www.cientifica.eu/index.php?option=com content& task=view&id=68&Itemid=111. Consultado abril 24, 2007. Davies, J.C. (s/f). Managing the Effects of Nanotechnology. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. EEA (European Environment Agency). 2001. Late Lessons from Early Warnings: The Precautionary Principle 1896–2000. Luxemburg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. ETC Group. 2004. La invasi´on invisible del campo. Ottawa: ETC Group. noviembre. ETC Group. 2005a. Las patentes de nanotecnolog´ıa: m´as all´a de la naturaleza. Implicaciones para el Sur global. Ottawa: ETC Group. ETC Group. 2005b. The Potential Impacts of Nano-scale Technologies on Commodity Markets: The Implications for Commodity Dependent Developing Countries. South Centre Trade Research Papers, 4. Foladori, G. and Zayago, E. 2007. Tracking Nanotechnology in M´exico. Nanotechnology Law & Business Journal, 4(3).
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Food Navigator.com. 2006. UK Food Regulator Finds ‘Gaps’ in Regulating Nanotechnology. 24/05/2006. News. http://www.foodnavigator.com/news/ng.asp?id=67935. Consultado mayo 07, 2007. Groth III, E. 2000. Science, Precaution and Food Safety: How Can We Do Better? Consumers Union. Org. A Discussion Paper for the US Codex. IUF (International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations). (s/f). About the IUF. http://www.iuf.org/www/en/abouttheiuf.php. Consultado abril 26, 2007. Joseph, T. and Morrison, M. 2006. Nanotechnology in Agriculture and Food. Institute of Nanotechnology. Nanoforum.org (European Nanotechnology Gateway). Kaiser, H. 2004. Nanotechnology in Food and Food Processing Industry Worldwide 2003-20062010-2015. http://www.hkc22.com/nanofood.html. Consultado mayo 07, 2007. Lux Research. 2005. Nanotechnology’s Environmental, Health, And Safety Risks Can Be Addressed Responsibly Today. Released June 15, 2005. Maynard, A.D., Aitken, R.J., Butz, T., Colvin, V., Donaldson, K., Oberd¨orster, G., Philbert, M.A., Ryan, J., Seaton, A., Stone, V., Tinkle, S.S.; Tran, L., Walker N.J., and Warheit, D.B. 2006. November. Safe Handling of Nanotechnology. Nature, 444, 16. Miller, G. 2006. Nanomaterials, Sunscreens and Cosmetics. Report. Friends of the Earth Australia. NanoWerk. 2006. Official Calls US Nanotechnology Risk Research a Priority. December 14, 2006. http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=1150.php Consultado Mayo 11, 2007. Nestl´e. 2002. Nutrition and Beauty: Nestl´e and L’Oreal Announce a Joint-venture Project. Press Releases. June 25, 2002. Regalado, A. 2004. Nanotechnology Patents Surge as Companies Vie to Stake Claim. The Wall Street Journal, June 18: A1. Rel-UITA. 2007. Resoluci´on sobre Nanotecnolog´ıa. 25 Congreso de la IUF Ginebra, 19–22 de marzo de 2007. http://www.rel-uita.org/sindicatos/congreso-uita-2007/resoluciones/ resolucion-nano.htm Consultado abril 24, 2007. [Presentada por: La 13a Conferencia RelUITA, octubre del 2006]. RS & RAE (Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering). 2004. Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies: Opportunities and Uncertainties (Policy document 20/04). London: The Royal Society and The Royal Academy of Engineering. http://www.nanotec.org.uk/finalReport.htm Consultado julio 27, 2006. Senjen, R. 2007 March. Nanosilver—A Threat to Soil, Water and Human Health? Friends of Earth Australia. (Background paper) http://nano.foe.org.au/filestore2/download/189/FoE% 20Nanosilver%20report.pdf.Consultado abril 07, 2007. Terrones, H. 2005. Nanociencia y nanotecnolog´ıa en M´exico. Tip. Revista especializada en ciencias qu´ımico-biol´ogicas. UNAM, 8(1), 50–51. Wolfe, J. 2005. Nanotech vs. The Green Gang. Forbes.com April 4th. WWICS (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars). 2003. Nanotechnology & Regulation. A Case Study Using the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA). A discussion paper. Publication 2003–2006.
Chapter 3
Thinking Longer Term about Technology Christine Peterson
Since the 1980s, Peterson has been an outspoken advocate for funding and developing long-term conceptualizations of nanotechnology. To this end she has sought to encourage scientists, politicians, members of the public, and others to envision ways in which the goal of building “artificial molecular machine systems” could help to create an enhanced world. In this chapter, she looks back over 20 years of analyzing the development of nanotechnology and reflects on what it takes to make effective future projections. Drawing on her work at the Foresight Nanotech Institute she suggests that a fortuitous mixture of knowledge, insight, and imagination can enable certain individuals to foresee technological futures. Such forecasts, she suggests, should be guided by the “laws” of physics and economics, but also of “human nature” (compare Berne, ch. 23). Peterson states that developing future projections is both difficult (Fiedeler, ch. 21) and important (Bennett, ch. 12; Kosal, ch. 13). – Eds.
C. Peterson Foresight Nanotech Institute, Palo Alto, CA, USA Originally presented at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University on 15 September 2006.
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Technology forecasting is extraordinarily difficult, yet such projections are required to guide decisions on basic research, investment, and military security. For over two decades, efforts have been underway at Foresight Nanotech Institute to influence technological development—particularly nanotechnology—in a positive direction, to maximize benefits and minimize potential downsides. This work has of necessity involved looking ahead, estimating which developments will be achieved and when they might be expected. Here we examine methods and results for this challenging task. Technology-based projections can be divided into three approximate timeframes: near term (two to five years), mid term (about ten years), and long term (twenty years and beyond). Forecasts in these timeframes vary widely with respect to which entities attempt to participate and the magnitude of resources devoted to the attempts. While technology prediction in any timeframe is very challenging, the order of difficulty among the three is not a simple function. Near-term predictions are least difficult, as they tend to involve relatively small incremental changes from a current situation. Long-term predictions are aided by being based on fundamental science combined with advances toward a theoretical ideal. In the mid term, neither of these factors can be expected to predominate consistently. One theme that shows up in examining predictions in the three categories is an ongoing need to compensate for what appears to be a standard human error in thinking about the future. In what is now referred to as Amara’s Law (see Fig. 3.1), past president of Institute of the Future Roy Amara stated, “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run” (PC Magazine 2006). Forecasts that violate these tendencies, while on average more accurate, are not as immediately credible and are often discounted. How, specifically, are technology forecasts generated? Due to the potential economic value of such forecasts, successful practitioners have little incentive to disclose their methods. Several factors would seem to be involved: (1) familiarity with today’s science relevant to the technology being examined, (2) detailed knowledge
Fig. 3.1 Amara’s Law, described by Paul Saffo in an interview by Jim McGee (McGee 2005)
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of today’s related products and R&D results, (3) sufficient economic knowledge to drive projections in the direction desired by the market, or at least by an investor (e.g., smaller, cheaper, faster, easier), (4) a leap of imagination which creates a picture of how a technology could be better, (5) the rate-of-change understanding needed to weed out such pictures which are either too radical, or too conservative, for the timeframe of interest, and (6) the daring required to present and defend the resulting new idea. A common error is to request projections, or the judgment of projections, from natural scientists. While some also do applied science, those who work only in the “pure” sciences are focused on discovering the eternal truths. Their interest is in the natural world and its laws; they are not usually skilled in thinking about technological change, new tools, and building new things. Since scientific laws and data cannot be predicted, there is a strong cultural bias against predictions among scientists, who see it as “hype” or “overpromising.” As a result of these factors, their predictions tend to be overly conservative. Reading lists of these can be both educational and amusing (Cerf and Navasky 1984). Specifically, it has been our observation that verbal claims by a scientist—or other supposed expert—that a particular nanotechnological projection is “impossible” need to be examined closely, as they can have any of three different meanings: (1) the technology is impossible due to a specified law of nature, (2) the technology is impossible with today’s tools, or (3) the technology is impossible in the speaker’s lifetime, or working lifetime. To evaluate the claim, it is necessary to determine which of these is meant; the second two are timing predictions rather than statements of impossibility. Those working in the pure sciences can be regarded as experts for the first meaning only, and often only when referring to their own specialized field of science. If it is not possible to determine which of the three meanings being alleged, it can be useful to engage the objector in debate with an opposing technical person to clarify the issue. A debate setting, or a move from verbal to written discussion, has been of assistance in encouraging commentators to use greater care when labeling a given projection as “impossible.”
Near-Term Forecasts Technologies in the near term category are of strong interest to industry and, therefore, to the financial community. These sectors have extensive mechanisms in place to attempt forecasts on technology-based products, including predictions of which particular competing technology will perform best, cost least, and arrive on the market soonest. In this timeframe, our standard tendency to make linear trend projections is less likely to lead to serious error, simply because the projections cover a shorter time, limiting the deviance that can occur. Due to the high potential value of near-term forecasts, they are generally kept proprietary. Large technology firms have in-house staff to make such projections. Market research firms prepare and sell detailed forecasts focused on this timeframe;
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Lux Research is an example of a firm working in the area of nanoscale technologies. Trade journals present such forecasts as they can obtain; in the case of nanotechnologies, Small Times is a leading publication performing this function. Investment advice newsletters provide forecasts that are more expensive than those available in trade journals, but less expensive than market research reports; for nanoscale technologies, Forbes/Wolfe Nanotech Report and Small Tech Prospector are examples. The near-term timeframe is of vital interest to venture capital investors, who place large, high-risk bets on technology firms. While such bets include many other factors, such as the management team, they involve a strong component of technology forecasting. The timing of product-to-market is central to these investments; usually the goal is to have a near-term success, with frequent cases of over-optimistic investments stretching, involuntarily, well into the mid-term. Successful predictions in this space are highly rewarded, reflecting the difficulty of the task. In the case of nanotechnologies, many high tech venture capital firms are participating. More rarely, a venture capital firm will deliberately extend its timeframe to straddle the near- and mid-term timeframes; in nanotechnologies, one such firm is Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which makes seed and early-stage investments and tolerates a longer timeframe than most VC firms. Steve Jurvetson of DFJ is an example of a technology investor who is widely regarded as talented in making nanoscale technology forecasts worthy of investment. Skills being used in this case appear to include the six listed above: familiarity with science, knowledge of current technology R&D, economic/market savvy, imagination, rate-of-change understanding, and daring. In the case of Jurvetson, the ability to envision change extends beyond the near-term to include long-term technologies, as demonstrated by a course he taught at Stanford University addressing the future of nanotechnologies, including the implications “of digital matter becoming more like software, much as genes are like memes” (Jurvetson 2005).
Mid-Term Forecasts Despite the potentially large economic value of useful technology forecasts in the roughly ten-year timeframe, far fewer entities engage in this effort—at least in public—possibly due to their greatly increased difficulty and inherent uncertainty. This timeframe benefits neither from the incremental change assumptions normally useful in the near term, nor from the drive-to-ultimate-limits approach applicable to the long term. The errors of near-term, “trend” projection forecasting methods are magnified in this timeframe. Further, the timeframe is not so long that the forecast is likely to have been entirely forgotten before it can be checked. For these reasons, forecasting in the mid-term requires audacity. While some industrial sectors can afford to restrict their attention to the nearterm, military organizations must make R&D investments requiring mid-term technology forecasts. One mechanism used by the US is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is best known for funding the invention of the
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Internet. This agency employs a unique system in which individual program managers make R&D investments based in large part on their own independent technology forecasts. As described on the unusually frank DARPA website: “Program Managers (the heart of DARPA) are selected to be technically outstanding and entrepreneurial. The best DARPA Program Managers have always been freewheeling zealots in pursuit of their goals” (DARPA 2003). In the field of nanoscale technologies, the US Army has placed a $50 million bet on the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies at MIT headed by Ned Thomas, whose ambitious portrayal of mid-range technologies was presumably key in winning this large investment. The ISN website describes the vision: “The ultimate goal is to create a 21st century battlesuit that combines high-tech capabilities with light weight and comfort. Imagine a bullet-proof jumpsuit, no thicker than ordinary spandex, that monitors health, eases injuries, communicates automatically, and maybe even lends superhuman abilities” (MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies 2006). Very few industry or government organizations keep substantial full-time staff devoted to projections beyond the near term. When needed, these organizations can turn to think tanks devoted specifically to making such forecasts. Three think tanks which have addressed nanoscale technologies are the Institute for the Future (IFTF), a nonprofit based in northern California; Global Business Network (GBN), also based in northern California; and the Institute for Alternative Futures (IAF) near Washington, D.C. Typical clients are government agencies, the military, utilities, insurance companies, and other very large firms. The Institute for Alternative Futures sponsored one of the earliest presentations on nanotechnology in December 1982. This event demonstrates a key role played by the futures think tanks: taking a visionary individual forecast and adding perspective by combining it with nearer-term viewpoints. In this case, a forecast by Eric Drexler was combined with the opinions of experimental scientist Kevin Ulmer and policy analyst Gretchen Kolsrud. Global Business Network was one of the first think tanks to make nanotechnologies a key part of its technology forecasts, co-sponsoring the first conference held on the topic with Foresight Institute in 1989. Like IAF, GBN combines visionary projections with nearer-term input, such as the views of theoretician Eric Drexler presented in parallel with those of experimentalist Alex Zettl (GBN 2000). Of these three think tanks, the Institute for the Future has carried out the most recent studies of nanotechnology futures. Their increased coverage may relate to a timeframe estimate updated in 2002: “Two years ago, when we did our last broad scan of the technology horizon, we placed nanotechnology at far reaches of our map. We said it would probably show up around 2015 at the earliest, most likely in the world of electronics. A lot has happened in the intervening two years, and some forms of nanotechnology now loom as a commercial frontier within this decade” (Vian et al. 2002). In 2006, IFTF carried out a UK-funded “Delta Scan” study looking at various technologies over the next fifty years, giving their results in the form of “outlooks”: internally consistent, plausible views of the future based on the best expertise available. One nanotechnology outlook describes smart materials, with a
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three-to-ten year timeframe and a medium-to-low impact level (IFTF 2006a). This reflects the limitations of the tools used today to communicate how technologies change over time: while the impact of smart materials is plausibly medium-to-low in the mid-term, the technology described here would surely be of very high impact longer-term. The Delta Scan study explicitly covers the next five decades, but our forecasting tools don’t make it easy to show how the outlook changes over time: surely a vital part of technology forecasting. To deal with the complexities of the mid-term timeframe, think tanks often stress the desirability of generating multiple pictures of the future. For GBN, this involves creating a number of different scenarios and encouraging clients to prepare strategies which are robust under as many as possible. The Institute for Alternative Futures builds the point directly into its name, and explains: “The future cannot be predicted. The word ‘futures’ in futures studies is plural because there is no one preordained future that is fated to occur. Rather, there are many different possible alternative futures. Instead of predicting what the future will be, futurists use a wide range of methodologies to engage in structured and thoughtful speculation about future possibilities. This helps people prepare for whatever future comes, and positions them to be more able to create the future they prefer” (Institute for Alternative Futures 2007).
Long-Term Forecasts In principle, long-term forecasts for the twenty-year period and beyond should be of interest to the military, government agencies, insurance companies, utilities, and individuals, all of whom make decisions affected by expectations in that timeframe. Environmentalists are also interested, but are usually overloaded with more urgent issues. In our efforts at the Foresight Nanotech Institute to compare long-term projections, we have found relatively few entities engaged in this task, with the field being restricted mainly to individual visionaries, science fiction writers, and in rare cases, think tanks. In addition to projecting current trends forward, long-term forecasters need to project basic principles backward, from some imagined ideal technology to what can be achieved in twenty years or so. To do this, they rely more heavily on abstract tools and laws to guide their projections: (1) The laws of science as generally understood today. These laws do not change over time, though our knowledge and understanding of them does change. However, we cannot predict when those changes will occur. We can predict the filling in of technical details—for example, that more will be known of how brain neurons function—but not the content of new physical laws. (2) The laws of economics, which push technologies to be faster, cheaper, more powerful, and (sometimes) easier.
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(3) The laws of human nature, defined for our purposes here to be constant. We assume that most people will want to be healthier, richer, better-looking, and that they will engineer toward those goals. Technology forecasting think tanks usually focus on mid-term projections, but are occasionally hired to look farther. The IFTF study mentioned above, carried out for the UK Government’s Office of Science and Innovation, attempted to look at the ten, twenty, and fifty year timeframes (IFTF 2006a). Their projections for nanotechnologies were heavily focused on “nanobio” directions, as opposed to a less-biological version in which nature’s molecular machine systems are used as inspiration for artificial molecular machines much different from those in nature—for example, systems not requiring water or other solvents. The accuracy of the IFTF bio-focused projections will not be known for many years, but they seem reasonable for the ten and the twenty year periods. For the fifty-year timeframe, the dominance of water-based nanotechnologies seems less plausible, given the theoretical work already completed at the current time, such as the designs by Nanorex. IFTF’s conservative fifty-year projection may be an example of Amara’s Law: an underestimate for the long term. Of the various requirements for technology forecasting, one takes place in a single mind: the leap of imagination to create a picture of how a technology could be better. These leaps must be large ones to work in the twenty-year-and-beyond timeframe. Individuals able to make these leaps with any degree of success are considered technological visionaries. Examples of visionaries from various technology areas examined by the Foresight Nanotech Institute include:
r r r r r
Doug Engelbart: hypertext, networking, graphical user interfaces Ted Nelson: personal computers, hypertext Richard Feynman: nanotechnology Eric Drexler: nanotechnology Aubrey de Grey: longevity technologies
Another kind of technology visionary takes multiple pictures from various sources and synthesizes a broader vision of what both technology and society will become: Ray Kurzweil on reverse-engineering the human brain and David Brin on transparency technologies are examples. Some of these visions have already partially come to pass; others lie entirely in the future. To aid in analysis, these pictures of the future could be parsed into one central insight, elaborated with time estimates, side effects, and other details. It may be asking too much of any forecaster to get all of these right; we have found that, to get the most benefit from a visionary, it appears useful to focus on the central insight. While today’s web does not fulfill all the goals of Engelbart and Nelson, their central insight of the power of hypertext has clearly been proven correct. Their visions, now decades old, inspired many researchers and continue to do so even today. In the field of nanotechnology, Richard Feynman’s 1959 after-dinner talk “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” is a classic. The central insight was clear: “The
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principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom. It is not an attempt to violate any laws; it is something, in principle, that can be done; but in practice, it has not been done because we are too big” (Feynman 2006). This assertion makes clear the central role of the first requirement of technology forecasting: understanding of science. It takes a very knowledgeable physicist to be able to state confidently and correctly that a given projection does not violate any physical laws. Also frequently cited as a nanotechnology visionary is Foresight Institute cofounder Eric Drexler. His books Nanosystems and Engines of Creation present detailed analysis and projections based on a central insight: we will be able to build artificial molecular machine systems, which will eventually manufacture macroscale products to atomic precision under programmable control (Drexler 2001; 1986). Highly controversial when first introduced in the early 1980s, this goal is gradually gaining acceptance. Like Engelbart and Nelson on hypertext, Drexler’s vision for nanotechnology inspired many young researchers, indicating that one measure of success for such projections may be the enthusiasm with which the R&D community responds. This enthusiasm may take years or even decades to become visible, due to the inherent conservatism of senior researchers who guide funding. Juniors in the field need to keep in mind the rule of thumb, attributed to Max Planck, that science progresses funeral by funeral. One way to circumvent this problem is to use new terminology; this has been helpful for young researchers wanting to pursue goals related to Drexler’s. A list of such alternative terminology could be given here, but in the interests of preserving funding, this will be omitted. However, due to the positive review from the National Academies (National Research Council 2006), the Foresight Nanotech Institute is now projecting that such alternative terminology may no longer be needed, as the original molecular machine systems concepts more fully enter the mainstream view. A technology visionary whose work has connections to nanotechnology, but who is just now gaining visibility, is Aubrey de Grey and his Strategies for Engineering Negligible Senescence (SENS 2005). This is a proposal for a broad-based engineering research project to address human aging. The central insight here is that we now know enough to categorize aging into seven distinct processes and to develop an engineering plan to address each one. Still highly controversial, de Grey’s central insight is generating interest; an attempt by MIT’s Technology Review to give a reward for disproving it has failed (Nuland 2005). The technology visionaries above present their pictures in the form of lectures, conferences, journal articles, and books categorized as non-fiction. They attempt to adhere strictly to science as it is currently understood. Also influential are those who use a narrative fiction form: science fiction (sf) writers. Some of these also attempt to adhere to real science, generating “hard” science fiction. While, due to artistic license, the hard science fiction genre occasionally includes a deliberate violation of physical law as we understand it today, most of the technological content is meant to be projected from science. The scenarios generated can sometimes function as serious explorations of the impacts of coming technologies.
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At its best, hard sf enables us to imagine longer-term interactions between technologies, individuals, and societies. Two examples are Accelerando by Charles Stross and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (Stross 2005; Card 1977). The former covers a great deal of ground, but in the first few chapters alone presents vivid and plausible projections of the future of wearables, the gift economy, and the interactions of highly mobile professionals with the tax system. The latter believably projects the future intersection of computer gaming with military technology, and has been required reading for rising stars in the U.S. Navy. The US military, given its urgently-felt need to understand the effects of coming technologies, has more than once pulled hard sf writers into its long-term forecast process. These skills have also been put to work to address global warming. As previously mentioned, often even “hard” sf will include the occasional violation of physical law for story purposes. The standard example is faster-than-light travel, but others are common as well. One story by Paul Anderson uses nanotechnology accurately except in the case of energy applications, for which the story requires nanotech to not work (Anderson 1995). Anderson includes a pseudotechnical excuse for this, knowing his readers will agree to suspend disbelief for the sake of the story. Due to these occasional deliberate violations, non-technical readers should check in advance to find out whether a given story includes such “errors.” In informal polls of audiences over two decades, Foresight Nanotech Institute speakers have found that a familiarity with fictional technology scenarios seems to be of assistance to those attempting to envision truly different technology-based futures. Human beings need scenarios, or stories, to help them envision situations greatly different from their own. It appears that hard sf, which can combine dramatically advanced technologies with human characters, can help readers grapple calmly with concepts that might otherwise be too challenging to address. For this reason, those attempting to think about long-term nanotechnologies are well advised to read a selection of the best hard sf on nanotech. In this case, “best” refers to a story’s educational value in showing the impact of nanotechnology, rather than its value as fiction per se. Reading these stories can sometimes be painful for the literature lover, since characterization, dialogue, and plot may not always live up the standards of more mainstream fiction. Further, reading sf may seem difficult to justify as “work,” but—in some cases—is not enjoyable enough to count as entertainment either. But for those attempting to think clearly about future technologies, it is a necessity. There is another excellent reason for those looking at nanotechnology futures to read relevant hard sf: technical people use them as cultural references. In nanotechnology, many have read The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, and having read this book will enable better communication on the topics it covers, which include how societies will choose to structure themselves in a world of advanced nanotech. At the Foresight Nanotech Institute we have become persuaded that for those trying to envision long-term futures, sf scenarios may be incorrect, but scenarios which have no flavor of science fiction have no chance at all of being correct.
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Collaborative Methods While the leap of imagination needed to make a technological forecast takes place in a single mind, the other qualities and stages involved can be drawn from a group. For near-term forecasts, society has evolved elaborate mechanisms to make predictions of success: the stock prices of technology companies are based in part on an incremental group prediction of technological success or failure. Venture capital firms and other investing groups work in a collaborative way internally to make guesses and place bets on technological trends. Think tanks have similar interactions when making mid-term forecasts. Frustration with the challenges of projecting technological change has helped stimulate two innovations in collaborative forecasting: Prediction Markets and Long Bets. The former, originated by Robin Hanson, now an economist at George Mason, enables participants to make specific predictions which are then aggregated into a group state of understanding (IFTF 2006b). Correct predictions are rewarded, ideally with cash, though this can be hard to do in the U.S. given current gambling laws. Foresight Nanotech Institute experimented with such markets in 1999, and found that placing a financial value on correct predictions did appear to help focus serious attention from participants. Today, these mechanisms are gaining increased acceptance, especially within firms. The Long Bets project on accountable predictions, founded by Stewart Brand and others, is “a public arena for enjoyably competitive predictions, of interest to society, with philanthropic money at stake” that furnishes the continuity to see even the longest bets through to public resolution” (Long Now Foundation 2007). Having the rewards go to charity avoids the potential conflict with US gambling laws. It is hoped that these new reputation mechanisms will ultimately lead to clearer information on which individuals or groups are most accurate in their forecasts, which in principle could lead to significant benefits for society in general. The Foresight Nanotech Institute recommends that policymakers facilitate these advances by adjusting regulatory regimes explicitly to permit such activities under the law. In this way, we can encourage society to more effectively make longer-term projections—a task so difficult and important that it needs all the help we can give.
References PC Magazine. 2006. Amara’s law definition. Available at: http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia. Anderson, P. 1995. Statesman. In E. Elliott. ed., Nanodreams. New York: Baen. Card, O.S. 1977. Ender’s Game. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC. Cerf, C., and V. Navasky. 1984. The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation. New York: Pantheon Books. DARPA. 2003. Over the Years. Available at: http://www.darpa.mil/body/overtheyears.html. Drexler, K.E. 1986. Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology. New York , NY: Anchor Press. Drexler, K.E. 2001. Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
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Feynman, R. 2006. There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom. Available at: http://www.zyvex. com/nanotech/feynman.html. GBN. 2000. Nanotechnology: It’s Not Science Fiction Anymore. A Conversation with Alex Zettl, University of California physics professor. Available at: http://www.gbn.com/ArticleDisplayServlet. srv?aid=1005. IFTF. 2006a. Delta Scan: The Future of Science and Technology, 2000–2055. Available at: http:// humanitieslab.stanford.edu/deltascan/Home. IFTF. 2006b. IFTF’s Future Now. Prediction Markets. Available at: http://future.iftf.org/2006/ 12/prediction mark.html. Institute for Alternative Futures. 2007. Methods. Available at: http://www.altfutures.com/ methods.asp. Jurvetson, S. 2005. Background: Steve Jurvetson—The World Technology Network. Available at: http://www.wtn.net/2004/bio251.html. Long Now Foundation. 2007. Long Bets. Available at: http://www.longbets.org/. McGee, J. 2005. S-curves and Planning Errors. Available at: http://www.mcgeesmusings.net/2005/ 12/22/paul-saffo-on-rules-for-forecasting/. Last accessed March 18, 2008. MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies. 2006. Available at: http://web.mit.edu.ezproxy1. lib.asu.edu/ISN/aboutisn/index.html. National Research Council. 2006. A Matter of Size: Triennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. Committee to Review the National Nanotechnology Initiative. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Nuland, S. 2005. Do You Want to Live Forever? Available at: http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/14147/. Strategies for Engineering Negligible Senescence. 2005. Available at: http://www.sens.org/. Stross, C. 2005. Accelerando. New York: Ace Publishing. Vian, K., Baitman, F., Cain, M., Cockayne, B., Lehtman, H., and A. Soojung-Kim Pang. 2002. The New World Map: A Quick Tour of the Ten-year Technology Horizon. Institute for the Future. Menlo Park, CA.
Chapter 4
Constructive Technology Assessment and Socio-Technical Scenarios Arie Rip and Haico te Kulve
Since the 1980s, Rip has been instrumental in developing and applying an approach to broaden the scope of participants and considerations that go into technological developments—an approach known as Constructive Technology Assessment (CTA). A number of organizations have employed CTA, including the Rathenau Institute (formerly, the Netherlands Office of Technology Assessment). Since 2005, the Dutch national nanotechnology consortium, NanoNed, has included CTA as a program component under Rip’s coordination. In this chapter, Rip and te Kulve suggest that because many nanotechnology applications remain little more than promises, studying their implications amounts to an exercise in “social science fiction.” In light of this challenge, they develop socio-technical scenarios. Scenarios are a wellestablished foresight method that are gaining wide use in the study of nanotechnology (T¨urk, ch. 8; Kosal, ch. 13). Here, Rip and te Kulve identify complex and overlooked interactions that can be used to make scenarios more conceptually robust and pragmatically effective. In their description of two scenario construction frameworks, they offer a link between theory and practice. They suggest that CTA scenarios can serve as “useful fictions” for strategic purposes (B¨unger, ch. 5) as well as for modulating ongoing socio-technical change. – Eds.
A. Rip University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherland Originally presented at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University on 23 February 2007.
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Introduction Within the spectrum of methods and approaches of technology assessment, some are more appropriate to nanotechnology than others. The challenge is to assess technological developments and their embedding in society as these occur. Constructive Technology Assessment (Rip et al. 1995; Schot and Rip 1997) and Real-Time Technology Assessment (Guston and Sarewitz 2002) are the main candidates. There is quite a lot of overlap, but Constructive TA, which we will discuss in this chapter, explicitly attempts to use insights from studies of the dynamics of technological development. For nanotechnology (actually, nanoscience and nanotechnologies), most of the envisioned applications are still in the realm of science fiction, in the sense that they are not there yet, and that it is not clear whether they will ever be realized. Their eventual impacts are even less clear—attempts to find out about them are then social science fiction. This doubly fictional character of nanotechnology requires the use of scenarios, in particular socio-technical scenarios which capture ongoing dynamics and develop implications for what might happen. They can be used as input in interactive workshops with various relevant actors, and then support broader interactions, where actors probe each other’s worlds, and reflexive articulation and learning might ensue. Such learning is not guaranteed, of course, but it is worthwhile to pursue it. Thus, socio-technical scenarios are important for the reflexive change aim of Constructive Technology Assessment: to broaden technological development by including more aspects and more actors, and at an early stage, so as to (hopefully) realize better technology in a better society (Schot and Rip 1997). Depending on the technology, the sector and the existing embedment in society, this will take different forms.1 It is a soft intervention, attempting to modulate ongoing socio-technological developments, at least by making them more reflexive. In Constructive TA, socio-technical scenarios are not just creative exercises showing possible futures (which is one function of scenarios). They embody and further articulate emerging patterns in interactions, up to paths that actors tend to follow. The combination of understanding of dynamics (“theory”), and actual construction of socio-technical scenarios and their use, structures this chapter. We start with discussing the general phenomenon of emerging irreversibilities in ongoing socio-technical developments, and how these constrain further thinking and action. In other words, futures are embedded in the present, and scenarios can be built drawing on such embedded or “endogenous” futures. The aim of Constructive TA to broaden technological development beyond what technology actors are doing already can be pursued in two ways. First, and following the concentric perspective of technology “enactors” we develop scenarios starting from a technological option or promising technological field, and broadening out concentrically. Second, we take a more distantiated perspective, where technological options are just one element in a larger, multi-level dynamic. We offer examples of both types of scenarios, the former applied to lab-in-a-cell analysis, the latter to nanotechnology in food packaging. In the concluding section we reflect on how far we have come.
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Emerging Irreversibilities and Modulation of Socio-technical Developments Emerging Irreversibilities and Endogenous Futures While new (emerging) science and technology introduce novelties, and thus potentially breaking up existing orders to some extent, subsequent developments create new patterns, up to dominant designs and industry standards. In other words, irreversibilities emerge, which will be reinforced when actors invest in the paths that appear to emerge. “Emerging irreversibilities facilitate specific technological paths—make it easier to act and interact—and constrain others—make it more difficult to do something else” (Van Merkerk and Robinson 2006). Emerging irreversibilities are a general feature of social life, and the sociological concept of “institutionalization” captures a large part of what happens. When technology is involved, irreversibilities are further solidified in configurations that work (Rip and Kemp 1998). The concept of ‘configuration that works’ applies to artefacts and systems, and includes (in principle) social linkages and alignments as well. A dominant design or industry standard would be an example, where the actual dominance, and thus the “working” of the design, depends on the adherence of relevant actors to it. Paths and other stable patterns enabling and constraining actions and views will shape further development. Thus, they span up an “endogenous future”: further developments are predicated on the pattern of the present situation. Not in a deterministic way: there are always choices and contingencies. Also, and important for the approach of Constructive TA, actors can use an understanding of these dynamics to act more productively, and in any case more reflexively. The phenomenon as such of emerging and stabilizing socio-technical paths is now widely recognized. Actors anticipate them, up to attempts to create the “better” path, for example, in the struggle about an industry standard or a dominant design. The battle over consumer videorecording in the 1970s and 1980s is an example (Cusumano et al. 1997; Deuten 2003), and is remembered and referred to, for example, in the ongoing battle over advanced DVD standards. The idea, and the practice, of roadmapping build on the recognition of emerging paths and the conviction that one can create such paths intentionally by coordinating actions. In micro-electronics there is a long history starting with SemaTech in the USA, and roadmapping is now globally coordinated by the International Semiconductor Technology Roadmap consortium. This is an example of a (strong) shaping of a path—as long as the strategic games based on mutual dependencies in the sector continue to be adhered to. The idea of endogenous futures predicated on existing and emerging irreversibilities is also the starting point for our scenario exercises. Such scenarios reconstruct ongoing and future paths, their rise and fall, and how they become a reference for actors’ strategies. Compared with roadmapping exercises, they are open ended: there is no future socio-technological functionality and performance that must be realized and thus become the starting point to identify challenges.
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Modulation of Concentric Perspectives of Enactors To address the aim of Constructive TA, to modulate and broaden technological innovation, it is necessary to understand our primary “target group,” i.e., those actors directly or indirectly involved in developing new technology. The first step is to recognize that “enactors” will work within a concentric perspective. For example, in the case of the development of new products, product managers often view the environment as concentric layers around the new product, starting with the business environment and ending with the wider society. Eventually, alignments with all layers need to be made, but the product manager often deals with them sequentially, starting first with clarifying functional aspects of the product, before addressing broader aspects (Deuten et al. 1997). The term “enactor” is adapted from Garud and Ahlstrom (1997). Their analysis can be developed to create a theory of actors and interaction dynamics around new and emerging technologies. Enactors, i.e. technology developers and promoters, who try to realize (enact) new technology, construct scenarios of progress and identify obstacles to be overcome. They thus work and think in “enactment cycles” which emphasize positive aspects. This includes a tendency to disqualify opposition as irrational or misguided, or following their own agendas. “How otherwise can one explain that progress is opposed?”2 Enactors will get irritated, because for them, explaining the promise of their technological option should be enough to convince consumers/citizens. For nanotechnology, enactors now also anticipate obstacles similar to the ones that occurred for GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) in agriculture and food; compare Colvin (2003). But the structure of the situation remains the same, that of an enactment cycle. While enactors identify with a technological option and products-to-bedeveloped, and see the world as waiting to receive this product—“the world” may well see alternatives and take a position of comparing and selecting. Thus, the other main position to be distinguished is the one of comparative selectors (not necessarily critics). There are professional comparative selectors (regulatory agencies like the US Food and Drug Administration) which use indicators, and develop calculations to compare the option with alternatives (e.g., versions of cost-benefit analysis). There are also citizens—consumers, etc., as amateur comparative selectors—which can range more freely because they are not tied to certain methods and to accountability. Spokespersons for consumers, citizens react and oppose (rather than just select); some NGOs become enactors for an alternative (as when Greenpeace Germany pushed for a better fridge—Greenfreeze).3 Enactors can, and sometimes must, interact with comparative selectors. Formally as with the US Food and Drug Administration, or informally as in marketing and in the recent interest in interactions between strategic management of firms and spokespersons for environment and civil society. And in a “domesticated” version in test-labs like Philips Home-Lab (Philips Research – Technologies) and the RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification Device) -filled shop (RFID Journal 2003) in which people are invited to try out the new products, services, and infrastructure. The further step is to recognize that enactment cycles and comparative-selection cycles interfere anyway, and to identify (possible) interference locations and events
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and what can happen there. Garud and Ahlstrom (1997) speak of “bridging events” and identify some examples and their limitations. Bridging events may not only include “events,” but also structural interaction. Cowan (1987)’s analysis in terms of a consumption junction is one example. For the soft intervention approach of Constructive TA, an important modality is to support and orchestrate bridging events. This is creating and orchestrating spaces where interactions occur, even if the interactions between citizens/consumers and technology developers and promoters will always be partial (because of their difference in perspective). There will be “probing of each other’s realities” (as Garud and Ahlstrom (1997) called it), with more or less contestation. In interactive workshops, this can be supported by socio-technical scenarios which show effects of (interfering) enactment and selection cycles, and give more substance to the interactions.
Concentric Scenarios and Interactive Workshops4 In the case of nanotechnologies, socio-technical scenarios are necessary to address their doubly fictional character, and they are important to support the interaction between enactors and selectors. In this section, we will focus on one bridging event, a strategy articulation workshop organized by Douglas K. R. Robinson (as part of his ongoing PhD research) for the European-Union Network of Excellence Frontiers, held in June 2006 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It was the first of a series of such workshops for Frontiers, looking at different areas including drug delivery and molecular machines. The June 2006 workshop focused on single-cell (on a chip) analysis.
Preparations for the Strategy Workshop: Mapping Ongoing Dynamics In CTA terms, these workshops are insertions in the ongoing dynamics of the Network of Excellence, and thus also in the development of the area(s) focused on. Substantial interaction between actors in interactive scenario workshops has challenges of its own. The organizers of the workshop need to reach the actors, in particular the nanotechnology actors and those allied with them. Firstly, to get them to participate at all—so there must be something at stake for the prospective participants. Secondly, by linking up with their worlds – without completely instrumentalizing CTA. This also implies that we have to accept some of the limitations prevalent in the nano-world, in particular the concentric perspective. To map the dynamics of development in single-cell (on a chip) analysis, we focused on existing and emerging technology platforms, and tools that might become integrated in such platforms.5 Public R&D labs and firms can use integrated platforms to develop technological options and new devices and products. In the case of single-cell (on a chip) analysis, there are two broad areas of relevance: tools for
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analyzing dynamics of living cells and integrated microfluidic systems as MicroTAS or Lab-on-a-chip. One challenge would be the development of an integrated cell-on-a-chip platform. This was recognized by enactors and motivated them to participate in the workshop. Robinson (and his co-organizers Tilo Propp and Arie Rip), in their research on these areas, had identified a number of possible innovation chains relevant to this challenge, as well as the present gaps in them. These were located on a multipath map (see Fig. 4.1), with the innovation chain from R&D to tools and laboratory technological platforms, to integrated platforms, working devices and products and applications) as the vertical axis, and time as horizontal axis. The multi-path maps served as support for the two aims of the workshop, first, to articulate challenges involved in designing a particular technology platform and the commercialization/application aspects of such a platform; and second, to articulate approaches and ways to deal with the identified challenges. In addition, socio-technical scenarios were created to show how actual developments could become entangled (making things easier or more difficult) and lead to one or another overall path.
Scenarios of Future Developments Three scenarios were written up in advance of the workshop by the organizers and distributed to the participants in a pre-workshop report. During the workshop these
Fig. 4.1 Multi-path map of Point of Care electrolyte analyser
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scenarios were mainly used to identify elements of dynamics to be taken into account in strategy articulation, for example, different design paradigms and polarization of visions. A key point was the limited malleability of the cell-on-a-chip field (and thus the difficulty for any particular enactor to make a difference). This, of course, was not new to the participants, but the scenarios articulate this “degree of difficultness” via sketching ongoing processes and (emerging) irreversibilities.
Scenario 1: Shifts and Lock-in into One Type of Application [This scenario foregrounds dynamics such as the polarization of visions of different applications and subsequent lock-in of one of these visions, constraining the further development of the other vision.] Earlier research aimed at the development of a chip that can be used for analysis of cells, with application to point-of-care diagnostics, slows down because the promises are not achieved in the short term and support is withheld. Instead, new research lines are opened when pharmaceutical companies start to invest in this technology platform for drug screening applications, using arrays of cells that act as biosensors. A key factor stimulating pharmaceutical firms to invest in this type of technology are increased safety requirements on drugs and a general (political) trend to move away from animal testing. After a time, sunk investments in this new area of applications make it difficult to pursue the initial vision of single cell analysis (for point-of-care diagnostics or any other use). Although, as the scenario explains, “breaking out of this dominant path is possible, and is demonstrated by a number of small dedicated devices, but mobilising resources for a dedicated single cell analysis platform becomes too high a challenge” (Robinson 2006, 13).
Scenario 2: Precarious Links to Cell Biology Tests [This scenario focuses instead on the dynamics of specific design paradigms and their impact on technological paths.] The promise of a cell analysis platform to enable the “measurement” of living cells in real time serves as a bridging opportunity between cell-on-a-chip research and cell biologists. Two different approaches towards the development of such a chip emerge. One approach emphasizes the development of a generic platform for cell-on-a-chip and a modular design. This approach turns out to work well for research but less for the commercialisation of a chip. A number of actors link up to establish a start up company named CellTron, linked to existing facilities and attempting to coordinate them, to develop lab-in-a-cell into a product family (large firms are not prepared to invest; they need a clear prospect of profitable applications). It explores various possibilities but finds it difficult to push particular applications when they emerge, and can survive only by further speculative investments. The other approach is to focus on an application-specific platform. Spin-offs from universities and public labs try out possibilities, and some survive. A portable DNA testing device based on lab-in-a-cell is successful. Although profitable applications
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remain limited, it acts as a stimulus for other application-based research projects and start-ups exploiting them. Scenario 3: Obliged to Remain in a Niche [This scenario foregrounds the effect of overall promise and disappointment trends in nanotechnology.] In the research world, there is clear interest in improved understanding of sub-cellular mechanisms via cell-on-a-chip technology. But this is not enough to carry on, now that the general high expectations around nanotechnology are deflated. To survive and grow, cell-on-a-chip technology must link up with concrete promises (for example, drug delivery) and thus shift from the development of a platform for general research to applications. However, potential applications are difficult to identify. Since the relevance for general research remains clear, the field survives, but as a niche development. There is some support of funding agencies because of the articulated fundamental interests, and there are incidental applications developed by start-ups.
Use of Scenarios in the Strategy Workshop The preparation of the scenarios was built on in-depth research, including knowledge of the technical field, of actor arrangements and entanglements. This is not only necessary to ensure accuracy and quality of scenarios (i.e. plausibility, not probability) but also to legitimate workshop organisers, when they intervene in the workshop process. This is important because intervention turns out to be necessary to move away from discussions about technical particulars and instead, focus on contestation and mutual articulation (“probing each other’s worlds”) related to the core questions. Participants in the workshop recognized the dynamics embedded in the scenarios and saw the scenarios as “useful fictions,” which could aid in strategy articulation. In retrospect, this can be seen as related to the concentric perspective, with the (enacted) technologies at the centre, which characterized the scenarios. Additional layers of complexity may be introduced. In the June 2006 workshop, the possibility to do so was explored, together with the participants, with the help of the “multi-path mapping” tool, by adding layers of societal embedding to the pre-circulated version (experimental platform, integrated platform, products, and application areas). This was continued after the workshop, because a spin-off company applied this tool to its own situation. The concentric perspective is visible in the layered structure and direction of the arrows in Fig. 4.1. For the broader aims of Constructive TA, there is an uneasy trade-off between CTA agents accommodating to existing enactors’ perspectives (so as to keep the enactors involved) and introducing incentives to broaden their perspectives (so as to induce some change). One way to do so is to include outsiders in the strategy articulation workshops. Once this is done, the concentric perspective itself is shown up as insufficient: there are other dynamics at play (e.g., regulation
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and societal debate), which have to be taken into account—by prudent enactors, who want to be successful, and by analysts (CTA agents) who want to understand the overall picture.
Evolving Multi-level Alignments as the Basis of Scenarios An overall picture has to transcend the enactor perspective. Whatever interests and strategies the different actors may have, the key phenomenon is the introduction of novelty in an existing socio-technical order. This requires de-alignment of existing linkages and competencies and subsequent re-alignment (Abernathy and Clark 1985). In this way, a new socio-technical path may emerge. In the literature, technological interrelatedness, economies of scale, and sunk investments have been quoted to explain path dependency (cf. David 1985). What we want to add is multi-level dynamics. Socio-technical paths become “doable,”6 when there is alignment between three levels:
r r r
Of ongoing work (and the practices this is embedded in), also across locations; Of the relevant institutions and networks that are directly involved, but also “third parties” who can provide or withhold credibility and legitimation (for example insurance companies, NGOs, and critical or activist groups); And of overall institutions, arrangements and authorities in our society (like patent law and patenting practices, but also issues of public/private collaboration).
There may be actors, like promise champions and institutional entrepreneurs, who attempt to align what happens at the different levels. Even so, eventual alignment will be an unintended outcome of interactions, rather than the direct result of dedicated alignment activities of one or a few actors. Alignment can also emerge because actors and activities accommodate to the same environmental constraints. Basically, alignment refers to the eventual entanglement of actors and activities in such a way that they cannot move completely independently and there is some mutual accommodation, like parts fitting together, creating a configuration that works, cf. Rip and Kemp (1998). Alignment across levels is particularly important because it introduces vicarious stabilization: if actors or circumstances appear to move in other directions and might actually be able to do so on their own level, they will be constrained by the links to another level with its own dynamics, which makes it more difficult for them to effect change at the other level. Based on these general considerations, we identify two entrance points for change (which we can observe and might want to stimulate). First, the role of actors who can work at two (or more) levels—linking-pin entrepreneurs. Second, spaces for interaction where actors can mutually position their activities and strategies in relation to possible and emerging paths. In general, alignment and the dynamics of stabilization and (attempts at) change can be mapped, and then form the basis to develop socio-technical scenarios; for example, in terms of strength of constraints and nature of emerging spaces for interaction.
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In our recent work, we have added industry structure—or better: industry structure+—as an important pattern and an intermediary variable shaping paths and other outcomes. Industry structure+ broadens the traditional notion of industry structure where size and other “demographical” features of the distribution of firms in an industry, and the patterns of their relationships, are studied in industrial economics. First, it includes other actors than firms in a sector, for example NGOs. Second, it includes other instances and patterns that shape strategy and action of firms, for example, expectations as prospective structures (Van Lente & Rip, 1998). Concrete examples would be attempts at anticipatory coordination (as usual in the semi-conductor industry), endogenization of regulation via for example voluntary reporting or codes of conduct, and entrance and involvements of new actors such as regional authorities, NGOs and insurance companies. For our analysis, as well as when building scenarios, we will use three levels, labelled as “micro,” “meso,” and “macro.” This is a reduction of complexity, and the labels can be misinterpreted because of their common use and connotation. We use them as shorthand for the three levels specified when we discuss alignment, and characterize these levels in terms of activities and interactions, rather than scope. For example, when (central) government is labelled “macro,” it refers to the nature of activities and to how government can be invoked as authority. Ongoing work in departments, and interactions of government actors would be counted as “micro.” With respect to (nano-)science one can distinguish between the level of: (micro) research activities, ongoing actions and interactions in labs; (meso) resource mobilization, acquisition and allocation of resources; (macro) discourse on and governance of socio-technical aspects of nanotechnology research, big debates on responsible innovation. Academic entrepreneurs are, often in their function as a group leader or director, responsible for the acquisition and allocation of resources for research, but also for the output of their group or institute. Typically, they act and move on all of the three levels of science. The micro level can be considered as a protected space, relatively isolated from outside demands and concerns. As a general rule, scientists are not held accountable for pro-actively addressing societal concerns and demands such as responsible innovation and actively pursuing the uptake of their results in, for example, business enterprises. This rule would construct an argument for the continuation of the suggested gap. However, expectation pressures from governmental agencies and companies might result in either repairing or deepening the gap.
Multi-level Analysis of Socio-technical Developments of Nanoparticles To give an example of multi-level analysis, we offer a sketch of the co-evolution of work on nanoparticles and concerns about their health, environment and safety aspects (Van Amerom and Rip 2007). Multi-level dynamics are visible in the coupled evolution of nanoparticles (research, production, and use) and risks of nanotechnology. The repeated occurrences
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and acceptance of acronyms such as ELSA (Ethical, Legal, Social Aspects) and HES (Health, Environmental, Safety) in discourse on, and governance of, nanotechnology research and in the mobilization of resources, indicates emerging alignment between societal concerns and allocation of resources.7 Actors such as governmental agencies, industry and (academic) researchers are increasingly held accountable for addressing societal concerns—a new emerging rule within this multi-level process. Over time, the rules of the game might change into: you should not only (promise to) take HES and ELSA into account, but also incorporate them into your research and thus live up to your promises. Whether this will happen is another question, and one which might be pursued through the creation of scenarios of possible futures. The implication of this brief analysis is that socio-technical paths, specifically of nano-particle R&D and product development, will occur in a world in which HES considerations have become forceful, and thus have to be taken into account (a further element of alignment). The force of HES (up to the use of just the acronym) is itself the outcome of what one could call an emerging and stabilized path, now at the meso/macro levels. This was not always the case. When the issue of health and environmental risks of nanoparticles was raised, and further highlighted by the ETC Group (2003), the immediate response was negation (in all senses of the word), and fury about the ETC proposal for a moratorium on nanoparticles. In a news feature article in Nature, it was noted that “the debate is clearly gathering pace,” while “some researchers. . . feel that they don’t need to join in the argument. ‘They don’t really see what the hoop-la is about.’ ” (Brumfiel 2003, 247). Inputs from toxicologists and epidemiologists (and scientists like Colvin) introduced some moderation, but the gut reaction remained. It was not legitimate to seriously discuss such risks, because that would only enlarge a possible roadblock. By the time the Royal Society (and Royal Academy of Engineering) Report appeared in July 2004, with its message to be cautious with introduction of nanoparticles in the environment because of the knowledge gaps about health and environmental impacts, it had become more difficult to just claim that nanoparticles were no cause for concern. The balance shifted, irreversibly, with the appearance of re-insurer Swiss Re’s report in April 2004. Discussing (and researching) risks of nanoparticles then became fully legitimate. One irony, played upon by the ETC Group and Swiss Re alike, was “size matters”: if the small size is what gives nanoparticles their interesting properties, these same size-dependent properties can also create harm. The immediate effects were double: more risk research is done, and regulatory agencies start moving (one question is whether existing regulation can be used to address the issues of nanotechnology). That creates a focus, almost a lock-in, on HES issues, and backgrounding of broader questions about the actual use of nanotubes, and nanoparticles in general. This narrow focus is now coming in for criticism. In parallel, firms started to have second thoughts about flagging nano for their products. If something untoward would happen under the label nanotechnology, that might then also reflect on their products, even if there was no cause for concern. Some firms stepped out of the nanotube business altogether, others proceeded,
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Fig. 4.2 Multi-level dynamics of socio-technical developments of nanoparticles
but more prudently. In the UK, this has led to a de facto alliance between firms and the regulatory agency DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), where DEFRA is experimenting with voluntary reporting (“soft law”). In other countries, regulatory authorities are still considering what to do, or, as in the USA, need to show that they do something because of criticisms levelled at them. The multi-level dynamics are visualised in Fig. 4.2. The right hand side of the diagram can be extended into the future by creating scenarios based on what becomes the dominant direction for each of the forks that are visible.
Multi-Level Dynamics in a Sector: The Case of Nanotechnology and Food Packaging The concentric (enactor) perspective can be circumvented, or at least reduced, through analyzing dynamics in sectors, foregrounding evolving activities and evolving actor relations related to (nano) science and technology in a sector, instead of a particular emerging technological path. Here we will focus on the food sector, and within that sector, on food packaging. To prepare multi-level scenarios, context and background analysis are important. Therefore, we will introduce nanotechnologies in the food packaging sector, after which we sketch three scenarios as a preparation for a Constructive Technology Assessment workshop.
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Development of Nanotechnologies for Food Packaging Applications Expectations are that the food sector will see a major rise in nanotechnology enabled products, but the magnitude of this development is contested. Market estimates range from 20.4 billion US dollars in 2010 (market study in 2004) to 5.8 billion US dollars in 2012 (market study in 2006).8 Concerns of consumer acceptance are voiced, as well as possible environmental and health risks associated with the application of nanotechnologies for food, which may act as a barrier for large scale commercialization, cf. Kuzma and Verhage (2006). As a journalist attending a nanotechnology and food conference in 2006 noted: “The food industry is hooked on nano-tech’s promises, but it is also very nervous” (Renton 2006). Food packaging is expected to be one of the first areas in the food sector to witness the application of nanotechnologies. Novel nanomaterials are expected to contribute to improve the shelf life of food products, which is a key function of food packaging. For example via the development of better oxygen barriers, active antimicrobial surfaces, and sensors integrated in packaging which can detect microbiological and biochemical changes (ElAmin 2005). At first glance, embedment of nano-enabled food packaging seems relatively straightforward compared to the application of nanotechnologies in food such as, for example, nutraceuticals. Still further downstream more controversial issues might appear such as the transfer of food safety responsibility from actors to packaging sensors, or divides between rich and poor related to purchases of high quality food, cf. ETC (2004). In addition to the challenge of anticipating possible issues further downstream—aligning discussions on risks and benefits of nanotechnologies with research and product development activities—nanotechnology enactors face the challenge of mobilizing and co-ordinating activities of multiple actors in the food packaging sector. The food packaging sector can be understood as an intersection of the food and packaging chain, including suppliers of raw materials, suppliers of packaging materials (convertors), food companies, and retailers. In addition to firms and knowledge institutes, also NGOs and regulatory agencies play an important role through, for example, articulation of concerns and regulations of health and environmental aspects of packaging, cf. Sonneveld (2000), Prisma & Partners and MinacNed (2006). Worldwide, the food packaging industry structure+ has evolved with respect to the exploration and exploitation of nanotechnologies. New alliances to develop nano-enabled food packaging technologies have emerged in the US, UK, and Nordic Countries (Wolfe 2005; Joseph and Morrison 2006; ElAmin 2007) and a few packaging technologies that make use of nanotechnologies have already appeared on the market (Joseph and Morrison 2006). Food safety authorities in the US, UK, and Europe are currently examining nanotechnologies and their regulation. Within Europe, the international research program SUSTAINPACK stands out both in size and ambition. SUSTAINPACK aims to develop nano-enabled fibrebased packaging as the future industry standard for packaging purposes, building on expectations of nanotechnologies and debates on sustainable packaging materials. Such a program is a space for interaction, and playing ground for
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exploring nanotechnologies in food packaging. Another example of a new space (plus some linking-pin entrepreneurial activity) is the Dutch quasi-branch organisation MinacNed. MinacNed is an association of companies and research institutes active in micro or nanotechnology and aims to strengthen economic activities in this area. As one of its activities, it initiated the development of a roadmap of applications for food (including packaging). Alliances to exploit the potential of nanotechnologies exist, but are still very much emerging according to specialized consultancies such as Pira International (Moore 2006). Enactors, voicing expectations of nano-enabled packaging technologies reducing (associated costs of) food wastage due to improved shelf life, or the development and adoption of more sustainable packaging materials, face scepticism related to embedment of these technologies. For example, nano packaging is expected to be linked with a high price tag and therefore met with reluctance by firms and consumers. Uncertainties about future regulation and return on investments, coordination challenges across the chain, and fears of negative consumer perceptions may act as further entry barriers, cf. the MinacNed roadmap (Prisma & Partners and MinacNed 2006, 18). Taking into account the described developments in nano-enabled food packaging, what could be future developments in terms of alignments between actors and activities?
Scenarios of Future Developments This brief mapping of the situation can be detailed further, but it is sufficient to characterize the present situation and its multi-actor, multi-level dynamics, and to develop three scenarios differing in how alignment emerges between levels. The time horizon of the scenarios is the coming five to ten years. At the moment, research in the application of nanotechnologies, such as the development of nanocomposites to improve paper-based packaging materials, occurs in a few relatively isolated places such as universities and incumbent firms. Although interactions between other companies and research institutes occur and new networks are expected to develop, they are not very substantial yet. Firms supplying packages take into account the strong requirement of low costs of materials from their customers, the fillers, with the retailers in the background, and do not consider using materials exceeding a certain price per kilogram material. Due to sunk costs, convertors may not easily change production technology, and will consider the extent to which it is possible to adapt existing machinery to the use of new materials. Until uncertainties about benefits, risks, and regulatory issues of new materials and components are reduced, companies are hesitant to allocate resources to R&D developments. With exception of incumbent firms and research institutes, virtually no other actors in the packaging sector are yet active in the exploitation of nanotechnologies for packaging. Figure 4.3 visualizes our mapping, and uses the characterization of the starting situation we just gave to outline three scenarios.
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Fig. 4.3 Multi-level dynamics of socio-technical developments of nano food packaging
Scenario 1: Only Little Nano Research institutes recognize this situation but are not pro-active in trying to change this as they diagnosed this situation as an impasse and not up to them to break through this impasse. They are focused on scientifically-interesting high tech solutions to packaging issues—with nanotechnology as its most recent hype. Research institutes start to pro-actively anticipate fashionable ideas on valorization of research, international economic competition, and the knowledge economy. More concretely, the acquisition of funding for research projects, reproducing the quest for the most advanced material solution to packaging problems such as barrier properties and mechanical strengths, will no longer be viable. Researchers in packaging start to co-operate with polymer scientists to analyze properties of materials known to improve barrier properties and ways to synthesize and integrate these in a relatively inexpensive way in existing foil making machinery. Rather than focusing on the realization of long term promises of nanotechnology, researchers increasingly orient themselves to short term pragmatic challenges of firms. Both big and small incumbents diagnose these research projects as promising and fit their interests, i.e. their considerations of costs and adaptability of machinery, and are willing to co-operate and invest. Support by funding and governmental agencies, taking into account the broader discourse on innovation, as well as the chance of success due to the involvement of companies, help to tip the balance in the formation of new collaborations. By focusing on short term valorization of knowledge by actors in
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the packaging sector, entry barriers for nanotechnology developments are de facto increased as there are fewer resources left for long term research into nanotechnologies. As a result, work on materialization of long term nanotechnology promises is fragmented. Big promises of nano-enabled food packaging move to the background along with discussions on broader socio-technical aspects of nano food packaging. Scenario 2: Regulation Helps With broader debates on environmental issues such as, for example, climate change in general, and HES of nanoparticles and packaging legislation in particular, discourse on nanotechnologies and packaging increasingly focuses on environmental aspects. Political parties such as, for example, the ChristenUnie in the Netherlands, advocate a precautionary approach, up to a moratorium. At the same time food regulators such as the Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority in the Netherlands press on with their activities and engage in various discussions with assessment experts, researchers, companies, but also NGOs and consumer organizations. Although discussion on risks, especially toxicology of nanotechnologies, are ongoing and no clear policies are developed, the sheer existence and visibility of these discussions cast a shadow on R&D developments and emerging alliances between actors to develop nanotechnologies for packaging. The emerging nano food packaging sector experiences a bifurcation. SMEs and start ups anticipate further controversies and regulatory barriers, and exit the field. These companies start to align themselves with other research activities and discourses that focus on biodegradable packaging materials that do not carry the perceived hazards of nanoparticles. They find strong allies in the form of retailers who follow the example of Wal-Mart who require the use of biodegradable packaging by their suppliers. Whereas the smaller and new firms exit the field, the incumbents welcome regulation and proceed cautiously with the development of nano food packaging products. They expect that regulation will shield them from protests from consumers and the added value of novel and improved functions of packaging materials will convince retailers. Discourse of nano in food packaging is focused on health, environment and safety risks and the development of nano packaging sets through, but cautiously. Scenario 3: Thresholds are Passed Nanotechnology research entrepreneurs recognize the entry barriers as they are perceived by some firms. Although additional funding for research is promised by governmental agencies, firms are still reluctant to participate because of their concerns about risks of nanoparticles and consumer perceptions. This poses a problem for research entrepreneurs because they consider the involvement of firms essential: both for ensuring additional funding and developing legitimacy for nanotechnology activities. Therefore they persuade critical consumer organizations as well as risk research institutes to participate in a research and development network through arguing that they can make a difference in future technologies. Subsequently, firms are willing to enter, anticipating that these new allies will legitimize new developments.
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The research entrepreneurs are also successful in mobilizing additional funds from governmental agencies, and a broad platform for the development of nanotechnologies for food packaging is ready to take off. The food packaging industry structure+ further evolves when first research results are published. Promising results about improved barrier properties of paper and plastics-based materials encourage pharmaceutical companies to join the further development of nano packaging. Although new relationships between food and health had already been anticipated and discussed, they now materialize in the form of collaborations in the development of new packaging materials. Over time, several thresholds are passed in the development of nanotechnologies for food packaging applications, softening entry barriers, forging relationships, and substantial interactions between an increasingly heterogeneous assembly of actors. Although broader socio-technical considerations such as risks of nanoparticles and consumer acceptance are taken up, it is often of a prudent nature, to ensure the development and stabilization of the research network.
Use of Multi-level Scenarios These scenarios can be used to explore further questions, for example whether and how ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSA) will be taken up at an early stage. This was one of the points raised in the multi-level mapping of the risk landscape around nanoparticles, where health, environmental, and safety risks are getting almost exclusive attention. In the food packaging scenarios, ELSA will not be necessary in the first scenario (there is no nano in food packaging), it will be reduced to immediate risk considerations in the second scenario (where regulation has reduced uncertainties), and might occur in the third scenario, especially because wider uses are becoming visible. The scenarios have not been used yet in workshops or other interactive settings. There has to be something at stake for relevant actors before they are prepared to invest in participating in a workshop. At the moment, there is too little at stake, concretely, to organize a scenario workshop. If we want to insert ourselves in ongoing dynamics, we have to find another way.
Conclusions We have shown how to create socio-technical scenarios that are of high quality because of detailed research into the technologies, sector, relevant actors, and the use of insights in technology dynamics and societal embedding, and of societal dynamics more generally. The scenarios are relevant to various actors, so they can be taken up as starting point for interactions (“probing each other’s worlds”), which lead to more reflexivity about what can and should be done, and eventually to other strategies and actions. For the scenarios we have presented here, it is too early to trace such impacts (if that is possible at all).
