Nanotechnology Challenges

CONTENTS

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Although many active scientists deplore the publicity about Drexler's futuristic scenario, I will argue that the controversies it has generated are very useful, at least in one respect. They help clarify the metaphysical assumptions underlying nanotechnologies, which may prove very helpful for understanding their public and cultural impact. Both Drexler and his opponents take inspiration from living systems, which they both describe as machines. However there is a striking contrast in their respective views of molecular machineries. This chapter based on semi-popular publications is an attempt to characterize the rival models of nanomachines and to disentangle the worldviews underpinning the uses of biological reference on both sides. Finally, in an effort to point out the historical roots of the contrast in the concepts of nanomachines, I raise the question of a divide between two cultures of nanotechnology.

In a recent debate, Eric Drexler and Richard Smalley have discussed the chemical and physical possibility of constructing molecular assemblers – devices that guide chemical reactions by placing, with atomic precision, reactive molecules. Drexler insisted on the mechanical feasibility of such assemblers, whereas Smalley resisted the idea that such devices could be chemically constructed, because we do not have the required control. Underlying the debate, there are differences regarding the appropriate goals, methods, and theories of nanotechnology, and the appropriate way of conceptualizing molecular assemblers. Not surprisingly, incommensurability emerges. In this chapter, I assess the main features of the debate, the levels of the emerging incommensurability, and indicate one way in which the debate could be decided.

Technology stands for humanly initiated causal processes. Some have very detailed knowledge of how such processes unfold. Others can represent to themselves only the turn of a switch and a resulting action. In both cases, technical intervention is accompanied by an act of the imagination. But what happens when technologies elude the grasp of imagination? – The term ‘noumenal technology’ refers to envisioned nano- and biotechnological applications that revert from the domination, control, or rationalization of nature and produce instead a form of technology that is as uncanny as brute, uncomprehended nature itself. This perspective helps us understand some of the arguments and supposedly irrational anxieties that are associated with these technical developments.

Two criteria are proposed for characterizing the diverse and not yet perspicuous relations between nanotechnology and nature. They assume a concept of nature as that which is not made by human action. One of the criteria endorses a distinction between natural and artificial objects in nanotechnology; the other allows for a discussion of the potential nanotechnological modification of nature. Insofar as current trends may be taken as indicative of future development, nanotechnology might increasingly use the model of nature as a point of orientation, while many of its products will continue to be clearly distinguished from nature.

Analysis of technological determinism by historians, sociologists, and philosophers has declined in recent years. Yet understanding this topic is necessary, particularly in examining the dynamics of emerging technologies and their associated research areas. This is especially true of nanotechnology, which, because of its roots in futurist traditions, employs unusual variants on classical determinist arguments. In particular, nanotechnology orients much more strongly to the past and future than most traditional disciplines. This non-presentism strongly colors its proponents' articulation of the field's definition, purview, and likely development. This chapter explores nano's non-presentism and suggests ways to further explore nano-determinism.

It is argued that the pictures generated by scanning tunneling electron microscopes are not images. Rather they should be regarded as ‘imaginings’. That they are sometimes proposed as images has two negative consequences: (1) It suggests that we have the kind of epistemological access to the nano scale that we do not, and (2) it has ethical consequences to the extent that we fail to tell the public the truth about what we can and cannot know.

This chapter investigates nanotechnological images as carriers of variable, dynamic knowledge. In a case study, it analyzes changes in the design of images based on scanning tunneling microscopic investigations between 1982 and 1990. The time period saw a gradual transition to an image design in which the atom itself appeared to have been made visible. The shift involved questions of how to image and how to represent atoms. This chapter argues that image designs were developed to make scanning tunneling microscopic images compatible with nano-technological visions. Thus, image design contributed to the view that tunneling microscope is a central scientific instrument for visionary nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology is a highly complex technological development due to many uncertainties in our knowledge about it. The Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd has developed a conceptual framework that can be used (1) to analyze the complexity of technological developments and (2) to see how priorities can be set in the many requirements that result from this complexity. This chapter discusses similarities and differences compared to other approaches.

This chapter reports on work-in-progress in the area of technology generalization. More specifically, it presents a model that allows integrating various expectations regarding emerging technologies. Nanotechnology is used as an example of a novel field of science and technology. The notion of leitbild (‘guiding image’) is used as a mediating concept pointing to potentially emerging technologies. Then we discuss to what extent patent and publication data can facilitate identifying scientific and technological trends and how to evaluate the epistemic utility of a leitbild.

