nanotechnology: legitimacy, narrative and emergent technologies

© 2008 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Sociology Compass 2/4 (2008): 1266–1286, 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00121.x

Nanotechnology: Legitimacy, Narrative and Emergent Technologies

José Julián López*Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Ottawa

AbstractIt is argued that the legitimacy of an emergent technology, such as nanotechnology,depends on its ability to develop a narrative that mobilises and integrates anumber of pre-existing narrative scripts. In the case of nanotechnology, especiallyin its NBIC variant (i.e. the convergence of Nano, Bio, Information technologyand the Cognitive sciences), the narrative types include science as transcendence,risk, hype, social accountability, ELSI (Ethical Legal and Social Implications) andScience Fiction. This article draws on a number science studies fields to showhow components from each of these narrative types make their appearance in thediscourse of nanotechnology, but also how they are ordered and stabilised arounda key metaphor: practitioners of nanotechnology as master builders. This meta-phor links nanotechnology to Science Fiction as a key site for the constructionof alternative worlds, and also to the above-mentioned narrative scripts. In theconclusion, some troubling implications of how nanotechnology is currentlylegitimated are highlighted.

Technological convergence could become the framework for human con-vergence. ... The twenty-first century could end in world peace, universalprosperity, and evolution to a higher level of compassion and accomplishment.It is hard to find the right metaphor to see a century into the future, but itmay be that humanity would become like a single distributed and intercon-nected ‘brain’ based in new core pathways of society. (Roco and Bainbridge2003, 6)

The convergence described in the epigraph refers to the anticipated inte-gration of nano, bio, information technology and the cognitive sciencesto produce an über-science, known in the USA by the acronym NBIC(Nano, Bio, Information technology, and the Cognitive sciences). As onereads the epigraph slowly, because the series of exorbitant claims cannotbut produce a succession of gasps, one is hard-pressed to determine fromwhere this text might have been taken. For instance, is this text takenfrom the website of a group, a religious-techno sect, that combines tech-nological ecstasy with religious salvation? If so, it could be seen as anextreme instance of an otherwise longer cultural and historical trend in

© 2008 The Author Sociology Compass 2/4 (2008): 1266–1286, 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00121.xJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Nanotechnology: Legitimacy, Narrative and Emergent Technologies 1267

which science becomes a repository of questions of ultimate meaning,which were once the sole preserve of religion. Paradoxically, then, giventhe frequent opposition between science and religion, science finds itselfhosting hopes of human redemption and transcendence, hence the quasi-religious nature of the imagery in the passage. However, were we toignore the text’s religious connotations, could this text not be taken fromone of those articles in the newspapers that routinely regale us withaccounts of how futuristic technologies will revolutionise our everydaylives? We could read the text as exemplifying the future orientation thatis said to characterise contemporary societies, what some scholars havecalled risk society (Beck 1992). In a risk society, we increasingly grasp thesignificance of the present in terms of its future potential rather than as asuccession of events and processes that preceded it. To the question ‘Whatdo we do now?’, rather than respond ‘What did my grandparents do?’,we respond ‘What do we want our grandchildren to be able to do?’

Then again, might we not see in this excerpt but another example ofthe obligatory exuberant hype that now underwrites the launch of verti-ginously expensive and complex scientific research endeavours? TheHuman Genome Project, which produced the first map of a humangenome, promised us molecular self-understanding, intervention andtailor-made medicine, not to mention a new high-tech bioeconomy toboot (Teitelman 1991). Have nanotechnology’s promoters (i.e. scientists,government, and industry representatives) had no choice but to up theante in order to attract interest, resources, minds, government funding andventure capital? Is this text taken from a brochure produced by a universityresearch spin-off company, presented to potential venture capitalists?Presumably, successive undertakings will need to promise even more,assuming that there is anything left to promise after NBIC convergencehas finished staking its claim on the future.

Or, does the first quotation draw our attention to a realignment of therelationship between ‘science’ and ‘society’, where it is no longer assumedthat the pursuit of the former will contribute positively to the later? If theinterests of scientific communities can no longer be assumed to dovetailwith those of society, then the scientific community will need to show ina concrete way that its aspirations coincide with those of ‘society’. In thiscase, the text could be a blurb, an element in a communications strategy,produced by a public relations firm, whose aim is to assure citizens thatthe writing of words or drawing of pictures with atoms by using a scan-ning tunnelling microscope will really benefit the citizens of a specificsociety in the long run. Hence, it could be seen as an exercise in socialaccountability.

The text, though, could be a product of the new and diverse forms ofexpertise and practices – variously known as ELSI (the Ethical, Legal, andSocial Impacts, or implications, of genetics, genomics, nanotechnology,etc.), ELSA (the Ethical Legal and Social Aspects of ...), public engagement,

1268 Nanotechnology: Legitimacy, Narrative and Emergent Technologies


or foresight exercises – that have emerged in order to explore, analyse,mediate and negotiate between scientific and social expectations.

Still, as a result of the confluence of an intense future orientation andof the purported radical social changes enabled by technological develop-ment, the epigraph could conceivably also be an epigraph in an introductorychapter of a science fiction (SF) novel. For instance, the text pieced togetherfrom a corrupted, barely legible digital-age artefact uncovered by thenovel’s protagonist, Dr. Kern, a DiSC (digital-silicon-culture) archaeolo-gist. This narrative device is commonly used in the SF genre to introducethe disruption or singularity (i.e. a new technology, first contact with aliens,a catastrophic civilisational collapse), which initiated the series of changesthat lead to the creation of a dramatically different utopian future world, or,perhaps, in ironic mode, a dystopian one. Which of the above is correct?