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We took up the doubly-fictional nature of nanotechnology character by locating the promises in contexts, tracing their dynamics, and more importantly, developing the fictions from claims of enactors and counter-claims of competing enactors or concerned and critical groups, into complete worlds—socio-technical scenarios— that can checked as to their plausibility and further evolution. Scenarios about future development of nanotechnology in society are not just imagined futures: they are rooted in historical and contemporary developments. In other words, they build on the endogenous future shaped through present irreversibilities and alignments. This is very clear in the concentric scenarios focusing on present and emerging socio-technical paths. In the multi-level scenarios, the scope is broader, but one can still see strengthening of, and shifts in, alignments and further lock-ins leading to trajectories, for example, how risks of nanoparticles are handled. The CTA approach was further specified in terms of enactors (“insiders”) and comparative selectors (“outsiders”) and their interactions. CTA workshops were positioned as intentional bridging events, and in fact, their design and organisation builds on diagnosis of ongoing dynamics in those terms. We have seen that concentric socio-technical scenarios are appreciated by enactors. This derives from their own tendency to think in terms of scenarios (and opportunities and blockages). We expect that political and civil society actors in a comparative-selector position will appreciate the multi-level scenarios, because their role there is constitutive rather than contributory. We have also argued that concentric scenarios need to be further contextualized, and include multi-level dynamics. If fully-fledged multi-level scenarios could be created, we would see how the present diagrams are actually selections, geared to the perspective of a particular kind of actor (in our diagrams, that of enactors). In other words, concentric scenarios are not just a ploy to accommodate enactors in order to broaden their views and actions—a necessary evil, as it were. Multi-level scenarios do not identify with a particular type of actor, but provide the backdrop to actor-specific scenarios. They are the scenarios related to CTA agents, who have no axes to grind other than promoting reflexivity (Schot and Rip 1997). They are broader, and in that sense better. But their broadness also makes them less relevant to actors, unless a translation and specification is made. Our suggestion that political and civil society actors would appreciate multi-level scenarios must therefore be modified: also for them, selection and specification are necessary. The CTA approach combines analysis and action: from tracing dynamics and articulating them, to modulating co-evolution, at least making it more reflexive. Socio-technical scenarios are thus not just tools, supporting one or another type of actor in reflection and articulation of strategies. They are created (or co-created) by CTA agents as part of insertions in ongoing dynamics, unavoidably so. We referred to this occasionally when we discussed scenario workshops. Further reflection on CTA as soft intervention is in order. If we are right in our diagnosis of endogenous futures, and use it to create socio-technical scenarios, we are actually creating a paradoxical situation, where we say to actors that they are part of a pattern and being shaped by it (cf. paths)—and then enjoin them to take action,
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perhaps changing the pattern. In each concrete case, actors may recognize how their choices and actions are being shaped (softly determined) by socio-technical factors and patterns, while at the same time they will act, and attempt to act better based on their understanding of such factors and patterns—up to undermining them. This point about actors being part of a pattern that is reproduced, and then profiting from insight in the pattern to do something different occurs explicitly as soon as there are stabilized anticipations. The well-known Gartner Group hypedisappointment cycle (mainly applied to information and communication technologies) is a case in point.9 Including its “paradoxical” use: there is an existing pattern (up to master curves), and The Gartner Group is willing to advise firm X about when and how to follow the cycle, or step out. Determinism and voluntarism in one: things will go this way, but if you understand it (and hire Gartner Group as consultant) you can escape from it by acting. Similarly, one could say: emerging irreversibilities and path dependencies will occur, but if you understand them, thanks to Constructive TA, you can escape them . . .. Such paradoxes have to be kept in mind, but socio-technical scenarios and scenario workshops can do useful things. They contribute to reflexive co-evolution of science, technology, and society. This need not, by itself, lead to a better technology in a better society. But it will definitely make the co-evolutionary processes more reflexive and create openings for responsible innovation.
Notes 1. The notion of an “early stage” is relative: one might see electric vehicles as being at a late stage of technological development: starting in the late 19th century, surviving in niche applications, now getting new leases on life. But their actual embedding and broader uptake requires further sociotechnical innovations, and is therefore in an early stage. This is how social experiments with electric vehicles have been studied (Hoogma 2000; Hoogma et al. 2002). 2. For an extreme example of this argument, see Bond (2005) who argues that it would be unethical to stop the development of nanotechnologies because of their potential to “enabling the blind to see and the deaf to hear.” 3. Pressure to substitute fluorochlorocarbons as coolants were ineffective until Greenpeace Germany and an ailing refrigerator company in former East Germany got together and created a technical alternative, Greenfreeze, which shifted the balance of forces, at least in Europe (Verheul and Vergragt 1995). Van de Poel (1998, 2003) has shown more generally that it is important to have a technological alternative, a configuration that actually works, to effect regime change. 4. The authors acknowledge contributions from Douglas K.R. Robinson in drafting this section, and his willingness to let us use documents from and data on the workshop before his own writing-up of them. 5. The emergence of platforms is a general innovation dynamic, and of particular importance for nanotechnologies (Robinson et al. 2007). 6. Cf. Fujimura’s (1987) analysis of doability. She shows how research becomes doable because of alignment (and the work of aligning) across levels: activities in the lab, the institute, the wider world, especially sponsors of research. 7. Whether the requirements for ELSA, as in the US National Nanotechnology Initiative, also lead to the integration of ELSA in research activities (in the technical sciences) is not clear. The few studies that have been carried out show that isolation from the outside world is still the main
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goal—and functional for pursuing the research without interference. See for example the studies by Erik Fisher in Colorado, who has developed and experimented with the concept of midstream modulation (Fisher et al. 2006). So there is no three-level alignment (yet), an alignment which would create strong stabilization, almost a lock-in. 8. See: http://www.hkc22.com/Nanofood.html and http://www.cientifica.com/www/summarys/Nano4FoodBrochure.pdf; accessed on 12-01-2007. 9. The hype-disappointment cycle is a folk-theory, because widely recognised, used to draw out implications, and not an object of systematic research. It is a relatively innocent folk theory, though, because actors can easily recognize its limitations and define their actions taking the limitations into account. See further Rip (2006).
References Abernathy, W.J. and K.B. Clark. 1985. Innovation: Mapping the Winds of Creative Destruction. Research Policy 14: 3–22. Bond, P. J. 2005. Responsible Nanotechnology Development. In Swiss Re, ed., Nanotechnology: “Small Size—Large Impact?,” Centre for Global Dialogue, (pp. 7–8). Z¨urich: Swiss Reinsurance Company. Brumfiel, G. 2003. A Little Knowledge. . . . Nature, 424: 246–248. Colvin, V. L. 2003. Testimony of Dr Vicki L. Colvin, Director Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN) and Associate Professor of Chemistry Rice University, Houston, TX, before the US House of Representatives Committee on Science in regard to “Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2003.” http://www.house.gov/science/ hearings/full03/apr09/colvin.htm. Cowan, R.S. 1987. The Consumption Junction: A Proposal for Research Strategies in the Sociology of Technology. In W.E. Bijker, T.P. Hughes, and T. Pinch, eds., The Social Construction of Technological Systems (pp. 261–280). Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The MIT Press. Cusumano, M.A., Y. Mylonadis, and R. Rosenbloom. 1997. Strategic Manoeuvring and Massmarket Dynamics: The Triumph of VHS over Beta. In Michael Tushman and Philip Anderson, eds., Managing Strategic Innovation and Change (pp. 75–98). Oxford: Oxford University Press. David, P. 1985. Clio and the Economics of QWERTY. American Economic Review, 75(2): 332–337. Deuten, J.J. 2003. Cosmopolitanizing Technologies. A Study of Four Emerging Technological Regimes. Enschede: Twente University Press. Deuten, J.J., Rip, A. and J. Jelsma. 1997. Societal Embedment and Product Creation Management. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 9(2): 131–148. ElAmin, A. 2005. Nanotechnology Targets New Food Packaging Products. http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/news/ng.asp?id=63147. ElAmin, A. 2007. Nano Project Aims to Reduce Packaging Waste. http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/news/printNewsBis.asp?id=74496. ETC. 2003. The Big Down: Atomtech—Technologies Converging at the Nano-scale. Ottowa (Canada): Action group on erosion, technology and concentration. ETC. 2004. Down on the Farm: The Impact of Nano-scale Technologies on Food and Agriculture. Ottowa (Canada): Action group on erosion, technology and concentration. Fisher, E., Mahajan, R.L., and C. Mitcham. 2006. Midstream Modulation of Technology: Governance from Within. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 26(6): 485–496. Fujimura, J.H. 1987. Constructing ‘Do-Able’ Problems in Cancer Research: Articulating Alignment. Social Studies of Science 17(2): 257–293.
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Garud, R. and D. Ahlstrom. 1997. Technology Assessment: A Socio-cognitive Perspective. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management 14: 25–48. Guston, D.H. and D. Sarewitz. 2002. Real-time Technology Assessment. Technology in Society 24: 93–109. Hoogma, R. 2000. Exploiting Technological Niches: Strategies for Experimental Introduction of Electric Vehicles. PhD dissertation, Enschede: Twente University Press. Hoogma, R., Kemp, R., Schot, J., and B. Truffer 2002. Experimenting for Sustainable Transport: The Approach of Strategic Niche Management. London: Spon Press. Joseph, T. and M. Morrison. 2006. Nanotechnology in Agriculture and Food. Nanoforum. http://www.nanoforum.org. Kuzma, J. and P. Verhage. 2006. Nanotechnology in Agriculture and Food Production: Anticipated Applications. Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Moore, G. 2006. Harnessing the Opportunities Offered by Emerging Technologies. Presented at the Specialty & Technical Papers Intertech-Pira Conference, (pp. 11–12) July, in Madison, Wisconsin. Philips Research – Technologies. Homelab: Our testing ground for a better tomorrow. http://www.research.philips.com/technologies/misc/homelab/. Prisma & Partners and MinacNed. 2006. Roadmap Microsystem & Nanotechnology in Food & Nutrition. Warnsveld: Prisma & Partners, Amersfoort: MinacNed. Renton, A. 2006. Welcome to the World of Nano Foods. Guardian Unlimited. December, 13th. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly/futureoffood/story/0,,1971266,00.html. RFID Journal. 2003. Metro Opens ‘Store of the Future.’ http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/ articleview/399/1/1/. Rip, A., T.J. Misa, and J. Schot, eds. 1995. Managing Technology in Society. The Approach of Constructive Technology Assessment, London and New York: Pinter Publishers. Rip, A. and R. Kemp. 1998. Technological Change. In S. Rayner and E.L. Malone, eds., Human Choice and Climate Change. Vol. 2 (pp. 327–399). Columbus, Ohio: Battelle Press. Rip, A. 2006. Folk Theories of Nanotechnologists. Science as Culture 15(4): 349–365. Robinson, D.K.R. 2006. Micro and Nano Tools for Single Cell Analysis: Strategy Articulation for Creating Linkages in the Innovation Chain. Preparatory report for CTA workshop as part of the Technology Assessment Programme of the “Frontiers” NoE. Unpublished internal report. Robinson, D.K.R., Rip, A. and V. Mangematin. 2007. Technological Agglomeration and the Emergence of Clusters and Networks in Nanotechnology. Research Policy 36: 871–879. Schot, J. and A. Rip. 1997. The Past and Future of Constructive Technology Assessment. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 54: 251–268. Sonneveld, K. 2000. What Drives (Food) Packaging Innovation? Packaging Technology and Science 13: 29–35. Van Amerom, M. and Rip, A. 2007. Pattern in the co-evolution of nanotechnology and society. Paper presented at the Conference of the Deliberating Future Technologies, Basel University. Van de Poel, I. 1998. Changing Technologies: A Comparative Study of Eight Processes of Transformation of Technological Regimes. PhD dissertation, Enschede: Twente University Press. Van de Poel, I. 2003. The Transformation of Technological Regimes. Research Policy 32: 49–68. Van Lente, H. and A. Rip. 1998. Expectations in Technological Developments: An Example of Prospective Structures to Be Filled in by Agency. In C. Disco and B.E. van der Meulen, eds., Getting New Technologies Together: Studies in Making Sociotechnical Order. Berlin – New York: Walter de Gruyter. Van Merkerk, R.O. and D.K.R. Robinson. 2006. The Interaction Between Expectations, Networks and Emerging Paths: A Framework and an Application to Lab on a Chip Technology for Medical and Pharmaceutical Applications. Technology Analysis and Strategic Management 18(3–4): 411–428.
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Verheul, H. and P.J. Vergragt. 1995. Social Experiments in the Development of Environmental Technology: A Bottom-up Perspective. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 7(3): 315–326. Wolfe, J. 2005. Safer and Guilt-Free Nano Foods. http://www.forbes.com/2005/08/09/nanotechnology-kraft-hershey cz jw 0810soapbox inl print.html.
Chapter 5
Information and Imagination: How Lux Research Forecasts ¨ Mark Bunger
While some visions of the future are intended to spark ideas, debate, or general interest, others are used to inform day-to-day business decisions. Lux Research is in the business of prediction in order to help companies exploit emerging markets in the nanotechnology sector. Lux is a formidable player in characterizing the nano sector through their consultancy services and analytical reports. These services and reports are broadly used by academics, government officials, policy makers, and other trend watchers as support for the belief that nanotechnology research will produce transformational economic growth (see also Agilent Technologies, ch. 11; Meyyappan, ch. 20). In this chapter, B¨unger explains how these products, which he helps to create, account for a host of social, economic, political, legal, and industrial considerations. Such factors are critical in Lux’s effort to assign values to future markets. A tour through Lux’s research and methodology for making such projections reveals detailed calculations based on arduously collected and analyzed data. B¨unger suggests, however, that this rigor is matched by some modesty at Lux, since numbers only represent a “best guess” and must be balanced by judgment and imagination (compare Berne, ch. 23). Nevertheless, these projections can have a significant impact on nanotechnology funding, research, and development. – Eds.
M. B¨unger Lux Research, San Francisco, CA, USA Originally presented at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University on 13 April 2007.
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Lux Research is an independent industry research firm that looks at emerging, natural science-based technologies. Each year we produce multiple reports that respond to customer needs in assessing the potential of emerging technologies. These reports often make projections about possible pathways of development and draw on rich analytics to track research and commercialization patterns and as such feed widely into discussions about the future of nanotechnology. Yet we are not futurists. We do not qualitatively approach plausible technological developments and try to imagine their farthest-reaching implications, such as what bloodstream-borne nanobots would look like or be capable of. These are fascinating after-dinner conversations that we do enjoy participating in, but to date we have not found a market for these kinds of thoughts. At the same time, we are not market researchers: we don’t attempt to calculate exactly how many grams of TiO2 will be sold worldwide next year, broken down by 30-, 40-, and 50-nanometer products. Here, there is a business well-served by other firms, and we do refer to these types of studies on occasion. Our forecasts are in some ways in between these two, as they are based on both rigorous data, and on creativity and judgment. This paper is meant to describe our methods for conducting this research, not as a promotion or defense of our approach, but as a contribution to the dialog among “nanotechnology watchers” coordinated by Arizona State University, in which we are honored to have been asked to participate.
Our History Lux Research was spun out of investment firm Lux Capital in 2004. Lux Capital had been producing The Nanotechnology Report, a large (some 500 pages) report about nanotechnology and about the startups and corporations involved in developing it, aimed at informing investors about this new field. Lux Research was created to produce this report and other information- and service-based products, allowing Lux Capital to solely focus on its investments. Today in early 2007, we are a team of about twenty-five people, mostly based in the US. Every year we publish The Nanotech Report, as well as eight “framework reports” and a weekly journal, which will be described in detail below. We also conduct specific studies for our clients, which also will be described below. As a professional services firm, our retained clients are primarily Global 1000 organizations, but also include government agencies, start-ups, investors, and universities. What we provide them is business advice, broad-based but also frequently tailored to the specific client’s business need: Which nanomaterial should I license to develop a more sensitive diagnostic test for prostate-specific antigens? Which metal oxide nanoparticle maker is my strongest competitor, and what action should I take to beat them? What nanotechnology startup should I acquire in order to accelerate my next-generation data-storage product? In order to answer these questions accurately and rapidly, we constantly scan the world of nanotechnology, looking at startups, corporations, patents, scientific papers, financial filings, government reports, and many more sources of data.
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Our Research Since Lux Research does not fall neatly into any category traditionally occupied by technology forecasters, it may be most useful to describe what we make, and then how we make it. By “technologies” we mean scientific developments that are commercially relevant as a product, process, or tool; we do not cover fundamental research or non-commercial sciences—say, astrophysics or evolutionary biology. By “natural science-based” we mean physics, chemistry, and biology; we don’t cover innovations related to software1 or social sciences—blogging, consumer psychology, and the like. First and foremost among the topics we cover has been nanotechnology, a field of scientific endeavor which has entered the commercial sphere perhaps more rapidly than any analogous domain of science, whether that be radio, plastics, biotechnology, information technology, or many other comparables. In addition to nanotechnology, we also cover areas such as regenerative medicine, “cleantech,” and post-CMOS electronics, as our client work and our own calculations and instincts about important innovations tell us. Within that scope, we undertake a variety of research activities that form our offering; the data, ideas, and services that our clients pay us for. As noted above, our published research consists of The Nanotech Report, eight framework reports, and fifty-two journals. These documents build on each other, with the Lux Research Journal at the base (see Fig. 5.1).
Lux Research Journal Each week, we publish the Lux Research Journal (LRJ), which contains three to five one-page company write-ups, as well as our “inside baseball” news and data, upcoming events, and other various bits of information useful to our clients. The basis of the company write-ups are our direct interviews (by phone or in person) with the CEOs, founders, and other key personnel at nanotechnology startups. These company write-ups are free text to be more readable, but cover a very structured list of data points, including operations, financing, materials and applications, patents, and partners. We also include our “take”—an unvarnished opinion about what our clients should or should not do in light of the contents of the briefing. The LRJ
The Nanotech Report (1/yr)
Framework Framework Reports Reports (8/yr) (8/yr)
Fig. 5.1 Published research at Lux
LuxResearch ResearchJournal Journal(52/yr) (52/yr) Lux
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does not contain any forecasts, except insofar as our recommendations contain our implicit judgment about probable futures. Another key feature of the LRJ is what we call “tidbits”—the happenings, revelations, gossip, et cetera, that we have learned from conversations at conferences, emails sent by contacts at other organizations, and other random sources. As with the company write-ups, these are also provided on our client portal, searchable and hyperlinked to the relevant entities. We distribute the LRJ to clients via email. In addition, all past write-ups are available via our client portal, and include hyperlinks to people, companies, technologies, etc., described in the write-up.
Framework Reports The eight framework reports we publish each year are thirty- to fifty-page studies of a particular topic of broad interest to our clients. Hence we rarely publish on industry-specific topics, but rather topics such as intellectual property or environmental, health, and safety issues that are of equal interest for a Kansas-based biomedical startup or a multibillion-dollar Asian electronics giant. Each report is written and edited in an eight-week process, involving a lead author (Analyst or Senior Analyst), an editor (Senior Analyst or Research Director), and a contributing researcher Analyst. While a large amount of the report-specific research and analysis is conducted in this short period, it is really the culmination of many months of less-intensive market monitoring, idea generation, and conceptual testing; and of course we pull from the large stores of data we collect in the process of writing the LRJ or doing other work. While there are some commonalities, each report has a somewhat unique methodology that combines primary and secondary research, and quantitative and qualitative analysis; this methodology is explained in detail in a methodology section, and clients can ask us for custom analyses using their own assumptions or can even receive the data sets for internal analysis. The methodology should lead to testable predictions and recommendations for companies that want to ensure or to avoid a particular future scenario. Examples of reports and the methodologies include:
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Sizing Nanotechnology’s Value Chain: We view nanotechnology as a value chain of materials, intermediates, and end products, all supported by tools (see Fig. 5.2).
In this report, we gathered actual and estimated sales data for companies supplying each of these products (nanoparticulate silver or iron oxide, atomic force microscopes, etc.). We then made forecasts for each by sector and region through 2014, and extrapolated this to broader economic impacts like job creation. Our forecast was based on our value chain ontology, secondary research, and more than one hundred interviews with executives, thought leaders, and academics. Our projections were triangulated from bottom-up, top-down, analogical, and third-party
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Nanoscale structures in unprocessed form
Intermediate products with nanoscale features
Nanoparticles, nanotubes, quantum dots, fullerenes, dendrimers, nanoporous materials…
Coatings, fabrics, memory and logic chips, contrast media, optical components, orthopedic materials, superconducting wire…
Finished goods incorporating nanotechnology Cars, clothing, airplanes, computers, consumer electronics devices, pharmaceuticals, processed food, plastic containers, appliances…
Nanotools Capital equipment and software used to visualize, manipulate, and model matter at the nanoscale Atomic force microscopes, nanoimprint lithography equipment, nanomanipulators…
Fig. 5.2 The nanotechnology value chain
market estimates, as well as advanced evolutionary models of how nanotech-based solutions “compete” with alternative solutions to win market share. So while the top-line conclusion illustrated in Fig. 5.3—“Nanotechnology will impact $2.9 trillion worth of products across the value chain by 2014”—sounds simple, in actuality it is based on thousands of data points, all of which are available for reanalysis if circumstances change. And notably, it illustrates that the market for nanomaterials is itself nano-sized in perspective: the tens of billions of revenue dollars they comprise forms a line too thin to be seen on this chart.
$3,000 $2,500 $2,000 Sales $1,500 ($ billions) $1,000 $500 $0 2005 2006
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Fig. 5.3 Sales of products incorporating nanotechnology, 2005 to 2014
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The CEO’s Nanotechnology Playbook: This report examines how corporations do (and should) go about organizing, governing, and funding nanotech initiatives and makes predictions about how and why they will do so differently in the future. The research is based on interviews with thirty-three large corporations active in nanotech and includes case studies of organizational models. How Nanotechnology Adds Value to Products: Using business case modeling for nanotech applications, this report forecasts nanotech’s economic impact on three high-volume products (a light vehicle, a mobile phone, and a breast cancer therapy); including revenue uplift and value chain metrics for existing nano-enabled products. The Nanotechnology IP Landscape: The initial report is an analysis of 1,084 nanotech patents covering 19,485 claims in carbon nanotubes, fullerenes, quantum dots, dendrimers, and nanowires. In its second year, we examine 4,986 nanotechnology patents covering 102,651 claims, and then do an in-depth claimby-claim analysis of eight nanomaterial platforms covering 2,646 patents and 49,807 claims. By examining historical data like entanglement, white space, and pendency,2 we predict where companies and researchers will find the most fertile ground for generating new, valuable, free-and-clear intellectual property. A Prudent Approach to Nanotech Environmental, Health, and Safety Risks: This report examines US government nanotech EHS funding, scientific papers, and consumer perception studies. Based on this, it provides a framework for assessing future real and perceived nanotech EHS risks applied to ten nanomaterials and ten sample product applications. The Truth about Nanotech Tools: Using sales data from instrument vendors, interviews with buyers and sellers, and other data, this report provides a market sizing and forecasts for nanotech inspection, fabrication, and modeling tools through 2009. We found, for example, that tools account for $1.7 billion (almost 20 percent) of total nanotech spending in 2005. Based on historic growth rates in specific categories like scanning probe microscopes (SPMs), electron microscopes (EMs), and dual-beam microscopes in inspection, nanoimprint lithography (NIL) and dip-pen nanolithography (DPN) in fabrication, and software tools for addressing nanostructures in modeling, we found their growth rates varying from as little as 5 percent to over 80 percent annually; data points such as these enabled us to forecast growth in these categories from $636 million in 2005 to $1.06 billion in 2010. Ranking the Nations, Nanotech’s Shifting Global Leaders: This report measures international competitiveness based on quantitative rankings of fourteen countries on nanotech activity and technology development strength. We forecast how these figures will change in coming years and calculate the impact on each country’s score. How Industry Leaders Organize for Nanotech Innovation: This assessment of corporate nanotech activity was based on 35 corporate interviews, and looked at secondary data such as R&D spending and specific nanotech projects at the world’s 1,331 largest companies. Based on this data, it forecasts expansion of
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financial and operational figures; for example, that 148 firms have structured nanotech initiatives today, which will nearly double to 290 in 2008 as 80 percent of high-impact companies move nanotech efforts into mainstream product development and many of the 217 firms in medium-impact sectors like automotive and food formalize today’s loose projects.
The Nanotech Report As noted above, The Nanotech Report (TNR) was the seed from which our company grew. This annual report provides profiles, evaluations, and forecasts on some seventy firms—both corporations and startups—and thirty technology domains (e.g. carbon nanotubes). Because of its size, the report draws on many different data sources: hundreds of interviews, a four person-year market sizing and forecasting effort, exhaustive analysis of corporate and government financing, and an assessment of over three hundred venture capital transactions.
Client Work In addition to the work we publish, we also conduct client-specific research projects that are never made public. While they do provide advice and recommendations— again implying our view of the future—these projects are not so much “consulting” as a means for companies to get unique data about the market. Below are some examples of client work and the methodology we used to conduct the studies.3
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A $4 billion maker of high-performance biology/agriculture/chemical-related products sought new application markets for three key new nanotechnologies they had developed in their labs. Each used a combination of metal or metal oxide nanoparticles in a polymer matrix; potential benefits ranged from improvements in cosmetic product features to the elimination of a costly step in the manufacturing process. We assessed twenty-two new applications, and prioritized them down to nine for closer examination. Each assessment included the following data: ◦ Qualitative Assessment (Description of the innovation; Problems with today’s solutions; The value of solving the problem; Other opportunities and unmet needs) ◦ Market Fit (Market Size in EU, US, ROW, Global; CAGR; (Client)-related materials as percent of production cost; (Client) addressable market (MUSD); (Client) target market share; Years to reach target market share; (Client) target revenue (MUSD). We also included a “Market Estimate Uncertainty” factor that conservatively adjusted figures where complete, reliable data was not available.
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◦ Market Environment and Value Chain: (Client) markets, buyers, competitors, distributors ◦ Material Fit: alignment between client’s technology and twenty properties, including abrasion resistance, antistatic, biodegradability, etc. ◦ Revenue forecast for the client and specific actions to take
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For a large, global scientific equipment maker developing a new instrument, we interviewed thirty five users in six segments (two user types times three industries) on preferences, views of competitors, unmet needs, and purchasing plans. The findings were used to predict how a new product would fare against competitors’ existing and future product offerings. In a third case, a multi-billion dollar medical devicemaker sought an overview of medical nanotechnology in areas such as drug delivery, in vivo diagnostics, implant coatings, and manufacturing and materials. Specifically, the Vice President of R&D and his fifteen direct reports wanted to build or acquire emerging medical nanotechnologies—involving both specific nanoparticles as well as processes involving nanostructured materials—to extend current product lines and launch new ones. We performed a market-sweeping evaluation to identify technically relevant start-ups unencumbered by strong competing partnerships or onerously entwined IP. Our research covered 189 companies and labs, and included in-depth interviews with 61 of them. Based on our work, we made direct introductions to a shortlist of companies of interest; the client created three new teams focused on commercialization in the three most promising areas. In this work, the business forecast was a given for us; the client knew the opportunity in each business area, and wanted our forecast of which emerging technologies would be ready in the timeframe that would help them grow their business.
Our Methods As the examples above show, we look at science and business. The fact that they do not evolve separately, but coevolve, can be a confounding or simplifying factor in our forecasts. Business is usually the rate-limiting factor in the reaction: Even the most scientifically fascinating discovery is unlikely to have an impact on society if it cannot provide economic benefits commensurate with its costs. And even a discovery that consumers desperately want or need won’t take off until science can provide a solution. On the other hand, scientific solutions do not appear simply because they are urgently needed, well-funded, or seemingly simple. In general, harsh economic and physical reality allows only incremental, predictable change— and keeps our forecasts grounded. Most technologies cause gradual change. But some new technologies undeniably change the world abruptly and unpredictably. To manage both, we believe forecasters need to:
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1. Gather as much data as the analysis warrants 2. Analyze the data in multiple ways 3. Use judgment and imagination within existing and new frameworks
1. Gather as Much Data as the Analysis Warrants We believe that whatever cannot inherently be measured, in some sense, does not exist. We measure—gather data—nearly constantly, and indeed acquiring and categorizing data makes up well over 90 percent of the time our employees spend on non-administrative tasks. In the world of “nano” or any other area of emerging technology, this means looking at startups, corporations, patents, scientific papers, financial filings, government reports, and many more sources of data. But it also means primary research: Last year we conducted more than 1,500 interviews with start-up CEOs, corporate executives, lab researchers, policymakers, and thought leaders. We complement these with on-site visits to labs, offices, and conferences all around the world; in the last two weeks, our employees have personally visited nanotechnology and toxicology researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the CEO of a Chinese nanomaterials startup, R&D leaders in five large Japanese corporations, eight Vice Presidents at an oil giant in Dubai, a Berkeley physics professor, and the US Senate Armed Services Committee. We invest so much time and money in this data-gathering exercise because we believe without data, forecasting is simply not possible. Of course some things can be measured only in theory—they can be difficult to count, or intentionally kept secret, such as a corporation’s data about the EHS risks of the materials it is developing or the detailed finances of a nanotech startup. In these cases, forecasters have a number of tactics to fall back on: interviewing skills and interrogation techniques, triangulation based on available data, and other tools of the analyst’s craft. For example, during a telephone interview, one start-up CEO was being very cagey about the company’s manufacturing process; a quick search for his CTO’s name in the USPTO database revealed patents with enough detail that we could get the conversation back “on track” with very specific questions about materials and methods. At the same time, discretion is very important; information revealed in confidence can never be revealed and attached to its source or we will lose our status as a trusted advisor. How much data is enough? That depends on the analysis the forecaster hopes to do. Sometimes, a back-of-the-napkin calculation is all that is warranted to rule an idea in or out; but identifying three preferences in five market segments in a population may require hundreds of survey points. Ultimately, a good data set is simply the one that is adequate for the analysis.
2. Analyze the Data in Multiple Ways Where there are holes in historical data, it is often a minor matter to calculate a reasonable approximation of the missing data and fill it in. This has its limits; if there is a lot of variation, or if the impact of variation is large, an approximation will
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not do. And if even a large minority of data points are estimated, then the analysis is likely to be inaccurate. The best a researcher can do in these cases is lay bare the data and calculations, and forecast best-case and worst-case scenarios that bound the problem. Unfortunately, there are no data points to be had about the forecaster’s main area of interest—the future—so the forecaster must analyze the historical data in multiple ways. If the assessments converge, the analysis is likely to be correct. At Lux Research, we strive to make detailed and quantifiable assessments of today’s current state, so our forecasts are frequently more a matter of arithmetic than of opinion. As a simple example, if the market for tennis rackets is $100 million, and has been growing between 2 percent and 3 percent for a decade, then it is very straightforward to calculate the likely market size for several years ahead. The addition of nanotechnology into a market should have some impact, of course; and forecasting this impact takes slightly more judgment. In the case of tennis rackets, one manufacturer has found that introducing C60 fullerenes into the composite increases the bonding between carbon graphite fibers and the epoxy polymer resin, thus increasing the stiffness of the racket and transferring more of the player’s energy into the motion of the ball. The manufacturer hopes that this benefit will get more players to buy this racket. To forecast the effect, we would modify the baseline forecast by examining each of the variables in that calculation:
r r r r
Revenue = units x price Units = number of players x number of rackets per player Number of players = number of players in US + number of players in EU + number of players in Japan. . . (or another segmentation variable) Et cetera.
For example, we would ask whether the introduction of nanotechnology will affect the number of units sold: Our judgment would be that the introduction of this technology will not change the number of players adopting the sport, since it does not change any of the primary benefits of the sport (fun, exercise, etc.). Nor will it increase the number of rackets per player, since customers first decide to buy a tennis racket and then choose which one they will purchase; sales of the nano-modified racket will reduce sales of conventional rackets. Even though the introduction of the new racket might increase the number of rackets per player, as some players replace an old racket sooner than they would have if the nano-racket had not been available, this would take away future sales, so the net effect on the overall market is zero. Price is probably a happier story; history has shown that nano-enabled products do enjoy a price premium over conventional alternatives; given data points such as the ones in the graphic below, it might be realistic to assume a 5 percent price increase in a conservative calculation, and as much as a 35 percent increase in a very optimistic scenario (See Table 5.1). Even in a simple calculation like this, there are dozens of variables to consider in this way. Some of these judgments would be based on historical precedent: What happened to sales of tennis rackets when graphite was introduced? Others are based on external data, such as population growth. In the most extreme case, a judgment may be based on personal experience or “common sense”—which is obviously not
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Table 5.1 Price premium of nano-enabled products over conventional alternatives Traditional product
Nano-enabled product
Nanoscale innovation
Price premium
Wilson U.S. Open tennis balls, can of 3 $2.59*
Wilson Double Core tennis balls, can of 3 $3.49*
Clay nanocomposite barrier coating (InMat)
35%
Coloplast/Sween Contreet foam antimicrobial garrier dressing with silver, 5x5”, 5 count $48.00**
Smith & Nephew Acticoat 7 antimicrobial dressing, 4x5”, 5 count $55.00**
Silver nanoparticles instead of micron-scale silver film (NuCryst)
15%
Eddie Bauer Ruston Fit Performance khakis, regular $44.50***
Eddie Bauer Ruston Fit NanoCare khakis, regular $49.50***
Superhydrophobic nanoscale coating applied to fabric (Nano-Tex)
11%
Prices drawn from: * Exsell Sports; ** Allegro Medical; *** Amazon.com; all as of January 8, 2005
perfectly scientific and should be limited to variables that have a small effect on the overall calculation. Some examples of all of these kinds of factors are shown in the Tables 5.2–5.4. Our next task is to take the historical and estimated datapoints into account and see how they modify the calculation. And in fact, for a great many products impacted by nanotechnology, a simple, straightforward calculation suffices to forecast the future with a high degree of accuracy. Usually, these calculations “burst a bubble” of enthusiastic expectations based on more qualitative, “from the hip” forecasts.
Table 5.2 Drivers and challenges for nanotechnology in pharmaceuticals +
New medical technologies required to serve an ageing population
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Big pharma is averse to investing in formulation technology—cost pressures decrease willingness of big pharma to explore outside of core competencies
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Blockbuster drugs are needed to sustain profits for big pharma companies—$21 billion worth of drugs coming off patent in 2006 alone Up to 40 percent of drug candidates discovered by combinatorial chemistry are eliminated due to solubility issues
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Nanoparticle size distribution and uncertainty about nanomaterial toxicity exacerbate regulatory issues
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Synthesis, handling, characterization of nanoparticles fall outside of the expertise of biological researchers
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+
Tomorrow’s displays will incorporate nanoscale features, but be “printed” roll-to-roll at 100 ft/sec—requiring high-throughput nanometer accuracy
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Nanomaterials can help enable new form factors like flexible displays
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Power demands of incumbent technologies like LCD limit miniaturization of consumer electronic devices
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Ultimately, printability means screens and other components may merge into one product category
Nano-enabled displays could be cheaper to produce, but technologies like inkjet or roll-to-roll printing require new capital investments Material quality is not yet up to snuff—this challenge may scuttle CNT-FED technology entirely Nanotech innovations offer components, like new backplanes, which may be cheaper in isolation but don’t take into account system costs and manufacturability
Take as an example, a forecast of the adoption of nanotechnology in the form of high-density batteries into hybrid electric vehicles. This application is extremely exciting because it has the potential to reduce an individual car’s petroleum consumption—even theoretically bringing it near zero. This is because high-density batteries enable the vehicle to travel farther on a single charge than many drivers need to travel in a day; hybrid vehicles using these batteries could be plugged into a socket at the owner’s home at night and begin each day completely recharged. Demand signals are strong, since many consumers are concerned about gas prices, pollution, and the geopolitical consequences of automobiles’ need for oil. Supply looks good since the technology is available today from several nanotechnology startups such as A123 and Altair; while it is not perfected, few doubt that remaining engineering problems can be worked out so that a reliable vehicle could be produced at cost similar to conventional automobiles. In fact, the plug-in hybrid cars on the road today have been built by car enthusiasts in their garages! However, a straightforward calculation shows that even this urgently needed, readily available technology will take decades to be adopted widely. In the US, there Table 5.4 Drivers and challenges for nanotechnology in automobiles +
A few niche applications in high-end cars, like coatings and self-cleaning glass, drive nanotech in autos today
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+
Next-generation vehicles will rely on nanotech in more core components, like hybrid batteries and fuel cell components Market forces, like oil prices and consumer demand, push automakers towards advanced technologies
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+
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Suppliers are squeezed on margins all the way down the value chain, creating tough cost demands for nanotech solutions Proposed nanotech applications like structural composites haven’t hit needed price-performance points due to challenges in creating dispersions High-volume production doesn’t merit bleeding-edge technology; consumers already feel that cars are “overfeatured”
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Fig. 5.4 Composition of vehicle population
are well over 220 million vehicles on the road, and about 17 million new vehicles are sold annually. Of course, not all of these new cars can be built with hybrid technology starting next year; engineering and economic constraints mean that it typically takes a decade or two for innovations (such as antilock brakes, air bags, electric starters, CD players, etc) to become standard equipment. Assuming that the new “green” battery technology is adopted by 100 percent of new car buyers in ten years (by 2017), in a straight-line 10 percent increase annually, it takes until around 2024 until all cars are plug-in hybrids (see Fig. 5.4). And unfortunately, this rate would be implausibly fast—given real-world factors like the growing (not stagnant) vehicle population and other insights that a lot of actual data provide, 2040–2060 is a more realistic forecast. Economics is indeed a dismal science! Bottom-up, top-down, and single-point calculations all contribute to the overall richness of the forecaster’s picture, but they can also expose untested assumptions, flaws in the analysis, and even—hopefully—golden kernels of truth. The important thing for forecasters to do is to use multiple kinds of analysis to approach the best approximation of the future reality.
3. Use Judgment and Imagination within Existing and New Frameworks For all their benefits in keeping forecasts realistic, calculations have their limits. In particular, they don’t tell the forecaster “what to do if X happens?”; “how can we avoid Y?”; or “what other possibilities might be open if we do Z?” For broader
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strategic thinking, calculations should feed into conceptual frameworks that help the forecaster (or the users of the forecast) to think about what they should do. There are a wealth of such conventional frameworks for analyzing businesses, products, and technologies, such as SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats), Porter’s Five Forces model, and the like. Naturally, at Lux Research, we draw on these as frequently as a chemist refers to the periodic table. But in addition, we have other frameworks we use implicitly and explicitly; some of these are unique to our firm, some are derived from other researchers’ work forecasting technological innovation. Here, some of the most important ones are described from those mostly quantitative and rigorous to those mostly intuitive and creative. Forecasting Technology Adoption Technology diffusion has been studied for well over 100 years now, beginning with the work of French sociologist Tarde in 1895, and greatly advanced by work such as that of Rogers who studied how hybrid corn was adopted by Iowa farmers, and more recently Christensen, who studied the uptake of novel computer disk drive formats. As most technology watchers are very familiar with these conceptual frameworks, I will not describe them at length here. While they are conceptual, they are each based on rigorously complied data and can form the “template” for a forecast of adoption of any new technology. By adjusting a few variables, such as rate of uptake and maximum market penetration, a forecaster can arrive at a reasonable approximation of a given technology’s likely uptake in the market. Then based on this, the effect of more qualitative factors—the introduction of a competing technology in three years, for example—can be estimated. An interesting observation about these different views is that they are not actually different—they are essentially transformations of the same general S-curve (each technology follows its own S-curve) (See Fig. 5.5). Just as particle physicists and cosmologists seek a “Grand Unified Theory” to link relativity and quantum mechanics, and string theorists try to use “M theory”
Christensen
Rogers
Derivative of penetration
Fig. 5.5 S-curves
90-degree rotation
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to unite their seemingly different approaches, perhaps this may form the basis of a unified innovation forecasting model for technology watchers.
Forecasting Quality and Cost Curves Just as adoption can be forecast with reasonable certainty based on historical templates, quality and cost trends can be forecast, albeit with slightly less rigor. Quality can predictably be forecast to increase, slowly at first, then at an ever-faster rate until it surpasses even the most demanding customer’s needs. Look at any product, whether it is cars, computers, food, toys, healthcare, mobile phones, digital watches, or frozen peas, and you will find a steady increase in the reliability, fit, and precision of that product at a given price point. When quality at a given price point exceeds customers’ needs, costs inevitably drop while quality stays constant. As an example, look at the cost of home computers; from the early 1980s until the early 2000s, the price of a PC was fairly constant at about $2000, even though chip speeds, memory, and even software capability (i.e. graphics rendering) were increasing exponentially. Today, computers that have more than enough of practically every feature are available for under $500; and simpler versions are being rolled out for $150 in MIT’s famous “Laptop for every child” program. When looking at nanotechnology, we can forecast that quality—of carbon nanotubes, ceramic nanoparticles, or any raw material today, and any intermediate or end product in the future—will increase steadily from today’s barely-acceptable levels. When acceptable quality levels are achieved, costs will plummet. Cost, when based on a limited resource, tends to increase over time, but that is not the case with any nanomaterial, nearly all of which are created from readily-available precursors. Cost decreases when 1) the resource is not limited or 2) the amount of the limited resource can be reduced. These changes are hard to predict specifically, because they tend to happen stochastically—an engineer makes a sudden discovery that enables a product to perform well even with less material, and the cost of the product drops. An interesting example of both factors happening at once occurred in 2001 at Ford Motor Company. Procurement people were acquiring vast hordes of palladium, which is a key—and very expensive—commodity needed for catalytic converters; they acted in secrecy so the market would not know of the auto giant’s needs and raise prices. At the same time, engineers were working diligently—and successfully—to make converters work with a fraction of the palladium previously needed. Suddenly, the company found itself with huge stockpiles of a metal it didn’t need, and dumping it back to the market cost billions of dollars.
Forecasting with Metaphor, Analogy, and Homology Scientists recoil at the use of science terms in business language: making a “quantum leap” into profitability, or developing “the DNA of leadership.” Being a science-based business, Lux Research abhors these too. But we also recognize that comparisons— metaphor, analogy, and homology—can be useful forecasting tools.
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Metaphor is a comparison between two things that illustrates an interesting but coincidental similarity that has limited extensibility. When people say “Business is war” or “Business is a jungle” they simply mean that business is rough: as animals in the jungle fight and eat each other, businesses fight and acquire each other. The metaphor can’t be extended to figure out, for example, that business must have a rainy season, or that business is based in equatorial regions; the sole use of a metaphor is to break out of rigid thinking, to motivate, to inspire creativity, or simply to communicate a dry idea colorfully—all useful tools for a forecaster who wants to engage a reader in topics like “Nanotech IP Battles Worth Fighting.” Analogy is more than metaphor: it is a comparison that illustrates an interesting similarity that can be usefully extended, within limits. When some people describe a company as an organism, they mean that the company’s interactions change its environment, and that those changes come back to alter the business in a cycle. The analogy of an organism allows us to make predictions about a business in a new way: just as animals can deplete their food base by overpredation, companies can oversell into a market and cannibalize future sales. As the predator population must find a new food source or shrink until it is back in balance with the prey, businesses must find new markets or downsize and consolidate until supply and demand are realigned. Homology is a similarity that reflects more than just an apt similarity; it reveals a shared underlying principle or mechanism. The analogy of a business as an organism in an environment can be extended to a homology between economies and ecosystems—both are complex adaptive systems that share many properties with other complex adaptive systems, and tools like network mapping and nonlinear dynamics used to analyze one rigorously can be used to analyze another. As a specific example, many researchers have seen similarities—certainly analogies, possibly homologies—between biological, technological, and industrial evolution. After an initial explosion of diverse forms, a few main body plans are selected for fitness with the environment. Variants within these forms compete and drive still more to extinction. Lacking competitors, the survivors grow in number until they reach the environment’s carrying capacity and begin to erode their own support system. Prey and predator populations may oscillate for generations, until a positive feedback loop spirals them into extinction or an exogenous change disrupts the balance, clearing room for new species to emerge and compete in a new environment. In the comparisons, the emergence of hundreds of phyla in the Cambrian Explosion mirrors the early stages of the automobile and the airplane, where over five hundred automakers once built cars in the US, and early aircraft sported so many wings they were compared to Venetian blinds (see Fig. 5.6). Today, only three biological kingdoms and two US automakers remain; almost all aircraft follow the same configuration of monoplane wings midship, rudder and elevators aft, and underwing engines. In fact, evolution by punctuated equilibrium seems nearly universal, applying with startling similarity to animals, aircraft, watches, computers, languages, cities, and many other objects of forecasters’ attention.
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Fig. 5.6 Early aircraft
The laws governing evolution—whether of species, technologies, or industries— are probably not as ironclad as Newton’s Laws of Motion But the similarity— because it seems to be a homology reflecting the same underlying mechanisms—can be used to predict the rise, maturity, and eclipse of nanoenabled products and nanotechnology startups.
Forecasting Incremental, Disruptive, and Structural Innovations At Lux Research, we talk about incremental, disruptive, and structural innovations. Incremental innovations make existing products marginally better, like the nanosilver coatings in Samsung refrigerators that stave off food spoilage. Disruptive innovations provide new features and properties that are otherwise unattainable, changing the rules of a product category—like nanoimprint lithography as a radical alternative to how chips are patterned in the semiconductor industry. Finally, structural innovations are those that collapse industry boundaries, like nanostructured paintable photovoltaics that could make paint giant Sherwin-Williams a player in a dramatically changed energy industry. By definition, quantifying the impact of these meteor-strike events is difficult, but historical examples tell a great deal. Consider Kodak, which missed the transition from analog to digital photography that cheap electronics and widespread PC adoption made possible; the company is laying off twenty-five thousand workers, lost $1.3 billion in 2005, and forecast over $1 billion in losses again in 2006. Most structural changes deriving from nanotech won’t occur in the near term— the disruptive innovations that precede them will have to be in the marketplace for a few years first. But enough of these potential transformations are in the cards that CEOs in high-impact industries should begin scenario planning for them now; for
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example, BP should be considering whether to partner with Sherwin-Williams on paintable photovoltaics. We are already seeing the beginning of nanotech-driven structural change in medicine; in particular, at the boundary between research supplies and in-vitro diagnostics. Look at the case of Invitrogen, which acquired Quantum Dot Corporation (QDC) in November 2005 for just $5 million. In addition to a fancy new product to enhance its lab equipment and material catalog, it gave teeth to QDC’s claims of the diagnostic utility of quantum dots and granted Invitrogen a hotly-disputed patent monopoly that it is now using to pry open the $100 billion in-vitro diagnostics market. The following month, Affymetrix put its CFO on the board of biosensor maker Nanomix and last year started collaborating with nanomedicine startup Signalomics, an in-vivo diagnostics tool maker. These commercial moves in nanomedicine mean research, in vitro diagnostics, and in vivo diagnostics aren’t separate markets any more: they’re separate product categories in ONE market, giving players on both sides of the old boundary a new set of customers and competitors to deal with. In the future, the ability to detect, image, and treat disease with tunable nanoparticles will blur the line between today’s medical device makers and pharmaceutical giants. A single kind of nanoparticle, such as Nanospectra’s gold shells, can diagnose cancer by reflecting light at one wavelength as well as kill tumor cells by absorbing light at another wavelength. As the device and drug industries converge—imagine Boston Scientific mulling a takeover offer from GlaxoSmithKline—their CEOs will have to be intimately familiar with nanotechnology; nanotech R&D will require a major portion of the overall R&D budget; and large programs in several divisions must develop next-generation products based on nanoscale innovations.
Forecasting with Science Fiction Today, public perceptions of nanotechnology are colored by wildly nutty science fiction stories like Michael Crichton’s Prey, or on the other, more prosaic extreme by Eddie Bauer khakis with stain-resistant Nano-Tex treatment. Rolling back the clock to the mid 1980s would show a similar gap between fiction and reality: William Gibson’s Neuromancer predicted a world where we would all “jack in” to virtual reality, while the mundane reality of computers of the time was monochrome monitors and character-based interfaces atop beige (khaki?) boxes. Today, presidential hopeful John Edwards campaigns—not terribly successfully—in Second Life; entire films like Finding Nemo are computer-generated; mobile phones that are essentially free devices can download and play any arcade game you desire; a $100 iPod nano can store more music than any consumer could legally own; cheap digital cameras captured the abuses of Abu Ghraib and turned political sentiments; bloggers forced Dan Rather into early retirement . . . and the list goes on. While we can’t jack in to the internet—yet—reality has far outpaced even the most imaginative science fiction writers of the 1980s and 1990s. The point is that science fiction, for all its blather, is still a very useful tool for forecasters to stretch their minds—and to see if the data provide a plausible path to a given future.
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Conclusion We hope that this overview of our approach—balancing information and imagination—will be useful to other technology forecasters as they think about the future. Given the profound unpredictability of the future even a decade ahead, as the Neuromancer-to-iPod Nano example illustrates, forecasters have an important role to play as midwives in the birth of new technologies. But we must also acknowledge the shortcomings of our craft; given our limitations, we need to advise our audiences to not only rely on our forecast, but to take multiple paths, to place multiple bets, because as the clich´e goes, change is a constant; plus c¸a change, plus de la mˆeme chose. As practitioners and students of the art and science of forecasting, we realize that the forecasts Lux Research makes about nanotechnology affect the very thing we are forecasting. As the invitation from ASU to participate in this program states: Regardless of their actual predictive value, such (“prospective”) approaches seek to anticipate, and thereby end up influencing, the future of nanotechnology. . . We encourage you to consider how and to what extent the practices are in fact affecting the future, or to what extent they have done so; for anticipations, even if they are “wrong,” nevertheless shape expectations, define players, and position resources in specific configurations that constrain or enable future outcomes.
Given the commercial raison d’etre of our firm, influencing this future—through our advice to clients and their subsequent investment, product development, legal, and other actions—is one of our explicit goals. But we know that sloppy or misleading forecasts about the future of nanotechnology and other science-driven innovations will have the opposite effect from the one we desire: to remove the barriers that keep science from flowing into the world and changing people’s lives for the better. Information tempers imagination but also inspires it, helping us avoid undesirable futures and make our hopes and dreams real.
Notes 1. Except software for natural science work, such as molecular modeling or systems biology tools. 2. Entanglement refers to the degree to which patents in a given space reference one another. White space is a measure of how crowded patents in an application category are, based on number of issued patents, number of relevant claims, number of published patent applications, and other metrics. Pendency is the time lag between the filing of a patent application and its issuance; the USPTO now takes an average of forty-seven months to grant nanotech patents, compared with thirty-three months in 1985. 3. For reasons of client confidentiality, we have slightly altered these project descriptions.
Chapter 6
Designing for the Future: Nanoscale Research Facilities Ahmad Soueid
People think about nanotechnology futures for a number of broad reasons. Some believe it can bring economic prosperity (B¨unger, ch. 5; Kundahl, ch. 15). Others are concerned about public safety (City of Berkeley, ch. 17), democratic legitimacy (Foladori and Invernizzi, ch. 2), national security (Kosal, ch. 13), and human identity (Berne, ch. 23). For architects, the future of nanotechnology is an important topic to consider so that the physical spaces they design will be able to accommodate nanoscale research for years to come. In this chapter, Soueid argues that over the past several years, architects have worked to design nanotechnology laboratory facilities that can accommodate not only today’s cutting-edge research, but also the research areas and techniques that will be developed over the next several decades. If these buildings are to be functional for the long term, architects must anticipate developments in equipment, systems, and social interactions while also designing facilities to be flexible enough to respond to developments that are not anticipated. Thus, Soueid continually re-evaluates his clients’ expectations for the future by observing how environmental and social factors interact with his designs (Rip and te Kulve, ch. 4; Sutcliffe, ch. 16). – Eds.
A. Soueid HDR Architecture, Inc., Alexandria, VA, USA Originally presented at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University on 30 March 2007.
E. Fisher et al. (eds.), The Yearbook of Nanotechnology in Society, Vol. 1, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
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Fig. 6.1 The National Institute of Standards and Technology Advanced Measurement Laboratory in Gaithersburg, Maryland (image courtesy of HDR Architecture, Inc.)
Introduction Architects must constantly look to the future. Any architect’s design must include adequate flexibility to allow a building to accept future modifications with minimal impact on existing operations. While this is true for any type of facility, the flexibility features are paramount in facilities designed for emerging fields such as nanoscale research. Nanoscale research presents a set of unique challenges in the design, construction, and operation of facilities. Lacking a long history of similar building designs to use as precedents, architects must thoroughly consider current research developments and carefully project for future requirements. In predicting the future, architects must coordinate a project planning team and plan ahead properly during the early project phases. To create the right environment, complex technical features are paramount, yet the human element is an essential factor that cannot be overlooked. Planners must envision the needs and interactions of a vast array of highly specialized interdisciplinary researchers. Since the planning phase often takes place three to five years prior to the original building occupancy, designers and researchers must effectively collaborate in order to design buildings that will not become obsolete prematurely.
Establishing Technical Requirements Project Planning Team Nanoscale research is a vast and complicated field of study that can engage a wide array of disciplines encompassing basic sciences such as the physical, chemical, and biological fields as well as applied sciences such as semiconductor, biotechnology, biopharmaceutical, optics, communications, and security (see Fig. 6.2). The focused picture for a facility’s future is unique to a particular program based on its mission and research thrust. Due to the nature of emerging research fields, each site, each
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Fig. 6.2 Nanotechnology research brings together the basic and applied sciences
program, each project is unique. There is no “standard” design solution. To get the proper focus, planners must use a different lens for every project. To take the proper snapshot of the future, the right people must have considerable involvement in the planning phase. The planning team must include both building designers and researchers. Architects must understand long term implications of design decisions and scientists must have a grasp on future research and the specific thrust and direction for their individual programs. The architect represents a comprehensive team of planners, designers, engineers, consultants, construction contractors, and facilities managers. The scientist represents a group of “technology advisors” made up of various researchers with special interests in the facility, sometimes called the “technical advisory group,” “project leadership team,” or “advisory committee.” This team is an essential element needed to develop the proper focus for the future design; otherwise, predicting the future impacts and needs will simply resemble throwing darts at a target while blindfolded. The design professionals and the advisory groups combine to form the “project planning team.”
Planning for Conflicting Criteria During the early phases of design, the planning team defines the facility’s operational, functional, and spatial needs as well as technical design criteria for each type of space within the building. Often conflicts arise in the technical criteria as the spaces are integrated. For example, some spaces may need an environment clear of airborne particulates; others must severely limit vibration and acoustic noise. Temperature and humidity control must be maintained at exacting standards in other areas. Conflicts between these criteria can easily arise. The need for large air handling equipment used to control temperature and humidity in one area will impact the stringent vibration and acoustic noise standards required in other areas. Electromagnetic radio frequency interference from the building’s electrical and communications systems may also impact some areas and shielding might be required. All these sources and limitations can exist within the same facility, requiring
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a careful balance of technical criteria and proper design solutions to create a workable concept. Determining the proper level of sensitivity will lead to “right sizing” of building and research equipment. This is a critical step in designing a building that is neither under-designed nor over-designed. In addition to technical criteria, there are other complicating factors that arise. Financial implications, development methods, and other logistical scenarios (such as method of construction procurement: owner-built versus developer-built) are elements that must also be considered during project planning. In some instances, it is too costly to provide a perfect solution for every requirement. Since no project has unlimited funds, the project planning team must develop the proper balance for needs within the overall financial and development framework provided for the project. All parties must be prepared to negotiate practical compromises.
Building Nanoscale Research Spaces It would be nice to build a “typical” laboratory and say, “you shall do nanoscale research here.” While researchers are able to grow carbon nanotubes in a space originally designed as a typical chemistry lab, some types of nanoscale research requires specialized laboratories designed to meet an array of special criteria. Laboratories may require working spaces that are relatively free of particulates, isolated from vibration, kept at a specific temperature or humidity level, and/or shielded from electromagnetic interference. They will also require a certain amount of office and other support space, and may call for research space with no special requirements. Each facility will need a unique “mix” of these spaces. That mix must be defined by the science to be carried out in the facility. Before any new nanoscale project can be started the requisite criteria for the entire facility must be identified and a hierarchy of design elements must be established. Collaboration among the designers, users, and all people that will be involved in a meaningful way must ensue to develop a clear understanding of the vision and mission of the proposed facility. This is a critical step that cannot be overemphasized—it is essential for future success. At this stage the proposed facility should take on a viable personality so that the participants in the planning phase develop an intuitive sense of which criteria are dominant, as well as which other objectives may play a minor, yet indispensable role in the overall project. The development of this intuitive model will bolster flexibility when the inevitable conflicts arise and will allow the parties involved to develop a plan adequately customized to meet their needs.
Airborne Particulates The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Advanced Measurement Laboratory project (AML) provides a good example of how to deal with tightly
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controlled environments in a nanoscale research facility (see Fig. 6.1). One such criteria in the AML design was the control of airborne contaminants. Before the NIST AML was built, NIST was trying to carry out cutting-edge research in facilities built in the 1960s. The age and setup of the buildings caused a number of problems. For instance, small pieces of the fan belts on the air handling unit motor would flake off, travel down the ductwork, and get blown into the space, landing at some random location. Those little specks didn’t seem big, but when they landed on materials being fabricated at the nanoscale, they easily ruined experiments and samples. Dust particles also had a negative impact on their devices. NIST responded by seeking to design a building with clean-room laboratories that could carefully control the environment to eliminate this type of problem, among others.
Vibration Vibration is also an important and complex concern. When measuring or capturing an image at the atomic scale, the slightest vibration can completely invalidate results. Researchers have found that extremely small motions can distort the images created by an electron microscope. Creating high-end, high-resolution images like these is a very sensitive procedure. In order to make them work, and in order to give correct results, vibration must be limited. When vibration is an issue the level of vibration allowable must first be ascertained. The more stringent the requirements, the more money it will cost to build a structure that will meet the specifications. Extensive tests should then be utilized on the potential site to gauge ambient vibration, both during the day and at night. Once the threshold is set and the site’s vibration level is identified, solutions can be considered. A relatively straightforward solution could involve setting the building back an adequate distance from the street to minimize the vibration impact of traffic. In other cases it is not so easy. The NIST AML provides a good example of vibration issue resolution. NIST wanted their laboratories to meet the “NIST A curve for vibration.” (see Table 6.1 and Figs. 6.3 and 6.4). The NIST AML had two possible sites, but the client preferred one over the other because it was prominently visible as visitors entered the campus. Unfortunately, the vibrations at the preferred site were found to exceed the required levels. The recommendation was to move the facility to a potentially quieter but less visible site on the same campus. After several studies and many measurements it was agreed to build the building at the quieter location. The resulting building is in a less prominent place, but situated much better for the research. In addition to choosing the quieter site, vibration was further reduced by building two of the facility’s five wings underground to minimize effects of the predominant surface vibrations (see Fig. 6.5). With the sensitive area about forty feet below the surface, the floor vibrations were reduced by more than 50 percent. For specialized laboratories where limiting vibration is very important—like metrology—it made a lot of sense to build underground.
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Criteria Office VC-A VC-B VC-D VC-E NIST A NIST A1
Frequency Range
Metric
Imperial
20 < f ≤ 100 Hz 1 ≤ f ≤ 20 Hz f ≤ 4 Hz 4 < f ≤ 100 Hz
400 m/s 50 m/s 25 m/s 6 m/s 3 m/s VC-E 3 m/s (velocity) 0.025 m (displacement) 3 m/s 0.75 m/s
16, 000 in/s 2000 in/s 1000 in/s 250 in/s 125 in/s 125 in/s 1 in 125 in/s 30 in/s
Sometimes the “right” site is not quiet enough. For ultra-quiet spaces, rooms can be built on specially designed isolation slabs that are supported on a series of isolators, reducing the transmission of vibrations from the building to the slab where the experiment is mounted as shown in Fig. 6.6. In this case, the isolation slab is made of a concrete mass weighing about ten tons. The air springs could have passive or active controls. The isolation slab is simply suspended about a quarter of an inch above the base to create the isolation. It ensures that people working in the lab and walking across the walk-on floor don’t cause the instrument to vibrate. When vibration is an issue, it makes sense to carefully anticipate what the needs will be so that the resulting building is not unnecessarily over-designed or under-designed.
Temperature Temperature can also be very important. The concern is not simply achieving a certain temperature but keeping it constant at that level. Difficulties can arise because
Fig. 6.3 NIST AML vibration measurement test
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Fig. 6.4 NIST AML vibration measurement test
Fig. 6.5 Section through three of the five NIST AML wings showing the laboratory facilities built underground
EXISTING LAB
WALK-ON FLOOR ISOLATION SLAB 7’-3” PIT BASE
Fig. 6.6 Section through an isolation slab supported on air springs
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the work being done in the lab often can change the temperatures enough to cause problems with the experiment. Temperature can be closely controlled and maintained by designing systems that circulate the volume of air inside the room with a high number of air changes per hour. In typical laboratories, temperature fluctuations are controlled to ±1◦ C. Closer temperature control is sometimes needed and the tolerance could range from ±0.5◦ C down to ±0.01◦ C in highly critical spaces.
Electrical and Electromagnetic Interference Many of the instruments used by nanoscale researchers are highly sensitive to electrical and electromagnetic interference as well. Everything from a dip in the power to electromagnetic interference (EMI) or radio frequency interference (RFI) could degrade research. For instance, time and frequency standards are highly sensitive to magnetic fields. The specifics of each research situation must be carefully examined in order to address these special needs. When working to limit interference, designers must be cognizant of how different types of labs are arranged. For example, labs with particular sensitivity to electromagnetic interference should not be placed next to elevators or lab equipment that produces strong electromagnetic fields. Certain systems necessary for maintaining the building must also be taken into account. Transformers, rotating equipment, and pumps are examples of equipment required to keep the basic systems of a building operational, but can also interfere with laboratories. These systems must be placed where they are as benign as possible and, when necessary, local shielding can be designed to create the right kind of environment for nanoscale research. In general, during the interior design of a nanoscale building, components known to have interfering propensities should be segregated from research areas as much as possible. Steps may also be required to limit interference that might be produced by forces outside the building. An outside interference issue arose during early planning phases at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). Concerns arose regarding the radio frequency (RF) emissions produced by a National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Doppler radar located about a mile away. The site was tested for that specific concern; fortunately, the RF interference was low enough that it could be handled with local attenuation.
Anticipating the Future Future Site Modifications The design team must also look beyond building completion, addressing future changes in the nearby area. To insure the integrity of the research spaces built, the facility cannot always be designed as a stand-alone building. If the facility is placed
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in the context of a university or larger lab campus, rules must be established for the university or laboratory about what other things should be allowed to happen in the area. For instance, power lines can be very detrimental to a nanoscale lab. If they are placed too close to certain types of research, the work simply cannot be carried out effectively. If power lines are added, the lab may need to retrofit their buildings with expensive shielding to protect sensitive equipment, or they may try to influence the choice of location or shielding of the power lines. A master plan to help a facility envision the potential impact of changes in the area is an important element to consider.
Further Into the Future—Anticipating Research In planning, architects can develop a future plan with the assistance of researchers and administrators who understand their work and their current needs. In such cases, expertise can be shared and architects and scientists can work closely to find solutions to their known problems and project for the future. Researchers at Purdue University had been doing nanoscale research in various parts of the campus, and they were well prepared very early in the design phases of the Birck Nanotechnology Center (Fig. 6.7). On the other hand, it is also common for buildings to be designed and built when the client doesn’t yet have any users—this requires architects to step into the future with less collaboration and information to go on. In this case, many institutions adopt an “if you build it, they will come” philosophy and design laboratories that are often called user facilities where users are recruited after the building construction
Fig. 6.7 North Fac¸ade of the Birck Nanotechnology Center at Purdue University (image courtesy of HDR Architecture, Inc. | Steve Hall @ Hedrich Blessing)
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Fig. 6.8 Main entrance of the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies located at the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. (image courtesy of HDR Architecture, Inc. | Nick Merrick @ Hedrich Blessing)
is completed. This is evident in federal facilities such as the Department of Energy’s Nanoscale Research Centers built at five National Laboratory sites around the United States (e.g. the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies in Fig. 6.8). Another example is the Quantum Nano Center at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada. The university had a well-established graduate research program within The Institute for Quantum Computing plus an emerging undergraduate Nano Engineering program. Half the building’s constituents knew exactly what they needed while the other half had not been fully staffed at the design stages of the project. The University went into recruiting mode and is currently building a program from scratch. In an instance like this, it is uncertain what needs the users will have in the future. It is helpful to invite other people who have done this type of research to come in and help provide recommendations for the particular facility. Experience with other facilities as well as observing what others have done can be used as a benchmarking tool. It requires “out-of-the-box” thinking along with the outside opinions for predicting what might be needed. One way to increase the chances that buildings will be productive for years to come is to build in flexibility. Spaces can be designed to allow different types of research with minimal changes. For instance, movable casework can be designed for the labs, allowing researchers to relocate basic laboratory necessities like electricity, de-ionized water, and specialty gases. Of course this kind of flexibility doesn’t come free, but it can be worth the cost if it allows the space to maintain its efficiency over time without needing expensive redesigns. There are, however, some rules. The building cannot be laid out to have every element of research happen at any location because the needs of specific types
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of research can conflict. Typically the building is zoned for different types of research and procedures. If a cleanroom is built then cleanroom-type functions must be restricted to that area. A metrology space cannot tolerate a noisy lab next door. Flexibility can be worked in to some degree, but some placement parameters will exist. In a case like the University of Waterloo, it may be better if the facility owner does not customize anything unless there is some certainty about what will take place in that area in the coming years. Design can take a year or more and construction can take two to three years. Thus it can take three to five years from when the building is initiated to when it’s ready to house research. Predicting anything for the next five years can be speculative, especially in the field of nanoscale research. A good rule of thumb in any uncertain situation is to customize the known elements, maintain flexibility with the rest, and even delay decisions as late as possible so that some elements of customization may be integrated along the way.
