Alfred Nordmann (University of Darmstadt, Germany)
regards nanotech as a diversity of technologies

Social Imagination for Nanotechnology

Films like Hulk, books like Prey can impact, perhaps shape how the public perceives the risks of nanotechnology. One might therefore look to popular culture in order to study the "emerging risks of nanotechnology." I propose a different perspective by viewing a book like Prey not as cause but as symptom of the way in which we conceive of risks. Considered as a symptom, books like Prey teach us that one can't have it both ways, conceive of nanotechnology in visionary terms and complain about those who take these visions to dystopian extremes. They also teach us that we have to consider the risks not of nanotechnology but of particular nanotechnologies. What is true of airborne nanoparticles doesn't apply to nanostructured circuits or to surfaces in which nanoparticles are embedded. Taking nanotechnologies one at a time may diminish the glamor of "nanotechnology", but is the only way of keeping science honest and of gaining public support for specific, socially beneficial research programs that can be monitored for risk.

Unimaginative Visionaries

When Richard Feynman presented in 1959 his visionary lecture about "Plenty of the Room at the Bottom" that established the very possibility of nanotechnology, he simultaneously proved to be surprisingly unimaginative. When it came to describing what one might do with all this space at the bottom, he considers how much information it can accommodate. By envisioning the Library of Congress on the tip of a pin, Feynman remains firmly entrenched in the familiar paradigm of miniaturization.

From a science fiction author one might expect more than from a theoretical physicist, and so it's all the more surprising that the most famous nanotechnology novel to date proves equally unimaginative. Falling far behind the example of less famous, but more inventive authors like Kathleen Goonan or Neal Stephenson, Michael Crichton's Prey stays firmly entrenched in the familiar paradigm of the Frankenstein story. Once humans have developed addressable nanoparticles, what else might these do but band together to form macroscopic entities that undergo evolution, develop superhuman strength, and use it merely to seek out and destroy their makers?

Projections of old Fears

Feynman and Crichton both lack imagery that is specific to nanoscience and nanotechnology, for example, that speaks of the fears and risks related to the scale of nanotechnical artefacts, the unsettling nervousness that attends to things unseen and unfelt which may yet be actively present in some way or another. To be sure, this lack of imagination is due to the very novelty of the nanotechnical possibilities: Of course, most of us haven't quite learned to imagine these possibilities in the first place and know no better than to project our conventional, old-fashioned fears onto the new nanotechnology. There is an illuminating paradox in this: Since we are more familiar with those fears and worries than we are with the new technologies, the stories by Crichton and others in an odd way familiarize us with the unfamiliar. While conjuring catastrophic dangers to humankind, they also give us a false sense of security, namely that we know already what we need to be afraid of. I am not sure which is worse - the disproportionate and inadequate fears that become associated with an as of yet mostly non-existing technology, or the false sense of security and ignorance regarding the real character of the risks.

When, in contrast, we consider the risks not of "nanotechnology" but of artificially created nanoparticles, the situation changes entirely. On the one hand, there is no temptation anymore to conflate the fear of autonomous robots with the toxicological risk of airborne nanoparticles to the health of biological systems and of humans, in particular. On the other hand, we become confronted with very real limits of knowledge that may be insurmountable in the near and medium term. In the face of possible, even plausible risks to human health, are the promises of this research such that for the time being and while exposure levels are low we should support this research and permit the use of nanoparticles in aerosols and cosmetics? I submit that this specific problem is far more difficult and pressing than Bill Joy's and Michael Crichton's question whether or not the future still needs us.

From Nanotechnology to Nanotechnologies

The fear that pervades Michael Crichton's novel Prey is a vaguely generalized fear of nature itself. Especially his introduction makes clear that he is concerned with the dangerous instability of nature, a tendency toward chaos that is barely contained by the evolved order. On this view, nature produces perversions of nature that threaten the foothold of our species (as science fiction scholar Steve Lynn pointed out in a panel discussion, it appears that the career woman is for Crichton one such "perversion of nature"). Accordingly, what we have to fear most of all is a technology that becomes itself natural and, for example, subject to an evolutionary process.