The epigraph is, in fact, an excerpt from the introductory chapter to abook, published by a prestigious academic publisher, which specialises,amongst others, in the areas of science and technology, titled ConvergingTechnologies for Improving Human Performance. The book reports on theproceedings of a workshop sponsored by the US National Science Founda-tion (NSF) – attended by politicians, policy analysts, nanotechnoscientists,members of the business community, and humanities and social sciencescholars – on the prospects for and implications of converging technologiesat the nanoscale. The authors of the introduction, and editors of the book,are Mihail C. Roco and Williams Sims Bainbridge. The former, amechanical engineer by training, is Senior Advisor for Nanotechnologyto the Directorate of Engineering at the NSF and considered by many asone of the key architects of the US National Nanotechnology Initiative;the latter, a sociologist, co-directs the Human-Centered Computingprogram, also at the NSF. Together, and individually, both men have beenextremely active promoters of nanotechnology, and, more recently, NBICconvergence (see, for instance, Bainbridge 2007a,b; Roco and Bainbridge2001, 2003, 2006a,b,c; Roco and Montemagno 2004).

If the epigraph originates in a science policy document, how can weaccount for the diverse narrative strategies it incorporates? As we haveseen, the text contains elements ranging from religious techno-rapture,risk discourse, marketing hype, social accountability and ELSI to SFfabulation. What is the relationship between the plurality of narrativestrategies, legitimacy and the emergence of a new technology such asnanotechnology, in this and in related documents? An initial answer mightbe that science is a widely distributed activity that can be found in allspheres of social life. The activities that populate our everyday lives wouldhardly be conceivable or practicable were it not for the technoscientificgadgets it incorporates and the futuristic scientific horizons that mobiliseit (Michael 2006). We are not only users, consumers, and producers ofscience and technology, increasingly our status as citizens is also beingdefined by science and technology, as when we are consulted about



scientific developments or when we take political positions for or againsta certain technological innovation (e.g. genetically modified foods,xenotransplantation, biometric passports) (Irwin and Michael 2003).Moreover, the practice of science is not only located in university labor-atories; it also takes place in industry, governmental regulatory bodies andin non-governmental bodies such as Greenpeace. Consequently, it is notat all surprising that there should be different narrative types or ways oftalking about science.

What science is, as many science studies scholars have demonstrated(see Sismondo 2004 for an overview), is not just defined by laboratorywork and the scientific method, but by the plurality of ways in whichscientists and others talk about and attempt to define particular scientificpractices. This has two important implications for the study of an emer-gent technology such as nanotechnology, a technology whose contoursremain fuzzy and fluid. First, because there is no stable and commonlyaccepted definition, it is best to survey the varieties of ways in which itis talked about, the different narratives that try to define it. It is importantto approach the question of the definition of an emergent technology as aproblem and not as a given. Second, it is important to realise that the wayactors talk about an emergent technology does not emerge in a social, cul-tural or political vacuum. It draws on and is partly constituted through alreadyexisting discourses and narrative strategies. Approaching an emergent tech-nology in this way allows us to understand how the not-yet-materialised(which all emergent technologies are) becomes not only thinkable but alsoinvested with cultural authority and social legitimacy.

Above, I have already touched on five narrative types (i.e. science astranscendence, risk, hype, social accountability, ELSI, and SF). In whatfollows, I draw on a variety of approaches within the interdisciplinary fieldof science studies to show how nanotechnology discourse in the USA,particularly in its NBIC variant, draws on and is partially enacted by eachof the narrative types. My goal is not to produce a detailed map of theterrain (i.e. to provide a precise and comprehensive account of each ofthese approaches), but to provide a vista from which these differentdimensions of the discourse can be seen interacting. In addition, I showhow these narrative types are integrated, ordered and stabilised around akey metaphor: nanotechnoscientists as master builders. This metaphorlinks nanotechnology to SF as a key site for the construction of alternativeworlds. I conclude by highlighting some troubling implications of thisdiscursive configuration. The goal, throughout, then, is to provide ageneral introduction to some conceptual tools that are useful in trying tounderstand the way scientists and other actors talk about nanotechnologyas an emergent technology. However, I would like to introduce twoimportant caveats. First, the focus here on narrative features should notbe understood as exhausting nanotechnology. Given more space it wouldbe important to link the discourse to physical processes, laboratory practices



and broader social, cultural, economic and political phenomena. Second,the emphasis in this paper is on the broad discourses of individuals from,or close to, the scientific and science policy community. Much interestingwork has dealt with the representation of nanotechnology in the media,science fiction and popular culture (see, for instance, Anderson et al.2005; Faber 2006; Hayles 2004; Selin 2007; Schummer 2005; Te Kulve2006; Thurs 2007). That these should be defined by heterodox andmultitudinous narrative elements surprises no one, that the former (i.e.scientific and science policy discourse) should equally be constituted bymyriad narrative elements is less frequently recognised, hence the impor-tance of dealing with them here.