The Human Factor Designing Places for People Designing spaces for nanotechnology research is not only about how atoms, materials, and machines interact, it is also about how people interact. Research is not simply a project involving people using machines. New ideas, new techniques, and new products are the result of people working with each other. Architects can do a great deal to facilitate such interactions through the creation of spaces.
Interdisciplinary Interactions One of the most important concerns in building design, specifically for nanoscale research, is the need to foster research between scientists from different disciplines. In the past, research facilities have typically been designed for users from a specific discipline. In nanoscale research, however, we often see mergers between physical sciences and applied sciences; between physicists, chemists, biologists, material scientists, and biochemists. What’s happening cannot even be described as multidisciplinary. It is interdisciplinary. A lot of research used to be multi-disciplinary. For instance, researchers would come in from physics or from biology and they would collaborate with each other, but when the project was finished they would split up and everybody would go their own way. But much of nanoscale research is truly “interdisciplinary”—these researchers don’t simply add their component of expertise to those of other disciplines; they create entirely new fields that require continued collaboration if progress is to continue in that area (see Fig. 6.9).The distinction between disciplines is blurring because of the way researchers are working and discovering things, especially at the nanoscale.
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Fig. 6.9 In multidisciplinary research researchers take ideas and knowledge from other fields to inform their own. In interdisciplinary research researchers from more than one discipline work together to create knowledge and products that they cannot create independently
This interdisciplinary working style presents architects with a challenge. At Purdue University, the intent to design an interdisciplinary building was announced and any interested users groups were invited to give input. 250 people showed up at the first project meeting. Of course, a design to please each and every one of the 250 people was not an attainable goal. But this particular building was by definition supposed to support 27 different schools and 140 faculties—everything from materials science to biology to physics to chemistry to veterinary medicine to business. This was accomplished by designing new research facilities that physically link the other buildings at the newly master-planned Discovery Park. The Birck Nanotechnology Center is both functionally and physically connected to a number of different buildings. Since there’s a great deal of snow in Indiana, glass connectors (which the locals called “gerbil tubes”) were designed to keep people warm and dry as they go from building to building. At the University of Waterloo, the design involved a building that will be sandwiched between the biology and mathematics buildings. This was done intentionally because half the population comes from quantum computing, the other half comes from nano engineering. Most of these groups were from—or interacted with—the surrounding buildings. It took very valuable space—one of the few remaining green spaces on that campus—but promoting interdisciplinary work was important enough that they wanted to put it within the context of the other buildings around it. How important is it to keep researchers close together? It’s very important. The majority of collaborating researchers would rather be on the same floor. Increasing the number of floors creates a resistance from the researchers to go up and down.
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Shorter buildings with a broader footprints that place as many people as possible on the same floor are more conducive to collaboration that taller structures. Sometimes the layout of labs and offices is reconfigured. In a traditional design, the researcher’s office is right next to the lab, but that can mean that researchers are far away from each other. Researchers can be brought closer together if offices are clustered together (see Fig. 6.10). That can be desirable or not, it all depends on the environment that is desired.
Fostering Formal and Informal Communication In addition to putting researchers in proximity to one another, facilities should be designed to encourage different types of interactions between researchers. The two main categories of interaction which can be considered by designers are formal communication and informal communication. Formal communication tends to involve planned activities—meetings, lectures, etc. Informal communications
Fig. 6.10 The Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies at Sandia National Laboratories features a design that fosters interdisciplinary collaboration through the use of office and laboratory clusters, proper distribution of conference rooms and interaction areas, and the integration of internal courtyards
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are not planned—they simply result from chance encounters. Ultimately, both types of spaces are needed to have the right kind of environment for cutting-edge research. To accommodate formal communications, spaces are built that are typically associated with more formal interaction, like conference rooms and lectures halls. Informal communications may happen just about anywhere, but architects can help to increase the likelihood that they occur. For instance, good use can be made of hallways. Hallways used to be very dry—people just used them to walk from one place to another. Now hallways can be made into spaces where researchers can actually stop and do something. At Purdue the hallways are wider than normal to accommodate chairs, providing people a place to sit down, chat, and interact. There are strategic concerns to consider when such things are designed. A blackboard may be a great way to promote interactions, but you cannot be explicit and say, “We’re going to provide an interaction space at the end of the hallway. Can you guys go collaborate over there and interact with each other?” It doesn’t work that way. Well designed interaction areas should not require a building sign telling you where to find them. If items are strategically placed in the paths that people will travel, where they’re walking to the bathroom or on their route to the coffee room, creative events are implicitly encouraged (see Figs. 6.11 and 6.12). The impetus for interaction could be something as simple as a block of concrete in the middle of a grassy area outside the building, a TV room, a roof deck or balcony, or a window that overlooks an atrium. When people find the place conducive to sitting or watching, they begin to gather, and they interact. Architects also need to design places for gatherings, parties, events, and conferences (see Fig. 6.13). If designed right, lobbies and atriums can provide just such a space.
Fig. 6.11 Interaction area near the main elevators of the Birck Nanotechnology Center at Purdue University (image courtesy of HDR Architecture, Inc.)
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Fig. 6.12 Interior of the Birck Nanotechnology Center at Purdue University (image courtesy of HDR Architecture, Inc.)
Designing for Visitors It is incredibly important to pay attention to full-time researchers; however, they are not the only users of nanoscale research buildings. Many non-scientists are interested in what is going on inside as well. Buildings must be designed to do more than promote interaction between researchers—they need to enable outside visitors to interact with the labs. For instance, if a senator helped secure the funding for a building, he or she would probably like to visit it once in a while and see the work being done in it and promote the program he or she once sponsored. They want to know and show that the money is being well spent. It may also be important to bring fourth graders into the building to help them understand what researchers do. The building itself becomes an education tool for the future. This will require some careful planning. If not thought out during design, then it can be inconvenient or the facility will not show well. If a visiting dignitary helped secure five to six million dollars for a tool, then you might want to have a tour stop that shows off that tool while at the same time providing adequate protection to make sure that the tour doesn’t interfere with the research conducted at that time. For instance, it is nice to let visitors see what is happening in cleanrooms, but actual entry to a cleanroom requires special gowning and some training in proper safety and operational protocols. Typically you do not want to require an outside visitor to go through this process, which could take longer than the actual visit (especially if a large group is involved). It is good to incorporate viewing windows, a tour aisle essentially, to go around the space. In the NIST AML building a tour aisle was designed with windows looking into the clean labs on one side and an exterior view on the other side. This served two purposes: the visitors could see into the
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Fig. 6.13 Purdue University’s Birck Nanotechnology Center lobby doubles as a gathering space for special events (image courtesy of HDR Architecture, Inc.)
cleanroom, and researchers in the cleanroom could see outside the building. The window between the visitor corridor and cleanroom was at a slight angle avoiding reflection from the outdoor light coming from behind observers in the corridor (see Fig. 6.14).
Buildings That Attract Talent It isn’t only senators and school children that you want to impress. It’s just as important to bring in top talent. The world of nanoscale research sees a great deal of migration of people. A lot of scientists are getting top dollar moving around, and institutions are fighting to keep researchers within their campuses. The US has been on the receiving end of many researchers from other parts of the world.
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Fig. 6.14 NIST Advanced Measurement Laboratory Nanofabrication Facility Visitor Corridor (image courtesy of HDR Architecture, Inc.)
Good architecture and a well designed laboratory may be one of the best recruiting tools that can help attract potential researchers. Researchers would rather focus on their research than spend more time trying to fix the air conditioning or asking permission to fix a window. Having a well designed space is a major incentive for top research talents and can be a key factor when a researcher selects one institution over another. Individual offices also play a great role. Institutions are going above and beyond their current standards and allowing for a larger area for individual offices. This allows for further subdivision later, but right now it allows them to offer researchers large impressive offices and lots of laboratory space. That can be quite compelling to a top notch researcher currently working in a cramped lab or office.
Delivering the Facility Because of the cost premium for nanoscience buildings, it is critical to establish priorities for limited funding. It’s also vital to select the right project delivery method. Construction projects for most building types offer a wide variety of delivery packages, but options are much more limited for nanotechnology. A delivery method that works very well for a university classroom or dormitory project may not necessarily be the right approach for an advanced research laboratory facility. It is important for the owner and design team to have clear priorities. Team selection and project execution must be carefully considered early in the planning and design process. Selecting the “right” technique makes use of the concept of balancing the three legs of the footstool: scope, price, and schedule. An owner must recognize and prioritize the importance of each of these pillars. Depending on what is more important, there is a delivery method that is right for the project.
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The project delivery options includes traditional project delivery methods such as design-bid-build, design-build, construction management (CM) as risk, and CM as agent. There are also alternative delivery methods such as developer-based designbuild-operate or lease-back, and varying forms of public-private partnerships. A few universities and many government agencies make use of traditional design-bid-build or CM methods on current nanotech projects. There are also multiple ways to select a construction contractor, but it is critical that the contractor or construction manager has familiarity with the construction of buildings for technology, or demonstrates a plan to acquire that familiarity.
Conclusion Winston Churchill once said, “We shape our buildings and thereafter they shape us.” This is particularly true for research buildings. Architecture needs to be shaped by the needs of the research but, at the end of the day, a badly designed facility has the potential to be very limiting for its researchers. Whenever buildings are designed, careful thought needs to be directed toward the future. The space itself should not impinge upon and stop interdisciplinary research. Anticipation and prediction about how spaces will be used will not render perfect results. Over time, spaces will be needed for different things, so architects should do what they can to build flexibility into any design. Just as interdisciplinary research is evolving and shaping the future of nanoscale research, architecture in this context must also evolve. The traditional methods and models must yield to a new partnership between architects, nanoscale researchers, technical experts, and institutions. By combining and integrating the perspectives of all parties involved the realm of expertise, information and understanding will culminate to provide a sound basis for the project.
Chapter 7
What Drives Public Acceptance of Nanotechnology? Steven C. Currall, Eden B. King, Neal Lane, Juan Madera and Stacy Turner
Nanotechnology promoters routinely voice concern that their envisioned futures for government research investments and commercial products are vulnerable to a potentially unreceptive public (Meyyappan, ch. 20). A common goal among those seeking to facilitate nanotechnology adoption is to avoid public rejection of the emerging technology, as in the oft cited case of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) (see Williams, ch. 22). Currall and colleagues suggest that public resistance to GMOs resulted from “overreactions” that were “based on rumor and supposition.” To help ensure that the development of nanotechnology is not slowed, the authors suggest that public perceptions of it should be “based on objective science and engineering findings” (compare Goorden et al., ch. 14 and Sutcliffe, ch. 16). The authors conducted surveys using hypothetical product descriptions (as does Bennett, ch. 12) to ascertain US public attitudes toward the “risks and benefits” of nanotechnology in comparison to prior disruptive technologies. In clear contrast to other attempts to involve social scientists in public engagement efforts (T¨urk, ch. 8; Goorden et al., ch. 14), their goal is not that public visions should shape the direction of research but that experts should shape public visions of nanotechnology (Kennedy, ch. 1). – Eds.
S.C. Currall University College London, London, UK Originally published in March 2006 in Nature Nanotechnology, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 153–155.
E. Fisher et al. (eds.), The Yearbook of Nanotechnology in Society, Vol. 1, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
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Abstract How do the risks and benefits of nanotechnology, as viewed by the public, compare with those associated with other technologies such as genetically modified organisms, stem-cell research, biotechnology, and nuclear power? And when deciding to use a specific nanotechnology product, will consumers consider the risks, the benefits, or both? We report the first large-scale empirical analyses of these questions.
Introduction Recent reports indicate that over three hundred nanotechnology-based products have entered the marketplace (Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies 2008), and that these products were worth over $32 billion in 2005 (Lux Research 2008). As the public comes into more regular contact with applications of nanotechnology, will its appetite for the benefits of nanotechnology lead to increased support for research? Or will a fixation about the risks of nanotechnology—which could be real or imagined, health- or environment-related—slow progress in the field? Much of the current debate about the future of nanotechnology correctly focuses on the types and magnitude of risks. In July, Andrew Maynard of the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, an initiative launched by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and The Pew Charitable Trusts in 2005, published the most comprehensive research strategy yet for applying physical sciences and engineering to understand the environmental, health, and safety implications of nanotechnologies (Maynard 2006). Maynard argued in favor of, for example, national governments taking greater responsibility for interagency coordination, and more aggressive funding for the study of short-, intermediate-, and long-term risk priorities. And last month Maynard and others (Maynard et al. 2006) proposed a list of five grand challenges—such as the development of instruments to assess exposure to engineered nanomaterials in air and water—for “developing safe nanotechnologies through sound science.” As scientists and engineers work to establish the objective facts about the risks and benefits of nanotechnology, we believe it is also vital that social scientists contribute rigorous research on how the public perceives risks and benefits. Indeed, one government legislator recently stated (Wyden 2006), “If I had to pick the No. 1 challenge facing nanotechnology firms, it’s environmental, health, and safety regulation and the question of public perceptions.” Understanding public sentiment towards nanotechnology is pivotal because, historically, public perceptions and attitudes have shaped the direction and pace of scientific activity in a number of fields. This has been and continues to be the case with nuclear power, genetically modified organisms (GMO), embryonic stem-cell research, and biotechnology. In the case of GMO, negative public sentiment has had an adverse effect on governmental funding of research, especially in Europe (Nielsen 2003). Research on nanotechnology must involve innovative interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers in the physical sciences, engineering, and social sciences.
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Indeed, one of us (NL) recently called for a new research paradigm to inform policy making about emerging technologies such as nanotechnology: “[W]e have come to recognize how such things as human dynamics and institutional behavior can either enhance or impede the benefits to society of our research achievements. All of this can occur only by engaging the nation’s top social scientists, including policy experts, to work in collaboration with scientists and engineers from many fields and diverse institutions on multidisciplinary research efforts that address large but well-defined national and global problems” (Lane 2006).
What the Public Thinks Although previous social science research has studied public perceptions of research developments in nanotechnology (Macoubrie 2005; Peter D. Hart Research Associates 2006), we have conducted the first large-scale empirical effort to (1) compare nanotechnology with other technologies, and (2) analyze risks and benefits of specific nanotechnology applications. Specifically, we present a method for comparing the risks and benefits of nanotechnology relative to those of other technologies. This method can track shifts in public opinion as the result of the publication of new research about the risks and benefits of nanotechnology. Additionally, we call into question an assumption that the public thinks about nanotechnology applications only in terms of possible risks. Although not unconcerned about risks, people engage in a complex calculus whereby the risk of nanotechnology is but one consideration. How does nanotechnology compare with other technologies? A recent report suggested that when assessing the risks and benefits of nanotechnology, people may “draw upon analogies to past technologies, many of which may be misleading, such as asbestos, dioxin, Agent Orange, or nuclear power” (Macoubrie 2005). We used a national random-digit telephone-dialing survey to conduct interviews with 503 individuals in the United States to study whether nanotechnology was seen as more or less risky/beneficial than 43 other technologies. The list of technologies was based on previous research on perceptions of new technologies (Slovic 1987), which we supplemented with several emerging technologies (for example, GMO and stem-cell research). Individuals were asked the following question: “In general, how risky/beneficial do you consider each of the following items to be for the United States society as a whole?” Our results showed that nanotechnology was seen as relatively neutral; it was perceived as less risky and more beneficial than a number of other technologies such as GMO, pesticides, chemical disinfectants, and human genetic engineering. On the other hand, it was seen as more risky and less beneficial than solar power, vaccinations, hydroelectric power, and computer display screens. In the survey, 1 corresponds to very low risk or benefit and 7 corresponds to very high risk or benefit. Results showed that, at present, nanotechnology is viewed as medium risk and moderate benefit. The acronyms are: alcoholic beverages (AB), anaesthetics (AN), air travel (AT), automobile travel (ATT), bicycles (B),
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commercial aviation (CA), chemical disinfectants (CD), chemical fertilizers (CF), chemical manufacturing plants (CM), computer display screens (CS), dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT), electric power (EL), fire fighting (FF), food preservatives (FP), general aviation (GA), herbicides (H), home appliances (HA), human genetic engineering (HE), handguns (HG), hydroelectric power (HP), lasers (L), large construction (LC), liquid natural gas (LG), motorcycles (M), microwave ovens (MO), motor vehicles (MV), pesticides (P), prescription antibiotics (PA), prescription drugs (PD), police work (PW), railroad (R), radiation therapy (RT), surgery (S), stem-cell research (SC), smoking (SM), water fluoridation (WF), X-rays (X). Fig. 7.1 presents results from our surveys, previously unpublished literature. It is likely that, over time, public sentiment towards nanotechnology will shift towards either the upper left quadrant of Fig. 7.1 (that is, high benefit and low risk) or the lower right-hand quadrant (that is, low benefit and high risk). But will the fate of nanotechnology be determined by rumor and supposition, as some believe has been the case for GMO? Or will public opinion be based on objective science and engineering findings? Based on our results showing that society is relatively neutral about nanotechnology, now is the time to educate the public aggressively with facts about the risks and benefits of nanotechnology. Education can prevent opinions from becoming polarized on the basis of misinformation. Our research methodology provides a “scorecard” that can track how public attitudes to nanotechnology change over time (for example, annually) in light of media coverage of new research into the risks and benefits of nanotechnology.
Fig. 7.1 Perceived risks and benefits of nanotechnology and 43 other technologies, based on 503 responses to a national telephone survey
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As an example of interdisciplinary collaboration, we formed a partnership with scientists and engineers at the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN) at Rice University in Houston, Texas, to create four hypothetical nanotechnology applications with which consumers could plausibly come into contact: a medical product (a drug), a skin lotion, automobile tires, and refrigerator gas coolant. We then used a nationwide web survey in the United States to collect data from 4,542 likely consumers. The survey first presented respondents with the following generic definition of nanotechnology, which was developed with our science and engineering colleagues: “Nanotechnology involves human-designed materials or machines at extremely small sizes (atomic or molecular level) that have unique chemical, physical, electrical, or other properties.” This definition was followed by descriptions where we manipulated the level (high or low) of the health or environmental risks and benefits of the four nanotechnology applications. Respondents were then asked how likely they would be to use such applications on a scale that ran from 1 (extremely unlikely to use) to 7 (extremely likely). To validate the web study, we also conducted telephone interviews with a national random sample of 501 adults (see Methods section). Our results showed that for both the web and telephone samples, respondents did not consider the risks or benefits of nanotechnology independently. Rather, in a pattern that held true for both health- and environment-related applications, the effect of benefits on the use of nanotechnology applications was more pronounced when risks were lower than when risks were high (see Fig. 7.2). Thus, our findings
Fig. 7.2 Likelihood of people using a nanotechnology product for four combinations of risk and benefit, based on the combined average from 4,542 responses to a national web survey and 501 responses to a national telephone survey
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showed that public perceptions of nanotechnology are not as simple as previously assumed—risks and benefits are both enmeshed in a complex decision-making calculus. For instance, when the benefits are low, consumers are more concerned about risks than when benefits are high. Although the difference between the responses for high benefit/low risk and low benefit/high risk may seem modest, it is substantial for a survey of this nature. Similarly, the fact that the most positive response (that for high benefit/low risk) is still slightly below the mid-point of the 1–7 scale is not surprising because many respondents had not been exposed to nanotechnology products before the survey. The inclusion of an “interaction variable” (risk × benefit) revealed that respondents did not consider risk and benefit independently. The statistical test for the influence of the interaction variable is distributed as an F distribution with degrees of freedom of 1 and n − k − 1, where n is the number of observations in the empirical sample (that is, the number of survey respondents) and k is the number of predictor variables in the ordinary least-squares regression model. For the web sample we found F[1, 4,531] = 11, 301.4, P < 0.001, where P is the probability that the interaction effect was found by chance. For the telephone sample we found F[1, 490] = 34.52, P < 0.001, which again means that the probability that the interaction was due to chance was less than 1 in 1,000.
What Next? With respect to the future, government funding should be provided for interdisciplinary research centers that promote collaborative research among physical scientists, engineers, and social scientists. Additionally, social scientists should be encouraged, through research grant opportunities, to develop metrics and track the public’s understanding of the risks and benefits of nanotechnology. For example, we have presented a research methodology that can be used as a scorecard for gauging how the public compares nanotechnology with other technologies. Given the separation that typically exists between publicly-funded research and the regulatory functions of government, special interagency coordination must bridge this gap. However, we do not favor placing coordination responsibility entirely within a single regulatory agency in a given country. A number of authors have made similar recommendations concerning nanotechnology, but often with an emphasis on risk. We argue for a more balanced approach, where potential benefits and risks are addressed together. Only in that way will the public have an informed outlook on this important emerging technology. Academic bodies, such as the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering in the United Kingdom and the National Academies in the United States, should be asked to summarize and update the current state of knowledge about risks and benefits of nanotechnology. Based on these findings, interagency “societal impact” subgroups can be formed to coordinate education and public outreach efforts by creating a clearing house in each country that synthesizes information about the
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health and environmental impacts of nanotechnology, including performance indicators and the latest scientific findings on risks and benefits. In this regard, it is vital that bench researchers who are conducting toxicological analyses of nanotechnology, and others who are studying its potential benefits, redouble their efforts to be thorough, transparent, and timely in disseminating their results. This information will minimize the likelihood that the public develops polarized perceptions of nanotechnology based on rumor and supposition and hence avoid potential overreactions such as those that occurred with GMO.
Methods Methodological details of our studies are available from the corresponding author. Zogby International administered all our surveys. Our web survey was conducted in June 2004. To avoid attracting only respondents who were knowledgeable about, or sympathetic towards, nanotechnology, the word “nanotechnology” was not included in the request for participation; respondents were invited to participate in a “survey about commercial products using new technologies.” The format of the “extremely unlikely” to “extremely likely” response scale is a “behavioral estimation” format, which measures the immediate determinant of actual behaviour (Currall and Judge 1995). To control for individual differences across respondents in the subjective value they placed on risks and benefits we used analysis of variance with individual respondent as a “blocking variable.” This procedure statistically controlled for individual differences among respondents. Our national telephone survey examining nanotechnology applications, and the other national telephone survey examining how nanotechnology compared with 43 other technologies, were both conducted in August 2005. The authors are currently conducting detailed analyses based on this research, which will appear in future publications. Acknowledgments This research was supported in part by the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Initiative of the National Science Foundation under NSF Award Number EEC-0118007 and by NSF Award Number SES-0531146, and the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology at Rice University. We thank the following for assistance and feedback: W. Adams, S. Baggett, A. Barron, D. Beal, V. Colvin, M. Darby, K. Kulinowski, C. Merzbacher, M. Rohrbaugh, J. Tour, J. West, M. Wiesner, and L. Zucker. The authors have no affiliation with the Wilson International Center for Scholars nor do the authors have commercial relationships, or conflicts of interest, that affected this research. No corporation influenced the design or execution of our studies.
References Currall, S.C. and Judge, T.A. 1995. Measuring Trust between Organizational Boundary Role Persons. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 64: 151–170. Lane, N. 2006. Alarm Bells Should Help Us Refocus. Science 312: 1874–1875. Lux Research, Inc. 2008. http://www.luxresearchinc.com/. Accessed 2008.
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Macoubrie, J. 2005. Informed Public Perceptions of Nanotechnology and Trust in Government. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/events/docs/macoubriereport.pdf. Accessed 2008. Maynard, A.D. 2006. Nanotechnology: A Research Strategy for Assessing Risk. Washington, D.C.: Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. Maynard, A.D. et al. 2006. Safe Handling of Nanotechnology. Nature 444: 267–269. Nielsen, K.M. 2003. Transgenic Organisms—Time for Conceptual Diversification? Nature Biotechnology 21: 227–228. Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Inc. 2006. Report on Nanotechnology. Washington, D.C., September 19. Available at: http://www.nanotechporject.org/file download/files/HartReport.pdf Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. 2008. Consumer Products Inventory. http://www. nanotechproject.org/inventories/consumer/. Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, D.C. Accessed 2008. Slovic, P. 1987. Perception of Risk. Science 236(4799): 280–285. Wyden, R. 2006. February 17th 2006. Daily Environment Report 33: A-9.
Chapter 8
Nanologue ¨ Volker Turk
Who should help decide what socio-technical worlds are created, and what kinds of visions should guide such decisions? Nanologue, a collaborative project sponsored by the European Union, was created based on the idea that the development of nanotechnology should be shaped not only by scientists and politicians, but also by the deliberations of broader public groups. Those who support the project claim that broad-scale dialogues about technological choices should be informed by democratic processes (like Foladori and Invernizzi, ch. 2 and unlike Kennedy, ch. 1). In an effort to engage publics in thinking longer term about technological change (Bennett, ch. 12; Peterson, ch. 3), Nanologue worked with experts and public groups to develop scenarios depicting multiple distinct conceptions of the future of nanotechnology (Rip and te Kulve, ch. 4). T¨urk’s description of the process and resulting scenarios is included here, along with three images that capture the main thrust of each vision. Clearly, these futures are meant to differ in terms of governance, cultural uptake, economic viability, and desirability.
V. T¨urk Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, and Energy, Berlin, Germany
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Mysterious diseases, polluted drinking water, and mass fish deaths? Or—in contrast —a source of carbon-free energy enabling the EU to meet its Kyoto targets whilst powering our homes and strengthening business? These are just some of the features of the scenarios developed through Nanologue, an EU-funded 6th Framework Program project looking at the social, ethical, and legal implications of nanotechnology. Based on extensive research and stakeholder consultations, the twenty-one-month project by the Wuppertal Institute in Germany, the UK’s Forum for the Future, EMPA (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research), and triple innova of Germany, developed several products to enhance the dialogue about social, ethical, and legal aspects for nanotechnology applications. Amongst others the project produced three scenarios of how nanotechnology will have developed by 2015 and the NanoMeter, an internet-based tool assessing societal implications of nanotechnology. Results from the Nanologue project show that we have a choice in how technology develops—but the choices we make now will have considerable consequences for the future. Nanologue has raised a lot of interest among experts as well as civil society actors. We have helped pave the way towards enhancing the dialogue on ethical, legal, and social aspects of nanotechnologies. The scenarios, tools, and practical project results will help to translate the ongoing discussion into action. “It is important that we learn the lessons from the introduction of GM,” says Hugh Knowles, sustainability advisor at Forum for the Future and one of the authors of the report. “In that instance there was a total lack of forward thinking while the science was being developed and people weren’t consulted on issues that really mattered.” At the relatively early stage of the development of nanotechnology, there is still the opportunity to put systems in place that maximize the benefits of nanorelated products and minimize the risks of manufacturing, using, and disposing of them. “But such systems must be developed through informed dialogue involving the key stakeholders,” believes Hans Kastenholz of EMPA. One main product of the Nanologue project—the NanoMeter—addresses researchers and product developers. The NanoMeter helps to assess the societal impacts of nano-applications during product research and development in a quick and easy way. “Offering the most relevant societal implications identified during the Nanologue project the NanoMeter serves as a useful starting point to guide the internal discussion during the development phase of new products and technologies. This is a precondition to executing a debate among stakeholders,” explains Holger Wallbaum of triple innova. Both tools—the Nanotech 2015 scenarios and the NanoMeter—can be helpful guides to a sustainable and successful future of nanotechnology. Another one of the project’s main results is the report “The Future of Nanotechnology: We Need To Talk,” consisting of three scenarios that should assist people interested in nanotechnology in thinking about its place in society in a structured way. With so many unknowns it is difficult to have a meaningful discussion about the future of nanotechnology; to ameliorate this quandary the three scenarios construct plausible, realistic, and coherent visions of nanotechnology development in Europe based on findings from previous project phases.
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The scenarios aim at establishing a deeper understanding of the possible societal benefits and risks of nanotech-applications as opined by civil society representatives and researchers. By showing plausible futures and rationalizing the diversity of opinions presented during interviews and stakeholder workshops, the scenarios may inspire long-term policy development. The scenarios are explicitly not predictive, but should be used as a qualitative planning and communication tool. Considering key areas of uncertainty, the scenarios reflect combinations of the desirable and less desirable outcomes that will be a feature of many future trends. Written from the perspective of a researcher in 2015 examining the current state of nanotechnology, the scenarios point out what the key concerns are and the pathway that led to that point.
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Scenario 1: Disaster Recovery Public institutions were slow to plan for the possibility of health or environmental risks related to nanotechnology, and private enterprises were reluctant to self-regulate. This lack of regulation contributed to a major accident at a manufacturing plant in Korea in 2012. Subsequently, public concern about nanotechnologies escalated and a cautious approach to technology development was adopted. Although the technology is still being used and the science is still developing, the term “nanotechnologies” is used less, and the prefix nano has all-but disappeared. (See Fig. 8.1.)
Fig. 8.1 Scenario 1: Disaster recovery
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Scenario 2: Now We’re Talking Regulation of new technologies has been standardized internationally and strong accountability systems are in place, enabling transparent development of nanotechnology. Public sector incentives have directed research towards products that explicitly benefit society, supported by public participation. Local stakeholder forums debate issues that arise from the use of technology (such as privacy) and make decisions for their local area. The strong regulatory regime, especially around issues of toxicity, has meant that health and safety risks are spotted early on and are well-managed. The focus on products that benefit society and reduce negative environmental impact has paid off: growing resource stress means demand for these products is increasing around the world. (See Fig. 8.2.)
Fig. 8.2 Scenario 2: Now we’re Talking
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Scenario 3: Powering Ahead Scientific progress has been made much faster than expected, and nanotechnology related products are making a real impact on society and the economy. For example, there have been dramatic improvements in the efficiency of solar photovoltaic (PV) cells, allowing applications expected to come into the market in the 2020s to exist presently. Long-term investments in fossil fuel resources are progressively losing value, and new market entrants are growing quickly. The speed of change has left regulation behind. Although there has been discussion around the risks of novel materials, as far as public debate is concerned the benefits so far outweigh the risks. (See Fig. 8.3.) The scenarios, the NanoMeter, and further information about the project can be found at www.nanologue.net.
Fig. 8.3 Scenario 3: Powering Ahead
Chapter 9
Anticipating the Futures of Nanotechnology: Visionary Images as Means of Communication Andreas L¨osch
As the previous chapter (T¨urk, ch. 8) and the three that follow (ETC Group, ch. 10; Agilent Technologies, ch. 11; Bennett, ch. 12) illustrate, images are often used in an effort to engage perceptions, associations, and expectations. Given that technology futures are often difficult to grasp and require both understanding and imagination (Peterson, ch. 3; B¨unger, ch. 5), visual images can be an effective instrument for directing imaginations towards, or away from, specific ideas. In this chapter, L¨osch utilizes case study research in order to analyze ways in which images can mediate and bind together expectations associated with science, the economy, and mass media. He describes how visionary images form a “means of communication” between groups that employ vastly different discursive styles (compare Kundahl, ch. 15). This careful depiction suggests that visionary images exhibit a power to present and align diverse discourses (compare Berne, ch. 23). – Eds.
A. L¨osch Darmstadt Technical University, Darmstadt, Germany This article was originally published in July-September 2006 in Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, vol. 18, Nos. 3–4, pp. 393–409.
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Abstract Reports of the current success and future potential of nanotechnological innovation in the field of medicine are frequently illustrated with images depicting speculative and futuristic visions. Based on a case study of visionary images of nanorobots and mini-submarines in the human body in popular science magazines, the business press and daily and weekly newspapers, this paper demonstrates that, despite their weak reference to current developments in nanomedicine, these images serve as a means of communication for the ‘exchange’ of expectations between the discourses of science, economy and the mass media. Through a systems-theoretical and discourse-analytical examination of the dynamics of discourse-networks surrounding these images, the investigation focuses on a certain mediality of futuristic visual images which has been rather neglected in recent Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Technology Assessment. The ‘communicative spaces’ suggested by visionary images enable productions of meaning for the current potential of nanotechnological innovations in and between various discourses. The dynamics of expectations within the communication processes can be reconstructed according to the variations of discourse-specific (i.e. scientific) evaluations of the depicted visions, which in turn can be described as the recursive processing of other (i.e. economic and mass medial) evaluations.
Introduction Despite increasing industrial implementation, e.g. the use of nanoparticles in pharmaceutical application, nanotechnology still remains a highly visionary topic. In expert discussions and in public debates about the status and goals of current nanotechnological research and application, anticipations of possible futures play a vital role (Bundesministerium f¨ur Bildung und Forschung 2004; National Science and Technology Council 1999).1 Interestingly, the corresponding publications consistently use similar or even identical pictorial representations of the visions, in addition to the visionary descriptions in the texts. Most notably, visions of future nanotechnological innovations in medicine are illustrated in daily and weekly newspapers, the business press and popular science magazines not only increasingly, but also regularly with nearly the same images which represent visions of surgical nanorobots and mini-submarines inside the human body. The persistence of the use of these images is remarkable. Investigations of technology assessment and STS on nanotechnology both have revealed that futuristic visions have neither an epistemic function for nanoscientific research, nor are they suitable for the mediation of scientific knowledge to the general public, due to the marginal reference of the visions’ contents to the current scientific and technological development of nanotechnology (Coenen 2004; Glimell 2004; Grunwald 2004).The persistence of the visionary images in publications and, moreover, the references of the arguments in the texts can be observed empirically, however. On the basis of this observation, I assume that these images must have a different and by all means powerful function within the “inter-discursive” communication processes about the future of nanotechnology.
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Case-studies about the dynamics of expectations—e.g. on expectations in genetic engineering, information technology, and nanotechnology—have indeed been able to reconstruct the performativity not only of “Leitbilder” (guiding visions) but also of futuristic visions. For example, they examined the role of these visions for the creation of agendas of the relevant actors of innovations (Brown 2003; Meyer and Kuusi 2004; Schummer 2004). Thus, the question arises why these visual images, despite the lack of function of the depicted visions in the inner-scientific knowledge productions and for the mediation of scientific contents to the general public, can nevertheless persist so steadily in communication processes about the future of nanotechnology. Which roles do these visionary images play within the reciprocal mediations between the discourses of science, economy and the mass media? How are we to understand their performativity in the mediating discourses of science, economy, and the mass media, which accompany the innovation processes? The central thesis of my article is that these futuristic images function as a means of communication between scientific, economic, and mass medial discourses which enable “structural interfaces” between the different orders of discourse. Without such “mediators”2 meaningful communication between the discourses of science, economy, and the mass media would be impossible or at least hindered. The mediality of the futuristic images can be examined empirically by the observation of the variations of discourse-specific references to the depicted visions during the communication processes, and of the resulting inner-discursive productions of meaning which the image-references enable. The performativity of the futuristic images can be explained thus, that precisely these images provide “communicative spaces” which structure—both limit and enable—the communication processes about the future of nanotechnology: These visionary images map out ‘future spaces’ that are used to communicate about the present because these spaces enable interfaces between expectations of different discursive origin. The dynamics of such expectations are demonstrated in this paper by way of a case study on variations of discourse-specific ascriptions of meaning to two visionary images of nanorobots and mini-submarines in the human body. My description of two visionary images frequently used in the analyzed documents is followed by a description of the “de-nanobotization” of science thesis in technology assessment (Coenen 2004; Grunwald 2004; Paschen et al. 2004) and in some STS-studies, (Berube and Shipman 2004; Glimell 2004; Selin 2002), according to which the de-nanobotization of scientific expectations is caused by a loss of function of the visions of nanorobots in inner-scientific communication processes. In my study, this de-nanobotization thesis serves as a foil for the development of an analytical differentiation which allows the differentiation between discoursespecific image references in singular publication domains—e.g. daily and weekly newspapers—and also in single texts. This differentiation is oriented on Michel Foucault’s discourse analysis and on Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory. This analytical section will be followed by the presentation of the empirical research results of a case study on the meditaing role of visionary nanorobot and micro-submarine images. The performativity of the visionary images and the dynamics of expectation in communication processes between scientific, economic and mass medial discourses
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regarding the future of nanomedicine are reconstructed in two respects—that is, the spatial positioning and the temporal variation of the expectations. Finally, after a summary of the research results, the relevance of my results for the “sociology of expectations” and further studies on the dynamics of discourse networks around certain key concepts, metaphors and visual images will be discussed.
Scenarios of Two Visionary Images Since the late 1990s, two visionary images have been increasingly used in daily and weekly newspapers, the business press, as well as in popular science magazines for the pictorial representation of nanomedical visions of the future (for the textsample used for the analysis see the Appendix). Both images are found in articles discussing the future potential of nanotechnology in which scientific, economic and mass medial statements are interconnected. These images combine different semantic traditions from the fields of science, technology, art, popular culture, etc. One of the images depicts a medical nanorobot cleaning human arteries (Fig. 9.1). The second image shows the prototype of a micro-submarine, also in an artery (Fig. 9.2). The image of the nanorobot was created by the British computer graphic designer Julian Baum. In most of the documents which I have analyzed, it is annotated with captions such as “a nanorobot at work cleaning in human arteries”. In the picture, one sees a gray-metal colored object floating through a red tube. Floating towards it are a multitude of red discs. The object seems to resemble familiar science-fiction images of space ships and space stations. The red discs correspond to familiar visualizations of red blood cells. Moreover, various mechanical devices, which are reminiscent of radio modules, industrial vacuum cleaners, and a bucket-excavator
Fig. 9.1 Visionary image of a medical nanorobot in an artery (Courtesy of Julian Baum/SPL/Agentur Focus)
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Fig. 9.2 Visionary image of a micro-submarine in an artery (Courtesy of microTec/eye of science/Agentur Focus)
for coal strip-mining, are attached to the metal object. By digging and vacuuming the deposits along the tube wall, this machine appears to be preventing dangerous arterial clots. Since the technical artifact is placed within an artery, it must be a very small object indeed. Various other, even contrary interpretations of the image would also be possible, depending on one’s point of view. The scenario in the image of the micro-submarine comes across as being less dramatic. This image shows the already-existing prototype of a micro-scale submarine built by the German company microTec. This prototype was displayed at the World Expo in Hannover in 2000. In this picture, a photograph of the submarine prototype is pasted into a shot of the interior of an artery. In most publications, the image is captioned “nano-” or “mini-submarine in the artery.” Both images are supposed to depict the vision of the smallest medical machines which will, at some point in the undetermined future, perform diagnoses and treatment in the human body. This paper is interested in the function of these images as means of communication about possible ‘futures’ of nanomedicine and their effect on the dynamics of current expectations. Therefore, in the following, the context of image production— for example, constructing methods, the intentions of the image creator, and the cultural origins of the images’ themes—is irrelevant.3 Of relevance are the themes and semantic fields which the articles refer to when using these images as visual representations of nanomedical “futures.”
The “De-Nanobotization” Thesis The “Leitbild-research” (Dierkes, Hoffmann and Marz 1996; Grin and Grunwald 2000; Mambrey and Tepper 2000) in the field of technology assessment, as well as STS research oriented towards the “actor-network theory” (Callon 1999; Latour
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1999), increasingly view visions of nanotechnology as relevant objects of research. They are considered means of communication between the relevant actors within the fields of technological development and societal implementation, or instructional scripts which will determine the future dynamics of technological development and the diffusion of innovations (Fogelberg and Glimell 2003; Grin and Grunwald 2000; Grunwald 2004; Rip 2005). Ever since Bill Joy’s scenario of the doom of mankind at the hands of nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and robotics and the following expert and media debates of 2000, the use of futuristic visions in scientific contexts is said to have diminished (Berube and Shipman 2004; Joy 2000b; Paschen et al. 2004; Stix 2001). In this era of increasing industrial utilization of nanotechnology and growing media attention, scientific—and thus also economic—actors are said to have allegedly become aware of the ambivalence of such visions: namely, that they could arouse interest in, and at the same time evoke fears of, nanotechnology. Reputable scientists therefore seem to do without the use of nanorobotic visions (Selin 2002, 15). Since then, aside from apparently unreliable futurists—especially those associated with the U.S. Foresight-Institute, such as K. Eric Drexler and Robert A. Freitas—and the sensation-hungry media, everyone is supposedly concentrating on the factual representation of rather short-term realizable nanotechnological products. Future scenarios of nanorobots and micro-submarines in the human bloodstream seem to have been replaced by, for example, predictions of new nanotechnologically manufactured materials for drug targeting (Paschen et al. 2004, 268). According to this process of ‘de-nanobotization’ of scientific expectations, it seems that only the mass media are still clinging to their old favorites: the nanorobots and micro-submarines. From science-sociologist Cynthia Selin’s point of view, the scientific vision of nanorobots used in the late 1980s became a placeholder for everything unscientific and absolutely fictional about nanotechnology already in the late 1990s (Selin 2002, 8, 18).
Analytical Differentiation The “de-nanobotization” thesis proves to be undifferentiated when one examines visions as ‘structural interfaces’ between such different orders of discourse as science, economy and mass media. From this perspective, visions do not transport knowledge from one discourse to another; rather, they are the common media of the discourses, as they allow different interpretations of their contents, depending on the orders of the discourses. Mediation through these means of communication is based on the discourse-internal processing of ‘disconcerting’ references to the “common” visions from other discourses.4 Especially the analysis of the use of the pictorial form of the visions demonstrates this mediality. My hypothesis is that to date, precisely the visionary images of nanorobots and mini-submarines function similarly as means of communication for scientific, economic and mass medial discourses. Nanorobots are not disappearing from scientific expectations—but the meaning of what the images are actually supposed
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to represent is continually modifying itself in the communication processes. Via discourse-perspective ascriptions of meaning to the images, discourse-specific image references are produced. The expectations for the future of nanomedicine in the discourses are changing within a dynamic process of self-modifying ascriptions of meaning to the pictorial representations of the visions. In the introduction, I questioned the role of visionary images within reciprocal communications and their performativity in the mediating discourses. Based on my hypothesis, these general key questions can be translated into analytical research questions.
r r r
Which discourse-specific productions of meaning for each of the knowledge orders of science, economy, and the mass media do the images enable? How do discourse-perspective ascriptions of meaning to the images in one discourse—for example in a mass medial discourse—influence the descriptions of nanotechnolgy’s futures in the other—for example scientific and economic— discourses? Which structural interfaces and, as a result, modifications of discourse-perspective productions of meaning about nanotechnological futures—and thus discoursespecific expectations—do the ascriptions of each of the other discourses evoke over time?
Thus, I re-address questions from different research traditions: the studies on the dynamics of images of technological innovations (Mambrey and Tepper 2000; Wyatt 2000) as well as the “Sociology of Translations’ and its further development in the concept of ‘boundary objects” (Callon, Law, and Rip 1986; Star and Griesemer 1999). At the same time, I refer to recent research on key terms, metaphors, and images as mediators between discourses and their dynamics over the course of time (Bucchi 2004; Hellsten 2002; Leydesdorff and Hellsten 2005; Maasen and Weingart 2000). In contrast to these recent studies, however, I not only analyze mediations between social fields—for example, “science,” “economy,” and the “mass media.” Rather, it is necessary to be able to differentiate between statements of analytically distinguishable discourses within documents of certain fields. For this, I have developed an analytical differentiation, based equally on certain elements of Niklas Luhmann’s Systems Theory and Michel Foucault’s Discourse Analysis. This analytical differentiation enables the required attribution of statements and image references to specific discourses (Foucault 1972; Luhmann 1995). From the discourse-analytical perspective, statements from actors in the fields of science, economics, and journalism as well as their articulation in typical institutions and forums (e.g. their publication organs) cannot be equated with scientific, economic, and mass medial discourses. The affiliation of statements to one of the three discourses evolves only during the analysis of and in differentiation to other statements which are, in turn, affiliated with the other discourses (L¨osch et al. 2001). For the analytical differentiation of fundamental criteria for the distinction between scientific, economic and mass medial discourses, the distinction of the social subsystems of science, economy, and the mass media according to their codes and programmes in Luhmann’s Theory of Social Systems proves to be operationalizable. Science operates—according to this theory—with the code “true/false,” economy
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with the code “pay/non-pay,” and the mass media with the code “information/ noninformation” (Luhmann 1995).5 Orientation towards the systems-theoretical differentiation between social systems and their codes and programmes allows us to attribute to statements of scientific discourses exactly those image references that—according to the distinction “truth/untruth”—question the realizability of the represented vision. Image references concerning the marketability of the pictured future product according to the distinction “market value/no market value” are classified as statements of economic discourses. Finally, those images references referring to the novelty of the depicted nanotechnological artifact—according to the “new information/old non-information” distinction—are attributed to statements of mass medial discourses.
Nanorobots and Submarines as Means of Communication Image References and Periodization Between the late 1990s and mid-2004, the two images of the medical nanorobot and the micro-submarine, described above, have often been used to illustrate nanotechnological visions of the future in daily and weekly newspapers, business press and popular science magazines. Depending on the focus of the article, the text either stresses the fictionality of these visions as compared to present research and development, or current research and development is described as a preliminary stage to the realization of these visions. Depending on the article, the nanorobots and micro-submarines are described as expected incremental enhancements to current pharmaceutical drug-targeting and micro-technological minimal-invasive surgery research, or else they are considered a radical overthrowing of current surgical and pharmaceutical technologies. The images are described as representations of the progress of the miniaturization of technological artifacts or as a representation of the smallest technological artifacts which can be constructed only by nanotechnological molecular design (for the analyzed text-sample see the Appendix). All references or ascriptions of meaning to the images’ contents during the investigation period can be categorized into three different semantic fields: science fiction, medicine, and technology. Scientific discourses refer to the relationship between science and fiction. Economic discourses consider the relationship between incremental enhancements and radical innovations in medicine. Last but not least, mass medial discourses refer to the correlation between familiar microtechnological miniaturizations and a novel nanotechnological design of molecules (see Table 9.1). The images can function as a means of communication because the positioning of one discourse on one side of the dichotomy in its semantic field—for example, “science” or “fiction”—influence the positionings of the other discourses in their semantic fields. The results are variations in the discourse-specific scientific, economic, and mass medial assessments of the current and future potential of nanomedicine.
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Table 9.1 Discourse-specific image references Discourse
Topic
Semantic Field
Science Economy Mass Media
Realizability Marketability Novelty
Science vs. Fiction Incremental enhancements vs. radical innovations in medicine Miniaturization of technology vs. molecular construction
The discourses, therefore, do not so much deal with the “bare” images, but rather with the multiple image references of each of the other discourses. The ascriptions of meaning to the images provided by one discourse produce image references that are addressed to the other discourses and again evoke discourse-specific productions of references in these discourses—and vice versa. The performativity of the visionary images in communication processes is evident at the junction between the possible image references of each discourse, which are considered simultaneous (spatially) (see Table 9.1), and the (temporal) periodization (see Table 9.2) of dominating formations of image references in the three discourses. When following the transformations of the three discourses’ image references across the period of investigation, three periods can be distinguished. In the following, the formations of the image references in each period are reconstructed. The description of each period starts with an account of the respective contexts of the communication processes, followed by exemplary image-related quotations from the texts and their discourse-analytical attribution to one of the three discourses, and closes with a summarizing reconstruction of the dominating formations of discourse-specific image references.
Start up Period: Future Nanorobots This period is characterized by a mood of “starting up” in science and economy. The first possibilities of the transition from basic research to industrial application become apparent. The articles usually begin with a description of futuristic visions of nanorobots and assemblers which in the course of the article are contrasted by the description of market-oriented research plans on nanoparticles in the field of drug targeting. Starting in early 2000, an example of promising research which is often cited is the research regarding the use of super magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles by biologist Andreas Jordan to treat brain tumors at the Berlin Clinic Charit´e and the production of the corresponding nanoparticles at the Institute for New Materials
Table 9.2 Periodization of the image-communication Period
Topic
Start up (late 1990s to mid-2000) Problematization (mid-2000 to late 2001) Fictionalization (starting approx. 2002)
Future nanorobots Market damaging nanorobots Metaphorical nanorobots
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(Institut f¨ur Neue Materialien, INM) in Saarbr¨ucken (M¨uller 1998; Pantle 2000; Traufetter 2000). In 1998, the German-language popular science magazine Bild der Wissenschaft, for example, opens its main story “Departure for the Nano-era” with the image of Julian Baum’s artery-cleaning nanorobot (see Fig. 9.1). The pictured nanorobot is described as a “U.S. researchers’ dream in contrast to ‘European research projects’ in cancer treatment, and pharmacy, which are said to be oriented towards ‘realistic market goals’ ” (M¨uller 1998).6 According to the semantics of economic discourses in these statements, nanoparticle-research and product development based on nanoparticles are assessed as being marketable and incremental medical enhancements. The production of nanorobots is not considered unrealistic: their future realizability is prognosed. In an interview in early 1999, for example, physicist J¨org Kotthaus gives the following answer to the question of what he thinks of the nanorobot “which frees our arteries of build-up”: “The combination of electronics and mechanics will surely be somewhat more difficult. But why not? . . .It’s a technology of the day after tomorrow” (Kotthaus 1999). In April 2000, the microTec company’s micro-submarine (see Fig. 9.2) illustrates the main story about new medical technologies “Diving into the Nano-Cosmos” in the weekly magazine Der Spiegel. The image is captioned with the sentences: “Nanotechnologies will shrink diagnostic and repair equipment to molecular size . . .The nanorobots will react to diseases immediately in the beginning stages, since they are so small that they can reach practically every corner of the body. The photo shows the prototype of a mini-submarine in an artery” (Traufetter 2000, emphasis by A.L.). According to further assessments in the test, which I attribute to scientific discourses, “nanomedicine” qualifies “no longer just as utopia. . . .Reality is already catching up with science-fiction novels . . .Even the micro-submarine has ‘already been launched as a prototype” (Traufetter 2000, 169). Indeed, the submarine was still lacking the possibilities for suitable propulsion and navigation systems. But international research on the application of the ATP-ase enzyme—which produces energy in many microbes—for the production of “nanopropellers” and “artificial muscles” is being presented as research pointing toward the realization of nanorobots (Traufetter 2000; Hardy 1999, N2). It is stressed—according to the semantic distinction of mass medial discourses between old miniaturization and new molecular construction—that the submarine still belongs to the “class of Microsystems.” A miniaturization into the “nanoworld” will be made possible by new technologies of the nanotechnological manipulation of atoms and molecules (Traufetter 2000, 169). In summary, with such attributions of textual statements to specific scientific, economic and mass medial discourses, the following formation of image references can be reconstructed for this period: It is precisely the scientific discourses which refer to the semantic field of science fiction. Nanorobots, however, are not evaluated as fiction; they are considered realizable artifacts of the future. Economic discourses do not refer to futuristic nanorobots and mini-submarines. They address innovations in the pharmaceutical sector of drug targeting and thus position themselves on the side of incremental enhancements in the semantic field of medicine. Mass
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medial discourses refer to the novelty of nanotechnological constructions. Although nanorobots and mini-submarines are considered visualizations of the continuity of progressing technological miniaturizations, their realizability requires a novel nanotechnological design of molecules and atoms.
Problematization Period: Market-Damaging Nanorobots The second period is characterized by a disenchantment of economic expectations. Industrial nanotechnological breakthroughs are not realized as fast as one had expected. With the market-crash of the IT-branch, the problematization of nanotechnology is adopted as possible hype and mere fad. At the same time, as a result of the Bill Joy debate caused by the publication of his pessimistic vision “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the articles problematize the possible negative effects of futuristic visions for the public’s—including also potential investors’—view of nanotechnology (Joy 2000a). Starting in mid-2000, the image of the micro-submarine (see Fig. 9.2) has been used as an illustration by articles drawing a sobering balance to the previous industrial applications and absent economic success of nanotechnology. The submarine is no longer captioned “photo” of a mini-submarine, but rather “Journey into the future: Submarine in an artery” (Knop 2000, C5; Jung 2001, emphasis by A.L.). The image of Julian Baum’s nanorobot (see Fig. 9.1) illustrates the 2001 article from K. Eric Drexler about molecular nanotechnology in the popular science magazine Spektrum der Wissenschaft, the German edition of Scientific American. Drexler’s contribution is, in contrast to articles about nanotechnological developments in industrial manufacture, medicine, electronics, etc., placed under the rubric “visions.” The image of the nanorobot is captioned: “A medical nanorobot . . .swims in the bloodstream and prevents a life-threatening vessel blockage . . .The author expects such applications already in the foreseeable future” (Drexler 2001, emphasis by A.L.). In the corresponding texts, the images of nanorobots and submarines are described as representations of a very distant and incalculable nanotechnological future. The realization of nanorobots and mini-submarines—following an assessment of the images which I attribute to scientific discourse—should not be totally ruled out (Vasek 2000, p. 17); however, it is explicitly stressed that until their realization, “if it ever does happen, . . .decades will pass” (Jung 2001). For the current development of nanotechnology, these visions—according to statements of economic discourses—are viewed as rather harmful and obstructive. Such speculative visions—which, according to the semantics of economic discourses, are assessed as being representations of radical innovations with incalculable marketability— supposedly dominate “stock-market-prices” and are “bad advertising” which turns nanotechnology into a pure “media event.” These visions are considered uninteresting for economic “investment consultants” (Knop 2003; Vasek 2000). They are considered “obstructive visions” (Knop 2003; Vasek 2000), as they distract from the industrially utilizable ‘first small applications’ of nanoparticles—such as, for
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example, “grime-free toilets, scratch-proof auto paint,” which are evaluated as marketable and incremental innovations. “Researchers have been coming up” with such applications since they have been able to “selectively design and mix nanoparticles” (Jung 2001). The first applicable successes in the pharmaceutical field are attributed—following the semantics of mass medial discourses—“to the miniaturization of ingredients.” This is regarded as being contradictory to “the definitions of nanotechnology as the building of complex structures using the very tiniest elements” (Knop 2003, C5). But if one would not draw “the boundary between nanotechnology and microsystems technology so narrowly,” an economic expert emphasizes, “possibilities for financial investment” could by all means be found. To date, “complex nanomachines only exist in nature.” These are “viruses, bacteria, or even just proteins.” Currently, however, their ‘techniques of building complex structures is mastered only by nature’ (Knop 2000, C5). In sum, such attributions of statements from the texts to the three discourses allow the reconstruction of the following modification of discourse-specific image references: Economic discourses respond to the scientific prognosis of the future realizability of nanorobots in the previous period by explicitly referring to the non-marketability and thus the harmfulness of nanorobot and submarine visions for economic investments. In the semantic field of medicine, nanorobots and mini-submarines are positioned on the side of radical innovations, whose possible future marketability is, until today, totally vague and incalculable. Incremental enhancements and marketable products are considered separate from nanotechnology, belonging rather to the field of pharmaceutical and micro-technological miniaturizations. Scientific and mass medial discourses, on the other hand, respond to the economic references to marketable incremental enhancements in this period. Although nanorobots and mini-submarines are sill viewed as realizable in scientific discourses, their realization is shifted into a very distant future and presented as being dependent on future scientific possibilities of duplicating nature’s self-organizing principles. The current technological manipulations of nanoparticles as ascribed as being scientific successes which are still a far cry from complex nanomachines—such as nanorobots and submarines. Now it is the mass medial discourses that do not refer to futuristic nanorobots and submarines. Thus they describe the specific newness of nanotechnology as being not yet duplicable molecular designs of nature. Current developments are positioned on the side of well-tied trends in miniaturization.
Fictionalization Period: Metaphorical Nanorobots Although previously low sales increases of nanotech-companies were often brought up at the beginning of this period, it can be characterized by an increasing hope for the progress of nanoparticle research and the production of marketable products enabled through new nanoparticles (Knop 2003; Waters 2003). The progress of the experiments with nanoparticles for tumor therapy at the Charit´e clinic and product developments by companies in the field of drug targeting, for example Capsolution AG, are viewed as evidence for an increasing development of marketable products in
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the pharmaceutical industry (Freise and Janich 2002; W¨usthof 2002). Nanoparticles are dubbed “huge market conquerors” (Knop 2003, emphasis added by A.L. ). Additionally, risk discussion due to the possible health risks of nanoparticles is becoming an important topic of the articles. At the same time, the effect of the thriller Prey by author Michael Crichton in which he depicts the catastrophic scenario of a swarm of nanorobots gone wild, is being discussed controversially with regard to the public’s image of nanotechnology (Crichton 2002, 33). In this period the image of the micro-submarine (see Fig. 9.2) is used primarily to illustrate economically-oriented articles reporting the successes of companies that manufacture new and improved materials with nanoparticles and accordingly make market predictions for products made of nanoparticles (Freise and Janich 2002; Knop 2003). At this stage, the image is frequently accompanied by captions, for instance: “Science Fiction: A mini-robot travels through bloodstreams” (Knop 2003, emphasis added by A.L.). The image of Julian Baum’s nanorobot (see Fig. 9.1), on the other hand, is mostly used in articles reporting on scientific successes in nanomedicine as well as on risk discussions. In this context, the image is captioned, for example: “These helpful little machines exist . . .only in fantasy” (Haas 2003, 28, emphasis added by A.L.). Both images are captioned with statements which I attribute to scientific discourses. Both images are now increasingly described as fictional illustrations and as representations of very speculative visions. In the same texts, visions—according to semantics of economic discourses— are considered a contrast to market-oriented visions of economic realism (Schr¨oter 2002; Saxl 2002). At the same time in the risk discussions, the images serve as visualizations of fictional dangers in contrast to the realistic dangers of nanoparticles. In spite of scientists’ indignation when facing unrealistic nanorobotic-scenarios, for example in Michael Crichton’s novel Prey, not only the harmfulness of this and similar nanorobot-visions is being discussed: Scientists, for example, the well-known German physicist and nano-bioengineer Wolfgang Heckl, are now emphasizing the great “value of nanorobot-fiction as a starting point for public discussions” (Heckl 2002, 28). The submarine and nanorobot are described—following the semantics of scientific discourses—as fiction, but at the same time—following the semantics of mass medial discourses—as effectual representations of future possibilities of drug targeting with newly designed nanoparticles. In conclusion, with such attributions of statements to the three discourses, the reconstruction of the following further modifications in the formation of scientific, economic and mass medial image references can be reconstructed: In this period, scientific discourses appear to respond to the image references of economic discourses in the previous period in such a way that their evaluation of the realizability of nanorobots and submarines is moved to the side of fictionality. Nanorobots and submarines are now no longer described as being realizable visions, but rather increasingly as pictorial and metaphorical representatives for the future successes of drug targeting with nanoparticles. Economic discourses are now positioning products of nanoparticles more on the side of radical innovations with high market value. Mass medial discourses henceforth position nanoparticle-products on the side of molecular construction, which accentuates their novelty.
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Conclusion and Discussion Within the analyzed discourses a shifting in the interpretations of the nanorobot and micro-submarine images has become evident. The representation changes from realizable objects in the future to representative or metaphorical visualizations of products made of nanoparticles for medical drug targeting. This transformation cannot fully be understood as a mere “de-nanobotization” process of scientific expectations. If one views this transformation as the result of feedback between scientific, economic, and mass medial image references, this modification proves to be not purely the effect of scientific expectations, but rather a converting of the image ascriptions provided by economic and mass medial discourses. By the same token, the transformations of the scientific image references enable modifications in the discourse-specific productions of meaning in economic and mass medial discourses. Thus is it possible for economic discourses to perceive nanoparticles as radical and, at the same time, marketable innovations. Likewise, it is possible for mass medial discourses to extend their staging of the novelty of molecular construction beyond the limits of “traditional” micro-technological miniaturization to various research projects and product developments, including nanoparticles. But what is the reason for the suitability of such images as a means of communication? Their functionality for communicating the current and future potential of nanotechnology seems to be based on the space constitutive effects of these images. Both images constitute “spaces,” within which they represent futuristic nanotechnological artifacts and scenarios of future nanotechnological applications. The represented objects and scenarios—viewed from the perspectives of all of the three discourses—are at the same time “familiar” and “foreign”: The new artifacts—as in the images of the nanorobot and the micro-submarine—are found in the familiar spaces of the human body’s interior. The represented artifacts—for example, the submarine or a space ship—are familiar as well. Their novelty is only evident in that the images of the artifacts are placed in spaces in which they have previously not been found or observed. This combinatorics creates evidence for the newness through the alienation of familiar things, and at the same time, contextualizes the newness via its placement in a familiar environment. This image-specific combinatorics enables “structural interfacing” between different discourses: In this manner one can address, for example, the feasibility or the fictionality of the pictorially represented visions. The nanorobots and micro-submarines can be described as incremental enhancements or as radical replacements of current medical practices. The represented artifacts can be perceived as a miniaturization of already-existing technology or as products of a new molecular construction. These “communicative spaces” constituted by the nanorobot and micro-submarine images both limit and enable the variation of present discourse-specific productions of meaning about the future potential of nanomedicine. The new “spaces” opened up through the image-specific combinatorics of semantics are comparable to the “circulation spaces” constituted by “boundary objects” which enable manifold translations between different actors and networks (Star and Griesemer 1999). Sociological studies about the dynamics of expectations in innovation processes
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have investigated the circulation and exchange of expectations between the relevant actors. They pointed out that not only one “static” expectation is crucial for the dynamics and performativity of the future anticipation in current innovation processes, but rather the variation of original expectations over a negotiation period between the actors (Brown and Michael 2003; Brown et al. 2000; Konrad 2004; H. van Lente 1993). In contrast to these actor-theoretical studies, my systems-theory based discourse analytical investigation of the pictorial and medial dimensions of expectations refers to specific, thus far little-studied dynamics of expectations within “discourse-networks”: First, my analysis of the “discourse-networks” which form around the images shows that also within a social field or a publication domain—e.g. the “mass media” or the press—the visionary images evoke dynamics of expectations. These dynamics are based on the reciprocal and discourse-specific processing of expectations of the other discourses in the field, which can be categorized as “scientific,” “economic,” and “mass medial” discourses. With this analytical differentiation within social fields and their publication domains, my study extends the theoreticalmethodological insights of recent discourse-theory—and, to a certain extent, systemtheory—based studies on the mediating role of key terms, metaphors and images (Bucchi 2004; Hellsten 2002; Leydesdorff and Hellsten 2005; Maasen and Weingart 2000). Second, I extend this research to the investigation of the mediality of visual images. In contrast to these studies, I do not explain the dynamics of the discoursespecific processing of image references based on the circulation of visual images as metaphors between the discourses and the modifications of the images over the course of time. Rather, I reconstruct the mediality of the images based on the observation of variations of discourse-specific image references to the same and temporally unchanging—and thus static—images. For example following Wyatt’s analysis of internet metaphors, images of technological innovation became conventionalized during the period of negotiations of expectations between various actors (Wyatt 2000). As I show, however, the conventionalization of the images in processes of future communication does not necessarily lead to a simplification or fusion of the partaking discourses. Similar to the “boundary objects” which enable the coexistence of various incompatible discourse networks (Callon 1995; Star and Griesemer 1999, 506–509), the images which I analyze open up “spaces” of discourse-specific future communications which evoke temporarily valid and thus “flexible conventions” of nanotechnological futures in each discourse.7 Third, since the contents of the pictured forms of expectations are not interpreted literally and communication is not defined as a transfer of knowledge contents8 — as the pictures were regarded in their function as media—it was possible, due to the self-modifying image references, to empirically reveal correlations between the visionary images and the dynamics of the communication processes about the future potential of nanomedical visions. For the future of nanomedicine, it is not important whether one really expects “nanorobots” to “crawl” through our bodies one day, but rather what these visionary images represent in the eye of the beholder.