There are equally generalized fears also about multinational corporations and the hegemony of the United States, about the mechanization and dehumanization inherent in technological progress, about technologically superempowered individuals who can abuse technologies for purposes of terrorism, etc. While the fears associated with GMOs allowed themselves to be tied into the designs of particular companies such as Monsanto, it is characteristic of "nanotechnology" that it cannot be tied to any particular social or economic agenda and that the public is confronted with an amorphous technology that promises to change everything but nothing, in particular.

Generalized Fears and Vague Promises

Accordingly, generalized fears are matched by vague promises of a better life, a clean environment, plenty of space in an overcrowded world, global abundance, etc. These promises represent the flipside of Crichton's doomsday scenario and they are due to another illuminating paradox, namely the impossibility to extrapolate social visions for a technology that is thought to be radically novel and discontinuous with all that came before.

Again, I am not sure what is worse - the vaguely generalized fears or the equally general promises. It appears that both will distract us in coming to terms with the risks and benefits of specific innovations. At the same time, if we cannot extrapolate benefits and risks or even the particular applications of nanotechnology, how can we even envision and evaluate specific innovations?

The Liability and Opportunity of "Nanotechnology"

We are accustomed to speaking of "nanotechnology" in general terms as a radically novel enabling technology, one that can dramatically change every aspect of our lives. This characterization may well be adequate - as it is, for example, of "biotechnology." When we speak in these terms, however, we cannot claim that Michael Crichton's scenario is irrational as opposed to the credible visions of Mihail Roco, the chief propagandist for the U.S. Nanotechnology Initiative, who promises mind-machine interfaces, new sports and artforms, and the cure for cancer within the next 10 to 15 years. On the contrary, any talk of a radically novel, deeply transformative enabling technology must open the floodgates of the imagination, and it would be foolish to believe that one can steer this outpouring of visions in a particular direction. The trenches for this outpouring are already dug by generations of technophiles and technophobes who stand ready to bring their intellectual resources to bear on any program for universally transformative technologies. As long as nanotechnology trades in visions to obtain funding, it invites the company of visionaries.

Just like "biotechnology", nanotechnology may therefore be better off as a plural of technologies, each of which posing its own opportunities and risks. Society wouldn't know how to handle "biotechnology" as such, but it can engage in specific debates regarding GMOs and their regulation, the permissibility of stem cell research and human cloning, the benefits of tissue engineering and in vitro fertilization. As long as there is no similarly delimited list of particular nanotechnologies, however, the vagueness of "nanotechnology" presents not only a liability, but also an opportunity. If the future of vaguely defined nanotechnology is wide open, then there is time and space for deliberation and choice. Since "nanotechnology" radically underdetermines technological development, we can mobilize social imagination to determine it. Natural and social scientists, industry and consumers, engineers and policy makers can work together to develop social imagination not about nanotechnology in the singular and how it might radically affect a distant future. Instead, in a public process, the task is to identify social needs, economic benefits and cultural values for nanotechnology and with nanotechnologists in order to influence what particular nanotechnologies shall come out of generic nanotechnology. If the task is too big for specialists and disciplinary specialties, then it's cut out for a collaboration that spans from research communities to civil society.

To be sure, such common work may have a sobering effect. Once assessments of benefits and risk shift from the unbounded promise of nanotechnology at large to particular short-term research projects, smoother billiard-balls, tighter tennis-rackets, scratch-free sunglasses or better sunscreens can no longer serve as evidence for the progress and utility of nanotechnology. If nothing else, our discontent with such new and improved products for a familiar life of leisure must challenge the social imagination for nanotechnology's potential.

(c) Alfred Nordmann, editing by Martin Schäfer
 

Alfred Nordmann is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Darmstadt, Germany.

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