The difficulties of defining nanotechnology

It would be desirable and useful to begin with a succinct definition of thefield of nanotechnology. This, however, is far more difficult than onewould expect due to the numerous and heterogeneous elements one findswhen one trawls its turbulent depths. As Kate Marshal writes, ‘[t]hematrix surrounding nanotechnology is an accelerated one: so much so thatthe very definition of what the terms “nanotechnology” and “nanoscience”are is almost lost in overdertemination’ (2004, 149). Similarly, JoachimSchummer writes that ‘[t]here is no doubt that in the fields called “nano”numerous scientific and technological breakthroughs have been made andthat cutting-edge research is being done. Yet, it is difficult to specify whatthey have in common other than meeting standard definitions of nano-science and nanotechnology, which are notoriously vague’ (2005, 163).For instance, scale, as in the definition that follows, is a frequently usedattribute deployed to define the novelty and specificity of nanotechnology:

One nanometer (one billionth of a meter) is a magical point on the dimensionalscale. Nanostructures are at the confluence of the smallest of human-madedevices and the largest molecules of living things. Nanoscale science and engin-eering here refer to the fundamental understanding and resulting technologicaladvances arising from the exploitation of new physical, chemical and biologicalproperties of systems that are intermediate in size, between isolated atoms andmolecules and bulk materials, where the transitional properties between thetwo limits can be controlled. (Roco cited in Ratner and Ratner 2003, 7)

Thus, nanostructures are not just very small structures, ‘they are the smallestsolid things it is possible to make’, because below the nano length scalewe are in the domain of ‘a loose atom or small molecule floating in space’(Ratner and Ratner 2003, 7). Defining nanotechnology in terms of scaleopens up a vast realm of possibilities where it is possible to conceive ofthe development of all manner of extremely precise and finely gaugedinterfaces, couplings and synergies between processes, organisms andmachines, which might include new designs for medicines, novel delivery



mechanisms or even tissue regeneration as well as all manner of medicaldiagnostic, visualisation and monitoring devices. Outside of biomedicine,new computing architectures and communications assemblages couldprovide not only faster computing capabilities, but innumerable types ofsensing devices to make the objects in our immediate environments moreintelligent and adaptable. Finally, because it is at the nanoscale that manyimportant macroscopic properties of materials are defined (i.e. strength,malleability, conductivity, etc.), all sorts of stronger, more conductive ormore flexible materials can also be envisioned. In addition, it is foreseeablethat each of these dimensions will interact amongst themselves, forinstance, new materials will be able to increase computing power, whichin turn will provide more efficient biosensors, or maybe biosensors willbe incorporated in materials, etc.

However, as Katherine Hayles notes, ‘[n]anotechnology represents notso much a theoretical breakthrough as a concatenation of previouslyknown theories, new instrumentation, discoveries of new phenomena atthe nano-level, and synergistic overlaps between disciplines that appear tobe converging into a new transdiciplinary research front (2004, 11 emphasisadded). This concatenation includes such diverse disciplinary approachesas quantum physics, materials science, molecular biology, systems engin-eering, chemistry, information science, and optical physics, to name buta few. The prospect of all of these approaches being integrated into acohesive project would necessitate the development of shared conceptualvocabularies, taxonomies, protocols, notations, instrumentation, scopicregimes and collaborative structures, not to mention common goals andinterests. Although not strictly speaking impossible, we are far from beingthere. Insofar as these elements have yet to be developed or adequatelystabilised, any attempt to define the character of the field remains tentativeand open to continuous redefinition. The vague and generic definition interms of scale is in all likelihood far too thin to restrain and hold togetherits unruly constituents.

Indeed, the NBIC convergence, identified in the epigraph, and vigorouslypromulgated by Roco and Bainbridge in their numerous publications,could be seen as an attempt to fashion a more robust definition ofnanotechnology, by not only invoking a common length scale, but alsointroducing a rationale for disciplinary and technological convergence forthe pursuit of common goals:

[B]ased on a comprehensive understanding of the structure and behavior ofmatter from the nanoscale up to the most complex systems yet discovered, thehuman brain. Unification of science based on unity in nature and its holisticinvestigation will lead to technological convergence and a more efficient socialstructure for reaching human goals. (Roco and Bainbridge 2003, 1)

It remains to be seen whether NBIC in the USA will translate into asufficiently resilient and integrated network of actors (human and nonhuman),



activities and domains capable of successfully pursuing a shared andproductive research program. For the moment, the convergence formulaseems to have a certain degree of global traction (Bond 2004, 22;Williams 2006, 331), though always reworked to reflect local circumstancesand political imaginaries: for instance, Convergent Technologies for theEuropean Knowledge Society in the European Union, and Bio-SystemicSynthesis in Canada (Nordmann 2004a; Bouchard 2003, respectively).

The contemporary newness and radical nature of nanotechnology,however, is belied by the fact that current applications, at the nanoscale,‘are largely the result of incremental advances in already well-establishedbranches of applied science, such as material science and colloid technology’(Wood et al. 2003, 1). What is more, discussions about nanotechnologyrarely focus on ‘the relatively mundane applications that have arrived sofar, but on the longer-term possibilities of radical nanotechnology’ (Woodet al. 2003, 1). As Colin Milburn notes, scientific literature, includingjournal articles, ‘frequently speak of the technical advances still requiredfor “the full potential of the nanotechnology to be realised” ’ (2002, 263).Consequently, narratives about nanotechnology ‘freely and ubiquitouslyimport the nanofuture into the research of today, and the languageused ... rewrites the advances of tomorrow in the present tense’ (Milburn2002, 264). NBIC discourse is an excellent exemplar of this tendencybecause it is highly reliant on leveraging a future convergence into thepresent.

To be sure, there are competing ways of conceiving the future amongstthose promoting nanotechnology. For instance, Eric Drexler, whothrough his genre-bending book Engines of Creation popularised nanotech-nology and one of its most feared dramatis personae – nanobots – envisioneda future in which ‘universal assemblers’ would enable the molecularmanufacturing of ‘virtually anything from common materials withoutlabour, replacing smoking factories with systems as clean as forests. They[assemblers] will transform technology and the economy at their roots,opening a new world of possibilities. They will indeed be engines ofabundance’ (Drexler 1990, 63).