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Because of these insights, my case study could serve as a starting point for future sociological studies on expectations dynamics at the level of the evolution of discourse-networks which form around key concepts, metaphors, and visual images. The question remains open how the mediality of visual images differs from the mediality of key terms, metaphors, non-visual images, etc. The answer to this question could be a substantial contribution to a visual sociology of expectations. Acknowledgments Financial support for this work was provided by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. I would like to thank Harro van Lente and the anonymous referees for their useful comments.
Appendix The case study is a part of the project Spaces of Medical Micro- and Nanotechnology: Case Studies in the Sociology of Knowledge on how Technological Innovations are Negotiated and Mediated. The overall project examines the mediating role of visions—especially in their pictorial form—in communications of scientific, economic, and mass medial discourses about the potential of current research and development in medical micro- and nanotechnology. The project is based on the document analyses of international medical journals, popular science magazines, the business press as well as German daily and weekly newspapers. After conducting searches using scientific data banks (BIOSIS, Medline), the data banks of German library associations (HEBIS, GBV), and press data banks (among others, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), qualitative-empirical case studies on the mediality of visionary images were developed. In the relevant documents of the presented case study ‘Nanomachines in the Body,’ the two images of this article (Figs. 9.1 and 9.1) appear along with two very similar images of nanorobots and mini-submarines (see Table 9.3; relevance criterion of document selection: current nanomedical research and development are coupled with future visions of ‘nanomachines’). My article is based on partial results of this case study and presents results of the discourse analyses of documents from popular science magazines, the business press and German daily and weekly newspapers (from the mid 1990s until the end Table 9.3 Distribution of the images in relevant documents of the case study (archived in the project data bank, November 18th 2005) Publication domains
Documents of the case study
Images of nanomachines (4 images)
Documents of the overall project
Science (specialist journals and popular science magazines) Economy (newspapers and magazines) Mass Media (daily and weekly newspapers) Total
35
17
81
10 38
7 21
34 121
83
45
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of 2004). Control samples in English-language newspapers showed no significant differences. I also reconstructed the table of discourse-specific image references (Table 9.1) in documents from international medical journals.9 However, the examination of these specialty science documents over the short investigation period of my case study showed no significantly differentiable ‘temporal’ periods of image communication (as in Table 9.2). This result can be explained, among other things, by the weak sensitivity of specialty science publications to events, for example in comparison to the press.
Notes 1. For a detailed analysis of the visionary NSTC-slogan “Shaping the World Atom by Atom,” see Nordmann 2004. 2. Based on the communication term of Niklas Luhmann’s System Theory, I define mediation not as a transfer of knowledge, but rather as a system-internal processing of uncertainties which are triggered in a system by its observation of the communications of other systems. See for example Luhmann 1995. 3. For more on the cultural origins of these two images in Jules Verne’s Nautilus myth see Nerlich 2005. 4. See endnote 2. 5. For the mass media see Luhmann 2000. 6. In the following all German quotations have been translated into English. 7. Recent studies about the “image worlds” of nanotechnology mostly focus on the epistemic functions of images in laboratory-related scientific knowledge production or the convergence of scientific and artistic image productions. See Hennig 2004 and Milburn 2004. For and exception see Kaiser and Mayerhauser 2005. 8. For more on the theoretical and empirical problems of the transfer paradigm in studies on science communication see Bucchi 2004. 9. For the use of a visionary nanorobot image in an oncological journal see (L¨osch 2004, 198).
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W¨usthof, A. 2002. Nanopartikel transportieren Gene und Medikamente zielgerichtet in erkrankte Gewebe. Die Zeit. 27 March. Wyatt, S. 2000. Talking About the Future: Metaphors of the Internet. In Brown, N., B. Rappert, and A. Webster, eds., Contested Futures. A Sociology of Prospective Techno-Science. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 109–128.
Chapter 10
Winners of Nano-Hazard Symbol Contest Announced at World Social Forum, Nairobi, Kenya ETC Group
The ETC Group has been an especially outspoken critic of nanotechnology research since 2003. The organization argues that a better understanding of the future ramifications of such research is necessary before it can be responsibly pursued (Sutcliffe, ch. 16). In 2006, it renewed its call for a moratorium on nanoparticle production and release (also discussed by Miller, ch. 19). This press release describes another one of the strategies it employs to focus public attention on potential hazards and uncertainties associated with nanotechnology: an “international graphic design” contest. ETC contends that “concerned people everywhere” should have the information and freedom to decide what risks they will tolerate (like Foladori and Invernizzi, ch. 2; see Fiedeler, ch. 21). ETC’s contest presents the future in terms of the past by implying that managing human exposure to engineered nanoparticles should include warnings similar to those now used for nuclear, biological, and other hazardous materials. ETC has an impressive track record in gathering support for its ideas through mechanisms such as this. Under its former name, The Rural Advancement Foundation International, it played an instrumental role in helping mobilize European public resistance to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) (see Currall et al., ch. 7 and Meyyappan, ch. 20). – Eds.
ETC Group Ottawa, Canada This press release was originally posted on the ETC Group website in January 2007 at: www.etcgroup.org/upload/publication/pdf file/604
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ETC Group News Release Wednesday, 24 January 2007 www.etcgroup.org
Winners of Nano-Hazard Symbol Contest Announced at World Social Forum, Nairobi, Kenya An estimated 30,000 people gathered at the World Social Forum in Nairobi this week where participants had a chance to vote for their favorite Nano-Hazard Symbol – a design that warns of the presence of engineered nanomaterials (1nanometer = 1billionth of a meter). The winners of the international graphic design competition were announced today: The winning designs were submitted by: Dimitris Deligiannis (Greece), Shirley Gibson (Scotland), and Kypros Kyprianou (England).
“Tiny tech is no small matter – there was intense competition to design a nanohazard symbol, and enormous interest in Nairobi,” said Pat Mooney of ETC Group. “We ended up with three winners who were virtually tied for first place,” explained Mooney. The competition netted 482 unique designs from 24 countries. An independent panel of judges selected 16 finalists that appeared on the ballot in Nairobi. (The 16 finalists can be found here: http://www.etcgroup.org/gallery2/v/finalists/) The winning designs will be submitted to international standard-setting bodies responsible for hazard characterisation and could be used as a label on productpackaging or workroom walls. Because of their extremely small size and large surface area, nanoscale particles may be more reactive and more toxic than larger particles of the same substance. Even though hundreds of products containing engineered nanoparticles are on the market, the toxicology of nanoparticles is largely
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unknown. (More information on the competition, along with the list of judges, can be found here: http://www.etcgroup.org/nanohazard) “Congratulations to the winners, and to the hundreds of people from all over the globe who participated. We also want to thank our panel of judges, who had the challenging task of narrowing the field to 16 finalists,” added Kathy Jo Wetter of ETC Group. All 482 design submissions can be viewed at: http://www.etcgroup.org/gallery2/v/nanohazard/ The 16 finalists for the Nairobi-phase of the contest here: http://www.etcgroup.org/gallery2/v/finalists/ ETC contact information: Pat Mooney and Kathy Jo Wetter of ETC Group are attending the World Social Forum. We have a booth at the WSF venue and / or can be reached by email: Pat Mooney:
[email protected] Kathy Jo Wetter:
[email protected] Hope Shand (US)
[email protected] tel: 919 960-5767 Silvia Ribeiro (Mexico)
[email protected] tel: +52 5555 6326 64
Chapter 11
Your Children, Their Children . . . Agilent Technologies
Some of the most vibrant and persuasive futures are offered in commercial advertisements. Rather than simply present technical specifications of a product, advertisements often suggest that to obtain values such as pleasure, abundance, or status—in short, to achieve a measure of human happiness—one need merely purchase the product offered for sale. This advertisement from Agilent Technologies, a corporation that produces a wide array of laboratory equipment, is targeted at research scientists and investors and can be found in scientific journals such as Nature Nanotechnology. It does not include any images of the electronics, communications, or chemical analysis equipment that the company builds and sells. Instead, it appeals to a particular set of dreams and aspirations, suggesting that those who wisely invest in and use their equipment will help create a valued future of limitless possibilities that will benefit future generations (as also implied by Peterson, ch. 3 and Meyyappan, ch. 20; and as questioned by Miller, ch. 19 and Berne, ch. 23). – Eds.
Agilent Technologies Santa Clara, CA, USA This advertisement was created as part of a marketing campaign and was designed to be published in journals such as Nature Nanotechnology.
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Chapter 12
Developing Plausible Nano-Enabled Products Ira Bennett
Visions of the future are often purposefully constructed to compel groups or individuals to take specific actions. In this chapter, Bennett adds his voice to those scholars and practitioners who claim that technological visions should not be simply consumed or rejected, but developed and discussed. He describes his experiences in developing nanotechnology-enabled product descriptions for a scenarios project at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University. As do other projects in this volume (Rip and te Kulve, ch. 4; Currall et al., ch. 7; T¨urk, ch. 9; Goorden et al., ch. 14), this one seeks interdisciplinary input from technical experts as a basis to assist various social groups to think through and evaluate different nanotechnology futures. In order to ensure that these visions are “plausible,” however, Bennett seeks to create “neutral” product descriptions that contain “as little overt bias as possible” (compare L¨osch, ch. 9 and Williams, ch. 22). Bennett’s goal is to facilitate a conversation about goals, values, and possibilities rather than create enthusiasm for a specific future. – Eds.
I. Bennett Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
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Shortly after the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University (CNS-ASU) was founded in 2005, I was involved in a discussion about the numerous things being said about future products envisioned from nanotechnology research. For instance, in public survey work, there was often a lack of consistency in the way surveyors described nanotechnology. Wouldn’t it be nice, we mused, if we could develop a series of short vignettes that described, with as little overt bias as possible, technologies that nanotechnology research could actually produce in the future? These stories would be based on the cutting edge science presently occurring and would be evaluated by groups of scientists to make sure that they were technically feasible. The goal was a collection of na¨ıve product descriptions that neutrally describe products of the future that are technically valid, accessible, and thought provoking. The collection of descriptions could then be used by CNSASU researchers and others as the basis for public opinion surveys, outreach and education activities, and any endeavor that seeks to capture the imagination of an audience. By providing only information on how the technologies worked, with little context on how these technologies would fit into people’s lives, we hoped that people would imagine the potential products “into” their lives. The different ways that people imagine these technologies in their lives—good, bad, or mixed—would presumably stem from their own values and beliefs. The key for CNS researchers is to try to make the technologies and products provocative enough to evoke a response from the reader, while at the same time minimizing reference to their social and ethical contexts. As we began to explore how others—including scenario planners, futurists, and science fiction authors—think about the future, we found that this “minimalist” approach to writing about the future was somewhat new. A colleague of mine had been tasked with a similar project focusing on future biotechnologies. Her approach was to try to draw connections between what a particular technology assessment crowd had said about the future of biotechnology and then to develop her product descriptions from the combinations of those ideas. CNS initiated a similar process, collecting and evaluating different visions of nanotechnology in a database to get a sense of the scope of possible futures. Yet I found myself drawn away from the futurist crowd and back to what the scientists themselves were discussing. Rummaging through stacks of Science and Nature, I discovered that scientists said a number of interesting things about future technologies when they reported their research findings. The na¨ıve product descriptions I subsequently wrote were inspired by the paragraph, often the second or third, in scientific articles where the authors of the article make claims about the potential utility of the research findings towards some sort of product or technology. I used those claims as the beginning point to build the product further—sometimes finding alternate uses, sometimes having to figure out what the technology described in the article could be used for. In order to develop background for the product, I further combed the scientific literature for more information about the technologies that could enable such projects, the histories behind the efforts, the major players involved, and the breakthroughs that had recently happened. The descriptions are written in a style that can be described as similar to technical sales literature in that they attempt to avoid normative contexts and implications.
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Unlike advertising copy, there is no overt positive or negative spin to the technologies. This style of writing can be difficult because it lacks the crucial pieces of plot formation that allows a story to flow. Moreover, it is virtually impossible to write a “purely technical” description, strictly speaking. To get past these difficulties I would often develop an idea for an interesting technology, write a science fiction story about it, extract the technological content from the fictional story, and then write the short product description. For instance, the na¨ıve product description called “sleep,” which is presented in Figs. 12.1 and 12.2, comes from a short science fiction story that I wrote which
Fig. 12.1 “Sleep” scenario (page 1)
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Fig. 12.2 “Sleep” scenario (page 2)
allowed me to develop a sense of empathy with the fellow who had to wear this thing every night. It began with the following paragraph: I am not saying that it is awkward, but I remember being able to look over and see my wife sleeping next to me. Now, with the cage locked around my head, I am just able to stare up at the ceiling. The cage, giver of sleep, provider of information, holder of head. It occurred only in the trial period of chip implantation. The chips weren’t capable of down time. They ran continuously. The wearers unable to sleep . . .unable to shut the brain down. None of the first group survived . . .suicide, sedative overdose, exhaustion, dementia, death. It took several years to fix. The second generation was forced to sleep in coffin like structures that held their whole bodies rigid; these days just the head and neck. Soon, they say, it will merely be a hat, like a beanie.
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The character in this story clearly has mixed feelings about the brain chip and the subsequent cage locking his head and neck into position. How does providing for his family, through the job he is able to have because of the brain chip, compare with the inconvenience of wearing the cage? Notice that the character hopes that soon it would be only like wearing a beanie. Science fiction focuses on the people in the story, using technology to help develop the worlds and situations needed to tell the story the author wants to tell. In this project, however, the concern is that such context and vivid imagery might vilify the cage and chip and distract the reader from imagining him- or herself wearing the cage without focusing on the specific character’s experiences. By merely describing the technology and the product, I hoped that people would be more easily able to contextualize it in light of their own experiences and thus to visualize how it would fit into their lives. In developing these product descriptions, I was careful not only to make the potential product interesting, but also to make it plausible. The quickest way for a person to diffuse a conversation about the impacts of potential future products is to claim that the technology in question is impossible, that there is no point to the discussion because this vision of the future can never happen. In order to avoid (or at least deflect) that claim, the descriptions used in this project are vetted by groups of relevant scientists at ASU. The researchers are asked to evaluate the various enabling technologies present in the products in several ways. The first way explores plausibility. Does this defy the laws of nature? The second examines how long it might take to develop such a product. When could this product become a reality? The third is designed to flesh out the steps that would make it possible. What are the major technical breakthroughs that need to occur for this technology to be part of the future? Scientific participation in the vetting process has been a challenge. Several approaches have been tried, including mass mailings of the material to research centers, contacting individual researchers, and making general informal requests. It turns out that the most effective approach is to work with the people we at CNS know, or those that have a specific relationship to the product described. The trouble with this approach is that we end up with a limited number of research groups to work with. This seems to limit our range of opinions and may eventually overburden the volunteering research groups. The vetting is done in a workshop format, often with whole laboratory groups made up of research scientists, postdoctoral researchers, technicians, graduate students, and undergraduates. The experience appears to be rewarding for scientists as well as the CNS researchers. While I was vetting “sleep” with a neuroscience laboratory group, the researchers became very animated, and the graduate students began to develop more and more fantastic glimpses into the future. In some ways it looked like a comprehensive oral exam; students were eager to show their knowledge and ability to use it creatively while the faculty kept them in check concerning the practicality and feasibility of their ideas. Members of the laboratory group told me they felt as though the group had benefited from the experience as it provided some context to the students on where the technology could
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go into the future, past the day-to-day tedium of macaque models and algorithm development. The product description also benefited—the group was able to convince me that the technology was more plausible with a distributed network of small chips as opposed to one larger chip, and I realized that one of the major technical challenges is going to be how to code the signal so that the brain understands it. The na¨ıve product descriptions for this project have been used in a couple of different forums so far. The first was in the pilot of a project called “TechnoSpeakeasies” which aims to engage older adults in conversations about anticipatory technology assessment. In this context the product descriptions were used to help participants imagine future technologies. The approach was mildly successful. Because these descriptions merely include the technical aspects of the larger world that would involve the product, the audience had a hard time getting a feel for how a described technology might fit into their future world. In subsequent workshops, we will use the product descriptions in conjunction with a related fictional piece in an effort to help the audience to explore alternative stories that could be created with the same technology. The second use was in the ASU School of Design course, “InnovationSpace,” a year-long course that teamed up an undergraduate graphic designer, industrial designer, an engineer, and a business student with the goal of imagining, designing, and mocking up a new product. The na¨ıve product descriptions were provided as examples of technologies that could exist in the future to help inspire students working to develop their own vision of future nanotechnology products. Some of the groups gravitated towards the descriptions as inspiration immediately. The descriptions were able to provide some context to the lectures the students had heard on the scientific underpinnings of nanotechnology and gave them a better ability to recognize the potential day-to-day impacts of nanotechnology. The na¨ıve product descriptions are also slated for use in CNS-ASU’s NanoFutures project that will engage a variety of publics, assisting them to develop their own visions of the future through a wiki-formatted website. The NanoFutures project, born out of some early ideas about web-based comparative vetting, will allow specific groups (i.e., scientists, science and technology studies academics, policy makers) to add social, economic, and political context to the product descriptions. This web-based activity will include a discussion forum as well as space for visitors to write their own science fiction around the technology presented. Graphic versions of the descriptions have been developed for use with the NanoFutures project as another way to present the technology and product. The development of these na¨ıve product descriptions has been an important project for several reasons. The first is that the outcomes of the descriptions do not stand-alone; they need to be utilized by other activities to have much value. In essence we are creating a collection of tools. Second, it has been worthwhile to bring together natural scientists and social scientists to develop thoughts about the future. While this second point was not a goal of producing the descriptions, I feel the process has further solidified relationships between CNS and scientists working on nano-enabled technologies. Finally, while the product descriptions are
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just starting to be utilized by researchers at CNS and beyond, the work that has gone into developing and vetting these product descriptions has taught us at CNS a good deal about the breadth of technologies and products that nanotechnology can enable. For each of the products explored in the descriptions, ten more could have been developed from the enabling technologies. As the projects that are to utilize these product descriptions get past the trial phase, it will be interesting to see how the different publics involved react to the descriptions. Are they imaginative enough to evoke a response? Does the scientific plausibility matter in the potential discussions, or does that only limit the space for conversation? Is the minimization of social context a benefit or hindrance to the desired discussions? Careful monitoring and adjustment of the projects as they get started will help to ensure successful utilization of the product descriptions.
Chapter 13
Nanotechnology for Chemical and Biological Defense 2030 Workshop and Study Margaret E. Kosal
Since the beginning of World War II, the US military has been a prime mover in developing new technologies. The research and development that led to jet aircraft, radar, microelectronics, and the Internet was largely backed by military funding. Approximately 58 percent of the United States’ FY 2008 R&D budget is devoted to defense, of which approximately $475 million is projected for nanotechnology R&D in the Department of Defense. It is difficult to imagine this funding stream not having a significant effect on the meaning, direction, and future of nanotechnology (consider Kennedy, ch. 1 and Miller, ch. 19). In this chapter, Kosal provides a glimpse into how one military program uses scenarios to develop R&D funding priorities. It describes a January 2007 workshop in which a diverse array of people developed future scenarios (Rip and te Kulve, ch. 4; T¨urk, ch. 8) of nanotechnology and other converging technologies in relation to potential national security threats. Of note is the stated impetus for the project: What if intelligence communities came together twenty-five years ago to think strategically about future developments in biotechnology? – Eds.
M.E. Kosal Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, GA, USA
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Introduction In January 2007, the Department of Defense’s Chemical and Biological Defense Program (CBDP) brought together a diverse set of practitioners and researchers to develop scenarios and strategies on the potential benefits and the potential threats of nanotechnology to national security. The Nanotechnology for Chemical and Biological Defense 2030 Workshop and Study (NanoCBD2030) explored the possible impacts of nanoscience and analogous emerging technologies in order to formulate a strategy to enable science capabilities for the next twenty-five years. Leading experts in science, military, and international security fields, defense policy specialists, and members of the intelligence community came together for three days in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains north of Santa Fe to share knowledge and perspectives, to think deeply, and to collate their thoughts into a plan. The outcome of the workshop is being prepared for publication as a monograph, including a keystone strategic roadmap to invigorate and guide the Transformational Countermeasure Technologies Initiative (TCTI). This effort was led by the CBDP, through the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s (DTRA) Chemical and Biological Technologies Directorate (DTRA-CB) and the Office of the Special Assistant for Chemical and Biological Defense and Chemical Demilitarization Programs (OSA(CBD&CDP)) within the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). Nanotechnology is anticipated to offer significant and substantive advantages over existing technologies in the critical areas of size, surface-to-volume ratio, speed, cost, delivery, and performance. Since the field of nanotechnology is still emerging, this workshop had the unique position to influence the direction and the desired goals and outcomes, in order to provide a framework for the research as it impacts national security. This is particularly significant since nanotechnology, like biotechnology, is potentially “dual use”; the breakthroughs in nanotechnology may be applied to benefit the nation and society at large or may be used for nefarious and sinister purposes.
Origin/Impetus There were two primary ideas that inspired the workshop. First, a series of hypothetical questions: What if twenty-five years ago scientific and intelligence communities came together to develop innovative solutions and to strategize potential countermeasures emerging from the revolutionary developments in biotechnology? What if twenty-five years ago someone had started asking tough security questions about the prospect for that biotechnology to be co-opted for malicious intent by terrorists or used by states for offensive weapons programs and began planning how the US might develop capabilities to defend against such new weapons in order to achieve the ability to function in any environment unencumbered by chemical, biological, and radiological effects? While the potential threats of nanotechnology research in an “Age of Terrorism” are not as likely in the near term as those associated with
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biotechnology, threat anticipation and monitoring now can lessen the risk in upcoming years. Second, the workshop was inspired by the contrasting experiences of the workshop organizer who intentionally sought to bring together individuals with expertise related to nanotechnology and international security that otherwise would not interact.
Nanotechnology Scope In order to establish a common point of reference, the workshop presented an inclusive posture on what falls within the scope of nanotechnology. Nanoscience and nanotechnology research are exciting, emerging, and rapidly growing fields of interdisciplinary science that cross-cut and integrate biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and materials science. The term nanoscience refers to more than working with a lone atom or single small molecule. In biology, for example, nanoscience deals with the scale at which biochemical processes inside cells take place or at which nerve transmissions occur. Synaptic junctions between nerve cells in the brain are twenty to forty nanometers wide and between nerve cells and muscles three to four nanometers wide. To date, nanoscience most commonly refers to the manipulation of individual atoms and molecules to create larger structures. Because these masses are so small, gravity’s effect is greatly diminished and the conventions of friction are altered. Known to biophysicists as “life at low Reynolds number,” the nanoscale is the realm where viscous forces dominate: moving through water is like swimming through molasses. What are normally perceived to be weak forces between molecules dominate on the nanoscale. This is what allows geckos, which have millions of twonanometer-wide hairs lining their feet, to adhere to glassy, smooth surfaces. This same property would also theoretically limit the movement of nanoscale robots— they could easily stick to each other or to the first surface they encounter. When speaking about the nanoscale, within this workshop, we referred to science dominated by interactions of less than nominally one hundred nanometers. Interaction distances, however, were not the sole determinant of relevance for the workshop. Most technologies that interface to the nanoscience scale were also of interest. Therefore, technologies and the necessary infrastructure to interact, to manipulate, and generate the materials or products on the nanoscience scale were also considered as part of this nanotechnology workshop, e.g., a MEMs scale reactor capable of enabling molecular assemblers would be a fitting topic.
Workshop Charge The participants were given four core charges: (1) innovate solutions and strategize potential countermeasures to current chemical and biological threats leveraging revolutionary developments in nanotechnology, (2) anticipate proliferation scenarios
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in which nanotechnology is put to malicious use by terrorists or nation-states, (3) strategize potential countermeasures to defend against such uses, and (4) recommend research directions and priorities to enable the long-term physical science capabilities for the DoD’s Chemical and Biological Defense Program.
Scenario Development A guided scenario development process, loosely based on the type developed by Peter Schwartz, was intentionally employed to minimize chronological extrapolations from the science and technology of today. Participants were asked to imagine that they have fallen asleep and awake in 2030 in order to encourage the envisioning of disruptive leaps forward in nano-technologies and enabling systems. Two principal axes for describing these 2030 worlds were delineated (Fig. 13.1). One axis correlated strongly to national defense—the principal adversary of the US in the 2030—and the second with rate of technological innovation—rapid or slow and limited. Potential factors that might impact the rate of technology progress included changing cost and availability of technology, tools, and materials; dissemination of expertise—internationally and to private sector; global integration; ease of access to knowledge base; economic interdependence; energy distribution and demand; social-political instability and extent of social conflict; and socioreligious dis-motivation. The goal of the scenario development was to enable broad insight, or paths for technology investments, that can guide toward desired outcomes.
Fig. 13.1 The characteristics descriptors—or “Quadrants” of notional 2030 worlds that were used in the NanoCBD2030 scenario development process
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Workshop Process The NanoCBD2030 workshop participants were divided into nine focus groups for the development of the scenarios for each potential 2030 world. In order to facilitate these discussions and scenario development, the workshop organizers identified focus areas that span various fields of nanotechnology. The focus areas were categorized into either Countermeasures Development Scenarios (capabilities) or Challenges of Malfeasant Co-option of Nanotechnology (threats). The Countermeasures Development focus groups were charged with imagining capabilities against current chemical and biological defense capability gaps (i.e., problems that we currently lack solutions to or have less than ideal passive defense capabilities, e.g., standoff biological detection or revolutionary advances in personal protection filters). The sub-categories under Countermeasures Development Scenarios were: a) detection and diagnostics of biological agents; b) detection and diagnostics chemical agents; c) physical protection; d) decontamination, remediation, and consequence management; and e) medical countermeasures. The Challenges of Malfeasant Co-option of Nanotechnology scenario focus groups were charged with exploring the potential of misuse of nanotechnology by state or non-state actors, including proliferation challenges. The specific threat considered were: a) new or nano-enabled biochemical agents; b) malfeasant exploitation of the toxicological or other deleterious health effects; c) evasion of vaccines, innate human immunity, or other medical countermeasures; and d) self-assembled materials and devices to molecular assemblers. While all of the scenarios were notional, i.e., not currently within technical capability of the best scientists in the best laboratories and lacking concepts of operations, the scenarios were all to be based on sound scientific principles. For each quadrant of the notional 2030 worlds, the Countermeasure Development focus groups:
r r r r
Imagined the state of development of their countermeasure. What revolutionary advancements can they imagine nanotechnology will enable for 2030? Identified new fields that could contribute to capability development. Identified the enabling infrastructure(s) upon which the capabilities will depend. Identified the limits to countermeasure use against different adversary types.
The Challenges of Malfeasant Co-option of Nanotechnology focus groups considered potential threats that might be associated with the four quadrants:
r r r r r r
How might nanotechnology be used against US forces and our allies? What is the worst, technically-reasonable scenario? Will the principal threats be catastrophic or limited use, i.e., what are the consequences? How might they be delivered? On what enabling infrastructure will they depend? What will be the limits to acquisition by the different adversary types? What factors could drive proliferation forward or hinder it?
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After presenting the scenarios to the overall workshop, the focus groups shifted emphasis to identifying and developing strategic research directions with strong science and national security justification to achieve those 2030 capabilities for countermeasures and strategies toward limiting the threat of malfeasant actors realizing any part of the 2030 proliferation scenarios. General considerations included the identification of supporting research directions needed and bottlenecks to overcome to achieve success, delineation of factors—technical and non-technical—that would slow or speed development of countermeasure capabilities or threats, and articulation of key developments (breakthroughs, new platforms, enabling infrastructure, etc.) that have to occur by 2010 and 2020 for the 2030 scenarios to occur. For the challenges of malfeasant co-option of nanotechnology, the participants also identified critical nodes or events to interdict negative consequences or crucial development points that are most disconcerting from a national security perspective, i.e., places where the CBDP can implement effective programs to prevent or limit a threat. Participants also considered the overall national security component supporting the need to develop such capabilities or supporting the need to decrease the risk of a proliferation scenario. As a final component the workshop considered the types of organizations or research entities that the DoD CBDP’s should foster in order to generate the innovative and revolutionary countermeasures for 2030.
Summary The workshop developed scenarios and research strategies to describe what the future might look like, what we might want the future to provide in terms of national security, and how we might shape the present in order to the realize that desired future. There are various scenarios for deployment of nanotechnology for both civilian and defense purposes. While the focus of the NanoCBD2030 workshop was on scientific capabilities for national defense, the workshop aimed to consider scientific, military, regulatory, ethical, and moral considerations that different scenarios might present. Depending upon the rapidity of progress, the potential exploitation of nanotechnology by non-state actors and “rogue nations” for waging asymmetric warfare should have a role in influencing both current thinking and recommended nanotechnology future research and policy directions. Furthermore, technological advances alone might not be sufficient to transform the present laboratory-based nanotechnology science to field use. This is particularly the case when dealing with biological nanomaterials, with their nature-endowed complexities and behavior unpredictability. Thus, a nanotechnology revolution might be slow or fast in realization as emphasized in the “scenario development.” The key goals of the workshop, which were achieved, was the facilitation of vibrant discussions among leading scientific, military, intelligence, medical, engineering, and policy experts for developing a framework envisioned for the future of nanotechnology’s impact upon national security.
Chapter 14
Nanotechnologies for Tomorrow’s Society: A Case for Reflective Action Research in Flanders, Belgium Lieve Goorden, Michiel van Oudheusden, Johan Evers, and Marian Deblonde
Despite the continuing and widespread appeal of predictions (Peterson, ch. 3; B¨unger, ch. 5; Miller, ch. 19), some have contested their use in anticipating emerging technologies (Williams, ch. 22). Some policy and decision makers appear to be gradually relinquishing the hope of foretelling one probable—or even several plausible future paths of nanotechnology. As a case in point, Goorden and her colleagues describe how science policymakers in Flanders, Belgium, are turning from predicting, to the idea of “creating and shaping,” the future. The authors are part of the NanoSoc research project, funded by the Flemish Institute for the Promotion of Science and Technology. They submit that nanotechnology promoters face three central challenges that correspond to applications, scientific knowledge, and social reception (Sutcliffe, ch. 16). Drawing on Constructive Technology Assessment (Rip and te Kulve, ch. 4) and other forms of technology assessment (Fiedeler, ch. 21), the project elicits perspectives from multiple actors—including technologists, natural and social scientists, stakeholders, and citizens—in order that their several “incomplete” views can collectively and sequentially influence nanotechnology developments. – Eds.
L. Goorden University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium Originally presented at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University on 27 October 2006.
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Introduction Policy makers involved in innovation policy and scientists working on newly emerging technologies such as nanotechnologies, are confronted with three considerable challenges: a lack of distinct indicating directions of possible applications (strategic uncertainty), a lack of scientific knowledge (complexity), and the ambiguous reception of new developments in society. In this climate of uncertainty and ambiguity it is by no means clear for the actors involved how to innovate purposefully and constructively. From this post-modern perspective of swift evolutions and massive uncertainties in research and development, promoters of science and technology have had to give up the idea that predicting one or the probable future is possible because only one path inevitably leads to that future. Even the idea that several plausible paths are to be explored out of which we can somehow choose the most desirable, must be abandoned, given the assumption that we have to conceive the future as indeterminate (Dupuy 2004). Written from the perspective of a researcher in 2015 examining the current state of nanotechnology, the scenarios point out what the key concerns are and the pathway that led to that point. In that perspective, it is not any longer a matter of predicting or choosing a future, but rather of collectively building and shaping one. In response to this new reality and the challenges that arise from its dynamic, the Flemish interdisciplinary research project “Nanotechnologies for Tomorrow’s Society” (NanoSoc) engages innovation networks where each actor contributes his/her (incomplete) views and perspectives and confronts them with those of others. The project brings together nanotechnologists, natural and social scientists, stakeholders, and citizens in the region of Flanders, Belgium, to discuss and steer future nanotech developments in three particular fields of nanotechnology development: smart environment, bio on chip, and new materials. This article first discusses the main challenges in innovating successfully with nanotechnologies and then elaborates on how NanoSoc seeks to effectively address these issues through interdisciplinary reflective action research.
Nanotechnologies’ Main Challenges Both policy makers and scientists, when grouped together under the term “promoters” of research developments and innovation on the nanometer scale, are confronted with three broad categories of uncertainties: the lack of distinct indicating directions of possible applications (strategic uncertainty), the lack of scientific knowledge or the fact that the phenomena at the nanolevel are not yet fully known (complexity), and the ambiguous reception of new developments in society (ambivalence).
Strategic Uncertainty The nanoscale seems to be a place where the curiosity of scientists and engineers still finds plenty of room for fundamental exploration. As a consequence, innovation
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dynamics in nanotechnologies can be applied for different, if not diverging, directive ambitions. Nanotechnological innovation is thus considered to have a high goal searching nature. This is apparent from the fact that nanotechnology development is difficult to steer top down, as it is not driven by a particular theoretical program, nor is it inspired by specific societal expectations. Generating epistemic success is not searched for in the falsification of existing theories in physics and chemistry. The focus, rather, lies on the examination of new phenomena and properties at the nanoscale, even if key theories have already emerged to explain these properties (Janich 2006). In addition to this, nanotechnology development is not driven by a shared public expectation or political justification either, nor is it associated with any particular promise (as the Human Genome Project, for instance, was) (Nordmann 2007). Rather, nanoscience and engineering are space-oriented activities, focused on and centered around the nanoscale as such. Thus, nano-research appears to be guided by the implicit, appealing idea that once mankind gains control over molecular architecture, a lot (perhaps the unthinkable) becomes possible. Strategic uncertainty emerges also from the convergence and merging of various scientific disciplines. The scope of nanotechnology path formations is widened considerably by knowledge contributions and inputs from engineers, physicists, biologists, and chemists, all working at the nanoscale (and increasingly collaborating in multidisciplinary settings). These research efforts could have far-reaching consequences. Until yesterday we could arrange our common world with a limited amount of combinations of people, other living creatures, and nonliving devices. The future world, however, will be built with lots of new and complex combinations (Latour 2004). At the nanoscale, atoms, electronic bits, and genes or DNA will become interchangeable and thus obscure the boundaries between living creatures (micro-organisms, plants, animals, and people) and nonliving material and devices. The distinction between “knowing” (traditionally a result of science) and “creating” (an activity based on technology) is becoming ever more blurred as well, as the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) clearly illustrates. The STM, which is widely held to be a pioneering instrument in the development of nanotechnology, not only visualizes atoms, but manipulates them. Thus, the development of knowledge is directly accompanied with interventions in nature (comparable with the recombinant DNA technique which not only visualizes DNA sequences but also manipulates them). There does not seem to be a simple hierarchy between basic and applied science, but rather a gradual process of the mutual shaping between our understanding of nature and our ability to transform it. In this respect, societal ambitions, traditionally characterizing the activities of engineers, will now reach into the basic sciences themselves. These ambitions will frame the discovery of interesting characteristics at the nanoscale and will shape the selective disentanglement of the secrets of the nanoworld. For the reasons outlined above, the goal searching character of emergent sciences creates a huge challenge for the allocation of research and development investments, especially if we take into account that in today’s world an important share of nanoresearch is publicly funded.1 Research management has to dedicate substantial resources to research initiatives that can not yet be expressed in specific work programs or in clearly outlined objectives.
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Complexity Complexity has to do with what we know and what we do not know, or the fact that the phenomena at the nanolevel are not yet fully known in terms of the objectivity, validity, and reliability of our knowledge. Although at the nanoscale different scientific disciplines, involving researchers and technologists from different backgrounds, with their own unique experiences and expectations, work together to understand and manipulate the atomic nature of matter, the search for sound knowledge about causes and effects becomes increasingly complicated. In fact, complexity is expected to grow with every generation of new nanotechnology products, as four overlapping generations of nanoproducts have been identified for the period 2000–2020 (Roco and Bainbridge 2003). Each generation is characterized by a different state of knowledge about its particular risk liability (Renn and Roco 2006). The first generation of products is passive nanostructures with steady structures and functions during their use (for example nanoparticles in coatings, cosmetics, and food). Here, lack of knowledge refers to the difficulty of identifying and quantifying causal links between a multitude of potential causal agents and specific observed effects in a system. Because of these stable structures and functions during use, existent risk assessment methodologies may represent a proper approach to address these issues, since analysts might be able to reduce uncertainties by trying to assign a probability and an expected harm to a risky event. This requires a dialogue among experts which is focused first and foremost on bringing additional expert knowledge and a variety of expertise to the table. The second generation of products (e.g., drug delivery particles) is active nanostructures or nanosystems which change their morphology and/or chemical composition in the active phase. Often the answer to how any such system will evolve in terms of its stability and adaptation to external influences is unknown. Scientific knowledge is incomplete because of its selectivity and contingency on uncertain assumptions, assertions, and predictions (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993). The development of scenarios is a useful approach in trying to tackle this type of complexity, since it allows for a combination of known facts about the evolution of the system with plausible alternative adaptive trends. Ideally, discourse will center on balancing the possibilities for over- and under-protection to anticipated benefits. The third generation of products is integrated nanosystems or systems of nanosystems (for example, brain implants or implants in the nervous system); the fourth is molecular nanosystems or systems approaching the manner in which biological systems work (for example, cell-aging therapies, molecular components for transistors). In cases such as these, due to incompatible disciplinary and paradigmatic perspectives, actors are confronted with a variability of reasonable interpretations based on identical observations or assessments (Deblonde et al. 2005). As a consequence, many disputes are not about measurements as such, but evolve around much more fundamental questions, such as which core societal values are or will be apt to change given certain technological developments. To address such issues effectively,
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a concern assessment or the assessment of public concerns, is in place. This entails a participative discourse or platform where competing arguments, beliefs, and values are discussed openly (Renn and Roco 2006).
Ambivalence In relation to concern assessment, a third main challenge pops up for promoters of nanotechnologies: it is very difficult to predict future public perceptions and attitudes towards nanotechnology developments. In the first place, people will judge these developments and put a meaning on these changes in very different ways. Some people will not be surprised if implants in the brain became a matter of practice, because they see this as a logical further step in the progression of medical prosthesis and implants. Others will morally condemn these attempts, arguing that these developments are blurring the boundary between humans and machines. In general, people seem to appeal to their current moral assumptions when judging possible future applications. Respondents in a Eurobarometer survey conducted in 2005, for instance, were asked if they would approve of the use of a memory enhancing brain implant and of an implant to give hearing back (EC 2005). While a majority among them would never approve of the first application, most would readily accept the second.2 It appears that emotional and cultural responses to nanotechnology more adequately explain differences in individuals’ opinions than any other socio-economic factors, such as education, social class, and age. Furthermore, when exposed to additional scientific information on certain applications, individuals tend to assimilate this information in a manner that resonates with their deepest emotional and cultural predispositions (Kahan et al. 2007). It is not only expected, but very likely that wholly new ethical principles will govern societies dealing with radical technological change. We may not become actors on the stage of the future and can not look through the eyes of future generations, whose values or sense of identity may be quite different from ours. If meanwhile the future represents what we expect of it today, current research agendas will reflect these expectations (Grunwald 2006). Instead of trying to foresee these changes, a more appropriate way of dealing with the challenge of ambivalence would be to discuss the vulnerability of current values in light of plausible nanoscientific developments and to question aspects of our human condition, which we currently take for granted (Whitesides 2003).
Dilemmas in Dealing with Changes As the examples above illustrate, scientists and policy makers have to deal with various difficulties and are continuously faced with dilemmas in a context of swift evolutions and massive uncertainties in research at the nanoscale. The first challenge,
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a growing strategic uncertainty (and the goal searching character of technological innovation at the nanoscale), means more difficult choices in terms of securing effective science and technology management. Obviously, a society has the legitimate ambition (some would even say is under a moral obligation) to try to gain control over its destiny. As a consequence policies need to be proactive and look ahead, by trying to explore the remote future and anticipate coming technological developments and their introduction to future high-tech markets. However, most societies also experience technological progress as a source of continuing and recurrent destabilisation (Crow and Sarewitz 2000). Since the coherence of any community is dependent on a sense of predictability, the present situation is in need of continuous policy attention. In a context of swift changes, policies must focus on learning to cope with unexpected turns today, in a flexible manner. This dilemma lies at the origin of the institutional gap which has grown between strategic decision making in innovation policy on the one hand, and decision making on the acceptability of risks in regulation policy on the other. Barriers have emerged in terms of our capacity to interfere with humans and nature while producing future uncertainties and risks and our capacity to reduce and learn to cope today with these uncertainties and risks. The public controversy over the risks of genetically modified crops and foods is illustrative of this, as a general feeling of discomfort about not yet having developed adequate mechanisms and institutions to bridge this gap, pervaded society. Traditional responses to uncertainty, such as risk assessment/management, have left unchallenged the underlying assumption of the general desirability of accelerating research and innovation rates in this field. Scientists and engineers are working constantly to expand the boundaries of science and technology. In a context of complexity, of unsure and incomplete knowledge, they face a dilemma as well. As globalization spurs ever more competition for rapid scientific and technological advancement, they are hard pressed to deliver results, whilst simultaneously being called upon to be more precautious and reflexive about their work and its potential effects on society. This raises a dilemma, which is well reflected in the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of the United States of America (Fisher and Mahajan 2006). On the one hand this program lays out incentives for the rapid development of nanoscience and technology in the United States in order to ensure a leading role for America in the world. On the other it calls for careful—and thus time consuming—reflection on how nanotechnological developments are likely to affect society. The reconciliation of both policy approaches is rather tricky. In times of rapid change and ambivalent attitudes, public governance faces a difficult choice: either incite a public discussion based on provocative images of the future, and thus encourage a diversity of normative reflections in order to spur creativity and inventiveness in research, or, seek instead to redefine a communal identity and ask how new technologies are to be embedded in a common identity and culture. The first approach is likely to provoke a clash of opinions in society and will help to make points of agreement and disagreement explicit, while the other approach will focus on the quest and societal need for consensus.
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One can read two reports on emerging convergent technologies3 as different answers to the dilemma mentioned above. The European report is indicative of the first philosophy as it assumes that innovation and creativity in European regions will benefit from a deliberative search for consensus about values and priorities. The report states that converging technologies should enable and strengthen one another in the pursuit of a predefined “quality of life” vision. The chance of this approach arises from an explicit agenda-setting process in plain terms and objectives (e.g., “active aging”). The American report represents the second more provocative approach with much tolerance for the kind of innovative progress that may result from confronting diversity and disorder and learning systematically to accommodate to it. The presentation of what could be considered to be almost science fiction imaginaries launched a cultural debate and even controversy in and between the US and Europe, usually meandering between utopian and catastrophic arguments and at best stressing the co-evolution of technology and society (STOA 2006; Garreau 2005).4 In the next section we turn to such a local European context, to assess how innovation policies with new technologies, such as nanotechnologies, are conducted and developed to meet scientists’ and society’s needs in the region of Flanders, Belgium.
Governing these Uncertainties in a Flemish Context5 In Flanders6 policymakers have often developed contradictory policy strategies to cope with the uncertainties and dilemmas described above. From the eighties on, governmental innovation policy was framed within a top down approach characterized by attempts to centralize control on innovation. The focus of this policy was on selectively fostering critical directions in science and technology, and then on improving the flow of knowledge in the innovation chain (Goorden 2004). In this “science-driven” and “technology-push” approach, Flemish innovation policy selectively rewarded those academic research groups who placed their research activities explicitly in the domains government was pushing for. With the aim of “picking winners,” Flemish Government encouraged world-class research in generic fields of technology such as micro-electronics and biotechnology. This led to the establishment of the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Micro-electronics, IMEC, and later to the establishment of the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology, VIB. As a result, universities and public research institutions with an interuniversity structure became influential players in technology innovation. The institutional context in which they operated emphasized the central role of research actors in the innovation system with the focus on a science-driven philosophy. In the same period, the first Technology Assessment (TA) initiatives were launched as academic research programs. These programs were charged with examining the social impacts of new technologies such as biotechnology and micro-electronics. The need for TA research was framed within the dominant science-driven and
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technology-push approach. From this perspective it is considered necessary to predict and anticipate the social impacts of science and technology, in order to adequately steer and orient governmental research and technology programs. One could say that TA was assigned the task of giving public governance a helping hand in “picking winners.” As such the initiatives represented an “instrumental” type of TA in which the social scientific and policy analytic approaches of experts dominate (Guston and Sarewitz 2002). From the nineties on, there was a growing responsiveness to the idea that Flemish innovation policy needed a shift in focus, departing from a technology-push approach to striving for a policy which stresses the importance of technology diffusion. This was reflected in the support of a bottom up growth of innovation clusters as collaborations between all innovation actors (companies, universities, technological institutions, public administrations), with attention for spontaneous feedback loops between innovation phases. Following this thread of thought, the Flemish Government sought to stimulate endogenous growth in Flanders by anchoring technological innovation in geographic regions and in existing activities. Policy makers called for a kind of “bottom up” TA as well, which was described as an approach “that may not slow down or have a negative influence on creativity and the innovation process.”7 To this end TA activities had to be organized in close interaction with research and development practices in governmental technological programs8 and in public research and technological institutes.9 The expectation was that if TA was practised in direct consultation with science and technology producers, research would lead to socially useful applications. Today, both the top down and bottom up policy approaches towards technology innovations are running into their limits. Selective governmental support for priority technologies and activities seems to be a gamble. There is no reason whatsoever to assume that government officials are better at recognizing growth opportunities in the market than entrepreneurs (Hosper 2002). On the other hand, in a bottom up approach, the lack of vision of orienting investments in research and development (R&D) leads to ad hoc solutions and a laissez faire policy leaving the choice of technology directions to be fully determined by market forces This ambivalence is also present in the Flemish TA approaches. In general, top down academic experiences involving early warning mechanisms for negative impacts of new technologies have had little or no impact on reorienting research programs or redesigning technology trajectories. Apart from the sheer impossibility of predicting in advance (and thereby hopefully evading) the unwanted effects of new technologies, an explanation for this limited impact is found in the imposed institutional divide between academic TA research and current technological developments. Successive bottom up experiences with relegating TA to R&D projects and technological programs at least invited scientists and technologists to think critically about their research practices. However, if the institutional context for R&D does not systematically offer scientists opportunities for exposure to societal concerns and civil society incentives for reflection on technological developments as well, the palette of contributed perspectives shrinks to those areas that are considered most relevant to scientists and engineers (notably safety and health risks, and market opportunities).
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In order to create a more discursive type of TA in which the lay public participates through a genuine deliberative process, TA as a practice became lodged in an institution advising the Flemish Parliament, named the Flemish Institute for Science and Technology Assessment (viWTA) in 2000.10 This falls well into the European tradition (since the 1980s) to establish strong links between Technology Assessment activities and national or regional Parliaments (eg., The European Parliamentary Technology Assessment Network, EPTA). The establishment of viWTA fits in with the current mission expressed by the Flemish Parliament to become a “Glass House” on behalf of civil society. The representatives of the Flemish Parliament expect viWTA to contribute to a transparent public debate on complex issues about society and technology. The key focus of viWTA lies in attempting to widen and open up processes of engagement which tend to be restricted to endlessly debating possible risks, while deeper questions about the values, visions, and vested interests regarding new technologies remain unanswered. While in this way public engagement moves towards a richer public discussion aiming to influence innovation policies initiated by the Flemish Government, the sufficiency of this approach is still questionable. Apart from the difficulty of measuring those impacts, TA is still not fully ingrained in the innovation process; rather, it is done in a different location and time, isolated from the research and development enterprise itself. In this respect, developing adequate TA frameworks and procedures to deal effectively with the emergence of nanotechnologies is a big challenge for Flemish innovation policy. In a survey by viWTA (Goorden 2004), a group of R&D directors from companies, universities, and public administrations voiced some expectations and concerns. They stated that public governance should play the role of mentor by creating and governing new ways of collaboration and collective learning amongst all the relevant social actors involved in technological innovation. Secondly, they underlined the need for a collective vision and the formulation of social demands in relation to the policy goal of spending 3 percent of Flanders’ Gross Domestic Product on R&D by 2010.11 Thirdly, these R&D directors argued that for different reasons, broad public support for technological innovation in Flanders is missing. In the past there was little opportunity for fundamental debates on Science and Technology in Flemish Parliament, apart from formal discussions on the Public Budget. Major Flemish public research institutes are rarely called to account in public forums for their expenditures on R&D priorities. And the Flemish Council for Science Policy, which advises the Flemish Government on Science and Technology Policy, consists of experts whose opinions and views do not reflect the variety of perspectives present in Flemish society. The conclusion, therefore, was that science and technology should have a more prominent place on the public and political agenda. Given these assertions, the research project Nanotechnologies for Tomorrow’s Society (NanoSoc) comes at a timely moment, within what appears to be an encouraging institutional constellation. It is funded by the Flemish Institute for the Promotion of Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT) in a strategic program which supports interdisciplinary research among natural and social scientists, and with the explicit aim of involving civil society. Therefore it calls not only on nanoresearchers and social scientists, but on stakeholders and interested citizens as well,
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in an attempt to clarify the opportunities and challenges in the social shaping of nanotechnologies in Flanders through a participatory process of reflective inquiry. In the following sections we link up the different TA frameworks supporting our research endeavor and elaborate its key characteristics.
Linking up the TA Frameworks Seeking to integrate societal concerns into nanotechnology developments through a process of reflective inquiry with stakeholders is novel to Flanders, but the participatory TA approaches to which our project is indebted and on which it draws, are not. Constructive Technology Assessment (CTA), Real Time Technology Assessment (RTTA), and “public engagement” represent three approaches that aim to publicly assess technology innovation processes before they close down or become locked in, i.e., at an early, upstream stage (Macnaghten et al. 2005). Although they differ in their origins and methods, all three are responses to the need for more discursive TA forms, as each one is concerned with ensuring the reflexive co-evolution of science, technology, and society (Rip 2005).12 Thence, they move away from traditional models of TA which are expert-oriented and focus primarily on impacts and effects of new technologies, towards integrating public concerns and desires during, rather than after, the process of technology development. CTA, which was developed in the eighties in the Netherlands for use by the Dutch government, challenged the two-track approach (the institutional separation between activities of promotion of technological development and activities of controlling the effects of this development) by proposing to include TA already in the design and development phase of new technologies, specifically by broadening the aspects and the actors that were to be taken into account. This proposal to let TA be part of the construction of technology was called Constructive Technology Assessment (Smits and Leyten 1991; Jelsma and Rip 1995; Rip et al. 1995; Schot and Rip 1997). CTA attempts to do so by letting “societal aspects [of innovation] become additional design criteria” (Schot and Rip 1997). These criteria are established through the combination of specific analytical techniques, which include mapping and analyzing the ongoing dynamics of technological development, as well as the actors and networks involved; examining how technology is embedded in society and assessing emerging patterns; articulating with stakeholders socio-technical scenarios relating to future developments and possible impacts; and stimulating reflection through dialogue between innovators and users (Rip 2005). What these techniques illustrate is the strong emphasis CTA places on analyzing the ongoing interactions between technology and society, in order to improve their co-evolution. Significantly, this is done within a participatory framework of early engagement, by including users—the so-called demand side—in the process of technology construction. RTTA continues along the same path, although its originators describe their model as making use of more reflexive measures, such as focus groups and scenario
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development to elicit values and explore alternative potential outcomes, and analyze them as they evolve over time as well. The model further seeks to integrate sociotechnical mapping and dialogue with retrospective and prospective analysis, in an attempt “to situate innovation of concern in a historical context that will render it more amenable to understanding, and, if necessary, to modification.” The overall purpose of RTTA is “to build into the R&D enterprise itself a reflexive capacity that encourages more effective communication among potential stakeholders, elicits more knowledge of evolving stakeholder capabilities, preferences and values, and allows modulation of innovation paths and outcomes in response to ongoing analysis and discourse” (Guston and Sarewitz 2002). The idea of building more reflective capacity into the practice of science fits well with the British “public engagement” school of thought on science, technology, and society. Proponents of this approach note that processes of engagement tend to be restricted to endlessly debating possible risks, while deeper questions about the values, visions, and vested interests that motivate the scientific endeavor often remain unasked or unanswered (Rodemeyer et al. 2005). Attempting to widen and open up such debates, public engagement “[moves] away from models of prediction and control towards a richer public discussion about the visions, ends and purposes of science. . . .The aim is to broaden the kinds of social influence that shape science and technology, and hold them accountable.” The most effective way of realizing this aim, is to “reach a situation where scientific ‘excellence’ is automatically taken to include reflection and wider engagement on social and ethical dimensions” (Wilsdon et al. 2005). All three approaches relate to other science and technology frameworks as well, such as ELSA (Ethical, Legal, and Social Aspects), and build on existing and newly emerging notions in the field, such as responsible innovation and the idea of governance of science and technology, and of co-operative research (Stirling 2006). They can be further broadened and deepened by drawing on various disciplines (natural and social sciences, as well as the humanities), on techniques of mediation and facilitation, and by thoroughly analyzing innovation dynamics and the embedding of technology in society. The latter is particularly noteworthy for this paper, as it entails assessing with innovation actors larger patterns (technological, historical, political, economic, cultural, and other contexts) that enable or constrain them, to make actions more reflective (Rip 2005). From these complementary perspectives we create an overarching framework for early technology assessment, appropriate to both the policy context for TA in Flanders (as outlined in the previous section), and to the highly speculative domain of nanotechnology, given the uncertainties on the strategic and scientific level and the expected disagreements about nanotechnologies’ societal implications which might accompany their rapid emergence (as outlined in the first section). From CTA we retain its focus on critically analyzing the co-evolution of technology and society, whilst from RTTA we retain its emphasis on critically reflecting with actors on what motivates their actions and exploring action alternatives considerate of societal concerns. In what follows we expound further on what constitutes this reflective action approach of ours and account for the according research methodology.
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The Choice for Reflective Action NanoSoc as an Experimental Model in Dealing with Uncertainties and Dilemmas As described at the outset of this paper, innovation with new and emerging technologies involves a wide diversity of actors who interact in a context of much uncertainty and unpredictability. Innovation should thus be understood as a search process where advancement comes about through variation and selection, rather than by deliberate planning. Within such a potentially disruptive setting, dialogue between actors can guide innovation along a new, more balanced course (Larosse 2004). From this perspective we consider the NanoSoc project as an experimental search process (or an experimental social learning process) in dealing with the aforementioned uncertainties and dilemmas.
An experiment in Dealing with Strategic Uncertainty Given that nanoresearch is a goal searching enterprise with no clear options at hand, the question is how to fine-tune the pursuit of gaining power and control over the future, with attempts to cope day-to-day with unexpected turns. A manner to deal with this dilemma lies in trying to build bridges between the certainties of today and the uncertainties of tomorrow (L¨osch 2006). This explains why we propose to create an effective discursive setting where arguments about “now” cross-fertilize those about “later.” On the one hand, citizens’ exposure to current experiences and expectations with new technologies will make future images of nanoscientists more consistent, conceivable, and robust. From this perspective, public scrutiny is expected to contribute to the successful implementation of research and development agendas. On the other hand, when scientists are asked to make explicit their tacit representations of the future, civil society will discover possible alternatives. This, in turn, will assist public governance in making well founded choices today (for instance, in the field of authorization policies). Linking a dialogue about “now” with one about “later,” and utilizing their mutual and complementary strengths, requires a specific process approach: we choose to alternate between Technology Assessment (critically analyzing and reflecting on the co-evolution of technology and society) and Foresight (the exploration of unknown and promising possibilities).
An Experiment in Dealing with Complexity In the light of complexity, the central question is how to deal with the contradictory push for fast action (although this is a jump in the dark) and precautious reflection (even though this might imply losing one’s competitive lead).
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An exchange of a variety of types of knowledge and perspectives can point to a way out of this dilemma. Complexity can be contained with the help of a diversity of expertise providers. In a mixed-up model where innovation is regarded as a collective search process, the key challenge lies in designing innovation systems that are capable of social learning. In this sense, a successful dialogue will guide innovation when it threatens to go out of balance. The logic behind our process design (the sequence of successive interactive stages with participants which we initiate)13 rests on a double principle. Firstly, technology innovation is considered to be a co-responsible enterprise of both the promoters of science and technologies, and the so-called technology demanders. However, as the primary aim of the project is to stimulate the reflexivity of scientists themselves, the first stage of the process focuses on nanoexperts. They are drivers of new debates that cannot be resolved within the limits of a specialised discourse (Von Schomberg 2002). In the middle stages of the process, nanoexperts will be exposed to expectations and concerns expressed by civil society. The process circle will be closed temporarily, on turning back to the nanoexperts who will be asked to respond to issues raised in public debate.
An Experiment in Dealing with Ambivalence Given the transformational power of nanotechnologies, nanoresearch will face increasingly the challenge of being stuck in the continuing struggle between change or movement, and preservation. The choice to jump into provocative research and development activities will clash with the lack of moral criteria to judge a particular mission or project. On the other hand, if one chooses to stick to prevailing values and traditions, the risk of confining innovative endeavors is real (Sloterdijk 2006). A way out of this dilemma lies in discussing and debating plausible sociotechnical developments, and assessing the vulnerability of current values and assumptions in light of scenarios that emerge. Both dialogues should inspire but not restrict one another, as a provocation with innovative images of a technological future will incite the public to reflect on values they adhere to and values they are ready to exchange for new ones. In turn, urging people to think about what values and norms are essential for society to preserve and how to define “identity” will stimulate scientists in finding innovative technological paths and discovering non-stereotypical areas of application. Such a dialogue, which has to do both with plurality as well as identity, calls for specific process criteria (Latour 2004). In the light of a discussion about plurality, the process has to be inclusive and participants should adopt an attitude of perplexity, which means they should develop sensitivity towards a diversity of issues cropping up. In the light of a discussion of identity and desirability, the process should result in a ranking of values, whereby newly defined values should be compatible with prevailing ones. Also crucial in moving on with innovation is that at a given moment in time the debates reach temporary closure.
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The Process of Reflective Action To initiate prospective reflection and future-oriented debate, we pose the participants involved in the comprehensive interactive process two overarching questions for each of three case studies14 : (1) Which nanotechnology trajectories (developments) are likely or possible?, followed by (2) Which trajectories are worthwhile or desirable for a future society?. Thus participants look first for a variety and diversity of future nanotechnology trajectories and accordant new societal issues they deem imaginable and therefore require further consideration, and then discuss which trajectories are worth elaborating and refining. The first question is addressed in an exploration stage and a visioning stage; the second in a normative stage and a design stage, as outlined below.
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Exploration stage (March 2007)15 : Interactive construction by experts of narratives about fictional worlds with nanotechnologies in the future. Gradually, by running through the exercise, these fictional worlds will be turned into more coherent and tangible “futuristic visions” or “technosocial imaginaries,” suitable for providing a structured debate. Rather than looking at the constructed narratives as prospective tools, we conceive them as means of communication and as common platforms of understanding among differing participating actors. The narratives resulting out of this interactive exercise are co-shaped by different kinds of experts (nanoscientists and technology assessment experts in collaboration with interested citizens, brought together in a panel of approximately eighteen participants per case), being in that way hybrids between various orders of knowledge. Starting the process with experts fits in with the logic behind our process design (the sequence of successive interactive stages) aiming at stimulating reflexivity among scientists and promoters of nanoscience and technologies. They should be drivers of new debates that cannot be resolved within the limits of a specialised discourse. In order to foster this attitude of introspection, experts will be exposed at several moments during the process to expectations and concerns expressed by civil society. Visioning stage (September 2007)16 : Assessment by a citizens’ (or “lay”) panel (about eighteen participants for each case) of the vulnerability of current values and assumptions in the light of the constructed images of the future (outcome of the exploration stage). Principal criterion for selection of this panel is sociological diversity found in the Flemish population. Normative stage (planned in fall 2008): Construction by nanotech stakeholders (brought together in panels of about twenty participants for each case) of a shared image of a sustainable future for the societal application areas to which the technological trajectories under consideration are related. Design stage (planned in spring 2009): A prospective exercise of envisaging possible technological trajectories and their social embedding, which innovation actors find realistic and interesting, and stakeholders and citizens value positively in the light of shared visions. This process will be set up as a pilot project in a
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roadmapping exercise in cooperation with nanoscientists working at the research institutes of IMEC and EMAT. As each stage intends to bring together different kinds of actors (to maximize mutual learning), we draw on qualitative social scientific research methods designed specifically to facilitate and structure communication processes between participants from diverse backgrounds. In the exploration stage we use a three-round Delphi study which engages both natural and social scientists or TA experts, as well as a panel of citizens that is considered more or less knowledgeable about nanotechnology (through study or experience). The Delphi-exercise aims at exploring possible futures based on a variety of nanotechnological trajectories. This exploration exercise is not meant to learn to know the future. The future is not something that already exists and therefore is susceptible for social-scientific discovery. The intention to predict the future contradicts the assumption that the future is continuously shaped and reshaped by initiatives and interactions of a multitude of human and non-human agents. Our exploration exercise is meant to “visit” and “construct” possible futures. From these “visits” we want to learn which elements—expectations, hopes and fears, co-operation networks, interests, infrastructures, institutions—in our actual situation prepare for the various possible futures. This information should enable promoters of nanotechnology to link possible futures with the actual situation. The constructed “futuristic visions” are meant to be platforms for communication and debate about the present, about possible futures, and about the links between the two. These technosocial imaginaries should comply with the following criteria. First, they should be as diverse as is imaginable. Second, they should address continuity with the actual situation. Third, they should be consistent and coherent. And, fourth, they should shed light on both the societal and (nano) technological dimensions of future worlds. The Delphi-method refers to a structured interaction between various participants. To enhance creative thinking in the first two rounds, participants respond anonymously to written questionnaires. Their answers are then passed on to each other via e-mail. In the first round the participants write two or three short stories as their personal visions of futures with nanotechnology. Out of these stories, the research team derives a list of statements with regard to possible situations in the future. In the second round the participants are asked to indicate to what extent they agree with the statements. From these comments the research team distills a list of driving forces and concerns. Finally, in a subsequent, third round, participants meet physically in workshops to debate the Delphi results. Within the limits of a framework of chosen driving forces and concerns, the participants develop (with the help of a science journalist) stories (or imaginaries) about futures with nanotechnology. In the visioning stage the outcomes generated from the Delphi rounds (the images or representations of the future) are presented for critical examination to three citizens’ (or “lay”) panels (a panel for each case) in an interactive exercise of value mapping. The constructed narratives will equip citizens to engage in a conversation
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and reflection over issues such as: what do we take to be our most cherished values and beliefs and how these values might become assailable in the perspective of plausible futuristic visions; in what sense traditional values might be given a new interpretation, what values might hold a prominent place in such a future, and what values will retreat in the background. In this sense, communication of visions and reflection on visions can be relevant by the very reason of their normative character. While the expert participants of the first stage can be seen as “insiders” because they often (unconsciously) identify themselves with specific futures, citizens can be called “outsiders” since their manner of looking at the future is more tending to compare alternatives. As laymen, they usually assess technologies more from a “gut feeling,” based on unique experiences with technology, rather than scientific expertise (Hanssen and Van Est, 2004). Futuristic visions or technoscientific imaginaries are narrative constructions and therefore are capable of arranging people and values into a moral order: we make sense of a new reality by putting it into stories (Toumey 2004). The script of the citizens’ panel invites them to take a time machine to the future where they will discuss how it feels to walk around in that future and to explore what it means to accept or to criticize the basic principles of that futuristic sociotechnical order. Projecting oneself into the future and looking back at our present and evaluating it from there will incite people to see the present through different glasses, helping them to map values and to discern their susceptibility to change. With the help of a checklist for detecting clusters of argumentation, disentangling argumentative patterns and identifying tropes, the analysis will result in the development of an ethical matrix appropriate for assessing argumentations and moral reasoning of citizens. In the normative stage,17 the future images of experts and the results of the value mapping exercise with citizens are then passed to stakeholder representatives from various organized interest groups in Flemish society to assess potentially significant shifts in values, norms, and belief systems that take place as society and technology co-evolve. The purpose of this exercise is to recognize core values and ideals to which society as a whole is committed (and thus in all probability seeks to preserve), and which ones are apt to modification or adaptation as new technologies impact on society by changing expectations and realities. To structure this debate, stakeholders apply an interactive value tree analysis to come up with a shared image of the future. This method consists of asking participants to arrange value concerns along the branches of a tree structure, where higher level criteria correspond to generic, overall objectives, and the criteria at the lower levels to attributes that are relevant for the attainment of the larger objectives. In the design stage, the results of the previous stages are then communicated back to the innovation actors (from the first stage), who are asked to envisage possible technological trajectories and their social embedment and appraise these in terms of their usefulness in the light of former value discussions. They will also reflect on possible strategies that can contribute to realizing the projected future. Current roadmapping practices at IMEC and EMAT will be the starting point for launching a pilot project aiming at exploring adequate methodological approaches
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to open up these exercises for a broad range of perspectives, as investigated in the previous stages of NanoSoc. Taken together, the group interactions outlined above make up the reflective action component of our research project, as they provide participants, and innovation actors in particular, with strong incentives to reflect systematically on the embedding of technology in society and its many implications. As with Real Time TA, the focus is on rendering these actors aware of alternative potential outcomes, by exploring promising areas of technology innovations and by reflecting with them on values and basic attitudes that determine technology developments. Most importantly, the reflection exercises are an ongoing process, initiated with nanotechnologies still in their relatively early stages of design.
