Japan Starts a Big Push Toward the Small Scale

Crawford, Robert G.

doi:10.1126/science.254.5036.1304

Cited by 7 publications

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“…Japanese scientists had already synthesized nanotubes in 1991, the same year MITI had pledged the equivalent of US $225 million for future research in nanotechnological applications in the microelectronics sector. (See Crawford, 1991;.) The apparent head start of other major industrialized nations in the race towards nanotechnology clearly impressed on US policymakers the urgency of a unifi ed and comprehensive response.…”

Section: Imaginary Ancestry Vs Real Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Nanotechnology as Ideology: Towards a Critical Theory of ‘Converging Technologies’

Gelfert

2012

Science, Technology and Society

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The present paper contributes to a growing body of philosophical, sociological, and historical analyses of recent nanoscale science and technology. Through a close examination of the origins of contemporary nanotech efforts, their ambitions, and strategic uses, it also aims to provide the basis for a critical theory of emerging technologies more generally, in particular in relation to their alleged convergence in terms of goals and outcomes. The emergence, allure, and implications of nanotechnology, it is argued, can only be fully appreciated if one looks beyond its immediate technical and scientifi c payoffs to its infrastructural and ideological aspects. While nanotechnology aims to reshape the world 'atom by atom', its most tangible result so far has been the profound effect it has had on the organization of science-at-large, not least as the result of a thorough reshaping of the 'soft' funding infrastructure that places signifi cant constraints on the pursuit of long-term scientifi c research programmes. The paper concludes by noting a persistent, and perhaps deepening, gap between the utopian visions of some of nanotechnology's most vocal proponents and the realities of contemporary nanotechnological practice, which continue to be marked by global inequities.

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Section: Imaginary Ancestry Vs Real Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Nanotechnology as Ideology: Towards a Critical Theory of ‘Converging Technologies’

Gelfert

2012

Science, Technology and Society

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Bioelectronic interfacing: Micro- and nanofabrication techniques for generating predetermined molecular arrays

Connolly

1994

Trends in Biotechnology

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Will small be beautiful? Making policies for our nanotech future

McCray

2005

History and Technology

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investment in nanotechnology research and development soared quickly to almost US$1 billion annually. The NNI emerged at a salient point in US history as lawmakers worked to reshape national science policies in response to growing international economic competition and the increasing commercialization of academic science. This paper examines how advocates of nanotechnology successfully marketed their initiative. It pays especial attention to their optimistic depiction of societies and economies improved by nanotechnology, and considers why utopian techno-visions continue to flourish despite their tendency to ultimately disappoint. Keywords: Nanotechnology; Science Policy; Technological UtopiasIt was as if nanotechnology had gone through a phase transition; what had once been perceived as blue sky research … was now being seen as the key technology of the 21st century. 1 On 24 October 2003, California politicians, academics, and civic leaders attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the California NanoSystems Institute in Santa Barbara. This US$55 million high-tech building, with its ultra-filtered clean rooms and modular laboratories, represented only a fraction of the burgeoning national investment in nanotechnology. 2 Since 2000, when President William J. Clinton announced a new national initiative to foster the tools of the 'next industrial revolution,' dozens of universities and corporations have initiated programs where scientists and engineers research phenomena and technologies at the nanoscale. 3 Following proclamations by Clinton and other leaders, government and commercial investment into nanotechnology soared. In 2004, federal agencies in the USA dispensed W. Patrick McCray is an assistant professor in the History Department at the University of California at Santa Barbara, USA. Email: pmccray@history.ucsb.edu. He is the author, most recently, of Giant Telescopes: Astronomical Ambition and the Promise of Technology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). He is currently engaged in a pilot research project that examines the recent history of nanotechnology with especial emphasis on science policy, community formation, public perceptions, and the collection of oral histories. W. P. McCrayalmost a billion dollars a year to eager researchers ( Figure 1 shows the federal funding profile for nanotechnology research). 4 Meanwhile, forecasts, not from intemperate prognosticators but sober-minded science managers, predicted that the international market for nano-goods would be US$1 trillion by 2015. The production of these goods, supporters said, would require a new high-tech (and highly paid) workforce of some two million people, potentially leading to major restructuring of the global workforce. 5 To its advocates, nanotechnology is a 'transcendent realm,' a regime where research in the physical and biotechnological sciences may converge with information technologies and the cognitive sciences. 6 While definitions of what nanotechnology is varyindeed, one of its rhetorical strengths would see...

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Japan Starts a Big Push Toward the Small Scale

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Nanotechnology as Ideology: Towards a Critical Theory of ‘Converging Technologies’

Nanotechnology as Ideology: Towards a Critical Theory of ‘Converging Technologies’

Bioelectronic interfacing: Micro- and nanofabrication techniques for generating predetermined molecular arrays

Will small be beautiful? Making policies for our nanotech future

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