Knowledge politics and new converging technologies: a social epistemological perspective

Abstract

The “new converging technologies” refers to the prospect of advancing the human condition by the integrated study and application of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and the cognitive sciences – or “NBIC”. In recent years, it has loomed large, albeit with somewhat different emphases, in national science policy agendas throughout the world. This article considers the political and intellectual sources – both historical and contemporary – of the converging technologies agenda. Underlying it is a fluid conception of humanity that is captured by the ethically challenging notion of “enhancing evolution”.

Keywords:

• converging technologies
• nanotechnology
• biotechnology
• information technology
• chemical worldview
• physical worldview
• evolution
• enhancement

Notes

1. This narrative is also informed by the following interviews conducted by Fuller from October 2006 to November 2007: Dr Mihail Roco (US NSF director of nanotechnology initiatives: one phone and one face-to-face, total 3.5 hours), Dr Ronald Kostoff (US Office of Naval Research, chief scientometrician), Dr Anders Sandberg neuroscientist and transhumanist advocate, Oxford University), Professor Max Lu, two graduate students and two postdoctoral researchers (Australian Research Centre for Functional Nanomaterials, University of Queensland), Dr Howard Cattermole (editor, Interdisciplinary science reviews, journal of the UK Royal Institute of Materials Sciences), Professor V.V. Krishna (chair of the Centre for Studies in Science Policy, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi). Fuller also discussed topics related to this article with those attending the second annual meeting of social science partners associated with the US NSF-led CT initiative, which was held at Arizona State University on 19–21 April 2007, courtesy of Professor David Guston (director of the Center for Nanotechnology in Society). These interviews took place as part of a project on the social implications of NBIC, supported by the 6FP of the European Communities (see http://www.converging-technologies.org). An extended version of this article can be found on the website as an ““Output”” under the rubric of ““Deliverable 1””. It includes a bibliometric analysis of references to ““converging technologies”” conducted by Albert Tzeng

2. Philip Ball, Nanotechnology in the firing line. Available from: http://www.nanotechweb.org/articles/society/2/12/1/1, 23 December 2003. On the formalization of nanoethics, see Shew (2008)

3. The most cited version of the report in the academic literature is Mihail Roco and William Sims Bainbridge (2002b)

4. On the proactionary principle, see Max More, 2005, The proactionary principle. Available from: http://www.maxmore.com/proactionary.htm

5. See, e.g. Wilhelm Bibel (ed.), Converging technologies and the natural, social and cultural world, Special Interest Group Report for the European Commission via an Expert Group on “Foresighting the New Technology Wave”, 26 July 2004. Available from: ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/foresight/docs/ntw_sig4_en.pdf

6. In the case of India, it is just INFO + anything. See the report of the National Knowledge Commission: http://knowledgecommission.gov.in/recommendations/default.asp. In Israel, there is INFO + COGNO via linguistics

7. The expert testimony that found favor with the judge was Robert Pennock, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, Transcript Day 3, 28 September 2005, 91–92

8. Of the two main authors of the original NSF document, Bainbridge is clearly the transhumanist. His solo articles veer towards matters of “cyberimmortality”, whereas Roco”s tend to focus on the reorganization of the scientific labor force. Contrast Bainbridge (2005) and Roco (2002)

9. The most obvious philosophical precedent here is Gilles Deleuze, who in turn drew on the work of Gilbert Simondon, who held the chair in psychology at the Sorbonne in the 1960s, when Deleuze wrote Difference and repetition

10. From issue 2566 of New scientist, 26 August 2006, 25

11. In the philosophy of biology, this perspective is associated with the “Weismann Doctrine”, named after the German embryologist normally credited with experimentally demonstrating the lack of interaction between “somatic” and “germ” cells. Of course, by the early twentieth century, it was generally granted that irradiation, strictly speaking, violated the Weismann Doctrine, but not in a strategically tractable way, as, say, followers of Lamarck would have liked. However, CT precisely revisits the Lamarckian dream with better science

12. Letters to the editor on this article reflected critically on the transhumanists’ continued normative reliance on evolution. One observed, quite properly: “Evolution didn't “build” us at all. It can only play the hand mutation deals it. If no mutation occurs, giving rise to a particular characteristic, no matter how much of a “good idea” that characteristic is, it will not arise. We, however, have the capacity for foresight and so can fine-tune some of evolution's less elegant solutions”