Conclusion Successful innovations with new and emerging technologies like nanotechnologies depend on how well scientists and societies deal with the strategic uncertainties (the goal searching character of nanotechnologies), the complexities (the difficult search for sound knowledge), and expected ambivalent reactions (the difficulty of predicting future public perceptions) at hand. Raising awareness and sensitivity among innovation actors towards user concerns and broader societal implications of technologies can contribute to shaping the direction of research and developments in a manner that meets the needs of those affected. It is our hope that the early dialogue processes which we initiate between nanotechnologists, stakeholders, and citizens in the Flemish region stimulate scientists and researchers in particular to explore alternative outcomes and critically question the values and assumptions that are built into research and innovation. As the reflective action approach presented in this paper integrates both Vision Assessment and Constructive or Real Time Technology Assessment methods, to create an overarching framework for early nanotechnology assessment, it can also be of use to TA practitioners, and instructive to researchers working in the ever developing field of science and technology studies as well.
Notes 1. In Europe one third of the total funds for nanotechnological research comes from private sources. In the United States private sources amount to ca. 54 percent; in Japan they account for almost two thirds. For the emerging Asian countries the public share is around 36 percent (Hullmann 2006). 2. This poll was conducted between January and February of 2005 by the Directorate General Research of the European Commission. The results were first published in Eurobarometer 225 under the title “Social values, Science and Technology”. For more information, see http://ec.europa.eu/public opinion/archives/ebs/-ebs 225 report en.pdf (EC, Special Eurobarometer 2005: 81). 3. The United States Government’s Report on “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance” (Roco and Bainbridge 2002) and the European Commission’s Report “Converging Technologies—Shaping the Future of European Societies” (Nordmann 2002).
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4. To what extent these differences in approach on the policy level have an impact on the level of research agendas of private and public R&D institutions remains an open question. 5. This section is adapted from (Van Oudheusden et al. 2006). 6. Flanders is the Dutch-speaking and highly industrialized northern region of Belgium, a country squeezed between France, Luxembourg, Germany, and The Netherlands. Because Belgium is a federal state and as such does not have a national innovation policy, the innovation system is decentralized. There is no hierarchical level between the federal and regional institutional levels, but a horizontal division of competences between the regional governments that cooperate on equal footing. 7. “Technology Note” of the Flemish Government, 1994. 8. These have included research and development programs on biotechnology, new materials and energy, and environmental technology. 9. These included the Flemish Institute of Biotechnology (VIB), The Research Center on Nuclear Energy (SCK), The Flemish Institute of Technology Research (VITO), the Flemish Institute for the Promotion of Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT), and the Flanders Technology Foundation (STV). 10. Flemish decree on the establishment of the Flemish Institute for Science and Technology Assessment (viWTA), Brussels, July 5, 2000. 11. The European Council at Barcelona (2002) decided that every European member state should spend 3 percent of its GDP on R&D by 2010. Two-thirds of the investment should come from private funding. In 2003 Flanders committed to this objective by launching its so-called Innovation Pact. 12. Arguably, public engagement is more a school of thought on science, technology, and society, than a TA approach. 13. This process design is elaborated upon under the section entitled, “The Process of Reflective Action”. 14. These case studies are bio-on-chip, smart environment, and nanomaterials. Their selection is based on two distinguishing features: one of a pragmatic, the other of a more substantial nature. The first type of consideration has to do with the context in which the original research proposal came into existence. This context was defined by the aforementioned IWT-Flanders, which launched a call for “strategic basic research” in 2005, and by the partners within the designated research consortium. The participation of the Physics Department of the University of Antwerp, EMAT, and Flanders’ leading research center on micro-electronics and nanotechnologies, IMEC, in our project determined the scope of the cases, as they should relate to research domains in which these research institutions have expertise. The substantial considerations are the time frame in which applications derived from the original technology are expected to reach the market (in the short, medium or long run), and the kinds of societal considerations that this process of market introduction evokes, as it is expected that, due to varying time frames, different societal and ethical concerns will be raised. 15. We are in the process of writing an article where we will discuss the methodology and the analysis of the results of the first stage. A report on each case with more details on the methodology and a descriptive analysis of the results, is available on www.nanosoc.be 16. We are in the process of analyzing the results of the three citizen panels. 17. An elaboration of the methodological approach of both last stages (normative and design stage) is still subject of further research in the NanoSoc team.
References Crow, M., and D. Sarewitz. 2000. Nanotechnology and Societal Transformation, Paper presented at the National Science and Technology Council Workshop on Societal Implications of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, September 28–29, 2000. Deblonde, M., Barriat, V., Warrant F., Goorden, L., and G. Valenduc. 2005. Science and Precaution in Interactive Risk Evaluation: SPIRE, Final Report. Brussels: Belgian Science Policy, p. 112.
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Dupuy, J. 2004. Complexity and Uncertainty: A Prudential Approach to Nanotechnology. A Contribution to the Work in Progress of the ‘Foresighting the New Technology Wave’ High-Level Expert Group, European Commission, Brussels. EC, Special Eurobarometer. 2005. Social Values, Science and Technology. June, 2005. Funtowicz, S., and J. Ravetz. 1993. Science for the Post-normal Age. Futures 25(7): 739–755. Fisher, E., and R.L. Mahajan. 2006. Contradictory Intent? US Federal Legislation on Integrating Societal Concerns into Nanotechnology Research and Development. Science and Public Policy 33(1): 5–16. Garreau, J. 2005. Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies– and What It Means to Be Human. United States: Doubleday. Goorden, L. 2004. Innovation Policy and Technology Assessment in Flanders. Study Commissioned by the Flemish Institute for Science and Technology Assessment, Antwerp, Belgium. Grunwald, A. 2006. Nanotechnologie als Chiffre der Zukunft. In A. Nordmann, J. Schummer, and A. Schwarz, Hrsg, eds., Nanotechnologien im Kontext. Philosophische, ethische und gesellschaftliche Perspektiven. Berlin: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, S. 49–80. Guston, D.H., and D. Sarewitz. 2002. Real Time Technology Assessment. Technology in Society. 24 (1-2): 93–109. Hanssen, L., and R. van Est. 2004. De dubbele boodschap van nanotechnologie. Een onderzoek naar opkomende publiekspercepties, Rathenau Instituut, The Hague. Hosper, G.J. 2002. Clusterbeleid tussen trend en traditie. Tijdschrift voor Wetenschap, Technologie en Samenleving 10(4): 152–156. Hullmann, A. 2006. The Economic Development of Nanotechnology: An Indicators Based Analysis. European Comission, Brussels, November 28th 2006. http://cordis.europa.eu./ nanotechnology. Accessed November 1st, 2007. Janich, P. 2006. Wissenschaftstheorie der Nanotechnologie. In A. Nordmann, J. Schummer, and A.S. Schwarz, eds., Nanotechnologien im Kontext (pp.1–32). Berlin: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft. Jelsma, J., and A. Rip. 1995. Biotechnologie in Bedrijf: Een bijdrage van Constructief Technology Assessment aan biotechnologisch innoveren, Rathenau Instituut. Kahan, D.M., Slovic, P., Braman, D., Gastil, J., and G.L. Cohen. 2007. Affect, Values, and Nanotechnology Risk Perceptions: An Experimental Investigation. GWU Legal Studies Research Paper No. 261. Latour, B. 2004. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. London: Harvard University Press. Larosse, J. 2004. Do Small Countries Have (Dis)advantages? The Rise of MAP’s as Instruments for Strategic Innovation Policy. Brussels: The Case of Flanders, IWT. L¨osch, A. 2006. Anticipating the Future of Nanotechnology: Some thoughts on the Boundaries of Sociotechnological Visions. Department of Sociology, Technical University Darmstadt. Macnaghten, P., Kearnes, M., and B. Wynne. 2005. Nanotechnology, Governance, and Public Deliberation: What Role for the Social Sciences? Science Communication 27(2): 1–24. Nordmann, A. 2002. Converging Technologies: Shaping the Future of European Societies. European Commission, Brussels. http://www.ntnu.no/2020/pdf/final report en.pdf. Accessed November 1st, 2007. Nordmann, A. 2007. Design Choices in the Nanoworld: A Space Odyssey. Paper presented at the UCSIA Conference, “Nano-researchers facing choices,” University of Antwerp, October 3, 2006. Renn, O., and M.C. Roco. 2006. White Paper on Nanotechnology Risk Governance. White paper no. 2, International Risk Governance Council, Geneva. Rip, A. 2005. Technology Assessment as Part of the Co-Evolution of Nanotechnology and Society: The Thrust of the TA Program in NanoNed. Paper contributed to the Conference on “Nanotechnology in Science, Economy and Society,” Marburg. Rip, A., Misa, T., and J. Schot., eds. 1995. Managing Technology in Society. The Approach of Constructive Technology Assessment. London: Pinter Publishers.
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Roco, M.C., and W.S. Bainbridge, eds. 2003. Societal Implications of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology–Improving Benefits to Humanity. NSET and NSF. Arlington, Virginia: Springer. Roco, M.C., and W.S. Bainbridge. 2002. Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance. Arlington, Virginia: National Science Foundation. Rodemeyer, M., Sarewitz, D., and J. Wilsdon. 2005. The Future of Technology Assessment. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center. Schot, J., and A. Rip. 1997. The Past and Future of Constructive Technology Assessment. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 54(2/3): 251–268. Sloterdijk, P. 2006. Het Kristalpaleis, Een filosofie van de globalisering. Amsterdam: Sun. Smits, R., and A. Leyten. 1991. Technology Assessment: waakhond of speurhond (Technology assessment: watchdog or tracker? Towards an integral technology policy.’) Dissertation, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Kerckebosch, Zeist. Stirling, A. 2006. From Science and Society to Science in Society: Towards a Framework for ‘Co-operative Research,’ Brussels. STOA (Scientific Technology Options Assessment). 2006. Technology Assessment on Converging Technologies. Report commissioned by the European Parliament. Toumey, C. 2004. Narratives for Nanotech: Anticipating Public Reactions to Nanotechnology. Techn´e 8(2): 88–116. Van Oudheusden et al., Widening the Circle of Nano-Research:. A Case for Reflective Action Research in Flemish Society. Paper submitted to and presented at the International Conference on Nanotechnology in San Francisco on November 2, 2006. Von Schomberg, R. 2002. The Erosion of Our Value Spheres: The Ways in Which Society Copes with Scientific, Moral and Ethical Uncertainty. In R. von Schomberg and K. Baynes, eds., Discourse and Democracy: On Habermas’ ‘Between Facts and Norms.’ Albany: SUNY Press. Wilsdon, J., Wynne, B., and J. Stilgoe. 2005. The Public Value of Science. Or How to Ensure that Science Really Matters. London: Demos. Whitesides, G.M. 2003. Science and Education for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. In M.C. Roco and W.S. Bainbridge, eds., Societal Implications of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology—Improving Benefits to Humanity. NSET and NSF. Arlington Virginia: Springer.
Chapter 15
Communications in the Age of Nanotechnology Griffith A. Kundahl
There are manifestly a vast number of societal and institutional mechanisms by which nanotechnology futures are presented, critiqued, and mediated. In this chapter, Kundahl points to the structure of organizational communications as one such mechanism. Kundahl is sensitive to the perspective of a public relations firm with clients interested in promoting new technologies such as nanotechnology. He suggests that more sophisticated institutional decision processes are developing in conjunction with the pursuit of nanotechnology (as evidenced by Goorden et al., ch. 14; Walsh and Medley, ch. 18; and Sutcliffe, ch. 16). He argues that in the past, communication strategies may have sought to repress potentially negative information such as possible risks, but that today some firms are advocating a more transparent model (see Currall et al., ch. 7). As a lawyer, Kundahl reasons from precedent. Thus, he presents a series of case studies to support his message that communications goals and strategies are changing due to both perceived qualities and the actual complexity and pace of envisioned nanotechnologies (see B¨unger, ch. 5). – Eds.
G.A. Kundahl Feinstein Kean Healthcare/Ogilvy PR Worldwide, Cambridge, MA, USA Originally presented at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University on 17 November 2006.
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Nanotechnology is prompting change in the way people and organizations communicate. New techniques of communicating emerge from novel challenges—and nanotechnology presents quite a few. This chapter explores nanotechnology’s impact on communication strategies and its impact on how communicators must adjust to anticipate the future.
Communication Challenges Presented by Nanotechnology The foremost communication challenge presented by nanotechnology is the sheer complexity of nanoscience and the technologies it spawns. A basic understanding of a single nanotech application generally requires the comprehension of complex and often counterintuitive scientific concepts occurring at the nanoscale, an environment defined roughly as measuring between 1 and 100 nanometers; a nanometer being one billionth of a meter. The sophisticated systems engineered at this level of smallness are intrinsically difficult to grasp even in the simplest terms possible and are thus hard to convey to audiences that do not have a certain level of scientific training. Nevertheless, the import of effective communications to many such audiences, which might include consumers, policymakers, journalists, business leaders, and other key constituencies, can not be overstated. A separate challenge exists when the focus of the communications turns to anticipating the broader future impacts of one or more of these nanotechnologies. Many future uses are simply unimaginable to us today as were many of the societal impacts of technologies such as the automobile and the computer when they were in their nascent stages. Few, if any, predicted the transforming effect on society of the steam engine, manned flight, the Internet, or any of numerous other revolutionary technologies that have greatly changed our lives. When the focus of communications turns to the potential risks associated with emerging nanotechnologies, yet another unique set of challenges are presented. Nanotechnology related risks are particularly hard to define given the current relative unavailability of quantifiable and useful scientific data regarding long-term effects. A prerequisite to the development of such data is the universal adoption of uniform standards. While progress is being made in this regard, for example the American Society for Testing and Materials’ (ASTM) new standardized nanotechnology nomenclature (ASTM 2006), much work has yet to be done. A trend that presents further challenges is that in the IT age, our society has become accustomed to having access to more robust and quicker information on risks and benefits. As such, we find ourselves in a unique scenario. A myriad of promising nanotechnologies are rapidly emerging at a time when efforts to establish universal basic standards, and quantifiable data and evidence on long-term affects, are still in their infancy. It is thus likely that the commercialization of these technologies will occur more rapidly than our society’s ability to fashion regulatory and legal frameworks based on as of yet undeveloped evidence and experience. Consequently, public trust, or distrust, in these technologies will evolve through means other than
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the government’s regulatory oversight. In this scenario, communications and public relations will drive the shaping of public opinion. In an environment where predictions of success and benefits are inherently speculative and where robust reliable data on environmental, health, and safety issues have yet to be secured, the impact of messaging and articulating one’s vision or concerns becomes paramount. Another challenge of communicating effectively in the age of nanotechnology is that nanotechnologies typically incorporate interdisciplinary contributions from diverse fields from chemistry to biology to physics and engineering. These various fields have their own terminology, language, and cadence which are difficult to process and sync for various audiences. Translating and communicating complex science to lay audiences is ever more challenging given that cutting-edge, science-driven technologies typically evoke the fear of the unknown and confront long-held beliefs about the way things “should” be done. Emerging technologies are also apt to create unrealistic positive expectations in addition to potentially unwarranted fears. Accordingly, communications strategies in the Age of Nanotechnology must increasingly consider that the broader public needs novel risk/benefit equations as well as non-traditional economic and business models. The sum of these communications challenges marks the Age of Nanotechnology as a natural point of change for communications methodologies across a broad scope of interaction. While some of these challenges were present in earlier waves of technological innovation, the emergence of nanotechnology, and other converging technologies, is accelerating and broadening their impact. The focus of technology communications has become decidedly more future-oriented due to the exponential pace of change. Oft-quoted futurist Ray Kurzweil refers to the rapid pace as “The Law of Accelerating Returns” and opines “. . . we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century—it will be more like 20,000 years of progress” (Kurzweil 2001). Whether or not one agrees with the drastic rate of change envisioned by Kurzweil, it is generally accepted that the convergence of emerging technologies, such as biotech, nanotech, information technology, and neurotechnology, are resulting in a significantly faster pace of change. Consequently, communications about these technologies must be future-oriented or else they risk being ineffective or quickly obsolete. Communications in this age must strive to accurately anticipate future developments. The case studies below present evidence that the unique characteristics of the emerging nanotechnologies era will have a profound impact upon and drive notable change in how people and organizations communicate. These case studies explore specific examples of how changes have already occurred and how they foreshadow future changes in approaches to communications.
The Role of Communications Emerging technologies like nanotechnology have the potential to positively impact the world, creating new wealth and reshaping economic and social policy. These
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technologies also have the ability to disrupt traditional business paradigms. Moreover, they present the fear of the unknown and the prospect of risks that are foreseen and unforeseen. The field of communications plays a critical role in informing and persuading as these new technologies shift old norms. Traditionally, the role of communications in emerging fields of technology was to establish clear messages and public relations programs to assist technologists, scientists, businessmen, activists, and other experts to distinctly articulate their discoveries, positions, and visions. These efforts are designed to provide the client with a distinct and effective voice in the marketplace and to aid in an informed public debate. Communications in this sector are often coupled with broader public relations efforts to build strategic relationships between an organization and its key constituencies and other concerned stakeholders. When executed effectively, say for an emerging business, a technology can move from obscurity to prominence— creating important visibility and generating deal flow. New technologies, in order to gain acceptance and thrive, rely on public awareness, trust, and support. If people misunderstand the value of technologies, they will not engage them and there will be no market to sustain them. The novel characteristics of nanotechnology and the rapidly changing technological landscape combine to foster innovative approaches to these traditional communications challenges. This chapter highlights four case studies that illustrate how the unique attributes of nanotechnology have changed communications strategies and approaches of organizations in different sectors. The common denominator in these case studies is that nanotechnology, along with the inherent challenges it encompasses, combined with these organizations’ individual interpretations of how nanotechnology will affect the future and their respective missions, have resulted in new adaptive communications paradigms. Prior to presenting the case studies, historical context is provided by examining how communications, or the lack thereof, affected the future of the asbestos industry during the past half century. The first case study examines a model of communications designed to emphasize transparency and establish checks and balances through the partnership of traditional adversaries, in this case a large corporation and an environmental advocacy group. The second case study explores how rapidly emerging nanotechnologies in the biomedical sector have introduced remarkable opportunities for advancement in the treatment of cancer and how new approaches to communications are being relied upon to maximize and expedite the promise of these advancements for the benefit of public health. The third case study examines how the diverse and crossdisciplinary nature of nanotechnologies have forced a regulatory agency, the US Patent & Trademark Office, to reconsider and restructure its internal communications methods in a manner so that it can continue to pursue its mission in a world being transformed by nanotechnologies. The final case study looks generically at the “nanotech start-up” and assesses how the unique characteristics of nanotechnologies have transformed the communications needs and approaches of these early stage companies.
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Historical Context The “Elephantine Mass”: The Asbestos Communications Legacy For the purpose of historical context and contrast, a quick review of an example of communications practice at the dawn of the asbestos industry is instructive (Bartrip 2006). In the 1930s, Sumner Simpson was the president of one of the nation’s leading asbestos manufacturers, Raybestos-Manhattan, Inc. Mr. Simpson and other leaders of the asbestos industry conspired to conceal from the public critical information which they had developed linking asbestos to cancer. Documents evidencing scientific research demonstrating the health hazards of exposure to asbestos along with incriminating correspondence between industry leaders have come to be known as the “Sumner Simpson” documents. More specifically, in 1936 several asbestos companies retained the Saranac Laboratory for Research on Tuberculosis to conduct research on health and safety aspects of asbestos. The Saranac research revealed a link between asbestos exposure and cancer. That research, however, was never communicated to the public. The companies that funded the research concluded that “there would be no publication of the research of experiments without (the group’s) consent,” and any publication “would not include any objectionable material . . . as, for example, any relation between asbestos and cancer” (Baron and Budd 2008). The industry-sponsored concealment of this critical health and safety information ultimately contributed to the short-term financial success of the asbestos industry and also to the tragic asbestos public health crisis which followed. The resulting litigation has become so broad and everlasting that it was referred to as “The Elephantine Mass” by US Supreme Court Justice David Souter (US Supreme Court 1999). The litigation has now spanned over forty years and continues to grow exponentially larger, expanding from some three hundred defendants in 1982 to over 8,400 defendants today. Some estimate that the eventual costs of this litigation could be over $210 billion (The Asbestos Alliance 2005). The approach to communications employed during the emerging asbestos industry in the 1930s and for decades thereafter was to not only remain publicly silent but to proactively suppress and conceal incriminating evidence on the matter of health and safety issues regarding asbestos. In short, the communications paradigm was devoid of any level of transparency. The ensuing public health crisis led to immeasurable human suffering and a financial cost to industry which continues to mount as it works its way through the judicial system some seventy years later. For contrast, we will fast-forward below to the 21st Century and examine how stakeholders in the emerging field of nanotechnology are forecasting future consequences in a substantially more transparent manner and how they are adapting approaches to communications to address the unique challenges presented by this rapidly emerging area of science and technology.1
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Case Studies DuPont and Environmental Defense: Innovative Communications Partnership DuPont, a Fortune 500 company with $26.6 billion in revenue (2005) and 60,000 employees operating in seventy countries worldwide (DuPont 2006), has partnered with Environmental Defense, a 500,000-plus-member non-profit organization dedicated to “protecting the environmental rights of all people” (Environmental Defense 2007) with a mutual goal to establish a “framework for the responsible development, production, use and disposal of nano-scale materials.” This partnership, in stark contrast to the actions of the asbestos industry seventy years ago, represents a forward-looking and transparent approach to communications between traditionally adversarial stakeholders as well as between industry and the public. With lessons such as those provided by the asbestos fiasco, and with an eye to what will be necessary to earn the public trust amidst a rapidly changing technological landscape, DuPont and Environmental Defense have perceived public expectations in the future to include more transparency in environmental, health, and safety decisions and processes. As a result, they have developed a communications model that promotes heightened transparency and incorporates a trust-engendering checks and balances component which is built upon input from adversarial perspectives. DuPont and Environmental Defense have overcome traditionally divergent perspectives to devise mutually agreeable methods for accomplishing their joint goal and for communicating results to the public. Chad Holliday, DuPont Chairman and CEO, and Environmental Defense President Fred Krupp made the following joint statement in the editorial section of the June 14, 2005 edition of the Wall Street Journal: “An early and open examination of the potential risks of a new product or technology is not just good common sense—it’s good business strategy” (Krupp and Holliday 2005). Following the launch of the partnership, the parties have engaged in an ongoing transparent and open dialogue on issues of environmental, health, and safety aspects of nanotechnology (Ruta and Fisher 2005). Moreover DuPont and Environmental Defense have jointly developed a “Nano Risk Framework”—a construct for the responsible development, production, use, and disposal of nano-scale materials (Medley and Walsh 2007). The Nano Risk Framework is intended for adoption by as wide an audience as possible. The stated intent of the framework is to “define a systematic and disciplined process that can be used to identify, manage and reduce potential environmental, health and safety risks of nano-scale materials across all lifecycle stages to help ensure that nanotechnology’s benefits are maximized while the potential risks are effectively assessed and managed.” One of the jointly coveted goals of the framework “has been to do so in an open, transparent manner with other groups, companies and institutions who are also working to assess the potential risks and benefits of nano-materials.” The ultimate vision for the framework is that it becomes a user-friendly, comprehensive
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tool for businesses, governments, non-profits, university interests, and others in their pursuit of responsible development of nanotechnologies. Here, the uncertainties associated with the future benefits and risks of nanotechnology served as a catalyst for a rare communications partnership between a large corporate entity and an environmentally-focused non-profit organization.
National Cancer Institute Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer: Communicating to Multiple Stakeholders The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is one of the first federal agencies to recognize the extraordinary potential of emerging nanotechnologies to its core mission and to employ a customized communications program to help expedite results. The NCI projects that in the future nanotechnologies will be the cornerstone of cancer diagnosis and cancer treatment. The NCI’s response to this vision of the future has been to try to expedite the attainment and implementation of these nanotechnologies by creating a new communications infrastructure to coordinate and catalyze multiple dispersed constituencies in the pursuit of a common goal. In the life sciences sector nanotechnology presents a wide variety of capabilities that are essential to the early diagnosis and effective treatment of cancer. The work that is being done to realize this potential is, however, occurring in a vastly dispersed field representing university labs, government labs, comprehensive cancer centers, large corporations, start-up corporations, clinicians, and others. To most effectively harness this work, in 2004 the NCI launched the NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer with a concise goal to “eliminate death and suffering from cancer . . .” (Kaiser 2003). In pursuit of that goal, the Alliance built an unprecedented communications network to serve the world’s largest ever biomedical nanotechnology initiative. While the NCI was already adept at linking the cancer research community, emerging nanotechnologies hastened the need to coordinate strategic planning across diverse sectors and to integrate research infrastructure to catalyze crossdisciplinary collaborations in a fashion that had not previously been pursued. The communications tools utilized to achieve this mission are a comprehensive Cancer Nanotechnology Plan through which all stakeholders are engaged, the establishment of Centers for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence, proactive cross-stakeholder engagement among federal agencies and the private sector, and a robust and state-ofthe-art web portal which provides a community access point for scientists, clinicians, researchers, and the public. The result of the Alliance’s communications plan has been increased interaction between the private sector and the government which has led to a higher rate of partnerships and dialogue between leading contributors in key areas of engineering, biology, and oncology that are paramount to the Alliance’s mission. The significance of the NCI’s approach to communications is that the broad and promising nature of nanotechnology to the NCI’s mission forced a change in
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the agency’s communication infrastructure and strategy in order to maximize and expedite results. Nanotechnology has proven to be a catalyst for innovative communication methods as the NCI anticipates, prepares for, and strives to positively affect the future of cancer detection and therapy.
US Patent and Trademark Office: Redefining Internal Communications The interdisciplinary nature of nanotechnology has challenged and caused some organizations to reconsider how they communicate internally. As discussed above, nanotechnologies typically involve the collaborative input of multiple fields of expertise. For instance a nanotechnology-inspired cancer therapeutic would likely incorporate research from experts in distinct fields of expertise such as biologists, pharmacoepidemiologists, biomedical engineers, and oncologists. The intellectual property which emerges from the development of such multidisciplinary efforts is often presented to the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) for patent protection. The volume of complex nanotechnology-based patent applications has rapidly grown to present a real internal communications issue for the PTO. In 1985, the PTO addressed 125 nanotechnology applications. Conservative estimates reveal the PTO issued between 4,000 and 6,000 nanotechnology patents between 2001 and 2003. By 2005, the yearly number had reached nearly 5,000 (National Cancer Institute 2006). As the PTO looks to the future, it is evident that complex cross-disciplinary patent applications will continue to be the norm. To respond to this changing landscape, the PTO has adjusted its internal communications paradigm to shape its own future effectiveness and to enable it to succeed in meeting its primary mission: to encourage innovation. Multi-disciplinary nanotechnologies have prompted specific changes at the PTO, an organization historically accustomed to managing the issuance of patents through a decidedly silo-like process with numerous vertical fields receiving customized attention. Traditionally, patent applications are directed to one of seven Patent Technology Centers focused on specific industry sectors. Nanotechnology patents, however, because they are typically cross-disciplinary in design, propose disruptive implications to numerous industries. Consequently, the process of marshalling internal expertise needed to evaluate all relevant implications of a particular nanotechnology is considerably challenging given established operational norms at the PTO. To illustrate the point, patent researchers have identified 253 separate international patent classes influenced by the new wave of nanotechnology patent applications. In an attempt to address these unique challenges and to avoid patent thickets, over-reaching patents and other scenarios which would impede the PTO’s primary goal of stimulating the economy, the PTO has established a new nanotechnology cross-reference digest (designated as class 977/dig.1) to address the anticipated future demands on internal (and external) PTO communications. According to the PTO, “[e]stablishing this nanotechnology cross-reference digest is the first step in a
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multi-phase nanotechnology classification project and will serve the following purposes, facilitate the searching of prior art related to Nanotechnology, function as a collection of issued U.S. patents and published pre-grant patent applications relating to nanotechnology across the technology centers and assist in the development of an expanded, more comprehensive, nanotechnology cross-reference art collection classification schedule” (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office 2007). In addition to these novel internal communications adaptations, the PTO is tackling potential future scenarios by providing its seasoned patent examiners with continuing education on the state of nanoscience and on emerging nanotechnologies while partnering with external groups to explore better methods of communicating and overcoming the unique challenges posed by nanotechnologies.
The Nanotechnology Start-Up Company: External Communications to Diverse Industrial and Geographic Sectors A significant volume of nanotechnology innovation occurs, and will continue to occur, from within start-up companies. As these companies seek to realize the potential value that nanotechnologies can provide, they face a new set of communications challenges not typically confronted by early stage companies in the past. As the executives in these companies anticipate the future growth of their businesses, they realize that future success hinges generally on capturing the added value that their nanotechnologies can offer to existing markets. Because nanotechnologies are typically enabling technologies, they often have numerous target markets which are unrelated (a characteristic that likewise challenged the PTO as discussed in the previous section). The diversity of target markets demands a broader communications strategy than that of a typical start-up. Moreover, the target markets for a nanotechnology start-up tend to be more geographically dispersed. To begin with, many nanotechnologies (such as carbon nanotubes) which are pursued by start-ups, are fundamental in design (i.e., “building block” technologies) and offer numerous applications across many industrial sectors. As such, nanotechnology start-ups, in order to maximize potential and to survive, must communicate externally to a diverse group across multiple industries. For example, the business plan of a carbon nanotube manufacturer would likely target opportunities in biomedical, materials, energy, semiconductor, aerospace, and other industrial sectors. To complicate matters, the nanotechnology marketplace is a decidedly global marketplace. There is a robust international race among governments in the developed and developing economies to tap the economic development rewards that nanotechnology promises. As such, the market of opportunities for nanotechnology start-ups is dispersed worldwide. Start-up companies of any variety are typically strapped for cash and must operate with executive teams overwhelmed with a multitude of critical time-sensitive tasks. In this environment, the added challenge of communicating across diverse industrial and geographic sectors is a significant burden. The nanotechnology
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start-ups that will survive and succeed will be the ones that most effectively manage this communications challenge. A number of nanotechnology start-ups are addressing this issue by employing executive teams with more diverse experience across sectors. Additionally, start-ups are increasingly outsourcing certain communications functions to public relations firms with cross-industry expertise and with global operations. Finally, nanotechnology start-ups are increasing their participation and communications outreach at industry conferences dispersed across sectors and geographic location. The approach to external communications employed by nanotechnology startups, as one might suspect, is adaptive and innovative and continues to change as survival in the marketplace demands.
Nanotechnology’s Impact on Communications As the foregoing case studies illustrate, the emergence of complex multi-disciplinary nanotechnologies is altering the way in which people and organizations communicate internally and externally. As nanotechnology stakeholders look to the future, this trend is likely to continue and to become more evident in a larger number of organizations for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, nanotechnology’s complex scientific and cross-disciplinary nature demands new approaches to communications. By definition, nanotechnology is technology which operates at the nanoscale, an environment which is extremely difficult to monitor and which is characterized by the counterintuitive forces of quantum physics. Moreover, most nanotechnologies, by virtue of the complexity of the playing field, require multi-faceted engineering which incorporates expertise of various fields from engineering to chemistry to physics and others depending on the application. As a basic rule, complex matters are more difficult to communicate than simple matters. Secondly, a relative void of reliable information regarding environmental, health, and safety, and other issues creates a unique situation in which development is outpacing regulatory and legal capacity to govern in real-time. Uniform standards which will allow scientists to communicate in a reliable fashion are in the early stages of development. Regulations which will guide research and commercialization are not yet established and must rely on uniform standards. Moreover, there is no specifically helpful body of statutory law or jurisprudence established, or of great use by way of analogy, because of the nascent stage and uniqueness of nanotechnology. In this environment, effective communication to the public becomes paramount to an organization’s mission. Additional factors such as the abundance of cross-industry applications and the demands of dispersed global markets fuel the need for adaptive communications strategies. The cumulative effect of these attributes unique to nanotechnology creates an environment that has never been encountered. New environments demand a fresh perspective and creative adaptation of old methods. That is certainly the case in
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the field of communications in which evidence is emerging of new and prospective approaches to anticipate, and to ultimately influence, the future of nanotechnology. Key components of and recurring themes in emerging nanotechnology communications strategies are likely to include: a need to educate and to simplify the complex; integration of scientific and risk/benefit information into easily digestible modules accessible to the audience; truthful and transparent messaging addressing risks and benefits with appropriate weight given to each; increased stakeholder dialogue with policymakers and regulators; mobilization of credible and capable sources to analyze and report on events involving nanotechnologies; and diligent, thorough, and objective assessment and reporting of adverse events. Traditional approaches to communications have not encountered the variety or depth of challenges presented by nanotechnology as described herein. While communications strategies are historically pragmatic and designed with a certain set of circumstances in mind, those strategies will stretch to new limits and conform to new models as the oncoming wave of nanotechnologies builds momentum and an ever-growing presence across organizations of every type.
Conclusion Emerging nanotechnologies present society with profound possibilities from mundane yet exciting advances in everyday consumer goods to the much needed early diagnosis and effective treatment of cancer. In addition to amazing benefits, nanotechnologies also present a mysterious and undefined set of risks which instill a natural sense of unease. Novel adaptive communications strategies will address the increasingly complex risk/benefit equation presented by emerging nanotechnologies. As society looks to the future, and stakeholders seek to understand and affect the future consequences of nanotechnologies, communications and public relations methods will adapt and play a very key role in the shaping of opinion. However, it is important to note that while communications and public relations strategies can be very effective in shaping dialogue and perception, many of the key events that will define the future of nanotechnology are outside the control or impact of communications. For instance, the ultimate safety of a given nanotechnology-enabled product will hinge on scientific parameters; communications strategies can only serve to put those parameters into proper context prior to, or after, they become defined. Communications and methods of public relations are tools used by organizations of every size, type and persuasion. In the Age of Nanotechnology, the unique circumstances described above will prompt organizations of every sort to employ communications as an essential component to achieve their respective mission, and those circumstances will also frequently inspire the use of innovative and adaptive communications approaches. Ideally, the public will more frequently benefit from scenarios, such as the DuPont and Environmental Defense partnership, in which a two-way street of adversarial yet constructive communications and public relations
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results in checks and balances of the uncertainties of the future of nanotechnology and provides reasoned guidance for the responsible research and development, as well as regulation, of specific nanotechnology-enabled products.
Note 1. There is no suggestion implied by this author that any emerging nanotechnology will follow the path, in any manner, that asbestos did. Nor has any evidence come to light that suggests that any nanotechnologies carry risks similar to those associated with asbestos. The historical point to be drawn here is that the communications model employed in the asbestos industry in the twentieth century contributed to grave results.
References The Asbestos Alliance. 2005. The Scope of the Asbestos Litigation Problem. Available at: http://www.asbestossolution.org/scope.html. Accessed 2008. ASTM. 2006. Standard Terminology Relating to Nanotechnology (E2456-06), October 1. ASTM International: West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Baron & Budd, P.C. 2008. Asbestos Industry knowledge of the Risk. Mesothelioma News. Dallas, Texas. Available at: http://www.mesotheliomanews.com/legal/the-asbestos-tragedy/asbestosindustry-knowledge-of-the-risk/. Accessed 2008. Bartrip, P. 2006. Beyond the Factory Gates: Asbestos and Health in Twentieth Century America. London: Continuum. DuPont. 2006. DuPont Data Book 2006. Wilmington, Deleware. Available at: http://media. corporate-ir.net/media files/irol/73/73320/2006Databook.pdf. Environmental Defense. 2007. Mission Statement. Available at: http://www.edf.org/page. cfm?tagID=370. Accessed 2008. Kaiser, J. 2003. War on Cancer: NCI Goal Aims for Cancer Victory by 2015. Science. Vol. 299, No. 5611 (28 February): 1297–1298. Krupp, F. and Holliday, C. 2005. Let’s Get Nanotech Right. Wall Street Journal, June 14. Kurzweil, R. 2001. The Law of Accelerating Returns, March 7. Available at: http://www. kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1 Medley, T. and Walsh, S. 2007. NANO Risk Framework. Environmental Defense – DuPont Nano Partnership: Washington, DC. June. Available at: http://nanoriskframework.com/ page.cfm?tagID=1081. Accessed 2008. National Cancer Institute. 2006. Where Science and Law Meet: Nantotechnology and Intellectual Property Issues. October. Available at: http://nano.cancer.gov/news center/ monthly feature 2006 oct.pdf. Accessed 2008. Ruta, G. and Fisher, L. 2005. DuPont and Environmental Defense Partnership Agreement and Project Description. August 30. Available at: http://www.edf.org/documents/ 5130 DuPontNanoPartnership010905.pdf. Accessed 2008. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. 2007. Class 977 Nanotechnology Cross-Reference Art Collection. Available at: http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/biochempharm/crossref.htm. Accessed 2007. U.S. Supreme Court. 1999. Ortiz et al. v. Fibreboard Corp. et al., Docket 97-1704. decided June 23.
Chapter 16
How Can Business Respond to the Technical, Social, and Commercial Uncertainties of Nanotechnology? Hilary Sutcliffe
In July 2004 the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering published the report, “Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies: Opportunities and Uncertainties.” This report urged new regulations for, and public debate on, the development of nanotechnologies (see City of Berkeley, ch. 17). In the wake of the considerable attention generated by the report, the Royal Society, together with the UK asset management company Insight Investment and the nanotech company trade association Nanotechnology Industries Association, hosted a follow up workshop. The workshop brought together representatives from seventeen European nanotechnology companies. Unlike other similar efforts (Walsh and Medley, ch. 18), the Royal Society and those engaged in the conference presumably expanded their discussions beyond environmental, health, and safety issues. In addition, they expanded their discussions to include broader ethical issues and social “interconnections.” One outcome of the workshop was the proposal to develop a voluntary nanotechnology “code of conduct.” This would help to “secure” nanotechnology innovation before the “window of opportunity” closes for industry, scientists, academics, NGOs to work together. – Eds.
H. Sutcliffe Acona, London, UK Originally posted on the Royal Society website: http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/ Disclaimer: This chapter highlights key issues that emerged from a business workshop on nanotechnology. It is not necessarily an expression of the views of the Royal Society, Insight Investment, or the Nanotechnology Industries Association.
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Introduction Commercialising innovations from nanotechnologies presents huge opportunities for business. But at the same time—while the evidence of harm is currently limited— there is real uncertainty over the potential environmental, health and safety (EHS) risks of some nanoscale materials, particularly the impact of manufactured free nanoparticles and nanotubes. The development of nanotechnologies also gives rise to a variety of social and ethical issues—both in relation to their governance and the societal impacts of specific applications. All businesses with an interest in this area will need strategies for dealing with these uncertainties. However, it is still early days in the development of nanotechnologies, and the environment in which they are and will continue to be commercialised is not yet fixed. There are numerous societal and environmental benefits expected to be brought by nanotechnological innovation. Public opinion is positive to nanotechnologies—a Eurobarometer survey in June 2006 suggests that Europeans feel optimistic about its contribution to society—and the majority of NGOs have not made it a campaigning issue as yet. The current debate encourages businesses, scientists, academics, NGOs and others to work together to address and reduce the various areas of uncertainty surrounding nanotechnologies; but time is running out, and the window of opportunity to secure nanotechnological innovation through a balanced stakeholder dialogue will not be open indefinitely.
Exploring Business Opportunity and Uncertainty On 7 November 2006, The Royal Society, Insight Investment and the Nanotechnology Industries Association (NIA) came together to explore these issues with business and stimulate companies to engage more fully with the broad spectrum of questions which affect the development of nanotechnologies. The three organisations began this process by convening a business-focused workshop and commissioning a briefing paper: An Uncertain Business: The technical, social and commercial challenges presented by nanotechnology (available from wwww.responsiblefutures.com). The workshop, hosted by the Royal Society and facilitated by Acona, brought together seventeen European companies with a commercial interest in nanotechnology—from food and chemicals manufacturers to retailers of healthcae and fashion. The event sought to build on the work of the initial report from the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering published in 2004, which was commissioned by the UK Government to consider current scientific knowledge in the field and whether nanotechnology could raise EHS, ethical or social issues which are not covered by current regulation (see www.nanotec.org.uk/finalReport.htm).
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This event had three aims: 1. To highlight the particular technical, social and commercial issues surrounding the development of nanotechnologies 2. To stimulate discussion and interaction among companies working up and down the supply chain on these topics; 3. To explore ways in which companies individually, or business collectively, could better understand and respond to the challenges posed by the issues.
The Nature of Nanotechnology Risks The seminar explored the technical, social and commercial areas of uncertainty surrounding the development and commercialisation of nanotechnologies and posed related questions for businesses to consider. Technical uncertainties describe issues concerning our understanding of the technology and how it behaves; they are manifest in our ability to develop, manufacture, control and measure it and ultimately to accurately predict its behaviours. Technical uncertainties, relating to potential EHS impacts, arise because we are at an early stage in our understanding of the behaviour and effect of (principally) free nanoparticles. Materials at the nanoscale can behave very differently from the same chemical in a bulk form. There is at this stage little data on hazard or safety: little is known, for example, about how nanomaterials enter the body, how they are metabolised, their toxicity and their impact on the environment and other species. The Royal Society has highlighted the pressing need for underpinning fundamental risk research in the area and a rigorous assessment of benefits, risks and uncertainties. Participants were challenged to consider the commercial imperative for directed research and the role of business in controlling their exposure to risks in this area. Social uncertainties stem from society’s view of the technology, based on complex factors including: the perceived benefits compared to the perceived risks; the uses to which the technologies are put, their impact on people and the environment; regulation and governance; and previous experience of new technologies. Companies need to consider the social and perceptual uncertainties surrounding nanotechnologies as carefully as they consider the technical uncertainties. A backlash of negative opinion from consumers, governments and civil society—as happened to genetically modified crops—could prove incalculably damaging to the success of all types of nanotechnology. The public perception of risks is dynamic and while currently people are broadly well disposed towards nanotechnologies this cannot be counted on indefinitely. The behaviour of companies, governments and others in society can shift perceptions one way or another. These perceptual risks depend on the ability of companies and
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governments to minimise unintended consequences, develop beneficial technologies and adequately govern the exploitation of the technologies. Participants were challenged to consider what steps they were taking to understand the social and perceptual risks they face and what methods they were using to mitigate these. Commercial uncertainties focus on the specialised questions raised as companies commercialise nanotechnology-based products. For example they need to consider the risks arising from the shape of future standards and regulation, and whether minimum regulation is necessarily the best approach; the potential for litigation (there are many lessons which may be learned from the business approach to asbestos for example) and the impact of complex intellectual property regimes on the development of less commercial but highly beneficial applications. These issues are also critical for investors who will be affected by the impact on company valuation if these risks are handled badly, especially if the products form a large part of the company’s current or future business, or if it has a valuable public brand. Similarly, lenders and insurers will be scrutinising the technical, social and commercial risks posted by nanotechnologies to allow them to assess risk, while the costs of capital and insurance policies may rise if these uncertainties are not adequately addressed. Participants were challenged to consider the effectiveness of their approach to research, risk assessment, regulation and other commercial aspects of nanotechnology development.
The Importance of Interconnections None of these risks and uncertainties can be considered in isolation. The commercial uncertainties for businesses working with nanotechnologies arise out of the technical and social risk associated with them. Regulatory uncertainty, for example, may leave companies potentially liable for damages in the event that products are discovered to present EHS problems, which in turn may affect a company’s ability to get adequate insurance coverage; or large scale brand owners and retailers may find themselves exposed to widespread public criticism if uncertainties further down the value chain affect public perception of nanotechnologies as a whole.
Business Response to Nanotechnology Uncertainties The participants at the workshop began to shape priorities for a business response to these issues. The important questions were distilled to three key areas: 1. A new approach to responding to technical, social and commercial risk is needed: Participants stressed the importance of a new approach to understanding and responding to the three types of risk. Lessons from asbestos and genetically
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modified crops must be learned and incorporated into businesses response to the development of nanotechnologies. This may involve new partnerships, a coordinated approach to responsible nanotechnology research and development and clarity about where responsibilities lie. 2. Business should be more active in the shaping the debates on regulatory systems, standards & definitions: There was concern about how the existing systems of regulation and risk assessment can cope with nano-risk and what role business should play in their development. A number of initiatives were currently underway in this area internationally, but progress was slow and business needs were often not taken into account. Participants felt that business should be fully involved in the processes of agreeing common definitions, standards and regulatory approaches. In light of current uncertainties, the development of a business focused “code of conduct” on the responsible development of nanotechnology was welcomed. 3. The importance of coordinated engagement and communication: Participants stressed the importance of effective and balanced communication about nanotechnologies. A starting point would be communication up and down the value chain between consumer focused companies, manufacturers and researchers. Dialogue between business and NGOs, consumers, government and the public was also considered an essential part of the process of responsible development—to understand and respond to aspirations for and concerns about nanotechnology.
Next Steps Identified at the Workshop Responsible Nanotechnology Code The development of a voluntary code of conduct for businesses engaged in nanotechnology was widely agreed to be an important next step. It was felt the code should be principles based rather than standards based and would be developed through a process of engagement between a group of European businesses and a wide range of stakeholders, including NGOs, government and consumer groups.
Responsible Nanotech Forum The coordination of an effective response to the technical, social and commercial issues surrounding nanotechnologies was considered essential. The participants discussed whether a new “Forum” or “Centre” may be an appropriate vehicle for this. It could be convened by an “honest broker,” an independent group who would be at arms length from all the stakeholders, yet have the respect and authority required to engage widely and coordinate a range of activities. Most importantly participants stressed that it should focus on actions to address uncertainties, rather than simply being a talking shop.
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A Strategic Approach to Communication and Engagement The group felt that there was a need for strategic coordination on communication and engagement activities on nanotechnology. This could enable business to understand and address social risks more effectively. It would also provide a clear means to demonstrate to stakeholders, including investors and regulators, a responsible business approach to nanotechnology development. For further information, please contact: The Royal Society
[email protected] Tel: +44 (0)20 7451 2500 Insight Investment
[email protected] Rachel Crossley Tel: +44 (0)20 7321 1262 Nanotechnology Industries Association
[email protected] Steffi Friedrichs Tel: +44 (0)7901 637 325 Acona
[email protected] Simon Hodgson Tel: +44 (0)20 7812 7131 Responsible Futures
[email protected] Hilary Sutcliffe Tel: +44 (0)20 7520 9086
Chapter 17
Manufactured Nanoparticle Health and Safety Disclosure [Draft Report] City of Berkeley Community Environmental Advisory Commission
In December 2006, the city council of Berkeley, California passed the world’s first nanoparticle regulation. Through the Community Environmental Advisory Commission, a commission founded in 1991 to collect information and offer advice to the city council on environmental issues, and with assistance from Berkeley Livermore Laboratories, the council developed a simple approach meant to be a first step to ensure the safe use and production of nanoparticles. The regulation does not limit the production or use of any materials, nor does it forbid any form of scientific inquiry (as called for by ETC Group, ch. 10). Lacking complete knowledge of the effects of nanoparticles (also discussed by Meyyappan, ch. 20), the Berkeley city government set up a data collection system to identify what types of nanoparticles people are using, what is known about their toxicity, and what steps are being taken to ensure responsible handling and use. The following document is the working report of the Commission and includes the text that was adopted as regulation. The regulation has been criticized for using a vague definition and understanding of nanoparticles (see Fiedeler, ch. 21). This criticism gains force when one notices the editorial changes preserved in the rough copy of the working report posted on the city’s website. Still, it has generated interest in other municipalities interested in passing similar regulations (compare Kennedy, ch. 1). – Eds.
Community Environmental Advisory Commission Berkeley, CA, USA This report was originally published in December 2006 on the City of Berkeley, California’s website at: http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/2006-citycouncil/packet/120506/12-05a.htm
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Chapter 18
A Framework for Responsible Nanotechnology Scott Walsh and Terry Medley
In an attempt to get nanotechnology “right the first time,” the century-old chemical manufacturing company DuPont and the non-profit group Environmental Defense created a framework for corporations to regulate the use and production of nanomaterials (City of Berkeley, ch. 17). In February 2007, the partnership produced a draft document outlining the steps DuPont had agreed to adopt to ensure that nanomaterials were handled in a way both organizations deemed appropriate. Much as the federal government does with its regulations, the organizations issued a call for comment with the goal of refining the framework and encouraging others to adopt it. While some organizations did submit comments, others argued that the partnership lacked the impartiality to develop regulations that would satisfactorily protect the environment, workers, and the public. Several environmental groups and labor unions (including the IUF, see Foladori and Invernizzi, ch. 2) issued a statement condemning the framework as an attempt to usurp the role of government to regulate industrial and product safety (contrast Kennedy, ch. 1). Nevertheless, the partnership represents an alliance between two groups that seldom work together and a rare instance of private sector self-regulation in the absence of government authority (as discussed by Kundahl, ch. 15). The following document summarizes the draft of the framework that was released for public review. – Eds.
S. Walsh Environmental Defense, New York, NY, USA Originally published in February 2007 on DuPont and Environmental Defense’s joint website: http://nanoriskframework.com.
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Abstract Environmental Defense, an environmental advocacy organization, and DuPont, a science-based products and services company, have developed a comprehensive, practical, and flexible Framework for evaluating and addressing the potential risks of nanoscale materials. The Framework is available at www.nanoriskframework.com. The intent of this Framework is to define a systematic and disciplined process for identifying, managing, and reducing any environmental, health, and safety risks of engineered nanomaterials across all stages of a product’s lifecycle. Our Framework offers guidance on the key questions an organization should consider in developing applications of such materials, and on the key information needed to make sound risk-evaluation and risk-management decisions. The Framework allows users to move ahead despite areas of incomplete or uncertain information, by using reasonable assumptions and by compensating for knowledge gaps with appropriate risk-management practices. Further, the Framework describes a system to guide information generation and update assumptions, decisions, and practices with new information as it becomes available. And the Framework offers guidance on how to communicate information and decisions to key stakeholders. We believe that the adoption of this Framework can promote responsible development of nanotechnology products, facilitate public acceptance, and support the development of a practical model for reasonable government policy on nanotechnology safety. We have solicited and incorporated feedback on our overall approach from a wide range of international stakeholders, and we are now pilot-testing the Framework on several materials and applications, at various stages of development. We expect that the Framework itself will evolve as it is used by a variety of stakeholders in a variety of settings for a variety of applications. We welcome feedback that will help us to improve it.
Introduction Nanotechnology, the design and manipulation of materials at the atomic scale, is a new area of knowledge that promises a dazzling array of opportunities in areas as diverse as manufacturing, energy, health care, and waste treatment. But while the ability to manipulate nanomaterials and incorporate them into products is advancing rapidly, our understanding of the potential environmental, health, and safety effects of nanomaterials—and of the most effective ways to manage such effects—has proceeded at a much slower pace. Given the enormous potential commercial and societal benefits that may come from nanotechnology, it is likely that nanomaterials, and products and applications containing them, will be widely produced and used. Therefore, it is especially important to understand and minimize the potential risks. Environmental Defense and DuPont worked to develop a comprehensive, practical, and flexible system, the Nano Risk Framework, for evaluating and addressing the potential environmental, health, and safety risks of nanoscale materials. Further, the Framework is designed to act as tool to document and communicate the steps a user has taken to address those risks and the basis for those actions. We
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believe that the adoption of the Framework can promote responsible development of nanotechnology products, facilitate public acceptance, and support the formulation of a practical model for reasonable government policy on nanotechnology safety.
Scope and Intended Audience The intent of this Framework is to define a systematic and disciplined process for identifying, managing, and reducing potential environmental, health, and safety risks of engineered nanomaterials across all stages of a product’s “lifecycle”—its full life from initial sourcing through manufacture, use, disposal, and ultimate fate. Our Framework offers guidance on the key questions an organization should consider in developing applications of nanomaterials, and on the information needed to make sound risk-evaluation and risk-management decisions. The Framework allows users flexibility in making decisions by compensating for knowledge gaps with reasonable assumptions and appropriate risk-management practices. Further, the Framework describes a system for guiding information generation and updating assumptions, decisions, and practices with new information as it becomes available. And the Framework offers guidance on how to communicate information and decisions to key stakeholders.
New and Different Elements Users acquainted with other risk-management frameworks will recognize some familiar elements here. Although we began this partnership without any preconceived opinions on whether nanoscale materials might require entirely new methods for evaluating and managing risks, we were pleased to find that the basic principles of many existing risk frameworks could be applied to our work. For example, this Framework follows a traditional risk-assessment paradigm similar to the one used by the US Environmental Protection Agency for evaluating new chemicals. In addition to conserving some tried-and-true elements, we also hope with our Framework to improve upon typical risk-management frameworks by incorporating several new or atypical elements. For example, it recommends developing informational profiles (“base sets”)—relevant to the properties, hazards, and exposures associated with a given nanomaterial and its application—for evaluating risks and guiding decisions. In particular, we recommend developing lifecycle profiles that provide more information on physical-chemical properties, ecotoxicity, and environmental fate than has typically been the case. These additions are needed because of: (a) the limited information and experience with nanomaterials for guiding decisions; (b) the inability to predict or extrapolate risk evaluations based on limited information; and (c) the importance of properties beyond chemical structure in defining nanomaterials’ behavior.
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The Framework is thus information-driven. The Framework does not implicitly assume the risk or safety of any material. Where there is little or no information to guide decisions on the potential for a particular hazard or exposure, the Framework suggests using “reasonable worst-case assumptions”—or, alternatively, using comparisons to other materials or processes that have been better characterized—along with management practices appropriate to those options. The Framework is also designed to encourage replacing assumptions with real information, especially as a product nears commercial launch, and refining management practices accordingly. In order for such a flexible framework to offer assurances to stakeholders, it requires transparency and accountability. Our Framework is a tool to organize, document, and communicate what information the user has about the material; to acknowledge where information is incomplete; to explain how information gaps were addressed; and to explain the rationale behind the user’s risk-management decisions and actions. Again, the iterative nature of the Framework suggests that the amount of information a user shares with stakeholders may vary by stage of development. Though it is likely that less information will be shared at the early stages of development (when little is to be had), users should share enough information by the time of a product’s commercial launch that stakeholders have a reasonable understanding of its potential risks and how they are to be safely managed. The Framework includes an Output Worksheet, which is meant to facilitate evaluation, management, and communication. The Worksheet provides a template for organizing all the information requested by the Framework, capturing overall evaluations of that information, and recording management decisions on how to act on it. The Worksheet can also be used as the basis for sharing information and decisions with stakeholders.
Framework Overview The Framework consists of six distinct steps, and it is designed to be used iteratively as stages of development advance and new information becomes available.
Step 1. Describe Material and Application This first step is to develop a general description of the nanomaterial and its intended uses, based on information in the possession of the developer or in the literature. These general descriptions set up the more thorough reviews of the material’s lifecycle properties, hazards, and exposures that are conducted in Step 2. The user also identifies analogous materials and applications that may help fill data gaps in this and other steps.
Step 2. Profile Lifecycle(s) Step 2 defines a three-part process to develop profiles of the nanomaterial’s properties, inherent hazards, and associated exposures. The properties profile identifies
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Fig. 18.1 Environmental Defense-DuPont Nano Risk Framework
and characterizes a nanomaterial’s physical and chemical properties. The hazard profile identifies and characterizes the nanomaterial’s potential safety, health, and environmental hazards. The exposure profile identifies and characterizes the opportunities for human or environmental exposure to the nanomaterial—including exposure both through intended use and by accidental release. The user considers the nanomaterial’s full lifecycle from material sourcing, through production and use, to end-of-life disposal or recycling. The user considers how the material’s properties, hazards, and exposures may change during the material’s lifecycle (for example, because of physical interactions during manufacturing or use, or chemical changes that may occur as it breaks down after disposal). The step suggests base sets of information, as well as the use of bridging information, to guide the development of these profiles. Various conditions (e.g., stage of development, type of use) will influence how fully a user may complete the base sets, or whether a user may incorporate additional information into the profiles. All three profiles work together—exposure information may suggest which hazards are most important to investigate, and vice versa; similarly, the material’s properties may suggest which hazards or exposure scenarios are most likely.
Step 3. Evaluate Risks In this step, all of the information generated in the profiles is reviewed in order to identify and characterize the nature, magnitude, and probability of risks presented by this particular nanomaterial and its anticipated application. In doing so, the user
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considers gaps in the lifecycle profiles, prioritizes those gaps, and determines how to address them—either by generating data or by using, in place of data, “reasonable worst case” assumptions or values.
Step 4. Assess Risk Management Here the user evaluates the available options for managing the risks identified in Step 3 and recommends a course of action. Options include engineering controls, protective equipment, risk communication, and product or process modifications.
Step 5. Decide, Document, and Act In this step, the user consults with the appropriate review team and decides whether or in what capacity to continue development and production. Consistent with a transparent decision-making process, the user documents those decisions and their rationale and shares appropriate information with the relevant internal and external stakeholders. The user may also decide that further information is needed and initiate action to gather that information. And the user determines the timing and conditions that will trigger future updates and reviews of the risk evaluation and riskmanagement decisions for the nanomaterial or nanomaterial-containing product. A worksheet is provided in the [Framework] appendix for documenting information, assumptions, and decisions.
Step 6. Review and Adapt Through regularly scheduled reviews as well as triggered reviews, the user updates and re-executes the risk evaluation, ensures that risk-management systems are working as expected, and adapts those systems in the face of new information (e.g., new hazard data) or new conditions (such as new exposure situations). Reviews may be triggered by a number of conditions (development milestones, changes in production or use, or new data on hazard or exposure, for example). As in Step 5, the user not only documents changes, decisions, and actions but also shares appropriate information with relevant stakeholders. Through these six steps, the Framework seeks to guide a process for risk evaluation and management that is practical, comprehensive, transparent, and flexible.
For More Information One of our main goals of developing this Framework has been to do so in an open, transparent manner with other groups, companies, and institutions who are also working to assess the potential risks and benefits of nano-materials. Since we began
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this project, we have solicited and incorporated input from a wide range of international stakeholders (large and small companies, government agencies, universities, and public-interest groups). To read the entire Framework and review the feedback received please visit www.nanoriskframework.com.
Chapter 19
Contemplating the Implications of a Nanotechnology “Revolution” Georgia Miller
Since the industrial revolution, various groups and associations have voiced concern over the potential negative effects of numerous new technologies. Such groups often claim to represent the overlooked interests of civil society, and focus on ethical and political issues such as inequality (see Foladori and Invernizzi, ch. 2). In the case of nanotechnology, the ETC Group (see ch. 10) and Greenpeace have helped focus media attention on the potential human and environmental risks of nanoparticles, and the Meridian Institute has suggested that nanotechnologies may spawn greater inequalities. In this chapter, Miller represents the position of Friends of the Earth Australia—a branch of the world’s largest federation of environmental organizations with member groups in over seventy-two countries. Friends of the Earth Australia has called for public involvement in technology decision making and for assessments of nanotechnology’s potential to address issues of exacerbating inequities alongside basic questions of safety (see Walsh and Medley, ch. 18). Miller voices concerns about potential human and environmental harms that are typically raised by those who engage in organized resistance to the otherwise unquestioned promotion of nanotechnologies, and does so by critiquing the more conventional futures (such as those presented by Kennedy, ch. 1; Kundahl, ch. 15; or Meyyappan, ch. 20). – Eds.
