Mondo Nano: Fun and Games in the World of Digital Matter by Colin Milburn (review)

'Hmmm, that is a funny coincidence. But are you serious?' (242). So says PerkyPat, Colin Milburn's mysterious correspondent in the sprawling, overwhelming, yet tour-de-force final chapter of Mondo Nano. Over the chapter's near 60 pages, Milburn weaves together Victorian mysticism, science, and invention, the Manhattan Project and the Bhagavad Gita, and sf novellas, films and videogames – all the while proposing connections between these threads and the science of nanotechnology. While there is, Milburn admits, something playful, even ridiculous, about this intellectual activity, Mondo Nano argues not only for the seriousness of play, but for a complex network of mutual influence and shared activity between various forms of 'imaginative play' and the science of nanotechnology. Milburn's account of this relationship is encyclopaedic, concerned, it seems, with addressing as many of these connecting threads as possible. It is a passionate, even ecstatic project that both reflects the grand scale and limitless possibilities of the young field of nanotechnology and introduces a range of possibilities for the interdisciplinary study of science and the humanities.

Milburn begins his book by introducing the 'playfulness' of the field of nanotechnology, from Richard Feynman's tongue-in-cheek 1959 lecture 'There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom' (7) to the creation of nanoscale cars, balls (and games), sculptures and films. Play is shown to be valuable both as discourse (to deflect scepticism inspired by unbelievable visions of nanoscale futures) and as methodology. As a young field, so little was/is known about the nanoworld that much can be learned about its rules merely by 'playing' within its space, a space variously conceived as a 'dollhouse world', 'space apart', 'playground', or 'magic circle'. In this, Milburn's book contributes to the study of play as something with serious socio/cultural meaning and function. While scientific research is functioning as play, videogames such as Folding@home are functioning as scientific research, recruiting PlayStation 3 owners to work together and compete against each other to solve problems and conduct research within the field. Thus the first part of Milburn's book focuses on 'playbor', the intermingling of play and labour. This is Milburn's project at its most concrete, presenting documented examples of the gamification of science.

Milburn becomes relatively less concrete (but more playful) when discussing the influence of various forms of 'imaginative play' – from ancient myth and religion to modern sf comics, movies, videogames, etc – on the scientific imagination, whether as constitutive of a shared vernacular amongst researchers or as inspiration for avenues of research. More often than not, this takes the form of geek-culture inside jokes, nanoscale Pacmen and Sonic rings. However, Milburn suggests, this influence can also shape deeper levels of meaning, such as ways in which both scientists and society at large understand scientific work. As an extreme (and representatively playful) example, the ability of nanotechnology to separate and reorganise the smallest elements of matter (thus making matter itself 'reprogrammable') is shown to resemble alchemy and magic. In this context, Shakespeare, thanks to his representations of magic and scale in A Midsummer Night's Dream 'can now be seen as a philosopher of the molecular sciences'. Similarly, the scientist creating nanoscale mazes is the ancestor of Daedalus, 'puzzle solver, maze builder, tuner of matter' (94), while the magic circle of nano research shares key features with the island lairs of fictional mad scientists and early modern utopian visions. Other examples of influence are more ominous. Comic book representations of superheroes are reflected in the research agendas and promotional materials of the military/industrial/scientific complex. Sf-inspired nanotech is sold to the consumer, potentially foreshadowing a world in which 'our private lives as consumers co-mix with the fantasy productions of military technoscience, drawing everything into a whiz-bang cartoon future. Have we already been drafted? Ha ha – that was a joke. But seriously…' (170). Characteristically, Milburn draws back from the...