Drexler occupies an interesting position within the nano-community(see Fogelberg and Glimell 2003; López 2004; Milburn 2002; Selin 2007;Thurs 2007). On the one hand, his status as a visionary pioneer isfrequently acknowledged. On the other, many ‘mainstream’ nanoscientistsmake every effort to distance themselves from him, by locating his nanotechvision outside the boundary of acceptable scientific practice in the domainof science fiction, if not gurudom (see, for instance, Stix 1996). None-theless, alongside the critiques of Drexler’s unscientific excesses, ‘seriousscientists’, such as the late Nobel laureate chemist Richard E. Smalley, arefar from moderate in the claims they make on the future. As Fogelbergand Glimell argue: ‘Smalley acknowledges that nanotechnology, even inthe more modest form of his own nanotube of carbon, eventually “may



change the future of humankind” and that nanotechnology from chemistryon a nanometerscale “may make even Drexler blush” ’ (2003, 19). Simi-larly, although Bainbridge (2007a, 35–43) situates Drexler’s approachto nanotechnology under the rubric of alchemy and derides hisunfounded fantastic speculations, he, along with Roco, as is clear fromthe epigraph, think nothing of claiming that NBIC has the potential tolead to world peace, prosperity and universal understanding! Thus, whatdistinguishes ‘realistic’ from ‘unrealistic’ nanofutures is not their degreebut their modalities of radicalism. As such, we are far from being able toachieve a definitional closure and stating what nanotechnology is and whatit is not. The better strategy, in this context, is to track the variety of waysthat nanotechnology, or more precisely NBIC, manifests itself as discourseand narrative.

Transcendence and risk

It is important not to forget, as Daniel Thurs reminds us, that

From the early 1800s to the late 1900s, English-speakers transformed sciencefrom a category largely synonymous with general knowledge, with methodssimilar to those of right thinking in all area and devotees who carried nospecial mark or qualification beyond what was expected of all upright citizens,to a term that denoted a particular brand of knowledge, distinguished by aspecial methodology, and pursued by a closed group of scientists. (2007, 68)

Consequently, in the earlier phase, advocates of science could draw ondeep and multilayered connections between ‘scientific knowledge, religion,morality, art, and common perceptions of the world’, without fear ofreproach or ridicule (Thurs 2007, 69). Insofar as these circuits of meaningare no longer available, contemporary science talk is oftentimes framed bydiscussions of technological applications, extrapolations, and invocationsof the future. In the later case, SF is frequently rhetorically mobilised in orderto create a sense of excitement (Hamilton 2003); as it unveils possible futureworlds, it also links science to the idea of transcendence (Thurs 2007).

Although Thurs and a number of scholars (see below) are certainlyright to draw attention to SF’s capacity to gestate and nurture intimationsof transcendence that can be transferred on to science, it is important tobe equally cognizant that there are other cultural sites and practices thatenable the coupling of science to hopes of transcendence. Biomedicine,as Byron Good has argued, represents one such site:

Weber ... held that civilizations are organised around a soteriological vision – anunderstanding of the nature of suffering, and means of transforming andtranscending suffering and achieving salvation. In contemporary WesternCivilizations, medicine is at the core of our soteriological vision. (1994, 70)

If Hannah Arendt, in The Human Condition, explained this soteriologicalinvestment of the body, biomedical science, and technology more broadly,



as a result of the underdevelopment of politics, the only modality oftranscendence compatible with the human condition, and Habermas(2003, 24) has linked it to the tethering of contemporary notions offreedom to the ideal of the scientific and technological control of society,Gerard McKenny (1997, 9) has drawn attention to the emergence of anew moral discourse, in Western modernity, that re-orchestrated therelationship between, pain, the body and transcendence:

[A] moral discourse that related the health of the body as well as its mortalityand its susceptibility to illness and suffering to broader conceptions of a morallyworthy life was succeeded by a moral discourse characterized by efforts toeliminate suffering and expand human choice and thereby overcome thehuman subjection to natural necessity or fate.

More broadly, a number of scholars have argued that questions of salvationand transcendence are no less constitutive of science than they are ofreligion (see, for instance, Campbell 2001; Fuller 1997; Midgley 1992;Murphy 1997).

In NBIC narratives, we encounter images of re-engineered flesh assembledthrough new materials and machine–body interfaces, dramatic incrementsin human longevity, communicative devices that make social-culturalcommunication diaphanous, effective and convergent, and a promisedland of plenty: all of them invoking religious imagery of transcendence,creation and the rapturous unity of humanity. Indeed, as in the case ofthe 19th-century sociologist Auguste Comte, who foresaw a unified bodyof positive knowledge as the new religion of humanity, Bainbridge main-tains that the knowledge produced through NBIC convergence willpermit humanity to transcend its current dependence on religious belief:‘A transcendence of the human condition – made possible by the unifica-tion of all science and technologies, establishing a dynamic new creed toreplace religion’ (Bainbridge 2007b, 198), in this way, becoming a non-religious religion. To be sure, SF narrative contributes to this aspirationof overcoming current material and bodily restrictions; however, theyearning for transcendence and its imbrications with science is intimatelyintertwined with broader cultural trends in Western society, whichnanotechnology, for the moment, cannot itself transcend.

If we blur the religious vista, it is also possible to bring into focus thecrystallisation of another broad-ranging social cultural trend (i.e. risk society).Narratives of scientific endeavours such as NBIC convergence are notonly seeded with the hope for a radically better future, they are also torn bya profound sense of concern and anxiety about prospective technologicallyinvested risks, which contemporary society cannot help but generate.Beck’s (1992) influential thesis about risk society is wide-ranging. It seeksto describe and explain a series of social dynamics that have producedsocial-structural changes, new modalities of politics and governance aswell as new forms of social being and reflexivity. However, what is of



interest in this context is the notion of ‘risk consciousness’, or theawareness of the inevitability of risks, and that the requirement tomanage risks means that action in risk society is ‘bound up with theaspiration to control and particularly the idea of controlling the future’(Giddens 1999, 3).