G. Miller Friends of the Earth Australia, Fitzroyvil, Australia
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Everyone’s Predicting a Nano “Revolution,” but No One’s Asking What its Social Consequences may be Governments and business leaders world wide suggest that we are on the cusp of a nanotechnology-enabled “revolution” that will transform every sector of industry, bringing far-reaching changes to economic, social, and ecological relations. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum notes that “if nanotechnology is going to revolutionise manufacturing, health care, energy supply, communications and probably defence, then it will transform labour and the workplace, the medical system, the transportation and power infrastructures and the military. None of these will be changed without significant social disruption” (National Science and Technology Development Agency 2002). The United States National Nanotechnology Initiative predicts: “If present trends in nanoscience and nanotechnology continue, most aspects of everyday life are subject to change” (National Science and Technology Council 1999). The Australian National Nanotechnology Strategy Taskforce states that nanotechnology “has the potential to fundamentally alter the way people live” (Department of Industry, Tourism and Resouces 2006). Yet despite the dramatic scope of these predictions, to date there has been a dearth of critical discussion about the important social challenges that nanotechnology presents. Key questions about nanotechnology’s social implications remain not only unanswered, but largely unasked. What would a “post-revolutionary” nanotech world look like? Given that past revolutions have resulted in winners, losers, and massive social upheaval, is anyone planning to manage this revolution to mitigate its most adverse consequences? Is this even possible? Whose interests are driving nanotechnology research, development and commercialization? Who bears the risks? Who stands to gain? Who will own nanotechnology’s applications? Who will have access? Will nanotechnology overcome global socio-economic disparities and environmental problems or exacerbate them? Given the huge amount of public money invested in nanotechnology research, does the public have a right to be involved in decision making that will help determine nanotechnology’s development trajectory? The macro-economic implications of a nanotechnology revolution have also received little attention. This is perplexing given that nanotechnology’s commercial potential is repeatedly cited as a key reason for massive investment of public money in research. Most government communications about nanotechnology’s economic implications are based on “blue sky” forecasting; they assume that by driving the next industrial revolution, nanotechnology will make us all fabulously wealthy. But forecasts from nanotechnology analysts suggest that a more sober and critical analysis of nanotechnology’s economic implications is warranted. Lux Research Inc. has warned that nanomaterials could replace markets for existing commodities, disrupt trade, and eliminate jobs in nearly every industry (Lux Research 2004). They predict that “just as the British industrial revolution knocked hand spinners and hand weavers out of business, nanotechnology will disrupt a slew of multi billion dollar companies and industries” (Lux Research 2004). Given predictions that nanotechnology will drive a new industrial revolution, it is surprising that there is not greater reflection on lessons to be learned from
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the experiences of the 18–19th century industrial revolution. That revolution transformed the industrial base from manual labour to machinery, revolutionising agriculture, transport, manufacturing, and communications. It underpinned unprecedented economic growth and far greater industrial efficiencies, but led to massive job-shedding, a boom in prison populations and mass emigration of displaced labourers from Europe to its colonies and former colonies, especially to the “New World.” Now nanotechnology is predicted to transform our industrial base once again. It seems reasonable to suggest that a nanotechnology-driven revolution could similarly underpin massive economic expansion and greater industrial efficiencies, while also resulting in massive job losses and significant disruptions to international trade. This time there will be no safety valve offered by the possibility of mass emigration of redundant labourers. The economies of many of the world’s poorest countries are dependent on the export of commodities that may be vulnerable to displacement by novel nanomaterials. Governments’ lack of interest in probing the implications of large-scale nanotechnology-driven socio-economic disruption appears foolhardy.
Why have Not Predictions of a Nanotechnology “Revolution” been Subject to Critical Questioning? Australian ethicist Dr. Robert Sparrow points out (Sparrow 2007) that if a political movement were to announce their plans to initiate a “revolution” that would forever transform the fundamental bases of industry and society, result in large-scale social and economic upheaval, and be carried out with no input from civil society, their plans would be subject to vigorous critique, if not organised resistance. The absence of a widespread critical response to predictions by nanotechnology’s proponents of “revolution” may be largely explained by the very low levels of public awareness of nanotechnology. In a 2006 survey of 1,500 individuals that was conducted in the United States, over 60 percent of respondents said they have never even heard of “nano” or “nanotechnology,” 90 percent said they were unfamiliar with nanotechnology and only 1 percent could correctly define nanotechnology (Waldron, Spencer, and Batt 2006). Similarly high levels of unfamiliarity with nanotechnology have been found by other recent North American (Cobb and Macoubrie 2004) and United Kingdom (Lawrence 2005) surveys. A second reason for the lack of critical response to predictions of nanotechnology revolution is our familiarity with fast-moving technology-driven change. In the last fifteen years alone we have seen mobile phones, vastly increased computer power, and the Internet transform international trade and change the way people who have access to these technologies work, shop, share information, access essential services, and experience community. For many people, especially people in the Global North who have benefited most from access to information technology, predictions of further, nanotechnology-driven change may appear to offer “business as usual,” or even exciting new opportunities. However United States lawyer Joel Rothstein
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Wolfson cautions that “if the nanotechnology gap [both within and between nations] will be anything like the gap that exists in ownership of computers and usage of the Internet, the nanotechnology gap between haves and have-nots will pose real societal issues” (Rothstein 2003). Increasing numbers of authors from the Global South are questioning whether rather than alleviating poverty, the probability of a nano divide means that nanotechnology is more likely to exacerbate existing global socio-economic inequities.1 Yet given the pressing and immediate threats facing much of the Global South, it is perhaps unsurprising that the future implications of nanotechnology have so far received little public attention. A third reason for people not responding critically to predictions of nanotechnology “revolution” is that they just don’t believe the hype. There is a massive disconnect between the hundreds of first generation “nanoproducts” that are now on sale in supermarkets and the visionary predictions of nanotechnology (for example, represented by the images often found in popular science magazines and even government reports of surgical “nanobots” and mini-submarines circulating in our blood stream (L¨osch 2006)). Quite simply, the transparent sunscreens, odour-eating socks, longer-lasting paints, anti-bacterial food packaging, and germ-killing dishwashers that now incorporate nanomaterials hardly appear to herald the dawning of a new industrial revolution. It is possible that the next five to ten years will see the commercial release of more sophisticated nanodevices for manufacturing and medicine, and even nanobiotechnology-modified crops and animals, which may raise the level of interest or concern among the general public regarding nanotechnology applications. But it is difficult to predict which aspects of nanotechnology’s potential will be realised and which will never pass the speculative phase. It may well be that dramatic predictions of nanotechnology-driven “revolution” are simply never realised. A fourth reason for the failure to grapple with the longer term social implications of next generation nanotechnology is the growing recognition of the immediate risks to health and environment that are posed by first generation nanomaterials. Many civil society organisations have focused their attention on trying to ensure the safety of nanomaterials that are already present in workplaces and on supermarket shelves, rather than initiating a critical discussion about what social implications nanotechnology may or may not have many years from now. Perhaps the greatest responsibility to examine nanotechnology’s social implications lies with the governments who have invested billions of public dollars into nanotechnology research and development. Yet in the midst of the international race to boost commercial research, secure patents, and bring products to market as quickly as possible, government funding for public interest research is tiny in comparison with funding for commercial and military research (see below).
Will a Nanotechnology Revolution be the Solution to Our Environmental and Social Problems or the Source of New Ones? The analysis of the implications of a possible nanotechnology-driven revolution remains sharply divided. Nanotechnology optimists see nanotechnology delivering
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environmentally benign material abundance for all, by providing universal clean water supplies; atomically engineered food and crops resulting in greater productivity with less labour requirements; nutritionally enhanced interactive “smart” foods; cheap and powerful energy generation; clean and highly efficient manufacturing; radically improved formulation of drugs, diagnostics, and organ replacement; much greater information storage and communication capacities; and personalised interactive “smart” appliances and computers. Some nano-proponents suggest that convergent nanoscale technologies will also enable us to expand human mental, physical, and military performance and to dramatically extend life expectancy (Roco and Bainbridge 2002). Conversely, nanotechnology sceptics suggest that it will exacerbate existing socio-economic inequity and the unequal distribution of power by creating greater inequities between rich and poor through an inevitable nano-divide; entrenching corporate concentration and enabling its control of even the very building blocks of the natural world; further eroding food sovereignty; distorting international power relations through its military applications and trade impacts; providing the tools for ubiquitous surveillance, with significant implications for civil liberty; introducing serious and poorly understood risks to the health of humans and the environment; and breaking down the barriers between life and non-life, redefining even what it means to be human. While many nano-sceptics acknowledge the potential for nanotechnology to be used for applications which have social or environmental utility, they fear that in reality, the huge costs associated with nanotech research will demand a focus on profitable applications that will deliver a financial return. Groups like Friends of the Earth Australia are concerned that this will result in “smart” medicines, “smart” foods, new cosmetics, and “smart” appliances for the rich, rather than an effort to reduce the huge inequities in global food distribution and trade that underpin many of the life-threatening illnesses of the poor.
Existing Investment and Commercialisation Trends Show Clearly that Commercial and Military Interests are Driving Nanotechnology’s Development As with all new technologies, nanotechnology’s development trajectory will be shaped by the political, economic, military, and social context in which it emerges. In 2006 the United States government, which is the world’s biggest funder of nanotechnology research, spent 33 percent of the US$1.3 billion National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) budget on military applications (National Science and Technology Council 2005). This disproportionately large funding of military research raises its own obvious problems—not least the potential to spark a new nano arms race. But it also highlights the much lower priority accorded basic research to determine whether or not nanomaterials already found in consumer products and workplaces worldwide pose unacceptable toxicity risks to human health and the environment.
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Senior scientists have warned that nanomaterials may pose serious toxicity risks.2 But the Woodrow Wilson Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies has estimated that highly relevant research into nanotechnology’s health and environment risks receives less than 0.85 percent (US$11 million) of the United States NNI budget (Maynard 2006). Research into the environmental and health risks of nanomaterials received 5 percent of the European Sixth Framework Programme budget (2002– 2006).3 World-wide, a tiny 0.4 percent of nanotechnology research spending is on research into risks for human health and the environment (ETUI-REHS 2007). Funding for research into nanotechnology’s broader social implications and challenges is similarly small. The 2006 United States NNI budget included US$43 million for education and research on nanotechnology’s social implications, including economic, legal, and ethical issues. However, it is likely that the bulk of this money was directed to education programs aimed at promoting public acceptance of nanotechnology, rather than inquiry aimed at critical investigation of its social implications. At a nanotechnology workshop held in 2005 by the United Kingdom’s Royal Society and the Science Council of Japan (Royal Society-Science Council of Japan 2005), representatives from the United States National Science Foundation indicated that they would spend US$28 million on education activities, and only US$7.5 million (0.58 percent of the 2006 NNI budget) on research into nanotechnology’s ethical, legal, and social issues. The first wave of nanoproducts released to market also demonstrates the primacy of the profit motive in guiding nanotechnology’s development. Anti-wrinkle cosmetics, display screens for computers, televisions, and mobile phones, premium coatings for luxury cars, odour-eating socks, and self-cleaning windows and bathrooms are all targeted squarely at wealthy consumers in the Global North. In 2004, the United Kingdom’s Royal Society noted that of the nanomaterials then in commercial production, the majority were used by the cosmetics industry.4 The quest for rapid commercialisation may also mean that many companies do not conduct safety testing. Swiss researchers recently surveyed 138 Swiss and German companies that produce or apply nanomaterials commercially. Of the 40 companies who responded, 65 percent indicated that they perform no risk assessments (Siegrist et al. 2007).
The Inevitable Development of a “Nano Divide” and its Exacerbation of Existing Global Socio-Economic Inequity The consequences of huge global inequities in wealth, power, and quality of environment are already starkly evident—poverty, disease, and social unrest grip a large proportion of the world’s population. Given the current development trajectory of nanotechnology, it appears likely to exacerbate existing social and economic inequities and to create new ones. A nano-divide appears inevitable. This divide will develop firstly between the nano-poor (most of the world’s poorest countries) and the nano-enabled nations (the United States, Japan, and Europe are the nanotech leaders, although over sixty countries now have national research programs).
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It will also occur within each nation, as the gap between those who control the new nanotechnologies and those whose products, services, or labour are displaced by them—and between those who can afford nano-enhanced medicines, materials, and goods and those who cannot—becomes ever larger. The ETC Group observes: “Despite rosy predictions that nanotech will provide a technical fix for hunger, disease and environmental security in the South, the extraordinary pace of nanotech patenting suggests that developing nations will participate via royalty payments. . . In a world dominated by proprietary science, it is the patent owners and those who can pay license fees who will determine access and price” (ETC Group 2005). Vandana Shiva has argued that synthesising nanotechnology alternatives to food will “accelerate existing trends of patent monopolies over life—making a few corporations ‘life-lords’ ” (Shiva 2004). Fearing that the expansion of nanotechnology into agriculture will further erode the ability of peasant, fishing, and farming communities to retain local control and ownership of food production, the 2007 international “Nyeleni Forum for Food Sovereignty” resolved to work towards an immediate moratorium on nanotechnology (International Steering Committee 2007). Nanotechnology-driven commodity obsolescence would have profound disruptive impacts for economies everywhere, but it would have the most devastating impact on people in the Global South. Ninety-five out of 141 developing countries depend on commodities such as cotton, rubber, copper, or platinum for at least 50 percent of their export earnings (The South Centre 2005). South Africa’s Minister of Science and Technology, Mosibudi Mangena, has warned that “with the increased investment in nanotechnology research and innovation, most traditional materials in specialised applications will, over time, be replaced by cheaper, functionally rich and stronger nano-materials. It is important to ensure that our natural resources do not become redundant, especially because our economy is still very much dependant on them” (Mangena 2005).
Converging Nanoscale Technologies and the Controversial Field of Human Enhancement Nanotechnology may not only reshape every sector of our economies, but it may also redefine our understanding of what it means to be human. To an unprecedented degree, converging nanoscale technologies promise to blur the boundaries between medical treatment and human “enhancement.” The 2002 report “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science [NBIC]” (Roco and Bainbridge 2002) records the proceedings of a high level workshop sponsored by the United States National Science Foundation and the Department of Commerce. The workshop participants envisioned breakthroughs in NBIC-related areas that they thought could be possible in the next ten to twenty years. Their grandiose vision included the following:
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Fast, broadband interfaces directly between the human brain and machines will transform work in factories, control automobiles, ensure military superiority, and enable new sports, art forms and modes of interaction between people. . . The ability to control the genetics of humans, animals, and agricultural plants will greatly benefit human welfare; widespread consensus about ethical, legal, and moral issues will be built in the process; Factories of tomorrow will be organized around converging technologies and increased human-machine capabilities as “intelligent environments” that achieve the maximum benefits of both mass production and custom design (Roco and Bainbridge 2002).
These may well be examples of speculative technologies that have no chance of realisation. However, the fact that one of the key conference organisers is the senior advisor for nanotechnology at the United States National Science Foundation suggests that it is worth considering the possibility that they will in fact be successful with this work. The quest to use NBIC technologies to enhance human physical, cognitive, and military performance has drawn strong criticism from disabilities and human rights advocates concerned that it will create new inequities and further marginalise existing disadvantaged groups.5 It defies credibility to suggest that a “widespread consensus about ethical, legal, and moral issues will be built in the process” of manipulating human genetics and increasing human-machine capabilities. Who will decide which of these applications are ethically acceptable or socially desirable? What limits and safeguards will be established and who will enforce them? What efforts will be made to ensure that inevitably expensive convergent technologyenabled “enhancement” of a small number of people in the Global North will not be at the expense of providing basic medicines to the majority of the world’s people who still lack access to basic medicines? Will efforts to enhance humans result in further marginalisation of existing marginalised groups, for example disabled people? At what point will the quest to enhance human performance and extend human life produce an elite minority of wealthy, long-living, enhanced people, leaving an un-enhanced majority underclass?
Molecular Manufacturing—if it Proves Possible—could have an Unprecedented Disruptive Impact on Labour Markets and Global Trade Debates continue to rage within the nanotechnology industry about whether or not sophisticated molecular manufacturing is possible and achievable.6 Wishing to avoid a public backlash against “weird science,” most in the industry prefer not to speculate about whether or not atomically-precise manufacturing from decentralised desktop nanofactories will ever be possible. However, given the number of nano-analysts and nano-scientists who predict that molecular manufacturing will be achievable in the next twenty to fifty years (e.g., see a series of essays commissioned
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in 2006 by the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology published in the journal Nanotechnology Perceptions),7 it is important to give some thought to its potentially enormous implications for human society. The massive disruptions in agriculture, trade, manufacturing, culture and social relations that would accompany such developments are extremely difficult to conceive or comprehend. Using desktop molecular factories would reduce the need for labour in the manufacturing sector to virtually zero. It would also dramatically reduce the need to transport, warehouse, or sell goods and would have flow on effects for labour in many associated industries. Michael Vassar estimated (Vassar 2006) that 60–80 percent of all work would become unnecessary in the USA within the decade of widespread availability of desktop molecular manufacturing. What sort of society would we have where 70 percent of the population did not work? How would this vast group of people feed themselves and meet their basic needs? Would a large part of the population be denied a way of earning a living, becoming dependent on the charity of molecular manufacture? Beyond these basic questions of survival, what would a life dependent on charity without work or the means to purchase non-essential goods mean for people’s sense of identity, purpose, self-fulfillment, and happiness? Given the scale of potential impacts of molecular manufacturing, it would be reassuring to know that our governments were at least assessing whether or not it could be possible, and what its implications may be, rather than dismissing it as impossible.
The Urgent Need for a Moratorium on the Commercial Research, Development, Production, and Release of Nanoproducts It’s hard for us to comprehend just how nanotechnology will change our world and to what extent the dramatic predictions of “revolution” will be realised. But the current development trajectory of nanotechnology suggests that it will exacerbate existing social inequities and create new ones. There is an urgent need for a moratorium on the commercial production and release of nanoproducts until we can establish regulations to protect the public, workers, and the environment from health and environmental hazards. However alongside addressing these immediate toxicity risks, we must also consider how best to maximise societal benefits and to mitigate adverse socio-economic impacts. Perhaps most important, given the predictions of a “revolution” being driven by public monies, is the challenge to democratise nanotechnology’s development and governance. A first step would be to create mechanisms to ensure that public preference and priorities inform the determination of research priorities and the development of governance measures. Rather than nanotechnology’s development simply reflecting commercial and military interests, it is time for public participation and public interest priorities to shape its trajectory. For further information about Friends of the Earth Australia’s work on nanotechnology issues please visit http://nano.foe.org.au.
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Notes 1. For example see The South Centre (2005). The Potential Impact of Nanotechnologies on Commodity Markets: The Implications for Commodity Dependent Developing Countries. Trade-Related Agenda, Development and Equity (T.R.A.D.E.) Research Paper 4; N. Invernizzi and G Foladori (2005). Nanotechnology and the Developing World: Will Nanotechnology Overcome Poverty or Widen Disparities?. Nanotechnology Law and Business Journal 2.3:101–110; A. Mittal (2006). Food Security: Empty Promises of Technological Solutions. Development 49(4):33–38. 2. For excellent overviews of the emerging field of nanotoxicology, see G. Oberd¨orster, and J. Oberd¨orster (2005). Nanotoxicology: An Emerging Discipline from Studies of Ultrafine Particles. Environmental Health Perspectives 113(7):823–839; and P. Hoet, I. Bruske-Holfeld, and O. Salatta (2004). Nanoparticles–Known and Unknown Health Risks. Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2:12; and G. Oberd¨orster, A. Maynard, K. Donaldson, V. Castranova, J. Fitzpatrick, K. Ausman, J. Carter, B. Karn, W. Kreyling, D. Lai, S. Olin, N. Monteiro-Riviere, D. Warheit, and H. Yang (2005). Principles for Characterising the Potential Human Health Effects from Exposure to Nanomaterials: Elements of a Screening Strategy. Particle and Fibre Toxicology 2:8. 3. Figure 17, European Commission (2005). Some Figures about Nanotechnology R&D in Europe and Beyond. Compiled by Unit G4 Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies European Commission, Research DG. Available at http://www.innovationsgesellschaft.ch/nano regulation archiv.htm. 4. See Chapter 4, The Royal Society and The Royal Academy of Engineering, UK 2004). Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies. Available at http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/. 5. For example see G. Wolbring (2002) Science and Technology and the Triple D (Disease, Disability, Defect). In M. Roco and W. Bainbridge (2002), eds., Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science. NSF/DOC-sponsored report. Available at: http://www.bioethicsanddisability.org/nbic.html. See discussions in P. Miller and J.Wilsdon (2005), eds., Better Humans? The Politics of Human Enhancement and Life Extension. Demos, Collection 21. Available at www.demos.co.uk. 6. For Example read the debate between the late Professor Richard Smalley and Dr K. Eric Drexler regarding the possibility of molecular manufacturing: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8148/ 8148counterpoint.html. 7. Essays available at Center for Responsible Nanotechnology: http://www.crnano.org/CTF-Essays.htm.
References Australian Government Department of Industry, Tourism, and Resouces. 2006. Options for a National Nanotechnology Strategy. Australia: Australian Government Department of Industry, Tourism, and Resources. Cobb, M. and J. Macoubrie. 2004. Public Perceptions about Nanotechnology: Risks, Benefits and Trust. Journal of Nanoparticle Research 6(4): 395–405. ETC Group. 2005. Nanotech’s “Second Nature” Patents: Implications for the Global South. Ontario, Canada: ETC Group Publications, 87 and 88. ETUI-REHS-European Trade Union Institute for Research, Education and Health and Safety, 2007. Available at: http://hesa.etui-rehs.org/uk/newsevents/newsfiche.asp?pk=823. International Steering Committee, Nyeleni Forum for Food Sovereignty. 2007. Synthesis Report. Available at http://www.nyeleni2007.org/spip.php?article334. Lawrence S. 2005. Nanotech Grows Up. Technology Review 108(6): 31. L¨osch, A. 2006. Anticipating the Futures of Nanotechnology: Visionary Images as Means of Communication. Technology Analysis and Strategic Management 18(3/4): 393–409. Lux Research. 2004. Nanotechnology: The Nanotech Report 2004. New York: Lux Research Inc. Mangena M. 2005. Opening address by the Minister of Science and Technology, Mr. Mosibudi Mangena, at the Project AuTEK progress report function, at Cape Town Interna-
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tional Convention Centre, Cape Town. Available at http://www.info.gov.za/speeches/2005/ 05020812451001.htm. Maynard, A.D. 2006. Nanotechnology: A Research Strategy for Assessing Risk. Washington, D.C.: Projects on Emerging Nanotechnologies, 3. National Science and Technology Development Agency, The APEC Center for Technology Foresight. 2002. Nanotechnology: The Technology for the 21st Century. Vol II: The Full Report. Bangkok, Thailand: National Science and Technology Development Agency. National Science And Technology Council, Interagency Working Group on Nanoscience, Engineering and Technology. 1999. Nanotechnology: Shaping the World Atom by Atom. Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office. National Science and Technology Council. 2005. Research and Development Leading to a Revolution in Technology and Industry Supplement to the President’s FY 2006 Budget. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. Roco M. and W. Bainbridge, eds. 2002. Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science. Available at http://www.wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies. Rothstein, W.J. 2003. Social and Ethical Issues in Nanotechnology: Lessons from Biotechnology and Other High Technologies. Biotechnology Law Report 22(4): 376–396. Royal Society-Science Council of Japan. 2005. Report of Workshop on Impacts of Nanotechnologies. Available at http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/. Siegrist, M., Wiek, A., Helland, A., and H. Kastenholz. 2007. Risks and Nanotechnology: The Public is More Concerned Than Experts and Industry. Nature 2: 67. Sparrow, R. (forthcoming). Talkin’ ‘bout a (Nanotechnological) Revolution. IEEE Technology and Society. The Royal Society & The Royal Academy of Engineering. 2004. Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies: Opportunities and Uncertainties. The United Kingdom: The Royal Society & The Royal Academy of Engineering. The South Centre. 2005. The Potential Impact of Nanotechnologies on Commodity Markets: The Implications for Commodity Cependent Developing Countries. Trade-Related Agenda, Development And Equity (T.R.A.D.E.) Research Paper 4. Vandana, S. 2004. Research Foundation for Science Technology and Ecology, India. Cited in B. McKibben, “Promising the World, or Costing the Earth?” Ecologist Asian 12(1). Vassar, M. 2006. Corporate Cornucopia: Examining the Special Implications of Commercial MNT Development. Available at http://wise-nano.org/w/Vassar CTF Essay. Waldron, A., Spencer D., and C. Batt. 2006. The Current State of Public Understanding of Nanotechnology. Journal of Nanoparticle Research 8: 569–575.
Chapter 20
Nanotechnology: Challenges and the Way Forward Meyya Meyyappan
Countless investors, both large and small, are interested in nanotechnology simply because they believe that, if they wait long enough, they will eventually see substantial financial returns. Such windfalls, however, will not happen automatically (Kennedy, ch. 1; Currall et al., ch. 7; Sutcliffe, ch. 16). Even if investments help produce a marketable product, there may be little or no financial gain if the product cannot be scaled up in production or if it is not adopted. In this chapter, Meyyappan presents a number of “threats” to the economic success of nanotechnology. These threats, which he contrasts to the promise of benefits, include negative public perceptions of nanotechnology as well as a “potential derailing campaign” (compare Foladori and Invernizzi, ch. 2; ETC Group, ch. 10; and Miller, ch. 19). Meyyappan, a veteran promoter of nanotechnology, has followed—and indeed helped shape— the development of nanotechnology over the last decade as Director of NASA’s program on nanotechnology. Despite the fact that his day-to-day work is in a government funded laboratory, his vision of the future entails the commercialization of nanotechnology products. To reap the benefits he envisions from the research he oversees, Meyyappan urges all those hoping for a nanotechnology enabled future to help overcome likely challenges to commercialization. – Eds.
M. Meyyappan National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA Originally presented at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University on 15 December 2006.
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Nanotechnology is widely touted as the technology of the twenty first century. There is a tremendous amount of research activity across the world enabled by focused funding from governments and industry. The expectations from the society on the return on investment are high. Having followed the development of nanotechnology over the last ten years as the Director of the NASA Ames Center for Nanotechnology, I have come to identify key issues that must be resolved to realize the potential of nanotechnology. This article discusses challenges facing commercialization and evolution of the field as an enabling technology.
Introduction In 2000, the US President Bill Clinton raised nanotechnology to the level of a federal initiative by creating the US National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) (National Science and Technology Council 2000). Since then, most industrialized nations have introduced their own nanotechnology initiatives, making an acknowledgement that this is something serious, big, and necessarily will have an economic impact. In the last eight years, with all the focused funding worldwide both from governments and the private sector, there has been an explosion in research on all things ultra small. More importantly, there has been a worldwide race in filing patents and creating startup companies. The multinational mega corporations have made serious investments as well. The culmination of these activities raises the usual questions: What is it? Is it for real? Is it going to last? What is going to be the impact? Is there anything for the society to fear? What needs to be resolved in order to make nanotechnology commercially viable? This article addresses these questions.
What is it? One nanometer is one billionth of a meter. As the name implies, nanotechnology is about creating small things in the nanometer length scale (1–100 nm). This is where general agreement ends and further definition begins to diverge, depending on who is asked. The discussion of definition here is entirely based on the consensus description in the NNI, which, by the way, is not a declaration entirely conceived by government bureaucrats, rather a consensus document produced by participating members from the academia, industry and government. The length scale is only a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition. After all, by the time the president created the NNI and committed new funding, the semiconductor industry had already achieved sub-100 nm silicon complementary-metal-oxidesemiconductor (CMOS) devices. If the length scale was the only driving factor, there would have been no need to come up with focused funding for something on the verge of reaching the market. So, the sufficient condition or critical component of what defines nano is the effort to take advantage of the novel properties that arise solely because of the nanometer length scale. Properties indeed change when going from the macro or bulk scale of a material to the nanoscale. Some examples will be given shortly. This requirement involving change in property and
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insistance on novelty then eliminates from the nanotechnology definition all the routine miniaturization activities common in computer chip fabrication or other smaller versions of the microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Critics might disagree with the requirement; regardless, not a dime of the NNI funding in the US has gone into research on the straightforward miniaturization of the silicon chip along the Moore’s Law curve. Another problem with depending entirely on length scale for defining nanotechnology is that the ultimate object to be made does not necessarily have to be a nanosized object and may very well be micro or macro. The nanoscale is not a human scale; in reality, for the creation to be useful, the final product would likely be macrosized. Imagine using carbon nanotubes, a nanoscale material, to create the composites that would be used in developing an aircraft wing or automobile body panel. The emphasis eventually will be on a seamless integration of the nano-micro-macro scales to create useful products. There are a couple of interesting points about the nanotechnology definition and the NNI efforts. Both implicitly from the definition and explicitly from the needs and objectives of the funding agencies (National Science Foundation as well as the mission-driven agencies such as the Department of Defense in the US and their counterparts in other countries), the focus of nanotechnology is on creating useful or functional things. Popular fiction aside, with early storylines centered on doomsday scenarios unleashed by uncontrolled nanocreations, the nanotechnology funding worldwide has been to advance the scientific knowledge which could lead to improved quality of life for the citizens. Incidentally, in that sense, the NNI documents, participating agencies, and funded proposals do not discuss or engage in anything closely related to self-replicating machines. Unfortunately the latter has been a diversion from all the serious work (more at the start of the NNI than at present), and widely and conveniently used by critics and skeptics to fuel fear among the public. As mentioned earlier, the novel properties that arise at the nanoscale are fundamental to this technology revolution. As the size decreases, the surface to volume ratio increases, interface effects become dominant, and quantum mechanics begins to play a key role. All of these lead to a change in physical, chemical, electrical, mechanical, optical, magnetic and other properties of materials. For example, gold melts at 1064◦ C whereas a 5 nm gold particle exhibits a lower melting point by nearly two hundred degrees. The bandgap of silicon is 1.1 eV whereas a silicon nanowire 5 nm in diameter exhibits a bandgap of nearly 3 eV. There are many such interesting changes in material properties when dimensions are reduced to the nanoscale. Synthesis of nanomaterials, characterization and understanding of the novel properties and development of applications that exploit these properties constitute the field of nanotechnology as advocated by the US NNI and similar initiatives abroad and practiced by the worldwide scientific community.
Impact of Nanotechnology as an Enabling Technology All existing products are based on one or more of the properties of the material used to construct that product. Since the primary effect of nanoscale is a change in all kinds of properties as discussed above, we can expect the impact of nanotechnology
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to be on all the existing products or processes we have at present. By considering economic sectors, the impact of nanotechnology will be felt on computing, memory, data storage, communications, electronics, photonics, materials and manufacturing, chemicals and plastics, energy, environment, transportation, health and medicine, national security, space exploration, etc. Nanotechnology is therefore not any single technology and we should speak in terms of nanotechnologies. However, it is more appropriate to recognize it as an enabling technology. In other words, nanotechnology is not an end by itself, instead it is a means to an end which can be any one of the economic sectors mentioned above. Other examples of enabling technologies from the past include textiles, the railroad, the automobile, aviation and computers. Railroad and automotive technologies are not simply about steam engines and internal combustion engines respectively or about all the mechanical things that go with them. Though that is what goes on in the factories producing them, these technologies are more than that: they enable bringing people together, transportation of goods and services to the market, and promotion of commerce. Computers, manufacturing of which is categorized under semiconductor or electronics industry, have changed the conduct of business in every economic sector. Therefore, the above technologies were truly unique at the time of their emerging and classified as enabling technologies. Nanotechnology is similarly expected to be an enabling technology with grand and pervasive impacts. If nanotechnology is an enabling technology, then the timeline scenarios and acceptance factors would evolve differently in each of the above economic sectors. Even the rules of the game would be different in each case since nano is attempting to impact established sectors. For example, the use of nanomaterials in the energy sector (batteries, fuel cells, solar cells) may well evolve differently from nanoelectronics or photonics in the communication sector or nanocomposites in a risk-averse sector such as commercial aviation. It is also hard to imagine similar or common rules of engagement among diverse industries regarding investment and timelines for return on investment, regulations, risk tolerance, labor rules, public acceptance, etc. There are two consequences to this enabling aspect. First, it is not possible and would not make sense, from regulation and public policy points of view, to come up with a quick, simple and singular policy that addresses the unique needs and circumstances of each sector. Second, as nanotechnology matures and is accepted in various industries, the term itself and the special reference to length scale may lose significance in the long run.
Challenges Facing Nanotechnology In order for nanotechnology to mature, it must overcome the growing pains associated with early development. As with any of the previous technology waves, nanotechnology also faces early challenges; some of them are familiar but most are unique to nanotechnology. Understanding the origin and nature of the challenges is important to overcome them in due course and realize the potential in the future.
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These challenges can be conveniently grouped as “internal” and “external” challenges. The internal challenges are generic to most emerging technologies and related to successful commercialization. The origin of as well as the solution for these challenges lies with the players themselves: academics, inventors, entrepreneurs, investors, corporations, government agencies funding early research, etc. These are the types of challenges the players recognize as they go along and implement a course correction as necessary. Even when mistakes are made early, goals do eventually get achieved though there may be a compromise in terms of other figuresof-merit such as lost time and resources. The external challenges are unpredictable and somewhat unique to nanotechnology; these are related to public perceptions, safety aspects, opposition from special interest groups such as environmentalists and religious groups, etc. Managing these external challenges or “threats” may not be easy for the players and in the worst case scenario, they have the potential to derail the progress. Such challenges must be addressed for nanotechnology to progress into the next phase of commercialization. The future development of nanotechnology as an enabling technology requires the players to negotiate amongst themselves (internal) as well as with other larger constituents (external). Both types of challenges are discussed below. The first internal or commercialization challenge is the recognition that what we have had until now has been mostly nanoscience and very little nanotechnology. There is a tremendous difference between the two; failure to recognize the difference leads to false or unrealistic expectations of timelines and commercialization. Nanoscience is about understanding the change in properties of materials at the nanoscale, characterizing such changes, laboratory level synthesis of nanomaterials, demonstrating the relevance of the above in some applications based on the novel properties, etc. This is precisely what is going on in most academic institutions across the world right now. Nanotechnology, in contrast, is about specific demonstration of a product or process incorporating the novel ideas confirmed by nanoscience and all other research associated with that product or process. For example, there have been numerous papers in the literature about carbon nanotube (CNT) based chemical sensors to detect gases and vapors such as industrial exhaust, bomb signatures, or biotoxins. All these articles have shown that some property of the CNTs (such as conductivity or capacitance) changes reproducibly when exposed to a gas or vapor. This is just nanoscience. Indeed, it is not uncommon to see claims of nanosensor development in an article that describes only the change in property mentioned above. Such a claim, however innocent and unintended, is entirely misleading. Any device fabricated in the above demonstration is not a sensor because this device cannot yet tell us the identity of the gas or vapor. What the investigator has done is to blow a known vapor mixed with air on the sensor and record an electrical signal. In real life, vapors and gases do not come from labeled cylinders. In contrast, nanotechnology in this context would include developments in establishing not only the ability of the nanotube to produce a signal in response to the blown vapor and the sensitivity levels, but more importantly selectivity leading to absolute discrimination, an economically feasible process for the sensor fabrication, and all the engineering constraints facing a system developer such as power consumption
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issues, signal processing, packaging, reliability, etc. Indeed, successful nanotechnology work, using the knowledge gained from nanoscience, would lead to product development in a reasonable time period. The discussion above related to science vs. technology is an age old one. In the case of nanotechnology, as time progresses, transition from nanoscience to technology and product development will certainly happen on a large scale. Nevertheless, it is worth bringing up the discussion here because the research community at large has been loosely using the term nanotechnology without understanding the implications. This is evident from many of the startup companies that have sprouted in recent years. Take the sensor case discussed above as an example. There is a rush to start a company right after obtaining the first set of results and the ensuing publication showing a change in property when the nanotube is exposed to a vapor. Neither the science professor who did the study nor the venture capitalist (VC) clearly understands or appreciates the distinction between nanoscience and nanotechnology. Since the clock for a startup starts ticking immediately after the first round funding and possibly stopping after three to four years (which is all the VCs have the patience for), starting from nanoscience does not provide enough time for a tangible product to emerge. On the other hand, such a sensor product, at least in a prototype form, is entirely likely within that magical period if the starting point were nanotechnology. Hence, formation of a company prematuredly based on nanoscience instead of nanotechnology is one of the major reasons why several nano startups have failed already. A logical extension of the point made above is that early participation from the engineering community is critical for the future commercial success of nanotechnology—both at the federal research funding levels and in startup companies. As of 2007, since we are still in the early years of the nano initiative, the funding emphasis at various government agencies has been on nanoscience with more money flowing into academic science departments than the engineering departments. There is a tremendous role in early research that can be played by the engineering departments: novel circuits and architectures for nanoelectronics, novel memory and data storage schemes, large scale production of nanomaterials, nano-micro-macro integration, system reliability to name a few. A proper balance would be necessary shortly to shift the emphasis to commercial development. A significant fraction of the nanotechnology commercialization effort occurs in startup companies, at least in the US, if not in the rest of the world. Then a critical question related to achieving commercial success involves which business models are most favorable. The tendency in the biosector for the last two decades has been an IP (intellectual property) to IPO (initial public offering) model. In this model, companies generally focus on piling up of patents in their domain and then pursue any exit strategy including IPO within five to seven years from incubation (sometimes even sooner) based on the perceived strength of their IP instead of a realistic product in the near future. Many of these companies—not all—typically are “day care centers” for research scientists wherein the focus is more research of the same kind as in the laboratories of the professor who founded the company. Indeed, not surprisingly, many of the (early) employees are students and post doctoral
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researchers from the founding group. In this model, when the exit strategy happens, early investors and founders strike it rich; but without the product or prototype in place and with declining resources, a large percentage of the startups eventually fail. Alternatively, successful companies in the bio and other sectors such as semiconductors have pursued a “product to IPO” model. It must be emphasized that it would be an oversimplification to assign blame for the small success rate among startups exclusively to the choice of business model. The reality is more complex. In any case, it remains to be seen if nanotechnology will be supported by similar business models as biotechnology. The biotechnology model involving acquiring broad patents may not bode well for nanotechnology, thus raising intellectual property as the next big issue that needs to be resolved for the commercialization of nanotechnology to be realized. There are simply way too many patents out there with early filing of broad and sometimes even vague concepts but no demonstration of any kind. While this does not violate current patent laws or regulations, it has been like the stampede during gold rush to stake out claims. This proliferation of patents with overlapping and all encompassing claims is certainly going to pose problems to big corporations as well as hard working, earnest entrepreneurs. No one, except the litigation attorneys and their firms, will benefit from this. Exacerbating this problem is the new trend of setting up nonproductive patent boutiques that specialize in collecting patents in a specific area from individual inventors or small universities and organizations without their own commercial technology office, for the sole purpose of inducing litigation fears and collecting large ransoms from companies with deep pockets. These problems related to intellectual property—if they are indeed problems, and there will be disagreement on that—are not going to be solved any time soon as this would require congressional action to change patent laws, etc. In any case, none of this would affect commercialization in countries where international patent laws are blatantly disregarded. One of the biggest issues threatening the future of nanotechnology and successful commercialization is the gap between expectation and reality. There has been a significant amount of hype about the economic benefit of various nanotechnologies and anticipated products, mostly from the vested inventors—both from academia and startup companies. In this regard, the big corporations are invariably silent, understandably due to the desire not to tip off the competition. For the other two above, except in some cases, silence is not the desirable option especially when promotion, tenure, prestigious awards, several rounds of VC fund raising etc., are at stake. While the hyping may not always be deliberate, it may simply be due to ignorance about what it takes to convert laboratory observations to tangible and economically viable products. Beyond that, certain amounts of hyperbole is inevitable in a free society when way too many media outlets—trade publications, newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, and the Internet media—are chasing professors and entrepreneurs for a quick, catchy quote, and the public relations offices of universities make sure to get the “visibility” their patrons deserve. Whereas some of the hype is harmless and forgotten quickly, any sustained distortion of reality is damaging. Indeed, prior to the nanotechnology wave, we have seen debacles that followed the dot.com hype.
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Fortunately, the indiscriminate funding frenzy of the dot.com era has not happened here, possibly because the memory of the dot.com scars is still fresh among the investment community. In general, it takes a good decade or more for a scientific discovery to make it as a product in the market. This is simply because the road to releasing a product is long with numerous milestones: converting a discovery or a simple widget into a system; development of an economically viable manufacturing process; product robustness to meet the working conditions; quality control; safety aspects of the material or product; government approval in case of some products (medical, for example); market testing and acceptance; etc. This has been a time-tested pathway in numerous technical sectors and there is no reason to expect that nanotechnology would be an exception. This reality needs to be communicated clearly to the public and the elected representatives; otherwise premature and misplaced disappointments can turn the research funding spigot off. Finally, if nanotechnology indeed is the technology of the twenty first century, then there must be a serious commitment to educating our future generation of scientists and engineers about this emerging field. Research universities both in the US and abroad have been doing remarkably well in offering specialized Masters degree programs and even undergraduate degree options in nanotechnology or at least elective courses. Better efforts are needed to educate those at the non-research undergraduate institutions and community colleges. And of course, what more can be said that has not been said before about the need to improve the science education at the K-12 level?
External Threats or Challenges The first of these has to do with the potential environmental, health, and safety (EHS) risks arising from nanomaterials and related products. In principle, this aspect should be classified as an internal challenge due to the possible control by the players themselves. However, given the involvement of a broad range of stakeholders such as the public, workers, etc., it becomes an external hurdle. Also, deliberate classification of it as an external threat is appropriate since in a free society with an extraordinary range of outlets for information, one safety or health problem or mis-step with one nanomaterial has the potential to castigate the entire field. At this writing, EHS risks of nanomaterials and products are mostly unknown. It is possible to take comfort in the fact that the existing laws and regulations in civilized nations about materials and products of any size would protect the public and workers from problems and malpractices, if any, with materials and products of nanosize. But it is entirely possible that companies can and will ship nanomaterials and nano-enabled products, marking “unknown” on the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS). In that case, when problems arise, it will be too late for the segment of population that has been affected. The society cannot wait for government intervention/protection until after the first accident or threat; it is prudent to pay attention to
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such risks before large scale industrialization activity happens. So, it is undeniable that generating the knowledge and database about the EHS risks of all nanomaterials is critical, if not daunting. The NNI in the US and Europe has taken this aspect seriously as evidenced by numerous discussions in public documents and conferences. But it is not clear how much effort is concentrated on research related to safety and health aspects and generation of the necessary data. Given its importance and its potential to kill the future of the field, it would not be entirely unreasonable to demand setting aside a specific fraction of the nanotechnology funding in every nation for creating the relevant knowledge and database. This is a proper alternative to leaving this chore to the industry, which can potentially fall short of the necessary actions due to financial, time-to-market, and other pressures. Even when data begins to emerge, the EHS risk is going to be a difficult issue to manage for the players because effective communication to the public and elected officials in a timely manner is key to a successful future but difficult at best. Consider for example carbon nanotubes, the wonder material. Investigations are on the horizon to assess their toxicity. Suppose it were to turn out to be the twenty first century equivalent of asbestos. Does this mean that CNTs should be banished across the board? In reality, it would become an issue only in applications dealing with bulk quantities, for example, in composites, coatings, fillers and the like. In all these cases, tons of nanotubes produced and shipped in fifty gallon drums would affect everyone in the chain: labor in the production plant, shipping and receiving workers, those who process them into products, and possibly the consumers depending on how the packaged product contains the nanotubes. In contrast, a sensor or an electronics device that contains carbon nanotubes fixed firmly on a substrate through in situ growth like how it is done with silicon in the semiconductor industry (not via bulk production) and completely packaged (like a computer chip) may not pose a hazard. Each of these sensors or devices uses only a microgram or less of nanotubes. That is, it takes a million discarded devices in a landfill to collect one gram of nanotubes, even if it is collectable. We have more nickel and cadmium in our batteries anytime in the house and incredible amounts of them in our landfills. Based on experience from the semiconductor industry, it is clear nanotubes can be safely used in such fabricated devices. The question then is how to communicate such a distinction effectively to avoid a mass hysteria and indiscriminate, across-the-board banishing of something instead of allowing safe usage where no threat is posed. The second threat is related to public fear about nanotechnology that is a direct consequence of all the misinformation out there. The origin of the misinformation goes way back to the time of NNI planning in the US and even before. Consideration of self-replicating machines and molecular assembly of such machines was advocated as the central theme of nanotechnology by a few individuals. However, this aspect was not included in the NNI plans originally. Even in a 2006 publication reviewing the NNI progress (National Research Council 2006), an external committee concluded that construction of such machines is not possible based on current science and engineering knowledge. While such machines can be modeled on the computer, the report in closing says that the community does not know how to build it nor is there a research strategy or plan to do so. Also, in reality, there is
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no government funding for such research and there are no known activities at major academic or industrial laboratories. In spite of this, self-replication of nanomachines and nanobots has received extensive coverage in the media, at least in the early years of the NNI. This is not entirely surprising or unexpected since the press has this notion that every story has to be sensational to grab the public’s attention. For the members of the press, a selfreplicating machine beats a novel memory device or lightweight composite any day. Besides some early irresponsible coverage in the press, one or two fictions published based on exotic nano creations have done their part to create negative images and/or fear of nanotechnology among a certain segment of the public. This segment of the voting public can and will influence their elected representatives—some of whom also get their information only from such sources—to regulate nanotechnology before it can even play its intended role in the commercial area. There are also organized groups which oppose nano and biotechnologies based on religious beliefs. Whereas it is understandable that religious groups would oppose stem cell research, cloning or genetically modified food, it is hard at first to comprehend that they would oppose nanotechnology. After all, who would oppose advances ranging from fuel saving composites for aircraft and automobiles, amazingly fast computers, infinite memory and data storage devices, etc., to better suntan lotions, and lightweight tennis racquets? Well, none of these matter when man is also believed to be on his way to create a machine that creates countless off-spring machines which could make the humans and even God more or less irrelevant. When this is the impression of nanotechnology among religious groups, their opposition should not be surprising to anyone. The real danger to the field is that this group is more powerful than any in influencing legislation, at least in the US but much less so in Europe and Asia. Nanotechnology is not the first to experience a potential derailing campaign in human civilization. Records indicate that there was opposition to the steam engine in the nineteenth century. But we have trains today. So, one suggestion may be to ignore all the opposition, charge ahead, and make sure that this nano train also arrives at the station. But it is not that simple since it is not the nineteenth century. People vote in democratic nations, and organized groups lobby Congress with their votes as well as campaign contributions. Educating the public and engaging the opposition groups is the only remedy. This is not to imply that it is a simple public relations problem that can be solved with better information. The public is legitimately concerned about the right approaches to utilize nanotechnology, safeguards against unintended consequences, ownership and control of technology, etc. Here again, there is a strong need to communicate government and industry positions to the public. Both in the US and Europe, government sponsored conferences have addressed the subject of ethically responsible development; but these conferences and their positive and reassuring messages have not reached the public through the media at the same scale as the early images of nanobots that appeared in the press. Again, it should not be entirely surprising to anyone who follows the media practices closely. Whereas misleading stories may appear on the front page or mistakes could be found
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in prominent features, the corrections and apologies usually are printed as a small note somewhere buried inside, and equal coverage correcting oversights is almost never done. There are equivalents of this in other forms of media as well. In this regard, educating the public is not only the responsibility of the government funding agencies, the nano research community and the industry, but the media should play a major role since it provides the public the window to the world. Hence, there is a need for the players to engage and utilize the media—and this is not to mean “manage” the media—in a timely and responsible manner whether assuaging needless fears about improbable self-replicating machines or addressing legitimate EHS concerns. Developing a trusting relationship between the players and the media is critical for this public educational process to be successful. Perhaps the NSF Centers for Nanotechnology in Society can play this crucial communication role. First, the scholars at these centers are not close to the technology and have no vested interest. For this reason, they will be viewed as neutral in their assessment and pronunciations to the public. Second, they can communicate more effectively than an average scientist or engineer. The next issue is related to globalization. Nanotechnology R&D exists largely due to public subsidy, and therefore the public has the right to expect tangible returns in terms of safe, improved products and jobs. While the former can be almost certainly guaranteed to the citizens of the Western nations footing the bill, a similar guarantee on job creation is impossible. Creation and loss of jobs is determined by public policy, tax incentives, industrial practices, cost reduction measures to meet and survive global competition, pressure to return short term gains to investors and market analysts, etc. In a globalized world, shipping of jobs overseas in every sector is as common as shipping of packages. Since nano as an enabling technology influences established sectors and markets, there is no reason to believe that the nation advancing a particular technology would have manufacturing jobs in that area. For example, regardless of how much of a monopoly the US may have in patents (hypothetically) on field emission devices, liquid crystal displays, or flat panel technology, we may never see manufacturing jobs related to television sets since this sector (and other consumer goods) was surrendered to Asia long ago. It is possible to argue, while acknowledging the above, that the tangible return to the investing nation such as the USA is creation of high paying, white collar R&D jobs, reinvestment of the royalties from the intellectual property on other things at home, etc. But in a nation of 300 million people, such returns only benefit a small segment of the population. Reconciling public investment vs. public benefit is always a tricky issue but in all fairness not unique to nanotechnology. Another question arising from the globalization nature of the world relates to the benefits of nanotechnology reaching poor nations, that is the perennial issue of the haves vs. the have-nots. An honest response should be why this would be an issue now when the have-nots have not yet caught up with several of the previous technology waves, namely, the Internet, the computers, and the information revolution, and if we continue in the reverse order, electricity. It is amazing that a sizable world population has no access to electricity even a hundred years after its invention. Again, these inequalities are determined by public policy, war, illiteracy,
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corruption, colonization, etc. But, realistically, nanotechnology can mitigate some of these inequities across the globe. Fundamental to global poverty and other related maladies is lack of cheap, clean energy sources. If nanotechnology were to introduce revolutions in this area via affordable solar or another form of energy for example, it could lead to clean water, efficient agriculture, and plentiful food supply, transportation, etc., raising the standard of living in poor nations. At the right price point, subsidies and philanthropy may not be needed to supply the above to the impoverished world; rather, it would make enormous business sense to address their needs. Even if the margins were to turn out to be low, the volume of two to three billion customers could make up for it.
Concluding Remarks Nanotechnology has gained worldwide recognition for its economic possibilities in diverse sectors. We are at a very early stage, exploring the possibilities through focused research funding. It will be another decade or so before we begin to see the impact on a noticeable scale. Beyond that, sustained success, if it happens, will continue to bear fruits for decades to come. Looking at the silicon revolution as an example, it has been in the making for about sixty years now, starting from the transistor in New Jersey in the 1940s to the emerging of integrated circuits in Silicon Valley in the 1960s and building of fabrication plants all over the world since then. Even though the evolution slope has been phenomenal and unprecedented in the last two decades, we cannot forget that this has been a six decade affair and the progress in the first two decades was meager. Considering civil aviation, a slowerpaced industry, the airplane has been primarily an aluminum tube since the days of the Wright Brothers. While progress in avionics, etc., in the industry has been remarkable, only now composites are being introduced (nearly at 30–50 percent level) to construct the plane even though composite research has been in progress for over three decades. The point here is, even though we have become an instant gratification society, science and technology cannot be hurried up. This means that sustained public funding should continue for decades. It is common knowledge that computers, aeronautics, the Internet, and almost every technological miracle since World War II had long and sustained research funding from the government. These early years of development of nanotechnology are the right time to put whatever safeguards, if any, in place, particularly the environmental, health and safety, aspects of nanomaterials but also addressing concerns about intellectual property and public involvement. Generating the toxicology database is a monumental work, considering the vast array of nanomaterials emerging from the labs. Toxicology studies supported by few grants here and there would be like digging a mountain tunnel with a few chisels. Ideally there should be a sizeable set-aside of the technology funding for EHS and sociological aspects. Finally, there must be a clear, honest, and timely communication to the public about the benefits, timeline, EHS risks, and other sociological aspects affecting the society.
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Acknowledgments This article is based on a presentation by the author at the Arizona State University Center for Nanotechnology in Society. The author benefited greatly from his discussions with the ASU-CNS members. He is grateful to Dr. Cynthia Selin of ASU-CNS for her critical comments and suggestions.
References National Research Council. 2006. A Matter of Size: Triennial Review of the national Nanotechnology Initiative. Committee to Review the National Nanotechnology Initiative. Washington DC: The National Academies Press. National Science and Technology Council, Committee on Technology and Subcommittee on Nanoscale Science, Engineering, and Technology. 2000. National Nanotechnology Initiative: The Initiative and its Implementation Plan. Washington DC: US government Printing Office.
Further Reading Roco, M.C., Williams, R.S., and Alivisatos, P. (eds.). 2000. Nanotechnology Research Directions: Vision for Nanotechnology in the Next Decade, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000. Roco, M.C. and Bainbridge, W.S. (eds.). 2007. Nanotechnology: Societal Implications. Springer. Foster, L.E. 2006. Nanotechnology: Science, Innovation and Opportunity. Prentice Hall.
Chapter 21
Technology Assessment of Nanotechnology: Problems and Methods in Assessing Emerging Technologies Ulrich Fiedeler
Understanding and assessing technological futures is, quite simply, an immense challenge. In this chapter, Fiedeler argues that nanotechnology is particularly problematic. He begins with a number of technical reasons why nanotechnology poses a special challenge including that it is in an early stage of development (L¨osch, ch. 9), is an interdisciplinary endeavor (Soueid, ch. 6), and is an enabling technology rather than a technology created with a specific application goal or field in mind (Goorden et al. ch. 14). But in his efforts to cut through these difficulties, Fiedeler finds that the social complexities are just as confounding (B¨unger, ch. 5; Sutcliffe, ch. 16; Rip and te Kulve, ch. 4). He argues that anyone trying to assess nanotechnology faces the additional challenge that there are a number of groups—including scientists, politicians, corporate executives, and even academics—who benefit from presenting nanotechnology in vague terms. A broad and malleable definition of nanotechnology helps individuals and organizations make stirring claims without being held responsible for fulfilling specific promises. Despite the forces that cloud discussions about nanotechnology, Fiedeler maintains that coming to grips with the precise nature of nanotechnology is imperative if one is to develop an accurate assessment of it. He concludes by offering a number of approaches that one can use in this process. – Eds.
U. Fiedeler Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis, Karlsruhe, Germany Originally presented at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University on 19 January 2007.
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Introduction Nanotechnology (NT) has been attracting a lot of attention. Some discussions about NT have reached a broader public (Joy 2000; Schirrmacher 2001), and a huge amount of funding has been and is still being allocated to NT research programs (Rieke and Bachmann 2004; Roco 2004). These discussions are fuelled by claims by scientists and science managers that NT will radically change our whole lives (Clinton 2000; Roca 2003; Uldrich et al. 2003) and have generated rather high expectations. As a result, social technology studies (STS) and researchers concerned with ethical, legal, and social aspects (ELSA) of technology face questions (from politicians, media, and other actors and voices, but also from each other) of what should one think about NT and what impact on society is to be expected. Analysing the impact of an emerging technology on society is the core task of technology assessment (TA). While STS focuses more on providing a fundamental understanding of the development of new technology and its relation to and interaction with society, TA focuses on the impact (see Bechmann et al. 2007; Gloede 2007). This article thus gives its particular attention to TA of NT. Even though there are differences between STS research and TA with regard to the addressees, aim, focus, and scope, there are many similarities in the subject. Therefore, although in the following I only use the term STS research, this also refers to TA. In general, with every emerging technology, and especially with NT, STS researchers face a dilemma. Even among natural scientists working in this field, the notion of NT is not clear and, in the NT research community, there is no common understanding of what counts as NT. On the other hand, STS researchers are being asked to assess its implications on science, the economy, and society. The expectations placed on STS researchers are fuelled by the promises and claims the promoters of NT make about its impact. Notwithstanding this dissent, even within the community of researchers in the field of NT, STS researchers must have a concept of NT in order to be able to assess it. In this article, I present some reasons why much confusion accompanies the analysis of the phenomenon called NT, and why assessment of the impact of NT on society presents a challenge. Most of the reasons for this challenge stem from the characteristics of NT, which are discussed in Section I. One reason for the confusion is that the NT phenomenon is not only a scientific activity, but also a social phenomenon that goes beyond science as a social subsystem. As I will make clear in the following, one crucial characteristic of NT is the discussion of NT itself. To understand why NT is so difficult to grasp and to analyse its impact on society, it is important to understand the dynamics of the NT debate (Section II). In clarifying this, it is useful to distinguish between research activities performed in the name of NT, discussion of NT, and analysis of this discussion. To this end, in Section II I introduce a distinction between two different levels of the debate on NT: the discussion of NT’s role in science and the economy, and its potential for solving basic problems such as pollution, energy, and water supply, and health care is referred to as a level 1 debate. By contrast, contributions that aim to analyse the above-mentioned discussion are termed level 2 debate. In this level 2 debate,
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NT is perceived as a social phenomenon, and contributions to this debate aim to understand NT as a social construct. The dynamics of the level 1 debate are discussed in Section II. In that section I conclude with the observation that at present researchers analysing NT as a social phenomenon are not aware that their studies often do not contribute to the level 2 debate, which would increase understanding of NT, but are only statements in the realm of the level 1 debate.
Section I: Characteristics of Nanotechnology Analysing a technology requires a concept of that technology. That means it must be clear what belongs to NT and what does not—what are its characteristics and their specifications? To elucidate in the following why NT is so difficult to understand, a list of the phenomenological characteristics of NT is presented that explains why so much effort has been and is still being made to this end (see Fiedeler et al. 2004). At this point, it should be mentioned that discussion of these characteristics does not constitute an attempt to define NT, nor do these characteristics form part of a definition. They are extracted from an analysis of NT and the discussion related to it. They illustrate why understanding NT is complicated, especially insofar as it is perceived as a social phenomenon, and they help us understand the dynamics of the NT debate. I think it essential to keep these NT characteristics in mind in our attempt to analyse NT, so that we can find the right questions, relevant subjects, and adequate methods to analyse its impact. There are five main characteristics of NT that explain why NT is so hard to grasp and why it is difficult to assess its impact on society: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
There is no clear definition. NT is genuinely interdisciplinary research. NT is predominantly an enabling technology. Most application concepts for NT are at an early stage of development. The debate on NT is a crucial property of NT itself.
In the context of this paper, the first characteristic is the most important one and will thus be discussed in much more detail than the others.
The Diversity of NT and the Lack of a Clear Definition The term NT encompasses a wide range of tools, techniques, and potential applications (see Paschen, et al. 2004; Malsch 2004; Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering 2004; Brune et al. 2006), and most of these are concepts and ideas rather than real technologies. Most of the activities under the name of NT could be better described as nanoscience, and in addition many of them were already being performed before the term NT arose.1 These observations indicate that NT is not
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well or clearly defined, but rather a very diverse field of research and technology development. Unlike most established disciplines and technologies, NT is characterised primarily in terms of size2 : “Nanotechnology (is made up of) areas of technology where dimensions and tolerances in the range of 0.1–100 nm play a critical role” (Nanoforum 2007). Thus the definition does not impose constraints on the subject of NT, which leads to many different research activities focusing on various topics of investigation being assigned to NT. For example, all fields of biology where structures in the nanometre range are being investigated and manipulated could be included, such as biological membranes, complex molecules such as enzymes, or even cell compartments. Some researchers claim the cell as an archetypal nanomachine (Jones 2004). In addition, from this point of view, the whole field of genetic engineering could be attributed to NT. Chemistry also works with atoms and molecules, and therefore seems to represent the paradigm of the NT vision: to build up new structures atom by atom (National Science and Technology Council 1999). Despite this, usually only certain fields of chemistry are assigned to NT, such as template chemistry or stereochemistry. Atoms and single molecules themselves, with dimensions in the range of 0.001 nm, are not usually attributed to NT. To conclude, the majority of research activities in chemistry are not assigned to NT. A third field closely related to NT is materials science. In its early stages, materials science concentrated on bulk material and more or less crude surface treatments such as physical polishing with fine grains and cleaning with detergents. New developments in analytical tools and process technology, however, now make it possible to construct planar surfaces with the accuracy of atomic layers. Other examples are coatings with a thickness of only a few atoms, which are composed of different elements, or ceramics and other compound materials with crystallites in the nanometre range. A further subject of nanoscience is the design of structured material constructed of building blocks of biological origin. A field on which high expectations are placed is nanoelectronics or molecular electronics. The aim of this research field is to build up electronic devices on the basis of complex molecules like DNA or building blocks like fullerenes or carbon nanotubes for the next generation of microelectronics when conventional (lithographic) structuring technology reaches its limits.3 No distinction is made these days between microelectronics and nanoelectronics: since some crucial parts in microelectronic devices are several tenths of a nanometre in size, the whole field of microelectronics is often attributed to NT.4 In conclusion, the broad definition of NT makes it extremely challenging for STS and TA researchers to assess the impact of NT on environment and society. The inclusion of microelectronics in NT alone widens up the object of investigation tremendously for STS researchers concerned with assessing the social impacts of NT, since research on the social implications of microelectronics is a huge challenge which has been undertaken for over thirty years already (see Wingert and Riehm 1985). With regard to the broad definition of NT, one can illustrate the challenge of assessing NT with an analogy. If one steps back to survey all the research and
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development activities attributed to NT, the impression might be gained that the question of NT’s impact is equal to the question of what is science’s impact. Nobody would attempt to answer that question, and for good reason.
Interdisciplinary Nature of NT As can be seen in the examples presented above, much research in the field of nanoscience is interdisciplinary in nature.5 This means that some areas of NT are bound up with the typical problems of interdisciplinary research that are evident in such areas as environmental science, climate research, conflict research, risk assessment, research on sustainable development, and research on biodiversity. Different theoretical frameworks, different methodologies, different systems of concepts, and different perspectives on how to address research questions have to be combined. Obviously, this interdisciplinary character makes it much more difficult to find a definition for NT, because every discipline has its own concept of and perspective on NT. In addition, from the outside NT seems more heterogeneous than would be the case if the subjects were different but only one discipline involved. In summary, the interdisciplinary character of NT contributes to its complexity and makes it more difficult to assess its impact on society.
NT is Predominantly an Enabling Technology An enabling technology is only part of a larger system, but one which gives the product crucial functionality. One example is microelectronics, which is used, e.g., in receivers, mobile phones, televisions, and computers. The appearance and functions of these products are entirely diverse, but they are based on the same technology. The same is true for NT: many very different products for very different purposes use the same NT. One extreme example is silicon nanoparticles: these are used in some paints to increase the scratch resistance of applied resin, in other paints to reduce the amount of solvent needed, as flame retardants, but also in ceramics for dental implants and inlays. This is to name just a very few of the multitude of applications. But each application is related to a different context of use. To assess the economic, environmental, and social implications of NT, each field of application has to be assessed separately. Therefore, the enabling character of NT increases the diversity of the object of investigation even beyond the already broad definition of NT.
Most Application Concepts for NT are at an Early Stage of Development A fourth characteristic aspect of NT, which is also linked to its diversity, is the wide range of development stages. For some simple applications, such as an improved rubber mixture for tires, nanoparticles have been used for several years. Yet most product concepts like drug-delivery systems are still far from being implemented,6
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while others, like the nanoassembler, are pure science fiction and will never be realized. To summarize, most of the concepts attributed to NT are science rather than technology, application ideas are rare, and at times no ideas for application even exist. That means while aiming to analyse the impact of NT, STS and TA researchers are confronted with problems which are well-known from forecasting and foresight research (Pereira 2007; Mitton and Willmott 2005).
