Big Promises: David Berube’s Nano-Hype
In the spring of 2001, David Berube and a colleague from the University of South Carolina visited the National Science Foundation to talk to the program director for Science and Technology Studies (this reviewer) about support for projects examining the societal and ethical implications of nanotechnology. The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), an interagency federal program focused on nano-scale science and technology, was just getting started and nanotechnology was being identified as the “next big thing” by many in the domestic and international science, engineering, and science-policy communities. Since then, funding in the United States has exceeded $1 billion annually, with similar amounts devoted to research in Europe, in Japan, and in south Asia. Berube’s NSF visit was the first step in creating a program of nanotechnology research at South Carolina that led, among other things, to Nano-Hype.{1}
Berube’s is an important study about a significant subject. Since the human genome project in the 1980s, large-scale science and technology research initiatives by the federal government have required attention to the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of emergent fields. NNI borrowed explicitly from the genome project in establishing such a requirement as a very visible element of its research program, in part to limit the type of resistance that surrounded recombinant DNA research and the commercialization of genetically modified organisms. Berube discusses all of this and much more; indeed, he provides the first detailed study specifically concerned with the societal implications of nanotechnology, including the challenges and obstacles facing societal-implications scholarship.
The book’s title identifies Berube’s organizing theme for exploring the societal implications of research related to exploiting nature at the nano scale (10-9 meters); it is his principal concern. Correctly observing that hype has been a pervasive feature of this rapidly growing research arena, he examines the various reasons that supporters of the NNI and nanotechnology have used to justify the massive commitment of funds: enormous economic payoffs in the form of new technologies; fundamental transformations in the nature of science and technology itself; the insuring of national competitiveness and national security. Indeed, some promoters of nanotechnology promise that it will change everything. They consider it to be the most important development since the Industrial Revolution, since printing, or even since the development of agriculture. Hype indeed! Historians of technology and science inevitably question such claims, and Berube seeks to examine why so very much is claimed for this emerging field. He finds first of all that the development of nanotechnology research has rested to a significant degree on uncritical assertions, on salesmanship, on hype, and his book performs a valuable service in opening to view and studying this phenomenon.
But it is also significant that Berube aims to provide more than a detailed review of the societal implications of nanotechnology. As he states early on, “My goal is to provide the reader with a better understanding of how nanotechnology has been communicated to the many audiences willing, sometimes even anxious, to listen” (p. 23). In fact, this volume amounts to a primer that identifies many of the actors involved in the process of developing nanotechnology. After an opening section that specifically reviews the question of hyping nanotechnology, Berube offers chapters on the agencies and officials concerned with nanotechnology, on the governmental initiatives (U.S. and otherwise) funding it, on the promotional reports behind it, and on NGOs. In addition, there are chapters on likely fields of application and on nanohazards and nanotoxicology. The two concluding chapters return to the societal-implications question and to the role of the public in the decision-making process. Thus the book attempts to survey a very broad area.
In general it achieves its goals, addressing both the specific question of the place of hype in nanotechnology and the wider attempt to present a snapshot of the entire field at this early stage of its development. But there are some issues worth raising, for—as Berube is well aware—it matters that this first STS review of nanotechnology get things right. The book rests on an immense research effort that has provided the author with a handle on the key people and developments in this realm, especially in matters of policy, direction, funding, societal implications, and (to a lesser extent) the science itself. But the sheer scale of the task, the task of conveying comprehensive information about the entire field of nanoscale science and engineering, results in a compendium, a very dense book with an enormous amount of detail. This is not easy to read, in part because the book sometimes loses its narrative line. The idea of hype largely recedes into the background in many of the chapters devoted to identifying the key people and organizations involved in moving nano research forward. Yet the rapidity with which the field is changing would threaten anyone’s ability to provide comprehensive coverage, and Berube often finds himself limited to summarizing and reporting on the events, actions, programs, and agencies involved in nanotechnology, rather than providing analysis of what it all means.
Moreover, the author’s stylistic approach introduces additional difficulties in making sense of the subject. Berube prefers to summarize the views of the many authors, researchers, and policymakers in their own words. The result is a blizzard of quotations. A lot of them are short and carefully chosen, but this choice leaves a jumpy and awkward narrative. Somewhat more disconcerting, the use of so many quotes can make it difficult to discern the author’s voice among the others present. Even more troubling, though, is Berube’s perhaps unconscious assumption that readers are already familiar with the main contours of the nano field and its primary figures and institutions. He himself possesses a command of the landscape, but many readers will be seeking that background and may not easily keep track of all the people and agencies. The first chapter exposes this problem most directly, for without much introduction Berube dives into a discussion about hype and many of the leaders and organizations that are the subjects of subsequent chapters. Indeed, he seems so eager to get to the vital core question of hype that he is unable to hold that subject for later chapters. At the risk of describing the book I would have written, I wonder if it might have been better to first offer some analytical and historical background and context so that the issue of hype could be explored from a more solid foundation.
Nevertheless, Nano-Hype is a significant contribution. Most important, it differs from the flood of introductory books on nanotechnology that seek to show why this field of scientific and engineering research is receiving such high priority from every industrialized country of the world. There is a great deal of information here for STS scholars interested in nano and societal implications, for Berube provides a guide to such primary issues as public acceptance of and resistance to nanotechnology, and the wider societal implications of its development. His emphasis on hype highlights a key feature of nanotechnology science policy and begins to balance some of the least critical promoters of nanotechnology. All of this is important, to be sure. Yet in the end, I realized that I had hoped for both more and less: a little more analysis and discussion; a little less reporting; a little more orderly argument. Berube is quite correct that we need to think carefully about where nanotechnology is going. His study certainly begins that process from the viewpoint of historians and other scholars working in science and technology studies.
{1}David Berube, Nano-Hype: The Truth behind the Nanotechnology Buzz (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2006, pp. 521, $28).
Dr. Seely is professor of history and department chair for social sciences at Michigan Technological University. As program director for Science and Technology Studies at the National Science Foundation from 2000–02, he served as the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate’s representative to the NSF’s nanotechnology working group. He has since remained interested in the question of the societal implications of nanotechnology and is involved in nanotechnology undergraduate education activities on the Michigan Tech campus.
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