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 gets things right. The book rests on an immense research...