In 1959, Richard Feynman suggested that the most compelling reason to pursue nanoscale research might be ‘just for fun.’ This article traces a history of playful images and ludic practices in nanotechnology. Two case studies—nanocars and nanosoccer—exemplify the ways in which scientific research mobilizes speculative futures, less through engineering design or stepwise protocol than through the recreational dynamics of play. Although such molecular toys might appear frivolous, they index the increasingly widespread conditions of play labor, or ‘playbor’, shaping today’s technoculture. (...) Exploring the processes of transmutation and transvaluation by which technological imaginaries are rendered operative, this article tells a story of how the nanoworld became an everyday reality by becoming a game. (shrink)

As we approach the end of the twentieth century, the ways in which knowledge--scientific, social, and cultural--is produced are undergoing fundamental changes. In The New Production of Knowledge, a distinguished group of authors analyze these changes as marking the transition from established institutions, disciplines, practices, and policies to a new mode of knowledge production. Identifying such elements as reflexivity, transdisciplinarity, and heterogeneity within this new mode, the authors consider their impact and interplay with the role of knowledge in social relations. (...) While the knowledge produced by research and development in science and technology is accorded central focus, the authors also outline the changing dimensions of social scientific and humanities knowledge and the relations between the production of knowledge and its dissemination through education. Placing science policy and scientific knowledge within the broader context of contemporary society, this book will be essential reading for all those concerned with the changing nature of knowledge, with the social study of science, with educational systems, and with the correlation between research and development and social, economic, and technological development. "Thought-provoking in its identification of issues that are global in scope; for policy makers in higher education, government, or the commercial sector." --Choice "By their insightful identification of the recent social transformation of knowledge production, the authors have been able to assert new imperatives for policy institutions. The lessons of the book are deep." --Alexis Jacquemin, Universite Catholique de Louvain and Advisor, Foreign Studies Unit, European Commission "Should we celebrate the emergence of a 'post-academic' mode of postmodern knowledge production of the post-industrial society of the 21st Century? Or should we turn away from it with increasing fear and loathing as we also uncover its contradictions. A generation of enthusiasts and/or critics will be indebted to the team of authors for exposing so forcefully the intimate connections between all the cognitive, educational, organizational, and commercial changes that are together revolutionizing the sciences, the technologies, and the humanities. This book will surely spark off a vigorous and fruitful debate about the meaning and purpose of knowledge in our culture." --Professor John Ziman, (Wendy, Janey at Ltd. is going to provide affiliation. Contact if you don't hear from her.) "Jointly authored by a team of distinguished scholars spanning a number of disciplines, The New Production of Knowledge maps the changes in the mode of knowledge production and the global impact of such transformations. . . . The authors succeed . . . at sketching out, in very large strokes, the emerging trends in knowledge production and their implications for future society. The macro focus of the book is a welcome change from the micro obsession of most sociologists of science, who have pretty much deconstructed institutions and even scientific knowledge out of existence." --Contemporary Sociology "This book is a timely contribution to current discussion on the breakdown of and need to renegotiate the social contract between science and society that Vannevar Bush and likeminded architects of science policy constructed immediately after World War II. It goes far beyond the usual scattering of fragmentary insights into changing institutional landscapes, cognitive structures, or quality control mechanisms of present day science, and their linkages with society at large. Tapping a wide variety of sources, the authors provide a coherent picture of important new characteristics that, taken altogether, fundamentally challenge our traditional notions of what academic research is all about. This well-founded analysis of the social redistribution of knowledge and its associated power patterns helps articulate what otherwise tends to remain an--albeit widespread--intuition. Unless they adapt to the new situation, universities in the future will find the centers of gravity of knowledge production moving even further beyond their ken. Knowledge of the social and cognitive dynamics of science in research is much needed as a basis of science and technology policymaking. The New Production of Knowledge does a lot to fill this gap. Another unique feature is its discussion of the humanities, which are usually left out in works coming out of the social studies of science." --Aant Elzinga, University od Goteborg. (shrink)

Although nanotechnology is often defined as operations on the 10-9 meters, the lack of charisma in the scale-bound definitions has been fortified by remarkable dreams and alluring promises that spark excitement for nanotechnology. The story of the rhetorical development of nanotechnology reveals how speculative claims are powerful constructions that create legitimacy in this emerging technological domain. From its inception, nanotechnology has been more of a dream than reality, more fiction than fact. In recent years, however, the term nanotechnology has been (...) actively drawn toward the present to begin to deliver on the fantastic expectations. This debate over time and timing is loaded with paradox. This work examines how future claims work to define what counts as nanotechnology and reveals dilemmas that accompany temporal disjunctures. Science and politics converge in debates about the future of technology as expectations serve to create and enforce power and legitimacy in the emerging area. (shrink)

