Bounding an emerging technology: Para-scientific media and the Drexler-Smalley debate about nanotechnology

Abstract

‘Nanotechnology’ is often touted as a significant emerging technological field. However, determining what nanotechnology means, whose research counts as nanotechnology, and who gets to speak on behalf of nanotechnology is a highly political process involving constant negotiation with significant implications for funding, legislation, and citizen support. In this paper, we deconstruct a high-profile moment of controversy about nanotechnology’s possibilities: a debate between K. Eric Drexler and Richard Smalley published as a ‘point—counterpoint’ feature in 2003 in Chemical & Engineering News. Rather than treat the debate as a stand-alone episode of scientific controversy, we seek to understand the forces that enabled it to be seen as such an episode. We introduce the term ‘para-scientific’ media to make explicit how certain forms of publication intervene in the dissemination of technical knowledge as it travels beyond its supposed site of production. The existence of para-scientific media is predicated on intimate association with formalized channels of scientific publication, but they also seek to engage other cultures of expertise. Through this lens, we show that Drexler and Smalley were not only independent entrepreneurs enrolling Chemical & Engineering News as a site of boundary work; members of the para-scientific media actively enrolled Drexler and Smalley as part of a broader effort to simplify a complex set of uncertainties about nanotechnology’s potential into two polarized views. In this case study, we examine received accounts of the debate, describe the boundary work undertaken by Drexler and Smalley to shape the path of nanotechnology’s emergence, and unpack the boundary work of the para-scientific media to create polarizing controversy that attracted audiences and influenced policy and scientific research agendas. Members of the para-scientific media have been influential in bounding nanotechnology as a field-in-tension by structuring irreconcilable dichotomies out of an ambiguous set of uncertainties. We conclude with thoughts about the implications of this case study for studies of science communication, institutional entrepreneurship and the ethics of emerging technologies.

Science Communication Online: Engaging Experts and Publics on the Internet

“…We look specifically to microblogs, Wikipedia, and an online database of radiation contamination readings as emerging forms of science communication online. Exploring how these platforms were used to share information in response to crisis, we advance the notion of "para-scientific genres, " borrowing and expanding upon the term from Sarah Kaplan and Joanna Radin's (2011) article "Bounding an Emerging Technology: Para-scientific Media and the Drexler-Smalley Debate about Nanotechnology, " published in Social Studies of Science. When Carolyn and I completed our work, the world of science communication looked somewhat, although not altogether, different from the vantage we have here in early 2019.…”

“…The importance of a conversational model of science communication should not be underestimated, particularly one that rejects transmission and deficit model thinking (Gross, 1994;Condit, 2012) about how to communicate science to-and with-broader publics. This conversational model is not wholesale new, as science communications have long included para-scientific genres (Kaplan & Radin, 2011) and interdisciplinary efforts (Ceccarelli, 2001). Both of these communications operate in a liminal space governed by norms of science-including the innermost conversations in the pages of refereed journals and trade journals-as well as the norms of popularizations.…”

“…When exploring science communications, this seemingly neat distinction between professional or internal genres of science communication and vernacular or external genres of science communication is immediately complicated by genres that inhabit more liminal spaces (Taylor, 1991;Gieryn, 1999Gieryn, , 1983, such as the pages of popular science or trade magazines (Kaplan & Radin, 2011) or interdisciplinary writings (Ceccarelli, 2001). Excluding popular science magazines, these examples remain in academic and institutional contexts.…”

Images and Imaginations: An Exploration of Nanotechnology Image Galleries

“…Such imagined mechanisms were emblematic of Foresight Institute founder K. Eric Drexler's vision of molecular manufacturing, which became central to his debate with Richard E. Smalley a decade ago [25]. Smalley and other proponents of nanotechnology promoted what they believed to be more sober visions of the future-sometimes characterized facetiously as a move toward "de-nanobotization" [26].…”

Cyrus Mody: Instrumental Community: Probe Microscopy and the Path to Nanotechnology

“…The interpenetration of these fields has yet to get much traction (though see recent work by Kaplan andRadin, 2011, andBerman, 2008, for studies linking STS and neoinstitutional theory), but Mody's book is a clear demonstration of the potential value. Chapter 1 offers a well-written and evocative summary of the book's arguments in each of the subsequent chapters, and if you were pressed for time, you could get away with just reading these initial pages.…”