Nanotechnology: Legitimacy, Narrative and Emergent Technologies

Abstract

It is argued that the legitimacy of an emergent technology, such as nanotechnology, depends on its ability to develop a narrative that mobilises and integrates a number of pre‐existing narrative scripts. In the case of nanotechnology, especially in its NBIC variant (i.e. the convergence of Nano, Bio, Information technology and the Cognitive sciences), the narrative types include science as transcendence, risk, hype, social accountability, ELSI (Ethical Legal and Social Implications) and Science Fiction. This article draws on a number science studies fields to show how components from each of these narrative types make their appearance in the discourse of nanotechnology, but also how they are ordered and stabilised around a key metaphor: practitioners of nanotechnology as master builders. This metaphor links nanotechnology to Science Fiction as a key site for the construction of alternative worlds, and also to the above‐mentioned narrative scripts. In the conclusion, some troubling implications of how nanotechnology is currently legitimated are highlighted.

Nanomedicine and personalised medicine: understanding the personalisation of health care in the molecular era

“…Instead, our respondents present such images as if they were ‘one‐to‐one correlates of the body’ (Schinzel : 185) that make available real time access and manipulability. The ‘desire to see the truth in the visualizations’ (Burri and Dumit : 299) is no doubt organised by one of nanotechnology and nanomedicine's central conceits: the nanoscale provides the basic building blocks of reality (López ), ‘producing a view of the material world that resembles a kind of atomistic reductionism’ reconfiguring ‘biological matter as amenable to engineering’ (Thacker : 121). The mediated nature of the images is erased because, as noted above, the reality of biological systems is understood as being ‘inherently composed of nanoscale building blocks’; thus, in seeing molecular nanostructures one ‘sees’ reality directly at its most basic and manipulable level.…”

“…The ubiquity of the term ‘promise’ and cognate terms, in the discourses of nanomedicine, indicates that like many contemporary emerging technologies (López ), nanomedicine is entangled in a future‐oriented language of hype, which extrapolates, some would say exaggerates, based on perceived present technical potential. In the context of nanomedicine this is recognised even by sympathetic researchers: ‘Too many publications still begin with a phrase ‘widely used for biomedical applications’ whereas in most cases the system has not even entered clinical trial or been tested in vivo … Investigators need to understand and articulate the difference between a lab experiment and a medicine’ (Duncan and Gaspar : 2118).…”

Scientific Emergence and Instantiation Part II: Assembling Synthetic Biology 2006–2015

“…Rhetorically, it is important to understand the formative and legitimizing function of science fiction for both synthetic biology and nanotechnology. López (2008) claimed that as science fiction is “a key site for the construction of alternative worlds,” it can also be a productive space for legitimizing new sciences (p. 1266). Echoing findings from both the nanotech and the synthetic biology studies, López described “the exuberant hype that now underwrites the launch of vertiginously expensive and complex scientific research endeavours” (p. 1267).…”

Conflicting Futures

“…As Tutton (2011) argues, "every future is predicated on others to be avoided" (p. 412). Furthermore, Lopez (2008) emphasizes that it cannot be assumed that differing narratives concerning the future will easily converge in a complementary way. Venkatesan (2010) emphasizes the importance of considering the diversity within society and social existence when determining the desired form of emerging technologies.…”