13. This strand of the history of science–society relations has yet to be told in its entirety. The standard point of departure in English is Kevles (1985)

14. It is worth stressing that this nascent posthumanist sensibility is actually the view of those who see themselves as “socially conscious”, but in a sense that treats the ecology as providing society”s parameters. For the humanist counterpoint, see Habermas (2002)

15. This self-alienation of the mental and physical parts of production was crystallized in the twentieth century through various theorizations of an intellectually-driven “managerial class”. See Karl Mannheim, James Burnham, etc

16. For the Weismann Doctrine, see footnote 11 above

17. Bichat, ironically, was himself dead by the age of 30

18. Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Complexity and uncertainty: a prudential approach to nanotechnology, a contribution to “Foresighting the New Technology Wave”. High Level Expert Goup, European Commission, Brussels. March 2004. Available fromL http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/files/20003/11272944951Dupuy2.pdf/Dupuy2.pdf. Strictly speaking, Dupuy”s claim is false. An important earlier precedent is the “anticipatory governance” of alchemy by the Roman Catholic Church, especially after the Papal Bull of 1317, which prohibited the project of transmuting base metals into gold on both moral and economic grounds

19. Alan Porter, Jan Youtie and Philip Shapira, Refining search terms for nanotechnology: Briefing Paper. Available from: http://cns.asu.edu/cns-library/documents/Porter-Shapira%20Nano%20Search%20Briefing%20Paper.pdf

20. An account of these nano-futures is provided by Cynthia Selin of Arizona State University: http://asdn.net/ngc2007/presentations/selin.pdf. See also Selin (2007). The potentially self-fulfilling character of nano-futures (at least in terms of acclimatizing people to any new nano-based developments) was remarked on by participants in the “cyberchat” that accompanied the Converging Science and Technologies: Research Trajectories and Institutional Settings conference associated with this project, held in Vienna, 14–15 May 2007. See http://www.converging-technologies.org/cyberconference/Chat/tabid/55/Default.aspx

21. For a good historical and philosophical account of the related distinction of the P-gene (i.e. preformationist – a gene for a specific trait) and the D-gene (i.e. developmentalist – a gene as a potential that can be actualized in many different ways), see Moss (2003)

22. Much of this popular imagery was based on the work of Hermann J. Muller, a pro-Soviet US geneticist who won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering X-ray mutagenesis in fruit flies. However, Muller”s own considered view was that irradiation usually produced lethal mutations that expedited death, not evolution. While Muller avoided the transhumanist obsession with expediting evolution, he pioneered the movement”s obsession with preserving (nowadays cryogenically) superior genetic stock by stressing how environmental pollution (not least from ambient radiation) was bound to deteriorate the human gene pool

23. A cynic might say that ableism marks the revenge of the disabled, since it would render normally abled people “always already disabled”. Not surprisingly, then, the leading scholar–activist of ableism is Gregor Wolbring of the University of Calgary, who describes himself on his website as “a thalidomider and a wheelchair user”. On the specific topic of this report, see the following article from Wolbring”s very interesting and informative online article series: “Ableism and NBICS”, http://www.innovationwatch.com/choiceisyours/choiceisyours.2006.08.15.htm, 15 August 2006

24. See Freeman Dyson, Our biotech future. The New York review of books, 54 (12). Dyson draws heavily on the work of the University of Illinois microbiologist Carl Woese

25. Ableism is a natural ally of the so-called adaptationist perspective on global climate change, which argues that rather than trying to deny or even stop climate change, the best course of action is to “adapt”, which may of course entail adapting our bodies as well as our external socio-economic systems. See Stehr and von Storch (2005)

26. Whether this relativization of disability actually benefits or simply even further marginalizes those traditionally treated as physically disabled remains a moot question

27. One highly publicized rearguard attempt to halt such free-floating enhancement policies comes from the communitarian political philosopher Sandel (2007). Sandel argues that ableist ideals violate the integrity of well-established social practices – including games – that are based on norms of fair play. However, perhaps the most thoughtful discussion of this issue comes from a clinician at the University of Pennsylvania medical school, who attempts to draw lessons from the history of cosmetic surgery, which, having begun as war-related reconstructive surgery, developed in a largely unregulated fashion in the consumer market (Chatterjee 2007)