Turning Nano Green: The Hybrid Imagination in Action

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Turning Nano Green The Hybrid Imagination in
Action

• Andrew Jamison

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An Underlying ContradictionHubris...

• hubris impious disregard of the limits
  governing human action in an orderly universe. It
  is the sin to which the great and gifted are most
  susceptible, and in Greek tragedy it is usually
  the hero's tragic flaw. (Encyclopedia Britannica
  online)

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...versus Hybrids

• hybrids offspring of parents that differ in
  genetically determined traits
• or, more colorfully
• By the late twentieth century, our time, a
  mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and
  fabricated hybrids of machine and organism...
  (Donna Haraway, A manifesto for cyborgs 1986)

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A Brief History of Technology
Long Waves of Technological Change (or
where hubris comes from)
mechanization


capitalism

imperialism
technoscience





1850
2000
1950
1900
1800
romanticism cooperation
environmentalism feminism
socialism populism
anticolonialism fascism




Cultural and Social Movements (or where hybrids
come from)

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The First Wave

• the industrial revolution (ca 1780-1830)
• Iron, textile machines, and steam engines
• Technologies of mechanization
• The factory as an organizational innovation
• Social and cultural movements
• machine-storming and cooperation
• romantic art and literature, e.g. Frankenstein

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The Industrial Revolution
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The hybrid imagination Samuel Morse and the
telegraph
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The Second Wave

• the age of capital (ca 1830-1880)
• Railroads, telegraph, and steel
• Technologies of socialization
• The rise of the corporation (Carnegie, Krupp)
• Social and cultural movements
• populism, communism and social-democracy
• science fiction and arts and crafts

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The Industrial Society
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The hybrid imaginationWilliam Morris and
industrial design

• nothing can be a work of art
• that is not useful
• The Lesser Arts, 1878

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The Third Wave

• the age of empire (ca 1880-1930)
• Electricity, automobiles, chemicals and airplanes
• Technologies of modernization
• Research becomes a business (Edison, DuPont)
• Social and cultural movements
• anticolonialism and fascism
• modernism and human ecology

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The Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk
Henry Ford with his 10 millionth car
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The hybrid Imagination Lewis Mumford and human
technology
The whole industrial world and instrumentalism
is only its highest conscious expression - has
taken values for granted...

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The Fourth Wave

• the new industrial state (ca 1930-1980)
• Atomic energy, genetics, and computers
• Technologies of scientification
• The rise of transnational corporations (IBM,
  Sony)
• Social and cultural movements
• civil rights and ban the bomb
• environmentalism, feminism and postmodernism

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The Age of Technoscience
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The hybrid imagination Rachel Carson and
environmental technology
The road we have long been traveling is
deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway om which
we progress with great speed, but at its end lies
disaster.
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A New Wave?

• the age of information (från ca 1980)
• Converging technologies (info-, bio-, cogno-,
  nano)
• Technologies of the virtual
• Global corporate empires (Microsoft, Nokia)
• Social and cultural movements
• identity politics and open source
• ecological design and global justice

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The Age of Information
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The hybrid imaginationVandana Shiva and global
ecology
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Changing Regimes of Knowledge and Power

• Industrial Military Commercial
• Little Science Big Science
  Technoscience
• Before WWII 1940s-1970s
  1980s-
• Type of
• Knowledge disciplinary
  multidisciplinary transdisciplinary
• Organiza- individuals or RD
  departments ad hoc projects and
• tional form research groups and
  institutes networks
• Dominant
• values academic
  bureaucratic entrepreneurial

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From Little Science to Big Science

• change in size and scale
• mission orientation
• external sponsorship
• new norm, or value system
• new role for the state (science policy)

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From Big Science to Technoscience

• change in range and scope
• market orientation, global reach
• university-industry collaboration
• epistemic drift (Elzinga)
• the state as strategist picking the winners

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Transdisciplinarity, or Mode 2
Knowledge which emerges from a particular
context of application with its own distinct
theoretical structures, research methods and
modes of practice but which may not be locatable
on the prevailing disciplinary map. Michael
Gibbons et al, The New Production of Knowledge
(1994)
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Contextual Differences

• Mode 1 Mode 2
• forms of structural
  programmatic
• funding (sub)national
  (trans)national
• main university
  transdisciplinary
• work sites departments
  centers
• framing disciplinary matrix
  specific context
• mechanism or paradigm of application

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The Cultural Appropriation of Nanotechnology

• The dominant , or hegemonic strategy (mode 2)
• commercialization, entrepreneurship,
  transdisciplinarity
• The residual, or traditionalist strategy (mode
  1)
• academicization, enlightenment,
  (multi)disciplinarity
• An emerging, or sustainable strategy (mode 3)
• hybridization, empowerment, interdisciplinarity

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The Tendency to Hubris

• transcending human limitations
• converging technologies (info, bio, cogno,
  nano)
• disregarding consequences and risks
• the rush to commercialize, and the lack of
  precaution
• drift of epistemic criteria
• problems with quality control and peer review

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The Forces of Habit(us)

• Nanotechnology primarily seen as providing new
  opportunities for scientists and engineers
• Organized and taught by reorganizing established
  scientific fields a kind of multidisciplinary
  model
• Politics and the rest of society left largely
  outside of research and education outsourcing
  of nanoethics
• A continuing belief in separating science and
  politics

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Fostering the Hybrid Imagination

• At the discursive, or macro level sustainable
  nano
• connecting technological solutions to social and
  environmental problems
• At the institutional, or meso level responsible
  nano
• creating contexts of communication across
  faculties and social domains
• At the personal, or micro level nanocitizenship
• integrating contextual knowlege and public
  outreach into nanoscience and engineering
  education

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Turning Nano Green

• As discourse
• connecting the rhetoric of converging
  technologies to the quest for sustainable
  development
• As organization
• building bridges between nanoscientists/engineers
  and environmentalists
• As practice
• conducting research and educational projects
  relating nanotechnology to social and
  environmental problems

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For example genetically modified,
nanoengineered, ecologically designed, raspberry
cactus-powered, solar-driven, CO2 emission-free,
resource-efficient, high-speed trains
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that could also be a way to create some
sustainable jobs and partnerships between
universities, companies, governmental agencies,
and local communities - and just maybe get
people to stop driving their cars so much!