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Governing Future Technologies Nanotechnology and the Rise of an Assessment Regime

:	Christoph Rehmann-Sutter, Sabine Maasen, Monika Kurath, Mario Kaiser
:	Mario Kaiser, Monika Kurath, Sabine Maasen, Christoph Rehmann-Sutter
:	Governing Future Technologies Nanotechnology and the Rise of an Assessment Regime
:	Springer-Verlag
:	9789048128341
:	1
:	CHF 85.40
:

:	Naturwissenschaften allgemein
:	English

:	314
:	Wasserzeichen
:	PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
:	PDF

Nanotechnology has been the subject of extensive 'assessment hype,' unlike any previous field of research and development. A multiplicity of stakeholders have started to analyze the implications of nanotechnology: Technology assessment institutions around the world, non-governmental organizations, think tanks, re-insurance companies, and academics from science and technology studies and applied ethics have turned their attention to this growing field's implications. In the course of these assessment efforts, a social phenomenon has emerged - a phenomenon the editors define as assessment regime.

Despite the variety of organizations, methods, and actors involved in the evaluation and regulation of emerging nanotechnologies, the assessment activities comply with an overarching scientific and political imperative: Innovations are only welcome if they are assessed against the criteria of safety, sustainability, desirability, and acceptability. So far, such deliberations and reflections have played only a subordinate role. This book argues that with the rise of the nanotechnology assessment regime, however, things have changed dramatically: Situated at the crossroads of democratizing science and technology, good governance, and the quest for sustainable innovations, the assessment regime has become constitutive for technological development.

The contributions in this book explore and critically analyse nanotechnology's assessment regime: To what extent is it constitutive for technology in general, for nanotechnology in particular? What social conditions render the regime a phenomenon sui generis? And what are its implications for science and society?

