Haptic Visions. Valerie Hanson

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Introduction: Imaging and Imagining Science in the Information Age

      The Information Age incarnates itself in the eye.

      —Ivan Illich

      In Greg Bear’s 1985 and 1988 science fiction novels, Eon and Eternity, humans from the distant future communicate through a mix of speaking, gesturing, and “picting,” where the communicator projects stylized images above her or his shoulder from a torque-shaped machine worn around the neck. In Bear’s narrative, this multi-modal communication surprises humans from the near future as they encounter their distant descendants; the use of “picting” while speaking likely seemed far-fetched to Bear’s readers in the 1980s. However, as I write this book in the early twenty-first century, with my camera phone in my pocket and my laptop with its graphic user interface on my desk, the use of images to communicate has become ubiquitous. In fact, Bear’s envisioned form of communication seems not only plausible today, but also imminent—just a small step from texting with emoji or using Snapchat.

      A few years after the publication of Bear’s science fiction novels, two scientists, D. M. Eigler and E. K. Schweizer, published a series of six images (see Figure 1) in an article in the April 5, 1990 issue of Nature. Like Bear’s form of communication, Eigler and Schweizer’s images intermingle text, picture, and (atomic) bodily movement to communicate; in the case of Eigler and Schweizer’s images, the purpose is to demonstrate the scientist’s ability to manipulate thirty-five individual xenon atoms and arrange the atoms to form the letters “IBM” on a nickel surface. At the time, Eigler and Schweizer’s images created a stir among scientists and others; the images also spurred interest in an emerging field of science and technology: nanotechnology.1 The fact that Eigler and Schweizer communicate what we can see and do with atoms in images forms part of a larger message about the important role of visualizations in shaping and communicating scientific knowledge. While the “IBM” images were published a few decades ago, the message that nanoscale images such as Eigler and Schweizer’s sends is still relevant today to both scientific and non-scientific audiences. The “IBM” images communicate—and communicate persuasively—about nanotechnology: as the images do so, the “IBM” images affect both the content and function of scientific discourses. Further, Eigler and Schweizer’s images form a part of the broader cultural trends in imaging occasioned by the widespread adoption of digital images to communicate—trends that make Bear’s vision of communication seem right around the corner.

      Haptic Visions is about reading messages conveyed about the nanoscale and image use generally, with a particular focus on the rhetorical interactions among images, ourselves, and the material world. More specifically, this book explores how visualizations like Eigler and Schweizer’s form persuasive elements in arguments about manipulation and interaction at the atomic scale. Haptic Visions also analyzes how arguments about atomic interaction expressed in images of the nanoscale affect our understanding of nanotechnology, as well as what visualizations like the “IBM” images imply about how digital images and scientific visualization technologies, such as the one that Eigler and Schweizer used (the scanning tunneling microscope or STM), help constitute arguments. While digital imaging and nanotechnology are relatively new developments, what is significant for rhetoricians is not the newness of these two developments, per se. Instead, what is important is that the conventions, practices, and even the significance of both digital imaging and nanotechnology are still in flux. The intersection of digital imaging and nanotechnology thus becomes a site for exploring what becomes persuasive within a developing technology of visual communication—and how then that persuasive communication affects developing scientific and technical fields like nanotechnology.