The Debate on NT is a Crucial Property of NT Against the background of the four points above, assessing the impact of NT is a challenging task. But there are even more difficulties: most of the issues already presented are of a technical nature. And, as a physicist, when I started my work at the Institute of Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), I thought I would be able to understand NT when I had grasped all the techniques used and all the research performed in this field. That would be hard enough! But then I realised that NT is more than just the sum of its parts in terms of research and development. To understand NT, one also has to consider the discourse on NT, and one could argue that the discourse is even more characteristic of the whole phenomenon than its technical counterpart. In other words: NT is mainly a social construct (Nordmann 2006a). This statement will become clearer if we take a look at the beginnings of NT. From the very beginning, NT was accompanied by big promises and huge expectations. The real NT breakthrough came with the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), a huge research funding program launched by the Clinton Administration in 2000.7 The documents of this initiative were full of promises, expectations and fantastic visions, and therefore gained great attention. Accordingly, research in the field of NT received major financial support (Roco 2003). This example shows how NT and research policy are closely linked, as it has always been in the field of spaceflight. The meaning of the statement that NT is a social construct goes even beyond this relationship of research policy, funding, and research activities. It refers back to the observation that NT is defined less by the object of research, as is the case in materials science or biotechnology. Instead, NT is created by scientists considering themselves a part of it and attributing research activities to NT as well as what is attributed to it from outside the field by those on the margin of the science system such as journalists, science managers, and policy makers.8 In analysing NT, we are considering a process that is not finished, but still ongoing. We do not have the comfortable distance of an historian tracing the development of the atomic theory of Democritus. So even if we can see that NT is socially constructed, at present the manner in which this construction is performed is still an open research question. Nevertheless, these relations mentioned briefly above show that the research performed in the name of NT and the debate on NT are two aspects of the same phenomenon and are inextricably connected. At present this interconnection of the two sides of NT seems the most challenging issue in understanding and assessing it.
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Thus we have seen that the characteristics of NT and especially its broad definition make it so difficult to grasp. In the following, a further aspect of the definition of NT should be mentioned which helps us to understand the dynamics of the NT debate. Apart from NT’s ability to manipulate matter in the nanometre range, most definitions also include the requirement that the nanometre-size structure must enable new functionalities. See, for example, the definition of NT by the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI): What is Nanotechnology? 1. Research and technology development at the atomic, molecular or macromolecular levels, in the length scale of approximately 1–100 nm range. 2. Creating and using structures, devices and systems that have novel properties and functions because of their small and/or intermediate size. 3. Ability to control or manipulate on the atomic scale (National Nanotechnology Initiative 2005).
Similarly, there is the definition of the European Commission in “Towards a European Strategy for Nanotechnology”: The term “nanotechnology” will be used here as a collective term, encompassing the various branches of nanosciences and nanotechnologies. Conceptually, nanotechnology refers to science and technology at the nano-scale of atoms and molecules, and to the scientific principles and new properties that can be understood and mastered when operating in this domain. Such properties can then be observed and exploited at the micro- or macro-scale, for example, for the development of materials and devices with novel functions and performance (European Commission 2004).
A typical example of such functionality is the effect of giant magnetoresistance. This effect describes the extreme increase in electronic resistance of a stack of layers of magnetic material when a magnetic field is applied. This effect can only be observed if the layers of the stack each have a thickness of several atoms and is used in the read head of a computer hard disk. Due to this effect, the size of the read head can be reduced, leading in turn to an increase in the amount of hard disk memory. But in practice, the new functionality is often unclear, not mentioned, or not even present. An example is miniaturisation in microelectronics which, as discussed above, is termed NT even though no intended new effect comes from the smaller size.9 This is especially the case where conducting paths are reduced in size down to several tenths of a nanometre: the only intention here is this reduction in size.10 Although most concepts of NT do not provide new functionality, the idea that new functionalities might be discovered and applied technically by NT is an important reason why it has attracted so much attention. The reason why many expectations relate to new functionalities can be illustrated by the example of semiconductor technology. Semiconductor technology is an
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impressive and, in this dimension, unique example of what is possible when material properties are adjusted. I am not referring here to the miniaturisation of pre-existing microelectronic circuits. What I have in mind is the replacement of electronic tubes by transistors based on semiconductor material. The crucial properties that are adjusted in semiconductor technology are the electronic properties of semiconductors. To do this, it is necessary to know how to grow extremely clean and perfect crystals. At first sight, semiconductor technology enables only the replacement of electronic tubes in electronic devices, but this replacement was accompanied by the possibility of reducing devices in size. From our daily life, we know how powerful this miniaturisation was, and how much these devices have changed our whole world.11 In addition to adjustment of the electronic properties, it is also possible to control the optical ones. Thus it was possible to realise optoelectronic devices such as light sensors for light,12 solar cells, and lasers. Today microelectronic devices based on semiconductor technology are used in a great variety of contexts. They have become essential in highly industrialised countries, even with regard to their economic importance. The prospect that NT might lead to the discovery of a similar functionality understandably enough generates a lot of enthusiasm. There is another implication related to the aspect of new functionality in the definition. This additional criterion makes it more difficult to distinguish what could be attributed to NT and what not. If one is really to take this criterion seriously, one has to be an expert in the research activity or technique under discussion. And even experts often differ in their opinions on that question. In terms of a practical distinction, this criterion is not useful, but rather provokes much confusion.
Conclusion to Section I The five characteristics of NT mentioned in this section explain why NT is difficult to grasp and understand on a phenomenological level; the technical reasons are obvious. The object of investigation crosses the borders of several present disciplines. Apart from the methodological and organizational challenges of research in this field, the subject of NT is complex and difficult to understand. An enabling technology (like biotechnology or microelectronics)13 cannot be identified with a certain application and is, therefore, not as easy to grasp as is the case with technologies designed for a specific purpose such as power plants, wind energy systems, or lighting techniques. Furthermore, as an emerging technology, NT is by definition not yet established and is continually undergoing changes and further developments. Communication and negotiation processes are characteristic of this stage of development. Due to the broad definition of NT, this communication process is made more complex because many actors are participating in the formation process. By necessity, an emerging technology is not clearly defined, but in NT the number of investigation objects is extraordinarily large. This is why this negotiation and discussion process, characteristic for the formation of every new research field, is particularly dominant in NT.
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Section II: The NT Debate The last section illustrated why NT is so difficult to grasp; in this section, I will concentrate on the NT debate. As mentioned in point 5 above, the NT debate is in itself a typical aspect of the subject and relates to other characteristics such as lack of a clear definition and its emerging character. The very complexity of the NT debate also makes it such a challenge to explore the impact of NT on society. As mentioned in the introduction, in the following discussion on the NT debate, I will introduce a distinction between different levels. In the NT debate different forms of contributions can be observed. On the one hand there are those that discuss specific nanotechnologies, their technical feasibilities, or their impacts on environment and society, or which expresses expectations about future developments in the field of NT. In the following, these contributions are assigned here to the level 1 debate. On the other hand, there are contributions that reflect on the discussion itself and analyse the actors, their interest, and their significance in the discussion as well as the impact on political decisions or research activities. These contributions are assigned here to the level 2 debate. This distinction should help us to understand the dynamics of the whole debate on NT and the role of STS researchers within this debate. Subsequently the complexity of the level 1 debate is described, the dynamics of which is an important factor in understanding why NT is so difficult to grasp. The considerations in the first part of the next section (III) represent a contribution to the level 2 debate. In the second part of this section (II), the level 2 debate is discussed.
Analysis of the Level 1 Debate In the following, the focus is on the issues and dynamics of the NT debate, i.e., the level 1 debate. In order to understand the dynamics of the NT level 1 debate, we must step back and analyze the relation of science, policy, and economy and the role the media plays in the relationship between these social subsystems. Of course, this cannot be done here in any detail, but some considerations are presented that aid in the analysis of the whole phenomenon called NT. NT is a field where one can observe current developments in the relation between science and policy. As in the US, in Europe too it has become increasingly necessary to justify research costs. This derives from the tendency of closer associations between the systems of science, policy, economy, and the media (see Weingart 2001). Policy is forced to legitimate its political decisions by scientific expertise. On the other hand, science is increasingly the subject of media attention which influences scientific communication. This media attention may enable science to promote itself, but on the other hand science is forced to prove its social benefit. Against this background, it is interesting to realize that big research programs like the NNI are promoted by far-reaching pretensions and dramatization.14 The following analysis of the different actors that contribute to the NT level 1 debate must be seen in the context of the development outlined above.
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To understand the dynamics of the NT debate, one must consider the whole range of different actors and their different interests (see Schummer 2004a). These different groups of actors and their interests are described briefly in the following. Science The interests of scientists in the NT debate have several dimensions. With regard to acquiring funding, all scientists have the same interest. They perceive NT as a term to gain public attention and, therefore, convince government and private investors to spend more money on research. For this purpose, NT is an appropriate vehicle. As mentioned above, the term NT encompasses many different research activities from different disciplines with different methods and analytic tools. Its inclusive character means the term can be used to bring different scientists together to further their own benefit and social relevance. Scientists use NT to form coalitions within or between fields. The various scientific communities try to guide the development of NT according to their own interests. Since many engineers are involved in setting the NT agenda, and considering the dominant concepts in NT programs, it might be argued that NT was introduced as a reaction to the biotechnology hype. A coalition of engineers, physicists, chemists, and former AI researchers are attempting to take the leading role away from biotechnology in the public debate (Fleischer 2004). A remarkable sentence supporting this hypothesis is to be found in a news report on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap, which illustrates this strategic action: “A key activity during this time will be the development of a new kind of vocabulary—lexicon—to define biological parts and processes in engineering terms” (NIH Roadmap 2005). It is explicitly stated here that research in the framework of the new NIH program aims to redefine the research subject formerly attributed to biology. It marks a shift from the biological paradigm to the engineering paradigm in the field of medical research. It proves that engineers are attempting to dominate a research field that was originally conducted by biologists. An emerging term like NT is also used to establish a new research field for an individual researcher or a research group. Researchers try to claim terms and then use them to bring their own ideas into the debate for the purposes of personal glory, prestige, and a good salary. In staking these claims, scientists re-label research activities as NT which were already in existence before the term gained broader attention. This re-labelling aggravates the problems of defining NT and distinguishing between what can and cannot be attributed to NT. Bionics is a prime example of this. The field of bionics deals mainly with objects or structures in the nanometre range and even provides functionalities common materials do not provide, but the discipline was developed before NT became established. A well-known example from bionics, the lotus effect,15 is now a prime example of NT. Of course, scientists in the field of bionics and biotechnology and those working in the field of nanoscience compete in some sense for funding, and thus have an ambivalent attitude towards NT: they accept their assignment to the field of NT while raising funds for a
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research project, but when publishing their results, they tend to deny their relation to NT.16 This ambivalent attitude also aggravates the problems of assessing the potential of NT. Therefore, their own classification of their research as NT is not necessarily a good criterion to judge whether or not it is in fact NT.
Policy For policy makers, NT represents a potential opportunity for making a name for themselves. They present NT as the next big thing and this gives them a means of stepping into the spotlight by promising to promote research and provide considerable funding; President Clinton did it, and in Germany so did the research minister, Mrs. Bulmahn, when she presented her new research policy program in 2002 (BMBF 2002). NT is offered as a solution to the unsolved problems with which society is struggling. On this same note, I would like to point out the specific perspective on social problems which is dominant in the NT field. The hope of solving society’s problems by means of technical solutions is very prominent.17 This can be seen by analyzing the visions presented in favour of NT (Fiedeler et al. 2005). Claims are made that basic problems such as pollution, security, and growth of economic welfare can be solved by NT, as can problems related to health care, ranging from healing disorders such as like blindness, deafness, and the inability to walk, through fighting cancer, to overcoming aging (Roco and Bainbridge 2002). Some proponents are even convinced that problems related to the interaction of social groups or between individuals can be solved by NT (Roco and Bainbridge 2002; Kurzweil 2002). The estimations and promises of actors and promoters in detailing the benefits of NT are based on extraordinary technical optimism (Sarewitz cited in Nordmann 2006b; Fiedeler and Krings 2006; Nordmann 2006c). For policymakers, the idea of solving social problems by means of new technical developments is attractive, because no decision has to be made as to who has to give way and who wins in a specific conflict. Instead of this, it seems that technical solutions make it possible to satisfy all interests at the same time, and also not to harm any group but simply get rid of the problem.18 From a policy perspective, other dynamics can also be observed in the field of NT. In the rhetoric of competition between nations19 in strategic documents, it is often claimed that research and development in the field of NT must be carried out. But it is not explained in these documents in any more detail why it should be necessary and useful to promote NT. The only reason is: in order to be better than the others. This rhetoric has become dominant in policy due to its orientation towards economy. Nations are perceived as large corporations. Methods and concepts appropriate to running a large company are transferred to politics. In addition, the broad definition of NT gives policy makers space to maneuver in reallocating funding, e.g. increasing fundamental research.
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Economy Companies have to improve their products and processes or develop new products. In the field of venture capital, analysts have to present new markets and new opportunities for investments. The development of new technologies plays an important role in this process. Thus, as with biotechnology in the early 1990s and the Internet in the late 1990s, NT currently attracts such great attention.20 Companies working in the field of NT often entertain two different attitudes towards NT: a promoting one and a reluctant one. Indeed, they often have both attitudes at the same time. Companies that produce NT-based products hope to profit from the high expectations related to NT and thus promote it and raise expectations about it. On the other hand, they are afraid that an accident or a problem, such as occurred when consumers were poisoned by the product Magic Nano, will have a detrimental effect on the whole NT field. Therefore, most of them do not dare to promote their products as being based on NT. If NT gets a bad press, they are afraid that the sale of their NT-based products will decline. This is why they do not want to talk about possible problems with NT but, as mentioned above, they do declare and perceive NT as the next big thing. These contributions from the economy in favour of the NT debate could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy in the sense that there will be much investment in the field of NT. And if a lot of money is spent on developing something, there will be results. With a little sleight of hand, these results can be used to present NT as a great success story.
Media As mentioned above, the connection between science and policy has become closer. The media play an important role in this relationship. On the one hand, the media provide transparency and, therefore, help to prevent policy from manipulating scientific results or eliminating researchers who present uncomfortable facts (Krauter 2006). On the other hand, the media need sensations. Therefore, they only report on extraordinary scientific results or results which are not in line with common sense. With regard to NT, the media amplify the fantastic and visionary aspects of NT due to their need for sensations. They give NT proponents and scientists a platform from which to disseminate highly speculative assumptions about NT and its social implications. Some scientists misuse their role as researchers and present results of poor scientific quality. With this behaviour, they draw attention to themselves, which is necessary for fundraising, but a burden on the image and the credibility of science. However, they do provide the media with the sensations the latter need, so the media amplify radical opinions and increase the variety of statements about the impact of NT on society. Particularly those media that address the economic sphere make extraordinary contributions to the NT discussion (Schummer 2006). It seems that market analysts, and newspaper- and Internet-based information platforms which target companies would like to satisfy their demand for ideas for new products and developments. In trying to glean some news in this field, they increase the amount of information
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about NT activities tremendously. The fact that there is no clear definition makes it easy for them to find researchers who claim their research results as new developments in the field of NT, even though most of the researchers in the specific discipline may disagree.
Level 1 Debate Conclusion The discussion of the level 1 debate in the last section shows that the contributions of the actors involved are dominated by their own interests, which are diverse and differ from actor to actor. We have shown that their contributions and behaviour are often guided by strategic motivations. In their task of assessing the impact of NT, STS researchers depend on the statements and estimations of scientists in the field. But if STS researchers want to come to reliable conclusions, they must be able to distinguish between statements from scientists or research managers that are politically motivated and statements that are based solely on their expertise. This is why it is important for STS researchers to understand the interests of the actors, their position, and their strategic behaviour. STS researchers must be able to distinguish the background against which the scientist gave the information, whether he/she is competent on the subject and what aim he/she is pursuing with his/her statements. Otherwise STS researchers cannot interpret and evaluate the information scientists and science managers provide. With regard to the dynamics of the level 1 debate, the above-mentioned aspects and the role and motives of the actors explain very well why their contributions and actions lead to a mutual amplification. There is one main opportunity provided by the broad definition of NT which all actors aim to exploit: they would like to profit from the possibility of transferring connotations from one field of NT to another. In summary, most actors profit from the openness of the term NT.
Remarks on the Level 2 Debate: What is the Role of TA and STS Researchers in this Game? Like the natural scientists, and maybe even more so, TA and STS researchers profit from this broad definition of NT and the related discussion about it: they are asked to provide an answer to the following questions: What is NT? What kind of developments will NT bring about? What are the impacts of NT on society? On the one hand, they are happy that their analytic competence and reflective ability are requested, and they are glad that there is a demand for their work. On the other hand, they do not feel comfortable dealing with such a vague and diverse phenomenon as NT. There are no methods and concepts of how to approach this kind of phenomenon. I realise that those not educated in the sciences often do not have sufficient knowledge about the technical feasibility of the concepts presented in the discussion on NT. They frequently do not distinguish between serious research activities and pure
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speculation or fantasy. It sometimes seems that non-scientists accept any idea that might be mentioned as a real technical possibility. As a consequence, the social implications of scenarios are analysed which are mainly science fiction. This is especially the case when the ethical implications of NT are the subject of the analysis (Moor and Weckert 2004; Dunkley 2004; Mnyusiwalla et al. 2003; Reynolds 2003). For some this type of inquiry may be akin to investigating the psychological consequences of living for a longer period of time on Mars in a small group. Why should we reflect on such a question? To translate this to NT: Why should we bother to analyze the social impact of nanoassemblers? When a study on the implications of NT is initiated, the concepts to be addressed must be analyzed with regard to their feasibility. Of course, this feasibility analysis cannot be conducted in any detail until all doubts about the feasibility of the concepts have been dispelled. But it makes no sense to analyse the impact of a specific concept of technology if there are no hard indications that this technology could be realized in the future. This is comparable to implementing the “precautionary principle” which requires consideration of those concepts that raise “reasonable concern” (Brune et al. 2006). Since assessment of the feasibility on the one hand needs technical understanding, and on the other hand development of social questions requires an understanding of social issues, such projects must to be performed in an interdisciplinary team. As NT is not related to only one technical discipline, analysis of its impact really requires an interdisciplinary approach, both with regard to the involvement of scientists from different disciplines and of scientists and non-scientists. So what is the role of TA and STS researchers in the NT discussion? They do not only profit from the discussion, but they also contribute to the discussion. This leads to two consequences: The first consequence is an increase in the diversity of NT. Now, if one tries to figure out “What is NT?” there are not only the comments and ideas of natural scientists, science managers, and policy makers, but also contributions from nonscientists. One is not only faced with obscure promises stated by some scientists, but also from STS researchers who claim, for example, that NT will give grounds for a new ethic (Moor and Weckert 2004), for a new human condition (Grunwald 2007), for disruptive technologies in arms and warfare, and with regard to personal security (Altmann and Gubrud 2001). The contributions of STS researchers are thus not only restricted to reflections on NT as a social construct (which would be contributions to the level 2 debate) but also influence the level 1 debate. I do not maintain that all claims made by STS researchers are wrong, but often the relation to NT is pure speculation and seems to be artificially constructed. As well as questioning the claims made by natural scientists promoting NT, those made by STS researchers have to be carefully assessed too. Of course, there are also many contributions from non-scientists which greatly aid our understanding of NT and help us disentangle the various related phenomena. The second consequence is that the work of STS researchers contributes to promoting NT and to its hype. There is a risk that NT promoters might exploit the work of STS researchers to endow the term NT with the importance they would wish it
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to have. They use a method of argumentation which is well-developed in Drexler’s Foresight Institute (Nordmann 2006d). They argue that NT is important and that it will lead to fundamental changes in society. To be prepared, they continue, society has to consider the social implications of NT. Then after STS researchers have started to reflect on the social implications of NT, and some NGO has delivered reports, warnings and a call for a moratorium, the promoters argue: “It’s not only us claiming that NT has social implications. But if NT has a social impact, it must be real!” It seems to me important for STS researchers to conceptualise their work in such a way that it can be used not to promote NT, but to understand NT better. This can be done if one is aware of the dynamics of the level 1 debate and treat the statements made by scientists with care. One should omit those that are poorly founded and any that involve forward ascription to NT. Nevertheless, STS researchers find themselves in an ambivalent situation. They profit from the discussion on NT, and the more confusing and miraculous NT seems, the more they are asked to provide answers. But if they just add fuel to the flames (as did the Center for Responsible NT21 ), they are also affected if disappointment takes over and, more importantly, this strategy discredits the reputation of scholars as neutral observers providing serious answers to complex and confusing social phenomena. In addition, we discredit science as a serious project which is not guided by personal interest.
Conclusion to Section II In investigating NT, three aspects should be considered: To what kind of discourse do I want to contribute? Am I contributing to level 1 (give statements about chances, risks, impacts, etc., or arguing against certain statements) or am I contributing to level 2 (analyzing the discourse about NT, the actors, their interests, and their mutual interaction, and the notions and visions used in the debate)? If STS researchers want to contribute to the level 1 discussion, for example, in the form of risk assessment of a certain NT or ethical considerations, they have to be careful in relying on statements from scientists, science managers, or other participants in the discussion. One must be aware of the potentially strategic character of these statements. In addition, it is necessary to assess to a certain extent the feasibility of the specific nanotechnique or nanoscientific concept which is the intended subject of the risk or impact analysis. From the perspective of the level 1 discourse, NT can no longer be treated as one single entity: there are only several different nanotechniques. From the perspective of the level 2 discussion (i.e., analysis of the discourse about NT), it is possible to view NT as one phenomenon as we do, for instance, in analyzing science or the society, but on level 1 this leads to mistakes and misunderstandings. The most prominent mistake is that a characteristic applying to a specific nanotechnique is attributed to the whole field.
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Section III: Dealing with the Challenge of Assessing NT In this final section, a number of approaches for dealing with the challenges thrown up by the assessment of NT are discussed. First, there are several ways of dealing with the lack of a clear definition and the related diversity of NT. The first approach claims that it is necessary to start the analysis with a clear definition: While the definition of the term Nanotechnology is not that decisive for researchers within the field of Nanotechnology, it becomes relevant if one wants to start a reflection on the research process as it will be done in Technology Assessment. One has to define the object to reflect on (Schmid et al. 2003).
This is appropriate for an analysis from the perspective of the level 1 discussion. As mentioned in Section I, if one aims to assess NT from a scientific and technical perspective, one must concentrate on specific techniques or a group of techniques. For this purpose, it is useful to have a clear description of that group of techniques. Otherwise, neither the subject of investigation is clear, nor the points of reference between the conclusions drawn from the assessment and the technology it aims to cover. But from the perspective of an analysis of NT on level 2, this approach is not useful, because it represents precisely the attempt to eliminate discursive aspects from the assessment of the underlying technologies. Using a sharp definition to try to get rid of the confusion about NT and to remove actions in the field of NT that are merely strategic ignores that NT’s diversity is a crucial characteristic, as shown in Sections I and II. Another approach is the call for public participation (Royal Society 2004). This can be interpreted as an attempt to delegate the problem of the diversity of NT to the public. “The technical and social complexity of NT demands a genuine dialogue between scientists and the public. . .” (Macnaghten et al. 2005). In consensus conferences,22 focus groups or publifocus procedures (TA-Swiss),23 the public is confronted with the diversity of NT and should decide for itself what it assumes to be important and most relevant. A third approach is to develop new methods appropriate to the analysis of NT. From the TA perspective, NT combines several challenges presented in Section I. The conclusion could be that it is necessary to develop new methods like Vision Assessment (Grunwald 2004; Fiedeler et al. 2005; L¨osch 2006). Instead of assessing NT as a whole, a further approach is to subdivide the subject into small parts. The analysis and assessment of the impact of NT could then be performed on specific concepts of nanoscience or specific nanotechniques (Royal Society 2004). Even though NT is heterogeneous, there is a common denominator. This allencompassing aspect will be lost if we just concentrate on specific nanotechnologies. Another approach is thus a call for a program to disentangle this complex phenomenon called NT (Nordmann 2006d, e). The final approach to analysing NT goes in a similar direction to the one mentioned above. The interesting issue with NT is not what kind of research is
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performed in its name and which technologies are to be developed, but how NT tries to find its identity (Kaiser and Kurat 2006). I am not arguing in favour of any one of these approaches or ideas for understanding NT. I think all of them are useful in discovering a certain aspect of NT. I would like to conclude my considerations on the challenge of assessing NT by suggesting a threefold approach.
Technical analyses Since NT is at an early stage of development, it can be concluded that TA must focus on scientific and technical developments in this field. This is different from genetic engineering or stem cell research, where the technical issues are quite clear but the ethical and social consequences are severely under discussion. The first approach to the wide variety of NT, namely common technical analysis, would be and is adequate, and such analyses have been already performed for some fields of NT (see for example Bachmann 1998; Hoffschulz 2001; Hoffknecht and Hoffschulz 2002a, b; Wevers and Wechsler 2002). Technical analyses of NT investigate certain fields of nanoscience, nanotechniques, and concepts of applications to estimate to which extent they differ from existing techniques and the direction in which research is going. These analyses reveal which concepts of applications are discussed within research. They are useful for exploring the whole field and gaining an overview of the activities performed in the name of NT and their stage of development. In addition, they facilitate estimation of the effort current being expended on a certain technical development. These technical analyses help us understand feasibility and avoid misinterpretation (as discussed in Section I). However, these technical analyses can only reveal selected issues and relations, but no conclusions about the relevance of the techniques under investigation.
Roadmapping To assess social relevance, research and development activities have to be assessed against the background of the social issues relevant in the particular field at which these applications are aimed. This means that for specific NT applications which have been identified to a certain extent as relevant or crucial, the analysis of their feasibility has to be performed in more detail (as called for in Section II). For this purpose, the method of roadmapping would be appropriate (Fiedeler et al. 2004, 2005). A roadmapping project provides robust estimation of the feasibility of the concept under discussion. This is important, as otherwise concerns about this concept would not be taken seriously. With the result of a roadmapping project, one can show that these concepts are not science fiction and that there are a number of researchers working seriously to realize it. Moreover, a roadmapping approach allows the incorporation of different perspectives within and across disciplines in the investigation process. This is especially important given the interdisciplinary character
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of NT (as discussed in Section I). Along with the interdisciplinary analysis of the selected specific application, a roadmapping process helps to clarify the context of use of that application. This is a precondition for assessing its social implications. Finally, a roadmapping project allows development of alternative solutions to the technique under consideration. Here, it should be clearly stated that this kind of roadmapping project is not a substitute for a TA process, but the precondition for a subsequent assessment of the social impact of the specific technology. However, as NT is at an early stage of development and even technical consequences and feasibility are often unclear, this kind of preliminary investigation is necessary. Knowledge of the feasibility is important in estimating the relevance of the concept with regard to its social impact. As an example: nanoassemblers would be a disruptive and far-reaching technology. But until there are any good arguments that this kind of technology is feasible, it is not worth spending time and resources in analyzing its social implications.
Vision Assessment / Media Analysis The two methods detailed above address the technical dimension of NT. However, as indicated in Section I, the debate about NT is also one of its essential characteristics. Therefore, technical developments in the field of NT cannot be assessed without knowledge of the development and dynamics of the NT debate. For this purpose, both of the above methods must be accompanied by a media and discourse analysis. The fact that NT is an emerging technological field in the phase of agenda setting leads particularly to the dominantly strategic use of ideas. Therefore, careful analysis of the discourse helps distinguish expert opinions expressing technical and scientific facts from statements given by the same experts but with political aims. Discourse analysis is important in the field of NT for a second reason, again linked with the early stage of development. Although science and fiction are not entangled as intricately as they are in spaceflight, in the field of NT research policy and funding are strongly influenced or even dominated by visions and myths. For this reason, further developments in this field are determined less by scientific progress than by the dynamics of the debate on visions perceived by the public. Although this relation between visions and research policy seems obvious, it is difficult to determine the concrete impact of a particular vision. It is not possible to measure the contribution of a certain vision to the design of a research program. Vision assessment aims to bridge this discrepancy between the obvious influence of the visions on the debate and the problem of measuring their impact (Grunwald 2004; Fiedeler et al. 2005). In addition, visions play an important role in the negotiation of expectations and of what is deemed to constitute a desirable future. From a na¨ıve understanding of TA, the term “assessment” seems to imply that the TA expert has to balance the benefits of new technologies against threats or unwanted side effects. Of course, nobody knows what is desired by the public and what should be prevented. In this context, vision assessment aims to clarify the meaning of certain visions and their
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consequences, and should foster public debate on the desirable future by providing more transparency. The purpose of vision assessment is to disentangle the meaning, use, and background of visions in order to understand their influence on the dynamics of a debate in a certain field. However, vision assessment has to be accompanied by systematic media analysis, otherwise it cannot take into account whether the stated vision is an outstanding single position or shared by many people. In addition, the accompanying media analysis permits investigation of the influence of the different visions on the dynamics of the debate. To conclude, the combination of all three methods gives the TA and STS expert a powerful tool in addressing an emerging technology like NT.
Notes 1. To mention just a few: some parts of materials science, especially surface science or surface physics, microelectronics, some parts of microbiology, some parts of bionics, and tissue engineering are technologies which were in use a long time before the term NT became popular. Now, they are attributed to NT. 2. One exception seems to be microtechnology and microelectronics. But the scope of microtechnology, for instance, is relatively clearly defined because it has its origin in techniques developed for microelectronics and did not, for example, enter into biology. 3. Fullerenes are a carbon configuration where the atoms form more or less spherical cages also known as Buckminster fullerenes or “Bucky Balls.” The most prominent is C60, consisting of 60 carbon atoms. Carbon nanotubes are tubes consisting of a rolled-up mesh-like configuration of carbon atoms. 4. For example, Wolf-Dieter Dudenhausen, Secretary of State for the German Ministry of Education and Research said on 25th November 2003: “Nanoelectronics is the engine of innovation for almost all branches of industry. In Germany, even today there are 70 000 employees in the chip manufacturing and supply industry depending on nanoelectronics. The market for electronic devices in Germany accounts for up to 20 billion Euro.” Source: Press release 219/03 of the BMBF (English U.F.). 5. Even though up to now the interdisciplinary character of NT has not led to interdisciplinary research in practice (Schummer 2004b). 6. Drug-delivery systems is a research field which is so widely discussed in the field of NT that the impression could be aroused that their development comes for the first time with NT. In fact, research on drug-delivery systems has been performed for more than forty years. 7. 465 million dollars were allocated for research in the field of nanotechnology in the fiscal year 2001 (NNI 2000). http://www.nano.gov/html/res/IntlFundingRoco.htm (20.4.2006) 8. See, e.g., Kaiser and Kurat (2006). 9. Some might argue that this reduction in size has effects such as quantisation of the current conducted by these wires. But these side effects cause several problems and are unintended. They do not contribute to the functionality of the device, but rather disturb it. 10. To be accurate, along with this reduction in size, energy loss is intended to be reduced and the number of calculation units per second increased. 11. I was impressed by a colleague’s experience which illustrates the rapidity of these developments. He told me that in talking to a young man of 25, he described the monotony of an ever-repeating situation with the metaphor: It was like ‘a scratched record’. The young man didn’t understand him, because he was not familiar with vinyl records.
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12. To be precise: Optoelectronic devices can detect electromagnetic radiation from infrared up to X-ray radiation and even high-energetic elementary particles. 13. The reason why it is difficult to conceptualise emerging technologies may be a question of time. Even though microelectronics and chemistry are enabling technologies, for most of us it is not difficult to imagine their applications. 14. One should bear in mind that the American policy system differs from the European and especially German ones. People with such controversial opinions as Ray Kurzweil would not have been invited as experts to the European or German parliaments to present their personal views. 15. Leaves and flowers of the lotus plant have a self-cleaning property due to their micronanostructured surface. The physical cause of this ability was discovered by bionics. The fact that the physical cause of this effect is in part related to the small dimension of the surface structure has motivated researchers in the field of NT to claim the lotus effect as part of NT. 16. Some aspects which are mentioned here are in general characteristic of the interaction processes accompanying the formation of a new discipline or a research program. More details about that can be found in several articles on the political dimensions of NT; see, for example, Schummer (2004a), Hessenbruch (2004), Berube (2004) Selin (2007), Heinze (2006), Clausen and Jorgensen (2005), Beth and Steinm¨uller (2003). 17. For scientists the idea that technical solutions could solve social problems is promoted simply because they are truly fascinated by their own techniques and really believe in their beneficial impact. Otherwise they would not work in this field (see also “the silent majority” in Nordmann 2006b). 18. Of course this is not the case, but it is far less obvious who will profit from the implementation of a new technology (for example, introducing healthcare robots to reduce health care system costs) and who will lose out. 19. See, for example, the document of the Lisbon strategy of the European Union (http://europa.eu/ scadplus/glossary/lisbon strategy en.htm). 20. The vast majority of newspaper articles on NT focus on economic subjects (Schummer 2006). 21. The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology did not question the immense impact NT will have on society as is claimed by some NT researchers, but took it as given. They set themselves on the stage as urgently awaited helpers to cope with all the problems NT could pose. 22. For example: http://www.nanojury.org/, http://www.bfr.bund.de/cd/8567, http://crnano.typepad.com/ crnblog/2005/05/conference of c.html. 23. http://www.ta-swiss.ch/a/nano pfna/2006 TAP8 Nanotechnologien d.pdf
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Schmid, G., Decker, M., Ernst, H., Fuchs, H., Gr¨unwald, W., Grunwald, A., Hofmann, H., Mayor, M., Rathgeber, W., Simon, U., and D. Wyrwa. 2003. Small Dimensions and Material Properties. A Definition of Nanotechnology. Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler: Europ¨aische Akademie. Schummer, J. 2004a. Societal and Ethical Implications of Nanotechnology: Meanings, Interest Groups, and Social Dynamics. Techne 8(2): 56. Schummer, J. 2004b. Interdisciplinary Issues in Nanoscale Research. In Baird, D., A. Nordmann, and J. Schummer, eds., Discovering the Nanoscale. Amsterdam, IOS Press. Schummer, J. 2006. Soziale und ethische implikationen der nanotechnologie im kontext von interessengruppen und sozialdynamik. Paper presented at Visionen der Nanotechnologie, T¨ubingen. Selin, C. 2007. Expectations and the Emergence of Nanotechnology. Science, Technology & Human Values 32(2): 196–220. Uldrich, J. and D. Newberry. 2003. The Next Big Thing Is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. London: Crown Business. Weingart, P. 2001. Die Stunde der Wahrheit—Zum Verh¨altnis der Wissenschaft zu Politik, Wirtschaft und Medien in der Wissensgesellschaft. Weilerwist:Velbr¨uck Wissenschaft. Wevers, M. And D. Wechsler. 2002. Technologieanalyse Nanobiotechnologie I: Grundlagen und Anwendungen molekularer funktionaler Biosysteme. D¨usseldorf: VDI-Technologiezentrum im Auftrag des BMBF. Wingert, B. and U. Riehm. 1985. Computer als Werkzeug. Anmerkungen zu einem verbreiteten Mißverst¨andnis. In W. Rammert, G. Bechmann, and H. Nowotny, eds., Technik und Gesellschaft, Jahrbuch 3. Frankfurt u.a.: Campus.
Chapter 22
Compressed Foresight and Narrative Bias: Pitfalls in Assessing High Technology Futures Robin Williams
This chapter by Williams is a biting critique of past and present efforts by science studies scholars to think about the future of new and emerging technologies. Williams stresses (similar to Rip and te Kulve, ch. 4; Goorden et al., ch. 14) that a fundamental teaching of Science and Technology Studies (STS) is that scholars cannot predict the future because the complex interrelationships among people, institutions, techniques, and machines are continually changing. He argues that any attempts at prediction are not only mistaken but could lead to false hopes, unwarranted fears, and misinformed attempts to remedy incorrectly perceived problems. While scholars and practitioners may attempt to avoid these pitfalls by examining several “possible” and “multiple” futures (see T¨urk, ch. 8), rather than a single expected path, even these approaches can be subject to Williams’ criticisms. As do others (Rip and te Kulve, ch. 4; Currall et al., ch. 7; Fiedeler, ch. 21), Williams considers the role of social scientists in joining the nanotechnology endeavor. Insofar as his warnings may lead to more sophisticated forecasts and more flexible preparations, they are important guidelines for avoiding some of the numerous traps that can ensnare the efforts of those who zealously anticipate the future or encourage others to do so. – Eds.
R. Williams University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland Originally published in December 2006 in Science as Culture, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 327–348.
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Background and Motivation With its historical links to the 1970s radical science movements, Science and Technology Studies (STS) has from the outset been concerned with the critical assessment of developments in Science and Technology (S&T). There has been a creative tension between this committed, activist perspective and the constructivist analytic tradition imported inter alia from the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (Pinch and Bijker 1984; Bijker 1993). The motivation of this paper, written in the aftermath of the 2004 4S/EASST conference,1 was a concern about the ways in which genomics and nanotechnology are being taken up across much of the activist wing of the STS community. At the conference (and elsewhere) there seemed to be a broadly shared, albeit largely taken for granted, script about what were the issues and implications and how they should be addressed (Society for Social Studies of Science 2004). These discussions seemed, uncritically, to be contributing to, as well as reflecting, wider critical discourses about new technologies, conceived from the outset as being challenging in terms of risks and social values. These commitments seem to conflict with the emphasis in most STS academic analysis on the need to deconstruct the objects of study, and in particular to be sceptical about claims regarding the character and implications of technologies. Despite a personal preference for a balance between analysis and action and for a closer coupling between reflection and intervention than many of my social constructivist colleagues, I find myself in the surprising position of urging greater reflexivity—analytical distance and indeed methodological relativism—in the way STS approaches high technology futures. The paper explores the question of how, in our attempts to anticipate (and even shape) the pathways and social implications of emerging science and technology, we can address the serendipity of innovation processes and their outcomes?
Overview The paper starts by examining contemporary discourses about emerging technologies, such as biotechnologies and nanotechnology, and their implications for high technology futures. There seems to be an attempt to look further into the future and map the technical and social outcomes in greater detail than previously, which can make these futures appear as largely determinate and imminent: as if the future is already assured, already here. Attempts at foresight are thus foreshortened: the future is compressed into the present. These accounts breach some of the key tenets of contemporary sociology of S&T, which criticizes reified treatments of emerging technologies as though they were coherent bundles of capabilities, exhibiting rather predictable innovation trajectories and determinate sets of impacts. It then examines ELSI-fication—referring to the way in which requirements for the advance assessment of the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) of (certain) scientific, technological, and especially medical developments have been implemented. It suggests that ELSI accounts can encourage a narrowed scope of enquiry and a simplified linear model of innovation pathways and outcomes. The
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idea that the societal and ethical implications of new S&T can be “read off” by the application of tools for ethical enquiry may, in particular, reproduce an “essentialist” understanding of the technology—society relationship—suggesting a simple relationship between the values surrounding technological development, the content of artifacts developed and the social outcomes when they are used. Whilst early analyses from the social shaping of technology (SST) perspective did include what we would now see as essentialist analyses of the relationship between a technology and the values in its developmental context [e.g. Noble’s (1979) study of the automation of machine tools in MacKenzie and Wajcman’s (1985) seminal collection], a growing body of subsequent empirically based studies has called this into question. Contemporary social shaping analysis—what we might call Mark II Social Shaping of Technology—emphasizes a multiplicity of sites and actors (including the locales of technology implementation and its users as well as developers) in shaping technological change and its outcomes (Sørenson and Williams 2002). Next the paper addresses the politics of technology and the scope for intervention. The flexibility in deployment of many technologies, the multiplicity of actors and contingency of outcomes identified in SST Mk II does not necessarily imply a pluralist or instrumental model of innovation in which the final consumer is somehow in command. Instead, SST II provides a map of the differing socio-technical architectures and contexts, which represent rather different socio-technical configurations and terrains for intervention. Finally it examines the dilemmas of intervention as evinced by the need to anticipate outcomes in the face of uncertainty about the future. There are important insights but also potential risks in seeking to extrapolate from previous episodes of technological change. There is also a need to balance the articulation of commitment and concerns while maintaining openness to new outcomes. As well as problems of explicit political commitments, particular schools of enquiry suffer from tacit commitments—including what is described as “narrative bias”—embedded in concepts, instruments and dominant narratives. Though STS cannot somehow free itself of bias, researchers may need to reflect upon their (often tacit) commitments—particularly insofar as social scientists are today being drawn into public debates and even as direct actors in innovation processes in a more immediate and influential way than hitherto.
Critique of Compressed Foresight: Deterministic Understandings of the Technology-Society Relationship Deterministic Claims Mobilized About the Implications of a Technology Recent public discussions about biotechnology and nanotechnology have unhelpfully adopted a simplistic treatment of these technologies as though these labels referred to a finite set of capabilities with largely determinate technical properties
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and predictable innovation trajectories and socio-economic and environmental implications. In the case of nanotechnology there has been an explicit, and indeed highly developed, attempt by the proponents of the technology to articulate claims around this posited broad field and project these long-term outcomes in a very detailed way (Roco and Bainbridge 2001; Stix 2001; Guston and Sarewitz 2002; Roco and Tornellini 2002; L´opez 2004; Bennett and Sarewitz 2006). In their wake, opponents of nanotechnology and biotechnology have equally sought to articulate dystopian visions, pointing in particular to the potential environmental and societal risks (see e.g. Arnall 2003).2 We are assured that exciting new gene therapies, or alternatively the threat of “grey goo” from self-replicating nano-devices, are just around the corner. The promotion of expectations has of course been a perennial feature of the development of science and technology projects and programmes (Brown 2003; Van Lente and Rip 1998a). However several features of the current setting give particular emphasis to the mobilization of expectations; the stakes are very high in a number of ways. Enormous economic and social benefits are being promised to justify the increasingly large-scale investments needed to achieve and exploit advances in S&T, which [drawing on ideas about the revolutionary character of recent changes, e.g. in Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs)] are conceived as radical breakthroughs that will be far reaching in their application and revolutionary in their consequences. At the same time these powerful visions have enflamed anxieties and, in the aftermath of a series of controversies over the risks of new technologies, we find attempts to contest from the outset S&T developments and their societal implications. The idea of compressed foresight thus seeks to draw attention to these ways in which today both proponents and opponents are seeing to project very specific visions (utopian and dystopian) of these high technology futures. The desire to resolve from the outset debates about the future prospects and implications of new technology motivates our attempts to anticipate the future and map the technical and social outcomes in a higher level of detail than previously. In attempting such a mapping, the future may be presented as if it were here today (or at least visible and already known) in a way that can make these futures appear as largely determinate and imminent; in this process, the gap between imagined and actual futures is foreshortened; our attempts at foresight, at anticipation of the future, are thus compacted and compressed.3 Such determinate projections of the technology development and exploitation trajectory stand in contrast to the findings from the large body of empirically grounded studies of historical scientific and technological developments which point to the unpredictability, and indeed serendipity of social and technical outcomes. These studies show that scientific/technical research communities are typically exploring a “garden of forking paths” rather than particular sets of opportunities and are subject to many unanticipated obstacles or reverse salients (Hughes 1983). Innovation pathways often deviate from their initially expected trajectory—some innovation routes peter out, while other technological developments progress very
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rapidly and even find unanticipated applications. Outcomes are mixed—frequently falling short of their initial promise but occasionally far exceeding expectations— and include unanticipated costs and benefits as well as those intended. Indeed, studies of historical experiences show that initial conceptions of the implications of a technology are often so far removed from ultimate outcomes as to be uninformative (Williams et al. 2005). The consequent critique of deterministic accounts of innovation outcomes has led most contemporary STS to reject the terminology of the “impacts” of technology, and the simplistic “linear” innovation models that underpin them, in favour of concepts such as the co-production of a technology and its societal outcomes (Sørenson and Williams 2002).
Reified Constructions of a Technological Field Alongside mechanistic linear models of innovation pathways and outcomes, we often find the reified treatment of emerging technologies—as though these were broadly homogeneous entities with finite technical properties and socio-economic implications—rather than diverse and heterogeneous bundles of capabilities. The constitution of nanotechnology as a field of research is perhaps a case in point (Fogelberg and Glimell 2003). Some futuristic visions and research programmes (e.g. atomic level manipulation) that have been around for a long time without achieving major breakthroughs, have suddenly become the focus of excitement in research policy circles, attracting large scale research and exploitation funding. Notwithstanding the rather disparate conceptions of nanotechnology—between a generic ability to manipulate at the atomic scale to more particular concepts such as nanomaterials—these are now constituted as an integrated area. In public and popular discourses there has also been conflation between advances in science and their exploitation through the application of this new knowledge and techniques in new technologies and medical practices. Instead we should perhaps see nanotechnology, in the first instance, as a somewhat unruly construct of technology proponents.4 Nanotechnology becomes a space within which technology promise can be negotiated—and a broad space of strategic research, where what is at stake is the promise of fields of technology rather than specific projects (Van Lente and Rip 1998b; Brown 2003). This was subsequently taken up and legitimated as a research programme-maker’s account—initially articulated most notably through the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and through US Congressional hearings resulting in the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act (NRDA) that authorized the $3.7 billion National Nanotechnology Program. This forms part of an emerging broader research policy framework that emphasizes the increasing scale of effort required for technological advance and exploitation and its heterogeneity (in terms both of the availability of complementary technical knowledges and of linkages between academic and industrial players). It favours large scale programmatic funding and specialist centres of excellence. In the case of NSF in particular this research policy perspective forms part of a confident broader mapping of the S&T research domain that anticipates
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the convergence of Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, and Cognitive Science—the so-called NBIC model (Spinardi and Williams 2005). Moreover, through a process of international policy mimicry, similarly conceived nanotechnology research programmes come to be part of the research policy provisions of virtually all major economies.5 The emphasis in these policy frameworks on the benefits and risks for society calls for some discussion. We note the very active role of NSF, notable Roco and collaborators (Roco and Bainbridge 2001; 2002), in promoting this debate and articulating visions of the far-reaching and positive societal benefits of nanotechnologies, perhaps also stimulated by the early articulation of public anxieties. The NRDA explicitly addresses the range of societal concerns associated with this new technology, including undesirable human and environmental consequences, and creates a mandate for integrating research on societal concerns with S&T research (Fisher 2005). The social as well as the technical stakes are being discussed ‘up-front.’ Indeed what we have arrived at could be seen as a remarkably socialized conception of the innovation process and its social outcomes (L´opez 2004), which Gorman (2002) has characterized as an emerging multi-disciplinary trading zone. The apparent tangibility of these visions of technical capabilities and social benefits draws attention away from more fundamental questions regarding what is nanotechnology. The concept of nanotechnology favoured by research policy refers to a markedly heterogeneous field, that pulls together some hitherto quite disparate areas of research—from chemistry, physics, and engineering, including microelectronics fabrication, materials science, scientific instrumentation, etc. Indeed many public research and exploitation policy frameworks flag this heterogeneity—pointing to the interaction between a range of technical advances needed for nanotechnology breakthroughs—and therefore support large-scale concerted research programmes (variously conceived as centres of excellence, platforms, clusters) able to integrate and exploit diverse research efforts and capabilities. Some have suggested that casting the net so wide—with correspondingly far-reaching projected returns—reflects a strategy by the disparate physical science communities to seek a quantum leap in research funding after a period in which the large-scale funding had been monopolized by Genomic S&T. Together they had more political weight—though such broad boundaries also entail risks, for example from loss of focus or infighting between competing constituents (Scientific American 2001; Stix 2001). Notwithstanding these visions of discontinuity and revolutionary change, some of the early achievements of nanotechnology seem rather mundane in comparison to the revolutionary promises [e.g. the transparent sun-tan lotion (Rather and Ratner 2003)] and look rather similar to conventional innovations. These observations, in turn, draw our attention to how a field is constructed and positions itself as a focus of expectations worthy of funding. In relation to a broad and heterogeneous field such as nanotechnology it forces us to ask how the various coalitions of actors in various constituent sub-domains have been brought together into broader fields construed as promising areas, suitable for funding? What kinds of boundary work have been undertaken in terms of admitting some fields and excluding others (Fogelberg and Glimell 2003)? What kinds of internal boundaries
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and ordering occur within the field (as evinced by the distinction between top-down and bottom-up approaches, and different definitions of the scope/scale of nanotechnology)? The availability of funding and other support for nanotechnology may promote reorientation of the research community; however the capabilities and objects of a researcher or laboratory are complex constructs and not wholly malleable (see e.g. Saari and Miettinen 2001), which may equally favour the redefinition of existing research as being part of the nanotechnology effort. We may need to explore the problems that may arise where public policy and debates get bound up with a particular set of preconceptions about technical potentialities and socio-economic challenges. In this connection, Donald MacKenzie has drawn our attention to the perils of the “certainty trough” (MacKenzie 1998). Whilst technical specialists in a domain are likely to be aware of the gulf between simplified accounts and what has been and is likely to be achieved,6 those who lack a direct understanding of a technical field need to rely on representation produced by others. The certainty trough may be most acute amongst non-specialists close enough to a programme to be committed to it, but unable to interrogate its claims critically. One danger that technology proponents may need to consider is the possibility that the gulf between these expectations and what is eventually delivered in the short-term may herald disenchantment with the technology (Stix 1996; Brown 2003), with the risk that public support may be withdrawn.7
ELSI-fication and its Analytical Pitfalls Today we find ourselves in a somewhat paradoxical situation. On the one hand expectations of rapid advances across various fields of S&T—as exemplified by the NBIC scenario—are seen as crucial for wealth creation in a competitive global knowledge economy and will potentially transform health and the quality of life. On the other hand, issues of “public acceptance” and fears about potential undesired (health, environmental, moral) consequences of technology have come to the fore, in the aftermath of the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) crisis, widespread public rejection of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) foods, and ethical debates about new reproductive technologies (Hathaway 2000). Research policymakers, practitioners and industry have come to the view that concern about the risks and ethical and social implications could impede acceptance of a technology and result in the failure of innovations. Advance in science and technology is both imperative and vulnerable! In this context scientists, medics and engineers, and, most directly, research policy-makers and (public and private sector) technology promoters have been forced to engage with the social, environmental and ethical, etc., dimensions of their work in a more systematic way than hitherto, attending not only to the organization of research and its exploitation, but also to its social outcomes. In a context in which addressing this broader “non-technical” domain has become a condition for the successful conduct of the S&T project in a more direct and compelling way than
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hitherto, technical specialists have turned to social scientists and other specialists, for example ethicists (as well as diverse lay publics), who are seen to possess the concepts and methodologies and legitimacy to help them address it. Cynics might observe that technical specialists have turned to those groups better placed to deal with, for them, troublesome domains—other expert groups seem to be enrolled to stand between technical specialists and society. But by the same token, social scientists, ethicists and others have not been slow to move in, securing audiences, influence and substantial public research funding in the process.8 One feature of this situation then has been the growth of funding for social sciences and the humanities linked to science, technology and medical research programmes. Much of this work is closely related to technical research projects and programmes—which often includes specific requirements for the advance assessment of the Ethical, Legal and Social Impacts (ELSI) of (certain) scientific, technological and especially medical developments. The ELSI programme, conducted under the US Human Genome Project,9 has provided a precedent for a similar programme under the National Nanotechnology Programme (Fisher 2005). One interesting question that we have to address here is why some technologies become the subject of societal controversy and concern—and requirements to address ELSI—whilst others, which may ultimately prove no less far-reaching in their social implications, are accepted without interrogation.10 Certain technologies, perceived as rather novel and strange, may provoke a frisson of desires and anxieties. They may act as “Rorschach tests” for society (Williams et al. 2005). This was evident in earlier rounds of technological change—for example the “new technology debate” in the 1980s, in which cheap microelectronics was seen as transforming society and became the subject of a number of hopes and fears: through robotics and automation they were seen as leading to mass unemployment, the displacement of workforce skills, surveillance, etc. Whilst such concerns may not have been entirely misplaced, the outcomes of pervasive computing have proved far more complex, often prosaic and disappointing, and also including unanticipated applications in pornography and crime, they are used for fun, play and enlightenment rather than just increasing productivity. Today, when these technologies are widely adopted, their capabilities and implications are better understood and have come to be recognized as rather mundane.11 In this connection technical capabilities which seem exotic or esoteric may offer greater scope for imagination—and some kinds of capability may offer particular openness as a vehicle for social concerns (e.g. where they seem to touch upon key human activities, where they impinge upon our identity or are somehow transgressive of important boundaries—particularly between what is perceived to be natural and unnatural), provoking particular dread as well as desires. The growth in these kinds of ELSI requirements is potentially extremely valuable in increasing research funding and bringing STS and broader social science and humanities perspectives into these S&T programmes. However, engagement is always something of a two-edged sword; it has complex effects and poses a number of challenges and dilemmas about the role for STS scholars. There are potential hazards, particularly if we embark upon this involvement in an uncritical and unreflexive manner (Rip 2005).12
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Three broad sets of concerns have been expressed around ELSI-fication:
r r r
Simplification: that the manner in which STS researchers and others are linked in to S&T research programmes may constrain the agenda of enquiry; Framing: that the structuring of enquiry—particularly the segregation between S&T and ELSI and between the different strands of ELSI—may frame debates; and Influence: that ELSI programmes may not be effective in influencing S&T policy and practice.
Simplification Social scientist (and lawyers and ethicists) have become involved in particular S&T projects and laboratories. For example in the UK, social scientists, lawyers and others participated in the Advisory Group that developed the Ethics and Governance Framework for The UK Biobank, which collects biological samples and environmental and lifestyle data, from medical records (UK Biobank 2003), while the Cambridge University Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration on Nanotechnology and the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Centre of the University of Newcastle have jointly participated in an intensive citizens jury on nanotechnology. This raises issues about how much interdisciplinary involvement is organized. Particular problems may arise where the research agenda is not driven by a social science perspective, but instead by a view (perhaps a scientist’s or policymaker’s view) of how ELSI analysis can contribute to resolving the challenges that may surround the development and exploitation of the technology. In this context the social science agenda may become simplified and trivialized in a number of ways. A selective range of substantive concerns may become prioritized, particularly where the ELSI researchers are called in to resolve practical matters (e.g. regarding how confidentiality and consent can be addressed in genetic health databases) and may end up with a service role. The social science (and ethical, legal etc.) contribution may be narrowly conceived and not driven by a social science research agenda. Even where this is not an issue, a limited set of potential socio-economic concerns may be highlighted, and become codified and bundled together within the ELSI framework. The ELSI team may end up closely associated with the S&T project and committed to ensuring that its objectives are fulfilled—working within the parameters (problem definitions, technical scope, timescale) of the S&T project. Finally, as we discuss below, a narrowed scope of enquiry may encourage a simplified model of the innovation process. Framing Wynne (2001) has argued that the separation of socio-ethical-legal enquiry from techno-scientific research has the consequence of leaving unaddressed the planning and conduct of scientific research and its claims to be able to resolve uncertainties about risk. The segmentation of debates into “hard” (risk management) and “soft”
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(ethical) also has ideological effects and, Wynne suggests, in the context of labeling of genetically modified foodstuffs, recasts public concerns as matters of private choice for individual consumers. We advance a parallel argument that the very idea of conducting prior ELSI assessments, by conveying the premise that one can somehow read off the diverse future implications at these earliest stages of a new technology, may encourage a linear reading of technology development pathways and outcomes.13 More specifically, the emphasis on ethical assessment of research and development activities takes us back to an essentialist understanding of the relationship between social values and innovation outcomes that have long been rejected by STS. Let us examine the two elements that seem to have become coupled together here. The practical activity of ethical assessment, derived perhaps from contemporary medical ethics, seems often to be informed by the more or less desirable outcomes (and vice versa). However this is underpinned by a simplified view of the value-artefact relationship: the idea that social implications are built-in to technologies in their early development, conceived as some kind of reflection of design practices and values, which are then reproduced when those technologies are subsequently applied. It is therefore unhelpful that much ELSI work may be somewhat divorced from the body of insights into innovation processes available from STS. In considering these framing processes we note that various kinds of discussion are, of course, conducted under the rubric of ELSI/ethical assessment. The concept of ethics demonstrates considerable interpretive flexibility.14 Evans has examined the growing influence of bioethics in the USA arguing that in this process, the domain of ethics itself has become narrowed and rigidified (Evans 2001). We should also consider that a new and evolving domain of debate is opening up around ELSI activities.15 Ethicists, philosophers and even theologians16 with their various presumptions, concerns and tools come into collision with STS and other social scientists, and with others (e.g. technical specialists deliberating the broader dimensions of their work). What is emerging is thus, to some extent, a contested domain. There is an element of competition between these different perspectives, augmented by a lack of mutual understanding and agreement about their respective contributions and domains of pertinence. A particular issue in relation to ELSI studies is that the findings from empirical STS research about the complexity of technological innovation processes and outcomes may not be widely recognized by other groups. There is a challenge for STS to communicate its core concepts and tools to other groups (as well as vice versa). Influence A third set of concerns, particularly evident from those connected with ELSI research programmes in the USA, revolves round the fear that this research will fail to influence policy (McCain 2002; Fisher 2005). Whilst a substantial body of ELSI findings and publications in relation to nanotechnologies are coming on stream (Schummer 2004), ELSI research has lagged behind S&T research (Mnyusiwalla et al. 2003); academic ELSI research may be segregated from policy and prac-
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tice by barriers between disciplines, it may not be sufficiently policy oriented, and may be arriving too late to influence policy (Guston 2002, 2004; Bennett and Sarewitz 2006). The US ELSI researchers, with their large-scale ELSI programme, find themselves in a rather different position to their UK and European counterparts for whom ELSI funding is more uneven and must be sought through a wide variety of sources and often involving smaller projects, sometimes linked to technical research projects and laboratories. The US researchers have, correspondingly, highlighted the challenge of integrating ELSI research into S&T research for example through the establishment of Centres for Responsible Innovation (Guston and Sarewitz 2002).
Intervention in Prior Development Moving Away from Linear Innovation Models The kind of linear, “essentialist” view of the innovation process that we have been criticizing here was apparent in some of the earliest critical accounts that informed the emergence of the social shaping of technology perspective (MacKenzie and Wajcman 1985), for example Noble’s (1979) classic study of the values underpinning design choices in machine tool automation. The analyses of Winner (1980) and of Collingridge (1992) both highlighted the extent to which certain kinds of outcome may get patterned into technology development. The implication was the need to intervene in technology development from its earliest stages. However, as evinced in the Collingridge Dilemma, this could be difficult to achieve.17 Ideas about how these difficulties could be resolved included the development of pro-active intervention methods such as Constructive Technology Assessment (Schot 1992; Rip et al. 1995). However, the subsequent evolution of social shaping analyses has called into question the presumption underpinning these early accounts, that development trajectories are stable and that the social implications of a technology are patterned into a technology at the outset (Sørenson 2004). The criticisms are advanced: that the early accounts privilege prior technology design and overlook first the way in which innovation continues as designed artefacts are implemented and used, and, further, underplays the complex biography of technologies including the cumulative character of their innovation processes over a multiplicity of sires of application and product design—implementation cycles (see e.g. the collection of papers in Sørenson and Williams 2002). Instead what we might call social shaping of technology Mk II (SST II) points to the highly dispersed ‘social learning’ processes—described variously as innofusion, domestication, consumption and appropriation (Williams et al. 2005), involving a much wider range of players than the technical, policy and managerial elite most directly involved in initial technology design/development (Russell and Williams 2002a). The emphasis in SST II on the plurality of players surrounding a technology does not mean that technological innovation has suddenly become emancipated, and that
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the strategic sites of technology design and development are no longer important. It does, however, suggest that the significance of the supply side is a matter that cannot be presupposed, but may vary between technologies and application settings and thus requires analysis and explanation in individual cases.
Differing Socio-technical Architectures and Contexts for Intervention The shift in analysis has important implications for attempts to intervene in technological development and control any undesirable consequences. Underpinned by a growing body of empirical research, the emerging SST II model of innovation draws attention to the multiplicity of sites and stages where technologies (and their outcomes) are shaped and where assessment and intervention may be undertaken. This offers a strongly contrasting model to traditional linear and essentialist accounts, which has suggested that you need to undertake technology assessment and control from the earliest stages of development. However, the opportunities for intervention vary substantially over different stages and across different sites of innovation, depending, amongst other things, upon the form of technology, which in turn patterns the socio-technical context of innovation, the range of players and the ways they are configured together (what we might call the socio-technical architecture of its creation and use). We must therefore explore the variety of technological forms, the various technologies and domains of application and use, which constitute different sociotechnical architectures and contexts for intervention. Though there is not space in the confines of this paper to do more than outline these factors, we can identify a spectrum of socio-technical architectures varying in terms of the centrality of prior design and thus need for prior intervention. Prior design and development choices may have particular pertinence, for example, in relation to those technologies exhibiting a high degree of “technological inseparability” or where they rest upon certain materials with intrinsic properties such as particularly severe or hard to control health or environmental hazards— nuclear power as perhaps a case in point (see Winner 1980)—which may therefore be inflexible in their implications after initial design decisions have been made. Similarly with innovation in pharmaceuticals, food additives, and biocides— which are directly and necessarily consumed by individuals (or absorbed by eco-systems)—the choice of material with its various desired and undesired consequences in crucial. In these cases we find extensive testing and approval systems to assess efficacy and risk. These testing requirements explicitly and deliberately impart a linear character to product development—products cannot be modified without further testing and regulatory approval [to the extent that these may sometimes be described as “the pipeline” (Tait and Williams 1999)]. These kinds of settings can produce simplified, hierarchically structured innovation systems (whereby, e.g., doctors and regulators have more salience over the choices of pharmaceuticals than
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consumers) than we find, for example in relation to electronic consumer goods, where the technology is being sold directly to the public. We may contrast these contexts where those affected by technologies have limited influence over adoption decisions with, for example, mass market products, in which, assuming that the consumer will not voluntarily adopt technologies inimical to their perceived interests, the consumption of the technology may be considered unproblematic, except in specific cases in which individual cost/risk avoidance will not motivate aversion.18 Prior choices are also important in relation to what are often described as largescale socio-technical systems, in which powerful “path dependencies,” and reinforcement between the technical features and the broader innovation regime, may result in lock-in to particular technology models. The difficulties of overcoming lock-in in technologies, once entrenched, and changing technology regimes, also mandate in favour of advance intervention in innovation pathways (Schot 1992; Rip et al. 1995). However, STS research into technology transitions, in particular exploring transitions to a more environmentally sustainable economy, has drawn attention to ways in which the close coupling between the design of technical components, the institutional context and entrenched operating principles could be reversed. A head-on assault on entrenched technologies is unlikely to succeed. However, existing elements could be reconfigured—for example whereby components developed for lean cars could be adapted for the electric car (Weber et al., 1999) and new technologies brought to maturity in protected niches (Rip and Schot 2002). This kind of reconfigurability of component technologies is a marked feature of certain other technologies which remain more generic in their social and technical implications. ICTs have an architecture that enables them to be highly flexible in their application. For example, industrial information systems frequently take the form of configurational technologies (Fleck et al. 1990)—specific combinations of standardized and customized elements put together to match the needs of organizational users—a process in which the user may be able to exercise substantial levels of choice. In some cases (e.g. widely dispersed technologies such as ICTs in everyday life), the final outcomes of innovation are not realized until the stages of final implementation/configuration of technologies, shaped by a wide array of intermediate and final users. Some nanotechnology applications are likely to share this reconfigurability, whilst in other applications the key choices (e.g. re materials) may be made early in development. This emphasis on the fluidity of application of technology is somewhat paradoxical, as it seems to take us back to some of the earliest debates in science and technology studies about the relationship between technology and society. In particular the recent emphasis on the flexibility of technologies in their application/use, and the consequent view that the social implications of technology are contingent features depending on the application context and the strategy and interaction of players seems to bring us back to something like the Bernalite ‘use-abuse’ model, that was much criticized by early technology studies analysts who insisted upon the need to “open the black box” and understand the social values and relationships that became embedded in S&T practice (Rose and Rose 1976).