As ‘social and ethical issues’ becomes a recurring phrase in the community paying attention to nanotechnology research, a crucial question becomes: what counts as a social and ethical issue? A typical list includes privacy, environmental health and safety, media hype, and other apparently unrelated issues. This chapter surveys those issues and suggests that concerns about fundamental concepts of ethics, such as fairness, justice, equity, and especially power, unite the various issues identified as ‘social and ethical issues’ in nanotechnology.

The growing presence of the products of nanotechnology in the public domain raises a number of ethical questions. This chapter considers whether existing environmental ethics can provide some guidance on these questions. After a brief discussion of the appropriateness of an environmental ethics framework for the task at hand, the chapter identifies a representative environmental ethic and uses it to evaluate four salient issues that emerge from nanotechnology. The discussion is intended both to give an initial theoretical take on nanotechnology from the perspective of environmental ethics and to provide a clear indication of the direction from which environmental resistance might come.

Nanosciences and nanotechnologies are developing at an incredibly rapid pace, promising a true revolution in a wide variety of fields where the capability to manipulate matter at the atomic or (supra)molecular scale is essential. This includes information processing systems, medical diagnoses and treatments, energy production and sustainable development, as well as a number of more futurist ideas that, as yet, remain pure fiction. These developments have begun to generate controversies and fears in the scientific community itself and the larger public. This chapter critically reviews the potential problems of an uncontrolled ‘nanoworld’ (grey goo, toxicity of nanoparticles, RFIDs, privacy, etc.) and the associated fears, as they appear in the literature. Suggestions to effectively manage controversies in this field, based on a sociological approach, are proposed.

We are concerned with the new type of uncertainty that is brought about in consideration of singular events, like the future effects of nanotechnology, and characterized by the existence of cognitive barriers leading to paralysis of action in decision-making. We argue for application of the methodology of ongoing normative assessment. Such a methodology is a balanced solution between waiting until it is too late, if the effects are dangerous, and acting when it is yet too early, if the consequences of the developing technology have not yet been determined.

Public debates about nanotechnology are often conducted in terms of mere possibility arguments (MPAs). These arguments come in two variants. According to the negative variant, since the development of nanotechnology can have certain specified negative effects, that development should not be supported. According to the positive variant, since the development of nanotechnology can have certain specified positive effects, it should be supported. The ‘can’ of these arguments is difficult to disambiguate, and meaningful probabilistic analysis of these statements is in most cases impossible. Therefore, other analytical tools have to be developed in order to deal rationally with mere possibility arguments. In this chapter, two such tools are introduced, namely the test of alternative effects and the test of alternative causes.

This chapter argues that narrative elements from the science fiction (SF) literary genre are used in the discourse of Nanoscience and Technology (NST) to bridge the gap between what is technically possible today and its inflated promises for the future. The argument is illustrated through a detailed discussion of two NST texts. The chapter concludes by arguing that the use of SF narrative techniques poses serious problems to the development of a critical analysis of the ethical and social implications of NST.

The topic of science and the public has enjoyed increasing attention of late. Most of the literature has concerned itself with consensus emerging from a negotiation between experts and non-experts or with the nature of expertise. I argue for a shift of emphasis from truth to funding, and that pleasure and the feeling of exhilaration is a crucial aspect of science and the public. To this purpose I analyze the publications of a group of researchers working on nanotechnology.

Much information regarding nanotechnology is publicly available, but discussion of this research is currently limited to certain specialized groups: scientists, engineers, and investors, plus distinctive subcultures of nanophiles and nanophobes. There has been very little public awareness, let alone any public reaction. Nevertheless, public controversies about nanotech will soon arise. This chapter borrows an insight from cultural anthropology to explore the likely forms of public reactions. It asks whether there are general lessons and statements about public scientific controversies which are helpful to the case of nanotechnology: do we have reliable models that accurately predict public reactions to new scientific developments, or should we turn instead to limited analogies with specific episodes of public reactions? Case studies from other recent public scientific controversies, particularly cold fusion and recombinant DNA, help us explore this question.

This chapter first analyzes the different meanings of and interests in ‘societal and ethical implications of nanotechnology’ by such diverse groups as science fiction authors, scientists and engineers, policy makers and science managers, business people, transhumanists, the media, and cultural and social scientists. Based on the mutual semantic impact among these groups, I characterize the current state and dynamics of the debate on ‘societal and ethical implications of nanotechnology’ by identifying the mediators, semantic leaders, and alliances in the debate. It turns out that the debate is dominated by a visionary alliance (consisting of science fiction authors, visionary engineers, transhumanists, and business people) which is rather robust against semantic impact from other groups. I conclude from this analysis and from the cultural history of science that the most likely impact of nanotechnology on society in the near future is a public anti-scientific backlash.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX OF NAMES