	Acknowledgments	5
	Contents	6
	List of Contributors	8
	Introduction: Governing Future Technologies	10
	Part I Going Nano: Opportunities and Risks	24
	Reinventing a Laboratory: Nanotechnology as a Resource for Organizational Change	26
	1 Introduction: Scientific Fields and Organizations	26
	2 Formation and Crises: History of a Testing Institute	28
	3 Shift: Addressing the Nano-Scale	30
	3.1 Economy of Promises and Performance Indicators	30
	3.2 Organizational Alignment: Recruitment, NANO 1 and NANO 2	31
	4 Differentiation: Strategies to Rethink Testing	33
	4.1 Reduction and Devaluation of Testing	33
	4.2 Reinterpretation and Repositioning of Testing	34
	4.3 Re-Valorization of Service	35
	5 Integration: Shaping the Contours of Nanotechnology	36
	5.1 ELSI, EHS, and Finance: The Case of the NanoConvention	36
	5.2 Public Understanding of Science: The Case of NanoPubli	37
	6 Conclusions	38
	7 Epilogue	40
	References	41
	Negotiating Nano: From Assessing Risks to Disciplinary Transformations	43
	1 Introduction: Identity Discourses and Assessment Dilemmas	43
	2 Strategies, Facing Problematic Identities	44
	2.1 Relegation to the Future	45
	2.2 Evading the Problem by Definitions and Representations	46
	2.3 Self-Reflection in the Social Sciences and Ethics	47
	2.4 Asking the Public	47
	2.5 Delegation to Toxicological Risk Research	49
	3 Transformation Processes in Toxicology	49
	3.1 The Significance of Doing ''Nano'': Negotiating Novelty	50
	3.2 The Significance of Being ''nano'': Reflections on Function and Expectations	53
	4 Assessment Transforming Disciplines?	54
	4.1 Toxicology as a Nanoscience?	54
	4.2 Disciplines Assessed	55
	References	56
	Nanoscience is 100 Years Old. The Defensive Appropriation of the Nanotechnology Discourse within the Disciplinary Boundaries of Crystallography	59
	1 Strong Traditions and Weak Positions in Crystallography	61
	2 Discursive Limits at the Nanoscale	63
	3 Networking a New Identity	68
	4 Conclusions	72
	References	73
	Part II Making Sense: Visions, Images, and Video Games	76
	From Nano-Convergence to NBIC-Convergence: The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Create it	78
	1 Introduction	78
	2 The Rhetoric of Nano-Convergence	79
	2.1 Convergence-as-Fact	79
	2.2 Convergence-by-Higher-Necessity	81
	2.3 Convergence-as-Opportunity	82
	3 NBIC-Convergence	83
	3.1 From Nano-Convergence to NBIC-Convergence	83
	3.2 The Ideas and Articulations of NBIC-Convergence	84
	3.3 The Friends of NBIC-Convergence	86
	4 Analysis: Convergence as a Teleological Concept	88
	5 Conclusion: New Challenges for STS	90
	References	91
	Deliberating Visions: The Case of Human Enhancement in the Discourse on Nanotechnology and Convergence	93
	1 Nanotechnology and the Convergence of Visions	93
	2 Aprs La Lutte: The Return of Posthumanism	95
	3 The Politics of Nanoconvergence and Human Enhancement	96
	4 Shortcomings and Obstacles in the Deliberation of Visions	102
	References	104
	Visual Dynamics: The Defuturization of the Popular Nano-Discourse as an Effect of Increasing Economization	108
	1 Introduction	108
	2 Futuristic Images and Contemporary Images of the Future	110
	3 Empirical Observations and Analysis of the Images Mediality	112
	3.1 The Process of Visual Defuturization (Mass Media Publications)	112
	3.2 Defuturized Images at Work (Research Policy Brochures for the Public)	116
	4 Theoretical Interpretation of the Observed Phenomena	119
	4.1 Defuturization as an Effect of Increasing Economization	119
	4.2 Images as the Powerful Drivers Behind the Familiarization Processes	122
	5 Conclusion	123
	References	125
	Digital Matters: Video Games and the Cultural Transcoding of Nanotechnology	128
	References	143
	Part III Assessing Nano: Repercussions on Research	147
	Emerging De Facto Agendas Surrounding Nanotechnology: Two Cases Full of Contingencies, Lock-outs, and Lock-ins	149
	1 Introduction and Conceptualization	149
	2 The Drexler Saga	153
	3 Health, Environmental, and Safety Aspects of Nanoparticles	161
	4 In Conclusion	167
	References	169
	The Risk Debate on Nanoparticles: Contribution to a Normalisation of the Science/Society Relationship?	174
	1 Introduction and Overview	174
	2 The SST Approach	176
	3 The Risk Debate on Nanoparticles	177
	4 Observations and Interpretations	181
	4.1 Nanoparticles and the Strong Social Constructivist Position	181
	4.2 What about ''Formation of Technology'' in the nanoparticle Story?	182
	4.3 The Normalisation Hypothesis	184
	5 The Institutional Case: Nanotechnology and Technology Assessment at FZK	185
	6 Conclusions	190
	References	191
	Futures Assessed: How Technology Assessment, Ethics and Think Tanks Make Sense of an Unknown Future	195
	1 The Assessment Regime: Damned to Explore the Future	195
	2 The Discursivity of Futures	196
	3 The Assessment Regime: Making the Future Decidable	198
	4 Articulations and Representations of the Future	199
	5 From Future to Futures: The Case of the Royal Society	200
	5.1 Institutions and Reports: Mutual Dependencies	200
	5.2 A Report's Recommendations: The Delegation of Futures	202
	5.3 The Delegated Futures of Technology Assessment	203
	6 From Future to Futures: The Case of Nano-Ethics	204
	6.1 The Academic Discourse of Ethics	205
	6.2 Nano-Ethics: Preparing Preparedness for Futures in the Present	206
	7 From Futures to Present: The Case of a Think Tank	208
	7.1 From Future to Expectations	209
	7.2 The Democratization of Futures	210
	8 Conclusions	211
	References	212
	Part IV Assessing Dialogue: Governing Nano by ELSI	214