Compressed Foresight and Narrative Bias: Pitfalls in Assessing High Technology Futures

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements An early version of this paper was presented at the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society (Egenis) at the University of Exeter, 30 November 2004. In addition to these discussions, the author is very grateful for feedback from colleagues at the University of Edinburgh (especially Wendy Faulkner, Donald MacKenzie, Sarah Parry and Joyce Tait) and beyond (in particular Nik Brown, David Guston, Arie Rip, Richard Twine and Brian Wynne), as well as two anonymous referees. Notes 14S & EASST Conference, Paris, 25–28 August 2004: Public Proofs: Science, Technology and Democracy; a joint meeting of the (mainly North American) Society for Social Studies of Science and the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology. 2There are, of course, important differences between proponents and opponents of a technology in the way in which future visions of an emerging technology are projected. I am grateful to my colleague Joyce Tait for this observation regarding the differences between 'positive' and 'negative' foresight, reflecting their proponents' diverging aims of targeting money to specific expected areas of innovation versus stopping developments (personal communication with author). 3Brown (2003) Brown, N. 2003. Hope against hype—accountability in biopasts, presents and futures. Science Studies, 16(2): 3–21. [Google Scholar] makes a similar argument, that technology hype mobilizes the future into the present. 4The idea of nanotechnology has a long history of course. The earliest accounts of nanotechnology can be traced back to a 1959 speech by the physicist, Richard P. Feynman, to the American Physical Society entitled 'There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom'. More recently the concept of nanotechnology was promoted in the writings of Eric Drexler (Drexler, 1986 Drexler, K. E. 1986. Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday. [Google Scholar]; Drexler et al., 1991 Drexler, K. E., Peterson, C. and Pergamit, G. 1991. Unbounding the Future: The Nanotechnology Revolution, New York: William Morrow and Company. [Google Scholar]) including his PhD, Molecular Engineering: An Approach to the Development of General Capabilities for Molecular Manipulation, published in 1981 and now available at his website: http://www.imm.org/. What is perhaps most striking is how well-rehearsed this self-history of nanotechnology is (Bennett and Sarewitz, 2006 Bennett, I. and Sarewitz, D. 2006. Too little, too late? Research policies on the societal implications of nanotechnology in the United States. Science as Culture, 15(4)[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]). The history and claims surrounding nanotechnology have not been without controversy—as exemplified by the highly publicized dispute between Scientific American and the Foresight Nanotech Institute (http://www.foresight.org/). The latter, founded by Drexler with a mission 'to ensure the beneficial implementation of nanotechnology', objected to an article in Scientific American (Stix, 1996 Stix, G. 1996. Waiting for breakthroughs. Scientific American, 274(4): 36[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) which contrasted the utopian futuristic visions articulated by Drexler and other 'Nanoists' with the more uneven and mundane achievements of 'Real Nanotechnology', in particular querying the prospects of self-assembling nanodevices. López (2004) López, J. 2004. Bridging the gaps: science fiction in nanotechnology. HYLE—International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry, 10(2): 129–152. [Google Scholar] suggests that the interpenetration of S&T and Science Fiction discourses presents a particular problem for critical analysis of nanotechnology. The issue of who is constructing these discourses is important. Bennett and Sarewitz (2006) Bennett, I. and Sarewitz, D. 2006. Too little, too late? Research policies on the societal implications of nanotechnology in the United States. Science as