For example, Bainbridge writes that ‘[s]tanding still is not an option,because uncontrolled sociopolitical forces will harness new technologiesto divergent forces ripping humanity apart: The only hope is unificationof the world on the basis of the unification of science’ (2007a, 22). Thus,technological development introduces risks (i.e. ‘the ripping of humanityapart’) that can only be overcome through further technological develop-ment (i.e. NBIC convergence). Similarly, nano-enabled sensors, detectorsand cognitive systems will provide the technological tools to regulate thenew risks produced by nanotechnology because ‘the production of risktechnologies produces a need for advanced technologies to combat theself-produced risk’ (Marshall 2004, 153). A heightened sense of riskconsciousness is an integral component of reflexive modernisation, wherethe realisation of the potential harm associated with technological devel-opment leads to the production of more risk technologies, which in turnaugur new risks, so that the process continues ad infinitum. For Marshall,NBIC convergence and nanotechnology are risks technologies par excel-lence because they provide a ‘system-immanent normal form of therevolutionising of needs’ (Beck cited in Marshall 2004, 153), thus recur-sively incorporating projections of future risks into present-day action.Needless to say, prognostications of radical technological and social changefunction as universal assemblers of seemingly endless risk and anxiety.

Hype, social accountability and ELSIfication

Thomas Gieryn has written that

Science’ often stands [for] credibility, for legitimate knowledge, for reliable anduseful predictions, for trustable reality: it commands assent in debate. If‘science’ says so, we are more often than not inclined to believe or act on it – andto prefer it over claims lacking this epistemic seal of approval. (1999, 1)

The epistemic authority of scientific practice is frequently understoodto derive from its categorical submission to the ‘tribunal of reason’, whoselingua franca is rational evidence-backed argument: let the facts speak forthemselves. Individual subjectivity, social interests, political logics are seento be ‘in contempt’, therefore rigorously excluded from the court ofscientific reason. If nature, the facts, or reality are to ring true, then thecacophony that is society must be silenced. It is this rupture, this disem-bedding of scientific practice from the fabric of society that appears tounderwrite the epistemic legitimacy of science. For some time, however,science studies scholars have been building a persuasive empirical and



theoretical case against this conceptualisation of science (see Latour 1987;Bijker 1995 for representative contributions).

Science studies scholars have argued that scientific practice (but also thatthe development of technological artefacts) takes place in highly localisedcontexts. They have equally highlighted that there is nothing inherent inscientific knowledge or in a technological artefact that propels thembeyond, or enables them to circulate outside of, the laboratory. Thus,scientific knowledge and technological artefacts are only capable of trav-elling through social space, and granted legitimacy outside of the laboratory,to the extent that networks of people and things are developed andmaintained for this purpose. For instance, facts normally travel as meas-urements or inscriptions and they depend on people who are trained toread and manipulate them. Without standardised measurements, notationsand annotators, facts would not travel very far. This mobility-enablinginfrastructure is made up of sociotechnical networks in which a variety ofconstituents, both human and non-human, are assigned places and roles.In the process, a variety of incentives (social, political, economic, culturaland ‘natural’) are mobilised.

In the early elaboration of networks, promissory notes are a particularlyuseful incentivising resource: for example, ‘this device will help youcollect the data you need’; ‘work with me and we will both get what wewant’; ‘this approach will allows us to cure disease A’; ‘this technology hasthe potential to make us healthy, wealthy and wise’; ‘multiply here bac-teria and your offspring will be able to feast’. Consequently, a number ofscience studies scholars have begun sketching out a sociology of expecta-tions in order to map the narrative modalities through which futureexpectations are mobilised in order to secure networks in the present (see,for instance, Borup et al. 2006; Brown 2003; Brown et al. 2000; Deutenand Rip 2000; Hedgecoe and Martin 2003; Lösch 2006; Michael 2006;Selin 2007; Thurs 2007). Amongst other things, it has been argued thatclaims about the future can enable the legitimisation of present work,the mobilisation of funds, and the reduction of uncertainty inherent indevelopment of technologies (van Lente cited in Hedgecoe and Martin2003, 330).

If some mobilising of the future has always been a component in theemergence and launch of new scientific concepts or technologies, it isperhaps to be expected that as science projects have become larger, moreexpensive and more complex the stakes have risen. Consequently, thepromissory notes, required to incorporate and maintain actors in thesenetworks of people and things, have necessarily become inflated, thus thehype. Add that increasingly as science and technology are conceptualised,in the Knowledge Society, as engines of economic growth for bothcorporations and nations (see, for instance, López and Robertson 2007),different scientific and technological projects have had to compete for‘corporate and public patronage’, which would go a long way towards



explaining why ‘various areas of technological innovation become satur-ated with stratospherically high expectations of immanent and revolution-ary change’ (Brown 2003, 4). Hence, the need for nanotechnology firstand then NBIC to wager more recklessly on the future. In the context ofthis competitive market logic, one might also describe NBIC’s attempt toincorporate biotechnology, a strong competitor, as a hostile (or friendly?)takeover.

Another salient dimension of contemporary attempts to mobilise actorsin the pursuit of scientific and technological goals through projects suchas the Human Genome Project and nanotechnology is that many of theactors, or ‘stakeholders’, are no longer just scientists. Indeed, it used to becommon to make a distinction between science and technology, theformer concerned with ‘pure’ scientific discovery whilst the latter withtranslating the discoveries of science into socially useful and in many casessaleable artefacts. Increasingly science studies scholars argue that the dis-tinction must be abandoned. Insofar as the majority of scientific endeavoursare currently legitimated by their more immediate social contributions,we have entered the reign of technoscience. Science may still remain ajuggernaut in contemporary society, but the pursuit of knowledge forknowledge’s sake is no longer sufficient to power it. Pure science, if pureever it was, is now incontestably hybrid.

