Visual Construction of Nanoscience

The Societal Dimensions of Visualizing Nanoscale Phenomena

Getting visualization right has important implications for science funding and commercialization. The future of both endeavors in turn depends on public perception and the perception of policy makers, which are guided not only by actual scientific and commercial advances but also by visions of the future, be they utopian or dystopian, verbal or visual. This is especially important in nanoscience, where an almost a surreal gap exists between what the technology is believed to promise (or threatens to create) and what it actually delivers. This gap, which is gradually narrowing, can be filled by science fiction images and visions which have been freely circulating in the discourse of science fiction long before science grabbed the idea.

Popular culture and imagination do not simply follow and reflect science. Rather, they are a critical part of the process of developing science and technology; they can inspire or, indeed, discourage researchers to turn what is thinkable into new technologies and they can frame the ways in which the public reacts to scientific innovations. Popular culture created images of space rockets before there were space rockets and of clones before there were clones. Before scientists do anything there is therefore often a ready-made public perception of how good or how evil it is going to be, derived from this social, literary, and cultural precognition. So when science does these things for real, their image has already been formed—for good or ill. These images make us see the new as something else, the old or the familiar, the good or the bad. They can be used to shape public perception, create hopes or fears, but also to gain funding or sell new products.

In order to borrow images from the future for the benefit of the present, images of utopian vehicles and voyages are particularly useful, from Jules Verne's Nautilus voyaging under the sea to nanomachines navigating through our bloodstreams, according to Nerlich in 2005. To move the present away from a presumed future, dystopian images of “Grey Goo” for example or nanobots running wild and devouring the earth are equally valuable. Both types of images continuously serve to science fictionalize science fact and blur the boundaries between cultural visions and scientific reality. Images of nanobots in particular can be both utopian and dystopian.

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