The article examines science-policy conversations mediated by social science in attempts to govern, or set up terms for, scientific research. The production of social science research accounts about science faces challenges in the domains of emerging technosciences, such as nano. Constructing notions of success and failure, participants in science actively engage in the interpretation of policy notions, such as the societal relevance of their research. Industrial engagement is one of the prominent themes both in policy renditions of governable science, and (...) in the participants’ attempts to achieve societally relevant research, often oriented into the future. How do we, as researchers, go about collecting, recording, and analyzing such future stories? I examine a series of recent interviews conducted in a number of US universities, and in particular at a university campus on the West Coast of the United States. The research engages participants through interviews, which can be understood as occasions for testing the interpretive flexibility of nano as “good” scientific practice and of what counts as societal relevance, under what circumstances and in view of what kind of audiences. (shrink)

A "Village Voice" Best Book of the Year, this seminal work presents new models of vision and examines modern theories of seeing in the context of contemporary critical practice. With contributions by: Norman Bryson Jonathan Crary Martin Jay Rosalind Krauss Jacqueline Rose Discussions in Contemporary Culture is an award-winning series co-published with the Dia Center for the Arts in New York City. These volumes offer rich and timely discourses on a broad range of cultural issues and critical theory. The collection (...) covers topics from urban planning to popular culture and literature, and continually attracts a wide and dedicated readership. (shrink)

Continuing William Mitchell's investigations of how we understand, reason about, anduse images, The Reconfigured Eye provides the first systematic, critical analysis of the digitalimaging revolution.

The cuteness of the avant-garde -- Merely interesting -- The zany science.

Images, ranging from visualizations of the nanoscale to future visions, abound within and beyond the world of nanotechnology. Rather than the contrast between imaging , i.e. creating images that are understood as offering a view on what is out there, and imagining , i.e. creating images offering impressions of how the nanoscale could look like and images presenting visions of worlds that might be realized, it is the entanglement between imaging and imagining which is the key to understanding what images (...) do. Three main arenas of entanglement of imag(in)ing and the tensions involved are discussed: production practices and use of visualizations of the nanoscale; imag(in)ing the future and the present; and entanglements of nanoscience and art. In these three arenas one sees struggles about which images might stand for nanotechnology, but also some stabilization of the entanglement of imag(in)ing, for example in established rules in the practices of visualizing the nanoscale. Three images have become iconic, through the combination of their wide reception and further circulation. All three, the IBM logo, the Foresight Institute’s Nanogear image, and the so-called Nanolouse, depict actual or imagined technoscientific objects and are thus seen as representing technoscientific achievements – while marking out territory. (shrink)

Nanotechnologies and nanoscience have generated an unprecedented global research and development race involving dozens of countries. The understanding of associated environmental, ethical, and societal implications lags far behind the science and technology. Consequently, it is critical to consider both what is known and what is unknown to offer a kernel that future work can be added to. The challenges presented by nanotechnologies are discussed. Some initial solutions such as self-regulation and borrowing techniques and tools from other fields are accompanied by (...) a call for further research. (shrink)

The molecule, as a perfect and ageless building block of matter that exists beyond human reach, has been an object of fascination and admiration since the 19th century. However, the discourse surrounding nanotechnology – at least at its most optimistic – promises the possibility of human mastery over this domain and, as a result, over all matter. This belief carries forward the old idea of a division between a realm of the base, material and particular, on one hand, and a (...) realm of the perfect, immaterial and abstract, on the other, one which today is most powerfully expressed in information discourse. Within this framework, nanotechnology promises the ability to negotiate and even dissolve this division, allowing matter itself to be treated as a kind of information. The most enthusiastic adherents of this idea believe that this will one day allow us to ‘reprogram’ material reality itself. (shrink)

This article retraces the trajectory of a start-up company NanoInk Inc. and its primary technology, the Dip-Pen, which it researches, manufactures, and commercializes. The case is of interest because it introduces a series of under elucidated questions concerning the relationships between “instrument” and “tool,” the birth of a new category of company, the “knowledge enterprise,” the dynamics of relations between complexity and simplicity related to tools “simplexity,” and the idea of “nanofication,” which refers to the spread of familiarity of a (...) nano-permeated future throughout society. (shrink)