In The New Production of Knowledge, Gibbons et al. (1994) introduce acontrast between Modes 1 and 2 science in order to highlight the distinct-iveness of contemporary technoscientific configurations (see also Etzkowitzand Leydesdorff 2000; Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993). The first mode,closer to the classical science/technology binary, is driven by the, relativeto society, narrow interests of the academic community. The secondmode, on the contrary, is much more oriented towards problem solvingand is located in the context of application; consequently it has to accountfor itself in terms of its social utility. Thus, ‘not only does science speakto society (it always has), but the conditions are established in whichsociety can “speak back” to science’ (Nowotny et al. 2002, 245). In thiscontext, technoscience must increasingly negotiate meanings and mobilisesupport in constituencies (e.g. user groups, patients, consumer associa-tions, the media, concerned citizens, nongovernmental organisations,political parties, venture capitalists, regulators) that extend far beyond thescientific community, leading to a heightened sensitivity of the socialimplications of its practice (Nowotny et al. 2002, 246).

The notion that ‘positive’ social implications increasingly define andlegitimise technoscience’s raison d’être is at the very core of the discourseof NBIC convergence, whether it be the development of new medicaldevices or treatments, faster and more powerful computing architectures,materials with novel properties, more effective communication infrastruc-ture, the development of economic competitive or military advantages,machine–human interfaces, a predictive science of the mind and social



interaction, world peace or the unification of humanity: they all represent‘a more efficient social structure for reaching human goals’ (Roco andBainbridge 2003, 1).

Given the crucial role played by the idea of social impacts or implica-tions in contemporary technoscience, it is unremarkable that a more orless formalised field of study should have become constituted around thisconcern. In 1990, the US Human Genome Project launched and moreimportantly funded an ELSI program, with the broad mandate ofexploring the Ethical, Legal and Social Implications of the mapping andsequencing of the human genome. It was hoped that it would also antic-ipate and resolve problems, and contribute to the development of policythat would harness the findings for the benefit of individuals and society.Finally, the ELSI program was also tasked with encouraging public discus-sion. Although there have been important criticisms of the program (seeEvans 2002; Huijer 2003; McCain 2002), this has not prevented theproliferation of ELSI-type programs and funding streams elsewhere andtheir attachment to new emerging areas such as nanotechnology, thusinvesting them with a certain social and political legitimacy. Hence,Roco’s strong trumpeting of the fact that the US National NanotechnologyInitiative ‘has made support for social, ethical and economic researchstudies a priority’ (2003, 185). Moreover, the text from which theepigraph is extracted is calibrated as a contribution to such an endeavour(i.e. to explore the social, ethical and economic consequences of NBICconvergence).

ELSI as a generic term, and not just as a reference to the original USprogramme, encompasses a multiplicity of efforts that defy easy categori-sation. Variations in disciplinary contributions, funding models, and inobjectives and goals are considerable from country to country (see Jasanoff2005; López and Robertson 2007). However, there does seem to be anemerging consensus that much of the work has been too closely alignedto the very technoscientific goals it was meant to scrutinise. In point offact, the potentially critical dimension of ELSI has been downplayed asELSI efforts have increasingly been directed towards the facilitation andmanagement of innovation, technological extrapolation and foresight, andthe anticipation of potential ‘blockages’ and solutions to the social andcultural reception of technologies (see, for instance, Williams 2006, 334).Moreover, the prospect nurtured in the claims of Mode 2 science, i.e. thatcitizens and civil society organisations would have a more active role inthe shaping of science and technology, have, thus far, not materialised (see,for instance, Bennett and Sarewitz 2006; López and Robertson 2007;Macnaghten et al. 2005; Nordmann 2007; Williams 2006).

The expectation that ELSI type activities should above all be facilitativeis central to NBIC discourse. In effect, ELSI loses whatever specificity itmight have as it becomes folded into the movement of and for conver-gence (López 2004): in the words of Bainbridge:



Only by examining the societal implications of nanotechnology in many variedsettings can we understand the full potential of this multifaceted world ofscience and engineering. And only by creating a new social science, unencum-bered by the ideologies and the disappointments of the past, and based in theconvergence of cognitive and information sciences, will we be able to under-stand and steer the future course of a transformed world. (2007a, 201)

SF

In the introduction, I posed the question of the relationship between theplurality of narrative strategies and the legitimacy of an emergent tech-nology such as nanotechnology. Insofar as the social, cultural, political andeconomic terrains in which scientific practices unfold are moulded by thetypes of processes and narratives that have been described so far – i.e.transcendence, risk, hype, social accountability, and ELSI – their interior-isation in attempts to demarcate the field of nanotechnology lends thiseffort a broader resonance, hence an undertone of social and culturalcredibility. However, one should not imagine that this is an uncontestedundertaking. Claims, made by actors, on behalf of nanotechnology arealso potential claims against competing visions of nanotechnology or othertechnoscientific endeavours, which may consequently elicit counterclaims.Moreover, it cannot be assumed that differing narratives will simplyconverge in a complementary way; for instance, risk narratives can dovetailwith some technological claims but not with others. People are generallymore willing to accept the risks associated with biotechnologicallyenabled health than they are of those associated with genetically modifiedorganisms. Nor can it be forgotten that other actors will be attempting touse and adapt the same narratives elements to consolidate their preferredtechnoscientific ventures.

