Richard Barke, Jud Ready, Alan Porter, and Lisa Yaszek Georgia Institute of Technology The emergence of active nanostructures and nanosystems (ANN) will challenge existing economic, social, and political systems in ways that are qualitatively different and much more rapid than previous technological revolutions. The effects of ANN will be a combination of the completely unfamiliar, the previously experienced, and the roughly analogous. How will the benefits and risks of ANN be understood and described, and how will social and political systems respond to these changes? Writers will use both familiar and new methods of scientific and popular communication to bridge the gaps between scientific and technical knowledge, public understanding, and policy responses. Studies are underway to analyze the public's understanding of nanotechnology, to determine their likely concerns and fears, to engage the public in a rational, informed dialogue about the risks and benefits of the technology, but we also need to understand how regulatory policy regarding ANN will be shaped by interactions among perceptions of risks and benefits and by the framing of issues using narratives, metaphors, and imagery across several realms of discourse.
This project will study how communications among scientists, the public, and policymakers about "how to regulate active nanostructures and nanosystems" are shaped by the way they understand and describe the emerging technology across three spheres of communication. Disjunctions among the scientific, public, and policy realms of discourse could have profound effects on how new regulatory systems for ANN will attempt to balance risks and benefits. This project will draw upon and contribute to research on risk perception, science, and regulatory policy; computer-aided analysis of technical text; nanotechnology research in electronics and photonics; and literary studies and science/technology fiction.
As the first exploratory phase of a larger study, this project will consist of three interrelated parts, each drawing on different intellectual traditions and methodologies, but converging to offer a unique perspective on the flow of ideas among the scientific, popular, and policymaking realms. First, techniques of literary analysis will be used to examine the use of metaphors, tropes, and story types (e.g., "fantastic journeys," "evil scientists," "swarms") that construct narratives used by scientists and writers to communicate about new sciences and technologies. Second, characterizations of ANN in scientific and other literature will be explored using powerful text-mining techniques, looking at term occurrences or co-occurrences, which will be meshed with reading-based approaches. Third, discourse analysis will be used examine communications among coalitions that are likely to shape policy debates about support for and regulation of nanotechnology in the US government. The goal is to understand the origins, adoption, evolution, and use of concepts and metaphors that both enable and constrain the scientific, public, and political understanding of a revolutionary technological step.