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Of course, the terrain of discussion about the “politics of technology” is very different today. We now have a large body of empirically based research findings encompassing many different types of technology/innovation contexts and rich conceptual schemas to characterize these (encompassing, e.g., systemic and incremental innovations) (Russell and Williams 2002b). This provides the basis for a much more nuanced analysis of specific innovation processes, as noted above, distinguishing the diverse kinds of technological forms and of transformation terrains—the sociotechnical settings in which episodes of technical innovation take place.19
The Dilemmas of Intervention—Balancing Action and Analysis Technology studies has, of course, been underpinned, from the outset, by a concern to assess and intervene around processes of technological change and their societal implications. This has motivated attempts to anticipate the outcomes of emerging technologies—particularly those with great potential significance for society and the environment. These attempts involve a number of risks and dilemmas. Much initial writing and activity in technology studies came from players with particular political commitments involved in the development, environmental and labour movements, feminism, and other critical perspectives (Faulkner et al. 1998). However the establishment of technology studies as a field of academic enquiry forced a revision— suggesting the need for greater analytical distance. In particular, a key argument across a number of analytic traditions was the need to deconstruct technology as an object of study. Bloor’s (1976) symmetry principle from the sociology of scientific knowledge—regarding the need to treat symmetrically knowledge claims believed false and true today—was applied to claims about the properties and implications of new technologies (Pinch and Bijker 1984). Though few followed Woolgar’s (1991) profound epistemological relativism, many more or less explicitly adopt a position that could be described as methodological relativism—that the properties of technologies and their performance are always mediated through socially rooted theoretical constructs and must thus remain provisional (Radder 1992). However the desire to intervene requires some degree of closure—or at least for some judgment to be made in the face of competing claims. Bijker (1993) suggests that STS must have two modes—of action and reflection—in which our commitment is balanced against skepticism. Moving between these modes however represents a tricky juggling act (Woodhouse et al. 2002). These issues resurface in the problems involved in assessing and intervening with new S&T fields: a desire to prevent or ameliorate potential negative outcomes motivates attempts to assess these in advance of comprehensive knowledge about the technical or societal outcomes. We may seek to extrapolate from previous episodes of innovation—however this past experience and our models for intervention may not apply (Grove-White et al. 2004). Moreover, the thrust of much contemporary STS has been to emphasize the contingency of socio-technical outcomes, and the consequent difficulties and pitfalls besetting attempts to generalize between cases (Sørenson 2002, 2004).
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From GMO to Nano? These considerations oblige us to problematize the frequently observed tendency to see the next technological revolution through the lens of the last. It poses questions: to what extent can we apply knowledge from previous episodes and contexts of innovation? What are the risks of attempting this? These challenges come up in contemporary debates about nanotechnology in which the ghost of the ongoing GMO food controversy looms large. In terms of public policy debates we find a number of themes recurring. People see substantive parallels between the two sets of issues—and a residue of public concerns are [sic] carried forward—anxieties about potential health and environmental problems of GMO food feed in to current nanotechnology concerns in much public discussion (Sandler and Kay 2006). Underpinning these responses are deeper issues and concerns regarding the motives and trustworthiness of the institutions involved: industry, scientists, regulators, and government (Wynne 2001). In terms of policy debates, our frameworks and tools of analysis are rooted in past circumstances which may no longer be appropriate. Grove-White et al. (2004) discuss the ways in which the GMO food policy debate was unhelpfully constrained within then existing risk management procedures. Taking this argument further, whilst we can observe how policy/regulatory routines may be rooted in their history, this observation may equally be applied to social science perspectives on technology. Much socio-economic research (e.g. Wood et al. 2003) seems to fall foul of the same problem—of applying a template based on GMO foods to nanotechnology—for example in terms of treating both technologies as a thing rather than a bundle of capabilities; conceived from the outset as challenging to existing boundaries on the grounds of potential risk and societal values. Criticizing this error, Grove-White et al. (2004) stress the: Early need for searching, socially-realistic analysis of the distinctive character and properties of the technological form . . .
They note: It cannot be assumed that the conceptualisations and analytical categories currently available will be able to capture what may prove most distinctive about nanotechnology (p. 9).
They make a further important observation, that this caution applies as much to assessment and engagement methods, and therefore call for experiments about new forms of public engagement. This kind of reflexive deliberation that Grove-White et al. (2004) propose is extremely valuable. However, it represents an extremely challenging goal. For example, we have very little experience of such new forms of engagement, let alone how they may feed in to policy/regulatory processes. Despite this, S&T policymakers seem to have latched on to the concept of public engagement and especially upstream policy engagement which was seized upon half-way through the GMO controversy as something that would have ameliorated or avoided this debacle (Department of Trade and Industry 2003) and comes to be seen as providing
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robust solutions to the problems of public acceptance, appropriation and steering of emerging technologies such as nanotechnology (Office of Science and Technology 2005). The STS critique of traditional technocratic approaches to technology promotion seems to have been taken on board by public policy (Rip 2005). However, the presumption that public involvement, and in particular upstream involvement in S&T, will lead to smoother, more socially beneficial and acceptable technology development and exploitation pathways remains unproven. Social scientists may need to be rather careful about how their proposals are presented, interpreted and acted upon by policymakers and technology decision-makers lest they end up appearing to offer a “social fix” to the problem of managing the introduction of problematic technologies in which engagement becomes a new mode of technology appropriation. There are real difficulties about the positions that social scientists adopt in these debates. Many seem to be approaching the GM and nano debates with a rather particular set of theoretical, methodological and political commitments which, for example, give salience to their potential risks, their presumed societal challenges and the difficulty of exercising control. Thus the starting point for much discussion is a more or less explicit presumption that a key question surrounding these technologies is their potential risk, presupposing both that these technologies are inherently likely to involve significant risks, and risks which are likely to be qualitatively different from existing technologies—such that a precautionary response is therefore needed.20 This precautionary risk frame is associated with a broader perspective whereby these technologies are presumed to pose a social challenge that is likewise different to previous scientific and technological developments. The final element is a presumption that these developments are somehow out of control; particularly where they may be self-reproducing or otherwise difficult to contain but more generally where their development is dominated by powerful private interests (e.g. the imputed self-interest of technical specialists as well as corporations); that public and broader societal interests are marginalized and there is therefore a need to strengthen public engagement and to amplify the “marginalized voices.” These are, of course, perfectly valid concerns. They are deeply rooted in the historical alignment of much work in technology studies with popular oppositional responses to emerging technologies (Faulkner et al. 1998; Woodhouse et al. 2002; Sørenson 2004). However, particularly as society gears itself up to an array of rapidly emerging S&T opportunities holding out far reaching “promise,” STS will necessarily encounter a wider range of no-less valid perspectives and concerns.21 For example, STS has long sought to validate “lay” contributions to decisions once the preserve of an industrial and technical elite. Today’s many-voiced debates may revolve around the conflicting claims and priorities of patient groups and experts supporting a new medical technology versus religious and other value-based groups opposing it. If STS remains bound by its historical repertoire, its past roles and commitments, we may arbitrarily and unhelpfully limit ourselves to being the mouthpiece of critical movements against modernization.
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Narrative Bias This brings us to a final point regarding the problem of the (often tacit) commitments in STS and social science/ELSI studies more generally. Even where political commitments are explicitly eschewed, the analytical frameworks that STS and other researchers deploy, the study methods, the tools for intervention, and dominant narratives of particular schools may import conceptions about the character of S&T developments, their likely trajectories and their implications. Researchers need to pay attention to “narrative bias”: the tendency of particular sub-disciplines and schools of analysis to revolve around particular stories, whether exemplary or cautionary tales (Stewart and Williams 2005). Across these stories we will find a (restricted) set of scripts: a repertoire of narrative structures, populated by certain groups of actors, sets of problems and their solutions; and often a set of somewhat stereotyped roles and characters: demons, potential victims and heroic rescuers (as well as a particular storyteller’s viewpoint). The consequence is the romanticization of certain players and strategic moves. The kinds of analytic frameworks we advance when we investigate new technologies are laden with presuppositions: technologies—and our tools for analysing them—come with stories attached. One example concerns the aforementioned application of a risk management frame. This highlights one problem: that we possess far better developed tools and criteria for thinking about the potential (health and environmental) risks of a new technology and how they may be reduced than for considering social benefit. Partly this is because risk avoidance tends to be a universalized goal, subject to standardized criteria, whilst conceptions of what is socially beneficial and how benefit should be addressed are likely to vary significantly between different social groups.22 It is of course not the case that researchers can somehow jettison narrative biases and commitments (they are, after all, a key constituent of what brings a school of enquiry to life—helping to pull out issues for analysis and ensuring that findings are meaningful/of broader interest). However, the established narrative repertoires within STS are becoming hackneyed, and no longer do justice to the complexity of our ambivalent encounters with emerging technologies—as we see in the case of ICTs today where diverse actors and groups have very different orientations and experiences (Stewart 2001). We may therefore need to be much more aware of our existing stories and acquire a richer repertoire of narrative frames. This could help analysts to relativize them: to see how we might move between different narrative structures and frames—and use them as a resource for analysis and debate.23
Implications for the Role of Social Scientists These points are important politically as well as for STS analysis. ELSI and STS researchers, and a wider range of scholars across the social sciences and humanities, are becoming more directly implicated in the emergence of these new technologies than in previous epochs of technological change. STS, after decades of
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commenting from the margins, has acquired a position in decision making as well as in the framing of public debates. As Rip (2005) recently observed, STS is becoming mainstream. Indeed, it could be argued that social scientists are becoming intermediaries in the mobilization of public sentiment—for example through their role in conducting, analysing and reporting on citizen panels and other exercises in user engagement, they are also necessarily interpreting and articulating the voices of particular actors. This somewhat privileged position places a special responsibility on STS researchers to consider their commitments with great care. The arguments that STS researchers deploy have consequences for different groups—proponents and opponents, scientists and lay publics, industry and policymakers. STS started with a generic commitment to challenging the exclusive role of technical specialists in science and technology policy—and sought to provide a critical account of the powerful industry and state actors that lay behind yesterday’s high technology futures. But these historical analytical and political stances may no longer be an adequate guide to the role STS is coming to play in the more complex and dynamic world of today. In the current climate STS may need to give a more balanced attention to the promotion and control of technology, to addressing its benefits as well as its risks, to considering the full range of diverse interests and public pressure groups favouring as well as opposing new technological and medical developments and even perhaps addressing the experiences of scientists and engineers, who may not recognize themselves, their imputed authority and goals in some of the more demonized accounts emerging of the field. STS has an important contribution to make in avoiding the pitfalls of compressed foresight: mechanistic understandings of technology trajectories and their “impacts” that are still prevalent in other disciplines and sectors of society. If it takes up this challenge and seeks a closer engagement with science and technology policy and practice, STS will need to consider very carefully its (often tacit) commitments, rooted for example in our historical links to popular and critical movements and develop a wider repertoire of roles, narratives and analytical frames more adequate to the complexity of the decision-making processes we face today and the ways in which we are engaged. Acknowledgments An early version of this paper was presented at the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society (Egenis) at the University of Exeter, 30 November 2004. In addition to these discussions, the author is very grateful for feedback from colleagues at the University of Edinburgh (especially Wendy Faulkner, Donald MacKenzie, Sarah Parry, and Joyce Tait) and beyond (in particular Nik Brown, David Guston, Arie Rip, Richard Twine, and Brian Wynne), as well as two anonymous referees.
Notes 1. 4S & EASST Conference, Paris, 25–28 August 2004: Public Proofs: Science, Technology, and Democracy; a joint meeting of the (mainly North American) Society for Social Studies of Science and the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology.
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2. There are, of course, important differences between proponents and opponents of a technology in a way in which future visions of an emerging technology are projected. I am grateful to my colleague Joyce Tait for this observation regarding the differences between “positive” and “negative” foresight, reflecting their proponents’ diverging aims of targeting money to specific expected areas of innovation versus stopping developments (personal communication with author). 3. Brown (2003) makes a similar argument, that technology hype mobilizes the future into the present. 4. The idea of nanotechnology has a long history, of course. The earliest accounts of nanotechnology can be traced back to a 1959 speech by the physicist, Richard P. Feynman, to the American Physical Society entitled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom.” More recently the concept of nanotechnology was promoted in the writings of Eric Drexler (Drexler 1986; Drexler et al. 1991) including his PhD, Molecular Engineering: An Approach to the Development of General Capabilities for Molecular Manipulation, published in 1981 and now available at his website: http://www.imm.org/. What is perhaps most striking is how well-rehearsed this self-history of nanotechnology is (Bennett and Sarewitz 2006). The history and claims surrounding nanotechnology have not been without controversy—as exemplified by the highly publicized dispute between Scientific American and the Foresight Nanotech Institute (http://www.foresight.org/). The latter, founded by Drexler with a mission “to ensure the beneficial implementation of nanotechnology,” objected to an article in Scientific American (Stix 1996) which contrasted the utopian futuristic visions articulated by Drexler and other “Nanoists” with the more uneven and mundane achievements of “Real Nanotechnology,” in particular querying the prospects of self-assembling nanodevices. L´opez (2004) suggests that the interpenetration of S&T and Science Fiction discourses presents a particular problem for critical analysis of nanotechnology. The issue of who is constructing these discourses is important. Bennett and Sarewitz (2006) highlight the historical exclusion of the STS community from discussions of nanotechnology futures. Though a large body of findings is coming on stream (Schummer 2004) following the US National Nanotechnology Programme (see below), it is striking that content analysis of the two main academic sociology of technology journals— Science, Technology and Human Values and Social Studies of Science—reveals only two papers which mention nanotechnology, even in the most tangential manner (Saari and Miettinen 2001; Gorman 2002). 5. In particular, the European Commission adopted a Communication: European Commission (2004) Towards a European Strategy for Nanotechnology [Communication, COM(2004) 338, 12 May 2004] followed by an Action Plan: European Commission (2005) Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies: An Action Plan for Europe 2005–2009 [COM(2005) 243, 7 June 2005]. These proposed a safe, integrated and responsible strategy for Europe in nanoscience and nanotechnology. See http://www.cordis.lu/nanotechnology/actionplan.htm (accessed 15 June 2006). 6. For example, research programme builders may see articulating promises/bigger visions as a necessary tactic of winning research funding; for the practising researcher, however, it may be business as usual—there is no necessity that they buy-in to these particular visions about the speed and outcomes of change. 7. Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the UK provides one illustration. The Lighthill Report (Science Research Council 1973), which concluded that the ambitious claims confidently projected by early AI proponents in the 1950s and 1960s showed no immediate prospect of being fulfilled, resulted in the near cessation of AI research funding in the UK for over a decade—the so-called AI Winter (http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/AI at Edinburgh perspective.html; Arnall 2003) (accessed 15 June 2006). 8. Langdon Winner, in his testimony to the Committee on Science of the US House of Representatives on The Societal Implications of Nanotechnology states:
I would not advise you to pass a Nanoethicist Full Employment Act, sponsoring the creation of a new profession. Although the new academic research in this area would be of some value, there is also a tendency for those who conduct research about the ethical dimensions of emerging technology to gravitate toward the more comfortable, even trivial questions involved, avoiding issues that might become a focus of conflict. The professional field of bioethics, for example (which might become, alas, a model for
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9. The ELSI Research Programme, founded in 1988, received 3–5 percent of the total funding for the US Human Genome Project. Between 1990 and 2001, the ELSI programme devoted more than $86 million to support some 235 research and education projects and conferences. See http://www.genome.gov/10001798. James Watson promoted the ELSI programme with the ambitious objective “to address, anticipate, and develop suggestions for dealing with such problems in order to forestall adverse effects” (Watson 1989). The specific goals adopted by the programme included developing policy options that would assure that the genetic information arising from HGP is used for the benefit of individuals and society (McCain 2002). 10. The question of why some new technologies have not been a source of concern, while others have provoked fierce contestation, is addressed by a considerable body of literature, much of it sparked initially by the battles over nuclear power in the late 1960s and 1970s. Classic discussions include Starr (1969) and Slovic (1987). Although useful (Slovic’s work in effect predicted the controversy over genetically modified foodstuffs), the classic analyses are rather narrowly psychological in their focus. For wider, more sociological viewpoints, see for example, Douglas (1986), Beck (1992), Krimsky and Golding (1992) and Luhmann (1993). 11. Thus James Fleck was intrigued that robotics and their societal and especially employment implications were the subject of much debate in the 1970s and 1980s, whereas other simpler but less imaginatively compelling technologies, such as programmable logic controllers, received negligible attention, despite having far more profound employment effects (Fleck et al. 1990). 12. The different usages of the term ELSI-fication—reflecting a range of more or less divergent concerns—point to the complex implications of the new engagement between S&T and social sciences/humanities. The term ELSI-fication gained everyday currency in the USA in the HGP era but seems to have been used first in STS discussions by David Guston in a presentation to the 4th Triple Helix Conference (Copenhagen 6–9 November 2002) (see Guston 2002; Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz 2003; http://users.fmg.u-va.nl/lleydesdorff/th4/spp.htm). Guston raises a concern that the volumes of ELSI research might swamp and distort social science. In contrast, Davenport and Leith have recently used this term to refer to “The increased participation of ‘society’ in science and also that social science and humanities understandings can be brought to bear on issues of science in society” (Davenport and Leith 2005, p.138). Arie Rip has raised the risk that “STS can become the victim of ‘ESLI-fication”’ (Rip 2005), becoming compromised if, in becoming engaged, it loses critical distance. The latter usage is the focus of this paper. 13. This is not to suggest that everyone undertaking ELSI assessments accepts such a mechanistic view. However, the commissioning and conduct of much ELSI work convey a sense of a determinate assessment being undertaken, which perhaps corresponds to the kinds of answers that the policy and practitioner audiences are seeking. It often appears closely tied to the conduct and timing of particular S&T research projects or programmes, and to particular issues that need to be resolved for the successful, effective handling of certain kinds of pragmatic problems for S&T research (proper handling of confidentiality issues in genetic medical studies as a case in point). This framing of questions to be addressed and the timing of ELSI studies may restrict the scope of enquiry (e.g. linking it to particular S&T developments or stakeholders). The attendant focusing involves opportunity costs, insofar as it may divert attention from other pertinent research goals, targets and frameworks. It may thus leave little scope for broader socio-economic enquiry and may be pursued at the cost of more fundamental academic research. 14. Indeed amongst some commentators the ethical dimension seems to be used as a euphemism for political/ideological commitment—here “ethics” refers to a politics of technology and to commitments and values that may remain unspoken to wider audiences. 15. For example, proposals for assessing the ethical, environmental, economic, legal, and social implications E3LS of technology, rather than ELSI, point to this plurality of concerns (Mnyusiwalla et al. 2003).
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16. For example the Human Genome Project ELSI programme included an award on the “Theological Questions Raised by the Human Genome Initiative” [Grant # R01 HG00487]. 17. The Collingridge Dilemma can be briefly summarized. At the initial stages of a technological system, knowledge about its potential hazards and other detrimental consequences will be limited. It is therefore difficult at this stage to win support/legitimacy for public intervention and control. Conversely, when a technological system is more developed, it will also be well-entrenched. Though we will have more systematic knowledge about the costs and benefits of the technology, attempts to regulate it will have to confront powerful vested interests (Collingridge 1980). 18. Contexts in which consumer choices might not avoid deleterious outcomes include:
r r r r
Risks which are not known/readily appreciated; Collective risks not experienced or perceived as sufficiently hazardous by the individual to deter adoption on the grounds of self-interest but sufficiently large to motivate collective action; Outcomes which are seen as unacceptable to “society” though accepted/desired by individuals/groups (e.g. criminal uses); Externalized costs (e.g. the undermining of public transport by the private car or likewise of public phone provision by the adoption of mobile phones).
19. The socio-technical outcomes of innovation may be patterned in different ways. For example, Arie Rip in mapping innovation pathways and outcomes, has distinguished between capabilities with “generic richness” and wide-ranging potential and those directed towards specific innovations (see Spinardi and Williams 2005). Interesting work has been done, for instance, by the European ATBEST project which examined techniques and tools for assessing Breakthrough and Emerging S&T. See http://www.ress.ed.ac.uk/atbest/ for more details. Given the uncertainties that surround attempts to anticipate innovation pathways and outcomes, it still remains a highly moot point whether it would be sensible to abandon S&T investigations where prior assessment had flagged the possibility of eventual problematic outcomes. 20. Attention to potential health and environmental hazards is, of course, important. However some elements of this presumed novelty of risk need to be examined. It is surely strange to find discussions of the hazards of nano-particles as if these were only being encountered for the first time, notwithstanding two or more decades of preceding discussion about the health hazards of welding fumes and vehicle exhaust particulates. The idea that nano-scale materials need to be subject to specific hazard testing (Royal Society/Royal Academy of Engineering 2004) has been rapidly accepted by the scientific and policy elite—perhaps because it could allay fears whilst not presenting a new challenge to existing regulatory regimes. 21. For example the early popular movements often emerged in reaction against a few heroic large-scale technology projects (nuclear power, supersonic aircraft). Today, when innovation is more rapid and diverse and widely distributed across social actors there is a shift from pro- and anti-debates to the more diverse assessment of a plethora of competing technical solutions in which the opportunity costs of choosing one path over another may figure as highly as costs and benefits. 22. In addition, as Grove-White et al. (2004) point out, the issue of promised social benefits has been systematically excluded from established regulatory processes. 23. Wendy Faulkner has drawn my attention to a parallel discussion in relation to feminist epistemology (see e.g. Haraway 1988).
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Watson, J.D. 1989. Testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space. US Congress, Senate Hearing 101–528, 9 November 1989, p. 13. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Weber, M., Hoogma, R., Lane, B., and J. Schot. 1999. Experimenting with Sustainable Transport Innovations. A Workbook for Strategic Niche Management. Seville/Enschede: University of Twente. Williams, R., Stewart, J. and R. Slack. 2005. Social Learning and Technological Innovation: Experimenting with ICTs. Aldershot: Edward Elgar. Winner, L. 1980. Do Artefacts Have Politics? Daedalus 109: 121–136. Winner, L. 2003. Testimony to the Committee on Science of the US House of Representatives on the Societal Implications of Nanotechnology House Committee on Science, Hearings, Wednesday, 9 April 2003. Available at http://www.house.gov/science/hearings/full03/apr09/winner.htm. Accessed 15 June 2006. Wood, S., Jones, R., and A. Geldart. 2003. The Social and Economic Challenges of Nanotechnology. Swindon: Economic and Social Research Council. Woodhouse, E., Hess, D., Breyman, S. and B. Martin. 2002. Science Studies and Activism: Possibilities and Problems for Recontructivist Agendas. Social Studies of Science 32(2): 297–319. Woolgar, S. 1991. The Turn to Technology in Social Studies of Science. Science, Technology & Human Values 16(1): 20–50. Wynne, B. 2001. Creating Public Alienation: Expert Cultures of Risk and Ethics on GMOs. Science as Culture 10(4): 445–481.
Chapter 23
Science Fiction, Nano-Ethics, and the Moral Imagination Rosalyn W. Berne
Thinking about societal, political, economic, and technological futures is extremely challenging (as pointed out by Peterson, ch. 3; Fiedeler, ch. 21; and Goorden et al., ch. 14). This Yearbook presents a number of potential tools, rationales, and frameworks for doing so—both from the standpoints of scholarly knowledge and of practitioner experience. Yet how does one approach deeper human and ethical dimensions—such as narrative conceptions of the self—that may be entailed by future visions of nanotechnology? In this chapter, Berne discusses questions such as this, which she terms “meta-ethical” questions. In doing so, she also considers the role of science fiction in exploring nanotechnology futures (as do Peterson, ch. 3; B¨unger, ch. 5; and Bennett, ch. 12). Berne contends that the creative process of writing fiction can help one tap into one’s imagination in order to bring the “source of the desires, images, and beliefs which give rise to the nanotechnology quest” into present view. – Eds.
R.W. Berne University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA Originally presented at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University on 6 October 2006.
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Introduction It is commonly assumed that science fiction is written with the intention of predicting our future. This is only partially correct. Sometimes science fiction is written to avoid what the future may be, as Dune author Frank Herbert has suggested (Hammer, n.d). While it will commonly portray imagined other-worlds, and other times, science fiction is just as much or even more so about us; living in our world; now. One way that humanity attempts to capture and understand the human condition is through science, and its quest for knowledge of the laws that govern the physical universe. Another is through religion, and its attempts to garner the nature and purpose of human life, inside of a moral universe that might guide how we ought to live. Ethics, yet another attempt to capture the human condition, seeks to identify and understand principles or laws that might govern human moral choices and behaviors. In the absence of discernable or existing moral laws, it reflects on the ways in which human communities construct and agree on values about how they will live together. To that end, science fiction (SF) has an important contribution to make. New technologies are developed, in part, to address human material needs. An ethics of technology then, will seek to understand under what conditions those developments ought to proceed, and to guide these developments in ways that enhance the good, and minimize any hard they may bring. It is often taken for granted that while nanotechnology may be revolutionary in its scope, it is just another phase in the evolution of technological development. Yet there is moral significance in the imagined possibilities, beliefs and visions which have given rise to nanotechnology. The global initiatives of nanotechnology represent an exponential increase in the capacity of human beings to precisely manipulate the molecular and even atomic levels of matter, both living and inert. One question often asked is “Where is nanotechnology leading us?” This seemingly prudent query actually reflects a passive, ethically ambivalent stance. How about asking “From where does the desire for such awesome power come, and to what purpose?” The moral imperative of such a potentially disruptive undertaking as the “nanotechnology revolution” is not to simply predict (and therein prepare for) our future; but rather, to take responsibility for the fact that we are using nanotechnology to reconstruct and reshape the course of human events. Ethically speaking, it behooves us to renounce the false belief that nanotechnology is just another phase of our technological evolution, recognizing and acknowledging the power and capacity we have to conceive, imagine, and conscientiously create a humanitarian, sustainable nanotechnology enabled future. This paper argues that SF is one means we have for doing so.
Three Dimensions of Nanotechnology Ethics Ethical considerations of nanotechnology can be viewed through three, sometimes overlapping categories (Berne 2006):
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First Dimension Nanoethics includes moral assertions about nanotechnology that are non negotiable as they represent apparent, explicit, commonly held, and widely accepted values. For example, scientists and engineers who are working with various nanosubstances and doing different kinds of experiments with those substances are expected to take care in storage and disposal, and to avoid exposing the atmosphere, water, and human beings to anything that might be hazardous. Potential dangers (e.g., freely migrating carbon nanotubes penetrating plant, animal, and human cells, or uncontrollable self-replicators) morally obligate nanoscale science and engineering researchers to proactively work at averting any consequential and environmental harms. Second Dimension Nanoethics is the domain of negotiable moral claims that are subject to change. It entails a dialogic, dialectic process of discovery and construction, where stakeholders are engaged in a dynamic, competitive process of exploring and negotiating values. Here, the worthiness, purposes, directions, and intentions of nanotechnology are called into question and sorted out. Consider the following example. Two nanoscientists speak about how wonderful it would be if their research could contribute to eliminating mental depression from the human condition. Various kinds of professional codes might offer these scientists some direction as to how to proceed ethically, with the study and actual development of a direct chemical intervention of the neurological causes of depression. But codes are not designed to offer insight into the deeper, more profound social, cultural, and perhaps spiritual consequences of such a “cure.” While the treatment may alleviate exceedingly difficult symptoms, it may also inhibit or mask the need for more fundamental changes to the person’s social or familial consitions; addressing the root, psychological causes of the depression. How might these two resarchers grapple with this level of inquiry regarding their research? Should they (or any laboratory scientist) concern themselves with such philosophical questions, or leave them to the mental health practitioners? Discourse drives Second Dimension inquires such as this. Third Dimension Attempts to understand why nanotechnology is being pursued as it is, what meaning it has for whom, and what deep-seated beliefs and ambitions are stimulating its development move us into Third Dimension Nanoethics. Third Dimension Nanoethics seeks meta-ethical understandings of the purposes of human living, beliefs about existence, and about the way meaning is created as it pertains to conceptualizations of selfhood and purpose. The Third Dimension is where we express tacit beliefs and ideas about nanotechnology through the use of imagery, fantasy, and metaphor and myth. Here, we are able to encounter the strangeness of what is imagined to yet be possible in the nanotechnology world, and to explore what those imaginings could mean if materialized in human individual and social life. This is also where
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we explore ourselves symbolically; obliquely expressing desires, fears, beliefs and needs that are buried in the recesses of the psyche. Each dimension of nanoethics exploration is important, the Third being the most elusive as it contains and reflects beliefs and assumptions about nanotechnology that are not expressed explicitly. The concept might be understood metaphorically in thinking of an almond or peach. The pit of a peach (Prunus persica) contains the seed, which is contained inside the hard, woody endocarp layer. The endocarp is the inner layer of the fruit wall, or pericarp. It is surrounded by a fleshy mesocarp and a thin outer skin or exocarp. The endocarp protects and aids in the dispersal of the vulnerable seed. The Third Dimension is like the pit; it contains the vulnerable seed (or our psyche), protected by the mesocarp and exocarp (the myths we live by, and the narratives we tell) regarding who we are and why we are engaged in nanotechnology research and development. Communication about ethics at the Third Dimension is coded in symbolism, thus providing a “protective layer” from our own self awareness. It is our social unconscious. Through highly metaphoric, imaginative rhetorical forms, we use narrative to encounter the strangeness of what is imagined to yet be possible in a nanotechnology-enabled world, and explore what those imaginings could mean. In Third Dimension nanoethics, myth and metaphor express (and obfuscate) the personal and cultural values, motivations, desires, fantasies, needs, fears and dreams underneath nanotechnology development. The challenge is to penetrate and explore each of the three dimensions of inquiry asking, “What is it we are doing when we do nanotechnology?” From there, we will more likely be able to conscientiously create and direct nanotechnology in humanitarian, environmentally sustainable ways. Thorough going work on the study and formation of public policy, public engagement, and public education in nanoscale science and technology which include consideration of socio-ethical-legal and environmental implications, are all about addressing first and second dimension nanoethics. Scenario writing projects, science caf´e’s, and forums of various sorts have been effective and helpful in this way. But what about the third dimension; how is it to be reached? Probing symbolic, embedded narratives for tacit elements of meaning is the work of Third Dimension nanoethics. It offers a gateway to the self awareness and understanding needed for answering the question of “why?” in an authentic, morally responsible way.
Metaphor, Myth and Moral Imagination We begin that process by engaging the moral imagination. What is the moral imagination and why is it useful? It is “an ability to imaginatively discern various possibilities for acting in a given situation and to envision the potential help and harm that is likely to result from a given action” (Johnson and Lakoff 1993). Exercise of this capacity involves being able to imagine many possibilities and their consequences, and being able to morally evaluate those possibilities. Most simply, the moral imagination is the process through which humans use the imagination to elucidate and explore the many potential courses of action available to them, and then play out
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each strategy in an imaginative way, in order to decide which strategy or strategies accomplish the desired goals, while protecting the interests and well-being of others. Decoding metaphor is a key link to this process. In their seminal work on metaphor and meaning, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson assert that, “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” (Johnson and Lakoff 1993). Though we are rarely aware of them, metaphors shape the way we think about and experience the world, and ourselves within it. Conceptualizing a visit to the doctor visit in paternalistic terms, for example, makes for a very different relationship and understandings of healing than does the more contemporary notion of a collaborating patient-physician relationship. Sometimes the answer to the question, “why are we doing this?” is found in metaphor. Metaphors are culturally-constructed, and reflect culturally-specific values. This is why identifying and understanding the use of metaphors in reference to nanotechnology can be so illuminating in regards to the culturally specific values embedded in the nanotechnology quest. The goal of working with SF is to tease out obfuscated assumptions, values and beliefs; Third Dimensional nanoethics inquiry. The importance of metaphor is also its imaginative role in the construction of that which is taken to be true. Imagination is, according to Johnson, crucial to the moral reasoning process because our human “moral understanding depends in large measure on various structures of imagination, such as images, image schemas, metaphors, narratives, and so on” (Johnson and Lakoff 1993). Johnson argues that it is metaphor, which “lies at the heart of our imaginative, moral rationality, without which we are doomed to habitual acts.” For Johnson, metaphors operate on two levels: first, metaphors shape “fundamental moral concepts;” second, the way we use conceptual metaphors will influence the way we perceive and understand a given situation (Johnson and Lakoff 1993). Moreover, “because so much of our common moral understanding is structured by systems of metaphor, no account of morality can be adequate that fails to examine the extent to which our conceptualization, reasoning, and language about morality involve metaphor” (Johnson and Lakoff 1993). Myth also plays an important role in the construction of reality. While the word connotes fiction, ignorance, and untruth, myth is actually fundamental to human living. As Joseph Campbell writes, “The material of myth is the material of our life, the material of our body, and the material of our environment, and a living, vital mythology deals with these in terms that are appropriate to the notion of knowledge of the time” (Campbell 1990). Long ago, atoms were viewed in mythical terms as belonging to an inaccessible domain, hidden from view by the will of Nature: But if we ask which atoms fall and when Envious Nature shuts the door on us. And all that matter which time and Nature grant us Little by Little, leading to gradual growth, Must escape the most concentrated sight As what is lost in the wasting away of age; Nor can you watch the weathering of the rocks
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That hang over the salt and gnawing sea. In unseen atoms Nature governs all. Lucretius (Esolen 1995) Today the atom is seen as accessible to us and therefore no longer mythologized as nature eluding humans. Our knowledge and understanding of nanotechnology includes a universe that is imperceptible to unaided human senses, and yet very much within reach of human control and manipulation. The myths that grounded earlier beliefs about Nature willfully keeping us at bay are no longer useful, not so much because they are now seen as false, but because our knowledge and capacities have changed. What remains the same, however, is the human need for myth. Who we are, what we believe and fear, where we seek to go and why, our social obligations and moral responsibilities are expressed through the myths which guide our lives. Campbell clarifies the meaning of myth in these terms: Mythology has been interpreted by the modern intellect as a primitive, fumbling effort to explain the world of nature (Frazer); as a production of poetical fantasy from prehistoric times, misunderstood by succeeding ages (Muller); as a repository of allegorical instruction, to shape the individual and his group (Durkheim); as a group dream, symptomatic of archetypal urges within the depths of the human psyche (Jung); as the traditional vehicle of man’s profound metaphysical insights (Coomaraswamy); and as God’s Revelation to His children (the Church). Mythology is all of these. The various judgments are determined by the view-points of the judges. For when scrutinized in terms not of what it is but of how it functions, of how it has served mankind in the past, of how it may serve today, mythology shows itself to be as amenable as life itself to the obsessions and requirements of the individual, the race, the age (Campbell 1949).
The “nano-technological revolution” means for a radical shift not just in our material perceptions, but also to the inner world of the human psyche. These are symbiotically related; as we come into new ways of knowing and interacting with the physical world, we engage ourselves in new ways. As we alter our senses of self, we also by necessity create new myths to live by. The emergence of nanotechnology confounds our capacity to know what is right and good in the rapidly evolving, profoundly unfamiliar material world of nanotechnology development, so we are creating new myths to guide our way. Back in 1949, Campbell saw that the mythologies of the time were already of little use. How much more true might that be, now that we are capable of re-arranging individual atoms into spaces of our own willing? As Campbell explains: The problem with mankind today, therefore, is precisely the opposite to that of men in the comparatively stable periods of those great co-ordinating mythologies which now are known as lies. Then all meaning was in the group, in the great anonymous forms, none in the self- expressive individual; today no meaning is in the group – none in the world – all is in the individual. But there the meaning is absolutely unconscious. One does not know toward what one moves. One does not know by what one is propelled. The lines of communication between the conscious and the unconscious zones of the human psyche have all been cut, and we have been spilt in two (Campbell 1949).
It behooves us to identify and understand the myths and metaphors emerging around the development of nanotechnology as this awareness may help to reconnect
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the lines of communication between “zones of our cultural psyche.” I suggest that doing so is essential if we are to become ethically conscientious of what we are doing when we pursue the development of nanotechnology.
Moral Imagination and the Narrative Re-construction of Self The moral imagination can be expressed in a variety of ways, one of which is narrative. Narrative is one of the most basic tools that human beings have for making sense of perception and experience, then investing those with meaning. Through the narrative process, we have access to important but often unarticulated hopes, fears, expectations, and assumptions regarding the physical world we inhabit. It also brings to light essential, yet otherwise tacit, elements of the human psyche. Narratives can, of course, fall into one or more overlapping categories, including fiction, non-fiction, or myth. Narratives are ubiquitous in human life: all humans have stories. Stories can be personal, familial, communal or national. Just as human beings are inherently imaginative creatures, so are they adept story-tellers. MacIntyre observed that, “man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal” (MacIntyre 1984). Similarly, Johnson notes that “Human life. . . is a narrative enterprise” (Johnson and Lakoff 1993) and Kearney writes that stories “are what make our condition human” (Kearney 2002). That ethics can be enriched through the study of narratives is well-established. Narratives offer a way for us to make, deconstruct, and remake meaning in the world, helping us to understand ourselves in relationship to others, and to the technologies we use. As crucial components of our reality-construction and meaningmaking, narrative also gives us the material with which to make sense of our actions, justify and criticize them. Through narrative we explore and evaluate possible courses of action and their moral implications. Johnson writes, “It is in sustained narratives. . . that we come closest to observing and participating in the reality of life as it is actually experienced and lived. We learn from, and are changed by, such narratives to the extent that we become imaginatively engaged in making fine discriminations of character and in determining what is morally salient in particular situations” (Johnson and Lakoff 1993). Narrative makes sense of the process by which an electron leaves one orbital for another. It also gives substance and meaning to the nanotechnology enterprise, as it necessitates the creation of new narratives; both fictional and factual.1 Morris speaks about a narrative ethics in the context of biomedicine, but his observation is no less salient here: Narrative does not necessarily tell us who is right and who is wrong. In fact, it actively undermines the false confidence – born of absolutist, objectivist theories of morality – that an ethical dilemma necessarily calls for or accommodates a single right action. What narrative offers. . . [is a] means to enhance understanding of the multiple values and conflicting perspectives at stake. . . (Morris 2002).
According to Johnson, “Since our experience is never static, and since evolution and technological change introduce new entities into our lives, we are faced
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with novel situations that simply were not envisioned in the historical periods that gave rise to our current understanding of certain moral concepts” (Johnson and Lakoff 1993). Because nanotechnology is a novel case, its ethical development requires recognition of the symbolic basis of moral inquiry. Language both conveys and constructs meaning. As such, it has the powerful capacity to take the otherwise indeterminate reality that nanotechnology represents and focus it toward determined visions and goals. Which language is chosen and how it is employed in narrative will have a great deal to do with the direction nanotechnology takes. Johnson argues, “deep reflective knowledge of the metaphorical nature of human understanding and of metaphors that structure one’s own moral understanding is essential for moral knowledge” (Johnson and Lakoff 1993). Following from there, the moral imagination must be engaged in order for the enterprise of nanotechnology research and development to proceed ethically. Johnson reminds us that, “No person can be moral in a suitably reflective way who cannot imagine alternative viewpoints as a means of understanding and transforming the limits of his own convictions and commitments; this is the activity of the moral imagination” (Johnson and Lakoff 1993). Narrative, broadly understood, not only cultivates the moral imagination; as a form of meaning-making, it reflects social norms, fears and aspirations. For example, the story of “Hansel and Gretel” is heavily freighted with symbolic meaning, going far beyond the explicit lesson that being lost in the woods makes us vulnerable to the dangers therein. This and other stories are told so that we might better navigate the murky moral waters of our cultures, and also of our psyches. Notions of danger, good, foolishness, weakness, courage, evil, power, frailty, heroism, sacrifice, etc. are constituted by the stories we have been told, have told ourselves, and have told to others. In a similar way, fictional narratives can help us better understand what we believe and where we may be going with the development of nanotechnology. Through exploring these symbolic expressions of the moral imagination, tacit elements of nanoscale science can be discerned
Science Fiction as Narrative Writing about possible future scenarios of nanotechnology in society is a useful exercise for practical decision making about what ought or ought not to be done in nanotechnology development. Clearly, the predictive elements of scenario writing have an important function. I want to suggest, however, that in order to reach the human psyche; source of the desires, images, and beliefs which give rise to the nanotechnology quest, we will have to penetrate that which eludes our conscious perception. Science Fiction may be most helpful there. The imaginative, creative spark ignited by science fiction offers a particularly illuminating way to link nanotechnology research and development with its existential gleanings of self knowledge and purpose, As such, SF, which is primarily symbolic, can be an especially useful tool of ethical deliberation about nanotechnology and help to inspire imaginative consideration of what is right and good in its development (Berne and Schummer 2005). It has the ability to be transformative in bringing to light ethical nodes of concern that are
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otherwise foreboding. While science fiction can certainly function as pure entertainment, its very nature endows it with the ability to serve as reflexive morality tales. Before proceeding, I will clarify what is meant here by use of the term “science fiction.” Science fiction is sometimes misidentified as fantasy fiction, with which this project is not currently concerned. Gunn provides an insightful distinction between science fiction and fantasy when he writes that: Fantasy and science fiction belong to the same broad category of fiction that deals with events other than those that occur, or have occurred, in the everyday world. But they belong to distinctly different methods of looking at those worlds: fantasy is unrealistic; science fiction is realistic. Fantasy creates its own universe with its own laws; science fiction exists in our universe with its shared laws. Fantasy is a private vision; science fiction is a public vision that must meet every test of reality (Gunn and Candelaria 2005).
The term “imaginative fiction” seems an apt description for the category, to which these two genres (or subgenres) belong. Science fiction, then, is imaginative fiction in which the events that occur are limited by known laws, whereas in fantasy fiction, as quoted in Bainbridge, Kyle writes, “there is an agency from which all law and power devolves” (Bainbridge 1986). Now back to the connection between science fiction, narrative and the moral imagination. Through science fictional accounts of nanotechnology-enabled futures, we may better see and critique predominant metaphors and the values they embody, and how they shape our conceptualizations of various events, beliefs and other human endeavors. As a form of creative production, science fiction allows us to loosen our clutch on that which has “actually happened,” permitting our imaginations to explore more than what we, as individuals and as members of particular societies, know. As Smith observes, while all fictional work, “operates through imaginative projection and invention in its creation. . .ordinary fiction takes for granted the context of knowledge common to author and reader” (Smith 1982), science fiction, in comparison, “takes the further step of assuming that these ‘givens’ are open to modification.” Thus, science fiction can in fact confront worldviews and personal visions that motivate nano-scientific knowledge systems that give rise to nanotechnology development. Smith, speaking on the relationship between science fiction and philosophy writes that science fiction “shares a fundamental goal with philosophy: the discovery of what is essential and valuable in reality” (p. 9). Pinsky concurs, arguing that we “must treat ‘philosophical’ texts and ‘science fiction’ texts as partners in a tense and ongoing relationship, struggling to articulate what might be considered the same theory in somewhat different languages” (Pinsky 2003). Ethics, as a fundamental component of philosophical inquiry, is thus appropriately addressed by science fiction. The unique characteristics of science fiction are important because they enable its readers and writers to investigate extrapolations of reality towards the goal of understanding that which already exists. Tymm observes that science fiction is able to explore social and political themes by imagining alternative realities and evaluating the forces that shape these imagined worlds (Tymm 1988). Evans further emphasizes this idea, noting that writers of science fiction “are perennially interested in possibilities and potentials,” through which “trends and assumptions in the
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real world” can be identified and assessed (Evans 1988). By “projecting what is familiar into unfamiliar contexts” (Smith 1982) worlds portrayed in science fiction are generally more “accessible to rational inquiry” (Smith 1982), making it possible to bring ethical considerations in those worlds to bear on ethical issues in this one. In The Diamond Age (Stephenson 1995), Stephenson’s narrative uses mythical elements to imaginatively explore the quandaries of one possible nanotechnologyenabled life (the transcendent) in relation to the present. While telling the story of a little girl named Nell, Stephenson weaves a world which is at once familiar and strange. In it, human beings have divided themselves into self-ruling territories of isolated social groupings, determined primarily by racial identity. Wars are fought over resources, land and power. Criminals are judged according to the severity of their deeds, and entertainment is the primary driver of business, once basic human needs are fulfilled. But unlike today, in Stephenson’s nanotechnology driven world, the basic needs of all human beings are met. Matter Compilers use “feed” to build from molecules any object which is programmed into the system, from food to clothing to entire buildings. And scarcity of resources is a political maneuver to limit misuse and abuse of technological power. Books are obsolete. Excessive sexual promiscuity is the norm, and violence is rampant. There are world governances, but the independence of each territory leaves social structure up to those who govern; so that in China, the old laws prevail and criminals are punished with physical torture or death. In this world many social-material issues persist from today’s world, but how they are handled is different. For birth control, for example, mites are placed inside the body of the female to eat fertile eggs as they are formed. Many diseases, such as cancer, are eradicated, but the threat of intelligent mites and nanoscaled devices migrating through the human body is formidable. And, there is no privacy from one’s neighbor, or one’s government. Campbell suggests that mythic images show us the way in which the cosmic energy manifests itself in time. As times change, such as they are doing now through nanotechnology, the modes of that manifestation of energy also change. Campbell offers as a basic mythological principle, “What is referred to in mythology as ‘the other world’ is really (in psychological terms) ‘the inner world;’ what is spoken of as “ ‘future,’ is ‘now’ ” (Campbell 2004). Following from Campbell, Stephenson’s nano world is also symbolic of our own psyche, formidable yet identifiable in our quest for control the material world (and our selves). The Diamond Age is a reflexive morality tale in its warning that humans are unlikely to cure what ails us, unless we change ourselves. The use of novel and powerful new technologies offers no promise other than novelty. It may, in fact, mean for greater complexity and social dis-ease. What then, is the purpose of our endeavors to increase our capacity to finesse matter, with precision and control?
Final Thoughts Science fiction enables us to use the moral imagination, in striving to recognize ourselves in our science, and thus to create and direct nanotechnology, conscientiously. During a SF writing workshop at Arizona State University in the spring of 2006,
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Dave Kissell wrote, “Memoirs of a Soldier” (unpublished), depicting a future where warfare with immense destruction is replaced by nano-driven war where annihilation means something completely different than bodily obliteration. His second paragraph reads: Sasha came out onto the porch and softly kissed her husband just below his ear. She had waited eight years for Logan to return from the last of his duty with the federation. War was quite different now. Casualty typically did not occur for those who had embraced the technological advances of the Nano-Age. It was a strategy that nations possessing the new technology had long debated. Years before now had seen wars that were like no other. The call for disarmament involved intellectual property rather than weapons, even though the shear destructive power of them had become so immense. This mattered very little since the technology in question could render the destructive power of conventional weapons as the new smart windshield obliterates an onslaught of raindrops. It is as if they were never there.
Kissell’s soldier narrates the story of his personal experience as a soldier of nanowarfare saying, . . . I can’t get the images out of my mind. I really think that I had been killed. I don’t know if it was the suit or something they gave me a few years before, but I only remember a lot of pain and waking up the next morning with the battle finished all around me. Everything in between is, well, not even a blur. I don’t know if I existed for that time. There was no light, no voice, nothing. It was nothingness, Sasha.
Battle had led not to his bodily death, but to the terrifying loss of his sense of self; a condition more horrifying in many ways. “Memoirs of a Soldier” is not so much a story which tries to predict our future; but rather, a story which tries to avert it. In its entirety, it functions to expose ambitions, myths, beliefs, and fears that embed themselves in the design of warfare; such as the fear of selfless consciousness, the drive to self destruction, and the illusion of grandeur through machine. What would happen if discourse about nanotechnology included serious reflection over science fiction stories written about the nanotechnology future? What I have been trying to suggest here, is that story itself can illuminate important, symbolic elements of our pursuit of nanotechnology, which are otherwise put out of view.
Note 1. Granted, the distinction between the two is not and need not be clearly delineated.
References Bainbridge, W. S. 1986. Dimensions of Science Fiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Berne, R.W. 2006. Nanotalk: Conversations with Scientists and Engineers about Ethics, Meaning, and Belief in the Development of Nanotechnology. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Berne, R. W. and J. Schummer. 2005. Teaching Societal and Ethical Implications of Nanotechnology to Engineering Students through Science Fiction. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 25(6): 459–468.
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Campbell, J. 1949. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: MJF Books. Campbell, J. 1990. Transformations of Myth through Time. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. Campbell, J. 2004. Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation. Novato, CA: New World Library. Esolen, A. M., ed. 1995. Lucretius: On the Nature of Things. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Evans, A.B. 1988. Jules verne Rediscovered: Didacticism and the Scientific Novel. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. Gunn, J. and M. Candelaria. 2005. Speculations on Speculation: Theories of Science Fiction. . Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc. Hammer, B. n.d. Letter to Educators: Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune. President, Sci. Fi. Channel. http://www.scifi.com/cableintheclassroom/dune/pdf/letter to educators.pdf. Johnson, M. and G. Lakoff. 1993. Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kearney, R. 2002. On Stories. New York: Routledge. MacIntyre, A. 1984. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Second Edition. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Morris, D. B. 2002. Narrative, Ethics, and Pain: Thinking with Stories. In R. Charon and M. Montello, eds., Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics. New York: Routledge. Pinsky, M. 2003. Future Present: Ethics and/as Science Fiction. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Smith, N. D., ed. 1982. Philosophers Look at Science Fiction. Chicago: Nelson Hall. Stephenson, N. 1995. The Diamond Age: Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. New York: Bantum Spectra Books. Tymm, M., ed. 1988. Science Fiction: A Teacher’s Guide & Resource Book. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House.
About the Editors
David H. Guston is Director of the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University. He also serves as Associate Director of the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes and Professor of Political Science at Arizona State. Among other books, Guston authored Between Politics and Science: Assuring the Integrity and Productivity of Research (Cambridge U. Press, 2000) and co-authored Informed Legislatures: Coping with Science in a Democracy (with Megan Jones and Lewis M. Branscomb, University Press of America, 1996). Erik Fisher is an assistant research professor at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University. He has held faculty appointments in the humanities and in engineering management and was an “embedded humanist” in a nanotechnology laboratory. Fisher writes about the Governance of Emerging Technologies, Ethics Policies, and Midstream Modulation. Cynthia Selin is an assistant research professor at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University. Her dissertation, Volatile Visions: Transactions in Anticipatory Knowledge, explores foresight methodologies, the sociology of expectations, and the emergence of nanotechnology. Jameson M. Wetmore is an assistant professor at the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes and the School of Human Evolution & Social Change at Arizona State University. He studies the history, sociology, politics, and ethics of technology to better understand how to reflect on, shape, and direct social and technological change. He co-edited Technology & Society: Building our Sociotechnical Future (MIT Press, 2008) with Deborah Johnson.
303
Index
A Actor-network theory, 127 Agilent Technologies, 71, 123, 147 Anderson, Paul, 45 Aquanova, 30 Artificial intelligence, 7, 10, 11, 283 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, 216 B Backlash, 15, 197, 222 Bainbridge, William, 166, 179, 219, 221, 251, 268, 270, 299 BASF, 30 Bauer, Eddie, 81, 88 Bayer Crop Science, 39 Bennett, Ira, 37, 117, 123, 149, 268, 275, 283, 291 Berkeley, City of (US), 91, 195, 201, 207 Berkeley Livermore Laboratories, 201 Berne, Rosalyn W, 37, 71, 91, 123, 147, 291 Berube, David, 125, 128, 260 Bioethics, 274, 283 Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University, 99, 102, 104–106 Boundary work, 270 Brand, Stewart, 46 Bridging events, 53, 66 Brin, David, 43 Brookhaven National Laboratory, 98 B¨unger, Mark, 49, 71, 91, 123, 163, 183, 241, 291 C Campbell, Joseph, 295, 296, 300 Card, Orson Scott, 45 Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology, Rice University, 113 Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Sandia National Laboratories, 100, 113
Center for Nanotechnology in Society, Arizona State University, 149, 150, 228 Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, 223, 255, 260 Chinese Academy of Sciences, 79 Christensen, Clayton M., 84 ChristenUnie (Dutch Christian UnionReformed Political Party), 64 Cientifica, 68 Clinton, William Jefferson, 228, 242, 251 Codex Alimentarius, 31 College of Design, Arizona State University, 154 Collingridge Dilemma, 275, 285 Commercial risk, 198 Complex adaptive systems, 86 Constructive technology assessment, 49–70, 163, 172, 173, 275 Copernicus, 12 Cosmetics, 15, 31–34, 166, 219, 220 Crichton, Michael, 11, 88, 135 Currall, Steven C, 23, 109, 143, 147, 183, 227, 265 D DDT, 16, 112 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (US), 40, 41 Defense Threat Reduction Agency (US), 158 de Gray, Aubrey, 43, 44 Deligiannis, Dimitris, 144 Delphi, 177 Democritus, 246 Department of Commerce (US), 221 Department of Defense (US), 157, 158, 229 Department of Energy (US), 100 Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (UK), 60 Discourse analysis, 125, 129, 138, 258
305
306 Disruptive innovations, 87 Draper Fisher Jurvetson, 40 Drexler, Eric, 11, 41, 43, 44, 128, 133, 224, 283 Dual use, 158 DuPont, 188, 193, 207, 208, 211 Dupuy, Jean-Pierre, 164 E Edwards, John, 88 Enactment cycles, 52 Endogenous future, 50, 51, 66 Engelbart, Doug, 43, 44 Enhancement, 130–132, 134, 136, 221, 222 Entanglement, 4, 56, 57, 76, 89 Environmental Defense, 188, 193, 207, 208, 211 Environmental, health, and safety, 14, 16, 18, 74, 76, 110, 185, 188, 192, 195, 196, 208, 209, 234 See also Health, environmental, safety (HES) Environmental Protection Agency (US), 209 ETC Group, 23, 26, 30–34, 59, 123, 143, 201, 215, 221, 227 Ethical, legal, and social aspects (ELSA), 59, 65, 67, 118, 173, 242 Ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI), 33, 261, 271–275, 281, 284, 285 Eurobarometer, 167, 179, 196 European Commission, 28, 179, 224, 247, 283 European Parliamentary Technology Assessment Network, 171 European Union, 117, 260 European Union Network of Excellence Frontiers, 53 F Feynman, Richard P., 43, 44, 283 Fiedeler, Ulrich, 37, 143, 163, 201, 241, 265, 291 Fisher, Erik, 68, 168, 188, 270, 272, 274, 303 Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology, 169 Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Micro-electronics, 169 Flemish Institute for Science and Technology Assessment, 171, 180 Flexibility, 92, 94, 100, 108, 209, 267, 274, 277 Foladori, Guillermo, 23, 117, 143, 207, 215, 224, 227 Food and Agriculture Organization (UN), 31 Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (the Netherlands), 64 Food and Drug Administration (US), 15, 33, 52
Index Ford Motor Company, 85 Foresight Nanotech Institute, 37, 38, 41–46, 128, 255, 283 Forum for the Future, 118 Foucault, Michel, 125, 128 Frankenfood, 17 Freitas, Robert A, 128 Friends of the Earth (Australia), 17, 33, 215, 219, 223 Future generations, 9, 147, 167, 234 G Galileo, 5, 12 Gartner Group, 67 Genetically modified organisms, 17, 52, 109–112, 115, 143, 271, 279 Genetics, nanotechnology, robotics, and information technology (GRIN), 9 Gibson, Shirley, 144 Gibson, William, 88 GlaxoSmithKline, 88 Global Business Network, 41, 42 Goorden, Lieve, 109, 149, 163, 171, 183, 241, 265, 291 Gray goo, 11, 268 Greenfreeze, 52, 67 Greenpeace, 52, 67, 215 Guston, David H., 50, 170, 173, 268, 275, 284, 303 H Hanson, Robin, 46 Haves vs. have nots, 218, 237 Health, environmental, safety (HES), 58, 59, 64, 65 Heckl, Wolfgang, 135 Herbert, Frank, 292 Honest broker, 199 Human Genome Project, 165, 272, 284, 285 Hype-disappointment cycle, 68 I IBM, 30 Imaginaries, 169, 176–178 Incremental innovations, 87, 134, 278 Indeterminate, 164, 298 Inequity, 219, 220 Institute for Alternative Futures, 41, 42 Institute for Quantum Computing, 100 Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (MIT), 41 Intel, 30 Intellectual property, 29, 74, 76, 190, 198, 232, 233, 237, 238, 301
Index International Labour Organization, 33 International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco, and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF), 23, 24, 26 Interpretive flexibility, 274 Invernizzi, Noela, 23, 224 Invitrogen, 88 Irreversibilities, 50, 51, 55, 66, 67 J Joint Economic Council (US Congress), 1 Joy, Bill, 11, 13, 128, 133, 242 Jurvetson, Steve, 40 K Kaiser, Helmut, 131, 139, 189, 257, 259 Kennedy, Joseph, 1, 109, 117, 157, 201, 207, 215, 227 Kodak, 87 Kolsrud, Gretchen, 41 Kosal, Margaret, 37, 49, 91, 157 Kraft, 31 Kundahl, Griffith A, 23, 91, 123, 183, 207, 215 Kurzweil, Ray, 9, 43, 185, 251, 260 Kyprianou, Kypros, 144 L Laissez faire policy, 170 Lane, Neal, 109, 111 Layman, 27, 178 “Leitbilder”, 125, 127 L’Oreal, 32 L¨osch, Andreas, 123, 129, 149, 174, 218, 241, 256 Lucretius, 296 Luddites, 11, 12 Luhmann, Niklas, 125, 129, 130, 139, 284 Lux Research, Inc, 35, 40, 71–73, 75, 80, 84, 85, 87, 89, 110, 216 M Mangena, Mosibudi, 221 Maynard, Andrew, 24, 32, 110, 220 Medley, Terry, 188, 207 Meridian Institute, 215 Meta-ethical, 291, 293 Meyyappan, Meyya, 1, 71, 109, 143, 147, 201, 215, 227 Midstream modulation, 68, 303 Miller, Georgia, 1, 23, 33, 143, 147, 157, 163, 215, 227 MinacNed, 61, 62 Monsanto, 17, 18, 30
307 Mooney, Pat, 144, 145 Moral imagination, 291, 292, 294, 297–300 Moratorium, 15–17, 59, 64, 143, 221, 223, 255 “Multi-path mapping”, 56 N Nano divide, 218–220 Nanomix, 88 NanoNed (the Netherlands), 49 NanoSoc (Flanders, Belgium), 163, 164, 171, 174, 179, 180 Nano-Tex, 81, 88 NASA Ames Center for Nanotechnology, 228 National Academy of Sciences (US), 9, 13, 14, 44, 114 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (US), 27 National Nanotechnology Initiative (US), 3, 9, 12, 14, 15, 18, 19, 33, 67, 216, 219, 228, 246, 247 National Nanotechnology Program (US), 269, 272, 283 National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (US), 98 National Science Foundation (US), 9, 14, 220–222, 224, 229, 237, 269, 270 National Science and Technology Council (US), 124, 139, 216, 219, 228, 244 Nature Nanotechnology, 109, 147 Nelson, Ted, 43, 44 Nestl´e, 31, 32 “Nyeleni Forum for Food Sovereignty”, 221 O Office of Science and Innovation (UK), 43, 280 P Patent and Trademark Office (US), 190, 191 Path dependency, 57, 67, 277 Performativity, 125, 129, 131, 137 Peterson, Christine, 37, 117, 123, 147, 163, 291 Philips, 52 Pira International, 62 Planck, Max, 44 Plausibility, 56, 66, 153, 155 Precautionary principle, 16, 28, 254 Professional codes, 293 Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (Woodrow Wilson Center), 110, 220 Propp, Tilo, 54 Public engagement, 19, 109, 171–173, 180, 279, 280, 294
308 Q Quantum Nano Center (University of Waterloo), 100 R Rather, Dan, 88 Real Time Technology Assessment, 50, 172, 179 Reflexive co-evolution, 67, 172 Reflexivity, 65, 66, 175, 176, 266 Responsible development, 13, 188, 189, 199, 208, 209, 236 Responsible innovation, 58, 67, 173, 275 Reverse salients, 268 Rip, Arie, 1, 49, 50, 54, 55, 58, 66, 68, 91, 117, 128, 129, 149, 157, 163, 172, 173, 241, 265, 268, 269, 272, 275, 277, 280, 282, 284 Risk management, 208–210, 212, 273, 279, 281 Roadmapping, 51, 177, 178, 257, 258 Robinson, Douglas K. R., 51, 53–55, 67 Roco, Mihail, 6, 166, 167, 179, 219, 221, 222, 242, 246, 251, 268, 270 Rogers, Everett, 84 Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), 3, 59, 114, 195, 196, 224, 243, 285 S Samsung, 87 Schwartz, Peter, 160 Science Council of Japan, 220 Science and Technology Studies, 124, 127, 154, 169, 171–174, 177, 178, 179, 265–367, 280–284 S-curve, 84 Selin, Cynthia, 125, 128, 303 SemaTech, 51 Senate Armed Services Committee (US), 79 Shelley, Mary, 12 Sherwin-Williams, 87, 88 Signalomics, 88 Singularity, The, 1, 7 Small Tech Prospector, 40 Small Times, 40 Social shaping of technology, 267, 275 Sociology of expectations, 126, 138, 303 Soueid, Ahmad, 91, 241 Stanford University, 40 Stephenson, Neal, 45, 300 Stross, Charles, 45
Index Sun Microsystems, 11 Sunscreen, 4, 5, 16, 25, 218, 236, 270 Surveillance, 219, 272 Sutcliffe, Hilary, 1, 91, 109, 143, 163, 183, 195, 227, 241 Swiss Re, 59 Syngenta, 30 T Te Kulve, Haico, 49 Thomas, Ned, 41 Toffler, Alvin, 3, 19 Toxic Substances Control Act, 14, 29 T¨urk, Volker, 23, 49, 109, 117, 123, 149, 157, 265 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2003 (Public Law 108–153), 20, 168, 269 U Ulmer, Kevin, 41 Unilever, 30, 31 Unintended consequences, 198, 236 Upstream, 172, 279, 280 U.S. Navy, 45 V Value mapping, 177, 178 Value tree analysis, 178 Venture capital, 40, 46, 77, 252 W Wal-Mart, 64 Walsh, Scott, 183, 188, 195, 207, 215 Watson, James, 284 Wetmore, Jameson M., 303 Wetter, Kathy Jo, 145 Williams, Robin, 109, 149, 163, 265, 267, 269, 270, 272, 275, 276, 278, 281, 285 Winner, Langdon, 275, 276, 283, 284 Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 29, 110 World Health Organization, 31, 32 World Intellectual Property Organization, 29 World Social Forum, 143–145 Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, and Energy, 117 Z Zettl, Alex, 41 Zogby International, 115