As a consequence, in addition to drawing on these diverse narrativescripts, the discourse of an emergent technology will also seek to open upa stable discursive space for itself in which it can order, modulate and fixthe meaning of these elements by organising them around a particulartheme or narrative, without, of course, ever entirely succeeding. HerbertGottweis describes this process as follows: ‘Any attempt to dominate afield of discursivity is based on practices of articulation, which consists ofthe construction of nodal points or master signifiers ... that partially fixmeanings’ (1998, 264).

In the context of nanotechnology, the nodal point is provided by apervasive and semantically powerful metaphor: nanotechnoscientists asmaster builders (López 2004). Indeed, as Alfred Nordmann notes, in manynanotechnology texts ‘nature is likened to an engineer who assemblesliving organisms from atoms and molecules’ (2007, 221). Because nano-technology is believed to contain the potential to mimic nature by alsooperating with the most fundamental ‘building blocks’ of reality, itbecomes in the words of Richard Smalley, ‘the builder’s final frontier’



(cited in National Science and Technology Council 1999, 1), and contigu-ous with the activity of nature itself (Thacker 2004, 139). In which case,it becomes possible, without blushing, to conceive of nanotechnologyas being capable of ‘Shaping the World Atom by Atom’ (NationalScience and Technology Council 1999). For its promoters, nanotech-nology provides the Archimedean point from which the world can bebuilt anew. The metaphor operates as a matrix that can attract and inte-grate the narratives of transcendence, risk, hype, accountability and socialimplications that have been explored above. Nanotechnology hosts afuture in which humans will be enabled to rebuild not only themselvesbut their world in a safe, controlled and precise manner to specificationsof their own choosing. Indeed, according to Bainbridge, even the futureof humanity is to be ‘built’ (2007a, 47).

This nodal metaphor, in turn, accounts for the centrality of SF narrativeelements in the discourse of nanotechnoscience. A number of com-mentators have noted the striking prevalence of SF features in the field, high-lighting how SF imagery is able to create a sense of excitement, hype andtranscendence (see, for instance, Hayles 2004; Landon 2004; Lösch 2006;Marshall 2004; Miksanek 2001; Milburn 2002; Nerlich 2005; Nordmann2004b; Selin 2007; Thurs 2007). SF images provide the symbolic collateralthat bridges the distance between what can now be achieved and what itspromoters promise it will realise; it maintains the hype notwithstandingnano’s current operating losses. However, in addition to this, SF andnanotechnoscience are also related in a more fundamental way: both arediscursive sites that enable the building of alternative worlds. This wouldaccount for not only why nanotech needs SF, but also why, as Landon(2004) persuasively argues, contemporary SF needs nanotech.

Alternative worlds can be the background, middle ground or fore-ground against which SF plots unfold; sometimes they can even be theprotagonists; they can be very much like our world save for minor differ-ences that turn out to make a lot of difference; they can be so strange asto be truly bizarre; they can be structured by our laws of physics or byphysics that obey quirky laws; they can be populated by humans, hybrids,mutants, aliens, machines, or perhaps no one at all; they can be theproduct of technological development, the collapse of civilisations, timetravel, chance encounters or warp engines. However, alternative worldsare never absent. They provide what SF critic Istavan Csicsery-Ronay Jr.calls a sublime chronotope: ‘a literary “space-time” where fictional thingswork according to their own particular laws of time and space’ (1996,386). Alternative worlds are constitutive of the genre.

The prospect of being able to rebuild the world with precision, whichis semantically powered by the master-builder metaphor, makes worldbuilding equally constitutive of nanotechnoscience’s horizons. What ismore, because nanotechnoscience works on the building blocks of matter,and because nothing exists that is not matter, everything is potentially



refurbishable. This authorises a self-consciously celebratory reductionistunderstanding of the world (Roco and Bainbridge 2003, 13) so that theNBIC program includes not only the re-engineering of the ‘materialworld’ but also of humans, human interaction, human societies, cultureand even humanity.

If nanostructures provide the vehicle, SF elements provide the road to,and the description of, the alternative world. Elsewhere, I detail a varietyof SF narrative elements to be found in the NBIC vision (López 2004).Here I just briefly draw attention to one. Given the importance of altern-ative worlds, it is not surprising that literary narrative techniques con-cerned with producing plausible versions of these are central to SF. Aparticularly important narrative device is that of the novum, which is ‘[a]deliberately introduced change made to the world as experienced byauthor and reader, but a change based on scientific or other logic; it issuch a significant part of the SF that the novum frequently determines thesubsequent narrative’ ( James 1994, 108). The novum is a singularity (e.g.a new technology, an encounter with aliens, an apocalyptic collapse) thatmarks a before and an after. It introduces an interruption around which,and through which, the world will unavoidably change. It is the terminusof the old world and the locus for the unfolding of a new world. It createsa world that is deformed through its subordination to one and only onedesign principle, which is why satire is rampant in the SF genre.

However, one of the benefits of this narrative device is that it makes itpossible to economically build a fictive world that is coherent and plausi-ble: all of the aspects of this new universe can be traced back linearly tothe novum. The alternative world can be structured around one premise.In NBIC discourse, convergence functions as the novum. The new worldthat is built through the narration of the consequences of this singularityhas, unsurprisingly, only one quality: convergence. Technologies willconverge and operate at the nanoscale, the natural sciences will converge,and these in turn will converge with the social sciences, the goals ofindividuals will converge as a result of a shared NBIC-enabled rationality,the goals of society will converge with those of science, social groups andsocieties will converge around common objectives and efficient means forobtaining them, culture, difference, and misunderstanding will be over-come through the convergence made possible by a ‘universal domain ofexchange’, and naturally humanity will converge and become unified.Transcendence, risk consciousness, hype, social accountability and ELSIare all accommodated and integrated in this most sublime of all chronotopes.Satire is notable for its absence.

So what?

In this paper, I have introduced some tools for thinking about thediscourse associated with nanotechnology in its NBIC incarnation.



Although my discussion has not been exhaustive, I have tried to conveysome of the ways in which different narrative forms interact in order totentatively define and provide legitimacy for this emergent technology. Ihave also drawn from a number of fields and studies within science studiesthat are particularly useful for understanding the specificity of thesenarratives. To conclude, I would like to briefly present a number of troub-ling dimensions associated with the specific configuration of narrativescripts coalescing in the current vision for NBIC convergence. A numberof major criticisms can be derived from a fundamental finding that hasemerged out of the extensive conceptual and theoretical work in the areaof science studies; namely, that ‘[i]n the short term we tend to completelyoverestimate the practical capabilities of technologies. In the longer term,we tend to get it wrong altogether, with technologies occasionally takingus completely by surprise’ (Brown 2003, 4). Insofar as hype, socialaccountability based on linear technological extrapolation, ELSI, and SFnarratives and practices pay little heed to the contingency and sociotech-nical complexity that constitute the development of scientific endeavoursand technologies, we will remain ill-prepared to steer, democraticallylegitimate and guide processes of scientific innovation.

Moreover, the ability to produce the effect of the future through‘compressed foresight’ (Williams 2006), SF literary devices, marketingtechniques and technological extrapolation will regrettably fuel the illusionsof prediction and control, what Sheila Jasanoff has called ‘technologies ofhubris’ (2003). Only an unreasonable Luddite would deny that nanotech-noscience, in its current form or otherwise, will probably lead to somerather amazing and truly beneficial applications. However, especially here,there is a need for ‘technologies of humility’; that is to say methods and

habits of thoughts, that try to come to grips with the ragged fringes of humanunderstanding – the unknown, the uncertain, the ambiguous and the uncon-trollable. Acknowledging the limits of prediction and control, technologies ofhumility confront ‘head-on’ the normative implications of our lack of perfectforesight. ( Jasanoff 2003, 22)

It might be argued that a focus on the narrative of the broader and moreprogrammatic aspects of an emergent technology, as in the case of NBIC,risks putting too much emphasis on the more hyperbolic and bombasticmoments of its eruption on the scene. Once, it becomes sufficientlybuoyant, hype and the SF imagery fade, replaced by a ‘far more immediateand mundane’ rhetoric (Thurs 2007, 90). Nonetheless, Jasanoff ’s call tocaution is no less applicable in this case. Moreover, the presence of SFelements in the narrative of new technologies should not be analysedexclusively in terms of how they will bear upon the development of thetechnology nor as reckless predictions of little consequence, because thereare consequences (see Brown 2003). There is also the question of itsbroader effect on the cultural and political imaginary of a society.



Csicsery-Ronay has argued that SF is not a disembodied literary genre.In fact, the vast majority of SF emerges in nations (i.e. Britain, France,Germany, Soviet Russia, Japan and the USA) that were via different pathsengaged in imperial strategies. For Csicsery-Ronay this is significantbecause it draws our attention to the close relationship between techno-logical development and imperialism ubiquitously rendered in dramaticform in SF. SF, however, also provided national audiences with a literary-mediation with which to symbolise and represent the transition ‘fromhistorical nations into hegemons’ through ‘the fantastic model of achievedtechnoscientific Empire’ (Csicsery-Ronay 2003, 231). In so doing, thepolitical, social and ethical disturbances produced by empire were discurs-ively transformed for the national audiences into questions of scientificand technological control due to SF’s faith in ‘the problem-generating andproblem-solving capacities of technology and the ontology of science’(Csicsery-Ronay 2003, 242).

True to SF literary form, in Bainbridge (2007a,b) we encounter theidioms of empire: the precariousness of social order, the importance oftechnologically enabled violence to police and defend borders, thedangers of cultural and populational collapse, the clash of civilisations, thepacification of barbarians, a profound distrust of the other, the pursuit of‘universal’ peace through violence if necessary, the desirability of universalstandards and language, a social and cultural topography were differencecan be technologically compiled into sameness, a horizon of unlimitedspace, and the dream of the perpetual reproduction of the current order.It is the novum of convergence that generates the ‘technoscientific Empire’that mediates all of these concerns or aspirations. In this context, it is wellworth remembering, as suggested by Arendt, that the great risk of thetechnological and scientific fix is that it will obfuscate the necessity ofpolitical engagement as a vehicle for ‘transcending’ the present, and layingdown the foundations for different, and one can only hope, better formsof social life.

Short Biography

José Julián López is an associate professor in the Department of Sociologyand Anthropology at the University of Ottawa. His current research andpublications address the discursive, professional and organisational mech-anisms through which knowledge and expertise are socially produced andsanctioned. Drawing on neoclassical sociological theory, political sociology,science studies and Foucauldian discourse analysis, he has examined theprocesses through which ELSI fields have been, and are being constituted,as forms of expertise with a ‘legitimate’ claim to participate in thegovernance of biotechnology and nanotechnoscience and its implicationsfor the democratic control of science policy. This research has beenfunded through a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of



Canada grant. In addition, he is also mapping the outlines of a sociology ofethics. His earlier work, Social Structure (with John Scott), was concernedwith the theoretical status of the concept of social structure. Also, inSociety and its Metaphors he analysed the role of discursive and narrativestrategies in social theorising, identifying a series of conceptual andtheoretical obstacles, and opportunities associated with a range of meta-phors of social structure. He has taught at the University of Essex and theUniversity of Nottingham. He obtained his PhD from the Department ofSociology at the University of Essex, from which he also holds an MA.

Note

* Correspondence address: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Ottawa,55 Laurier E. (8116), Ottawa, ON, Canada K1N 6N5. Email: [email protected]

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