Haptic Visions. Valerie Hanson

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      Figure 2. Color image of Eigler and Schweizer’s arrangement of xenon atoms into the letters I, B, and M, called “The Beginning” in the STM Image Gallery on the IBM Research web site. Image originally created by IBM Corporation.

      How the idea of manipulation and interaction with the nanoscale has lodged into the discourse of nanotechnology so solidly becomes interesting for rhetoric: Following how manipulation and interaction became part of the story of nanotechnology helps to explain not only how a topos forms within a discourse, but also the ways in which rhetorics are formed within—and help form—the complexities of an emerging field. As technology assessment scholar and physicist Ulrich Fiedeler argues, even for an emerging technology, in which stages of development often include discourse, or “communication and negotiation processes” (248), discourse about nanotechnology is a dominant characteristic of the field (246). Therefore, the rhetorics of nanotechnology discourse contribute to the formation of nanotechnology as a field. Fiedeler accounts for the importance of discourse through the interaction of what he sees as the other four main characteristics of nanotechnology: the lack of a clear definition; the interdisciplinarity of nanotechnology research; the fact that nanotechnology is an enabling technology (for example, as with microelectronics, nanotechnology is used to create a variety of other technologies); and the early development stage of nanotechnology products and applications (243). Each of Fiedeler’s five main characteristics contribute to the field’s complexity, even for those in nanotechnology; researchers and other participants rely more on discourse to bridge disciplines and other forms of knowledge in order to learn about others’ research and to conduct their own research in interdisciplinary teams. Further, Fiedeler comments that the sheer number of directions for research and topics for investigation adds to the complexity of nanotechnology, and so also increases the importance of communication (248).

      Fiedeler’s observation that nanotechnology’s discourses form a key characteristic of the field indicates part of nanotechnology’s interest for rhetoricians. Nanotechnology becomes a useful site in which to explore how arguments communicate, and in so doing, help constitute a scientific and technical field. How the dominant role of discourse affects nanotechnology and helps shape arguments within the field then become key questions for rhetorical research. While social scientists and rhetoricians have explored some aspects of nanotechnology discourses6 further analyses of the discursive rhetorics of nanotechnology can illuminate how discourses affect the development of nanotechnology as a field as well as the development of knowledge about the nanoscale.

      Rhetorical Roles of Images in Nanotechnology

      Images form an important part of nanotechnology discourse, as in any other scientific discourse.7 Images function within a discourse to constitute as well as communicate knowledge. One important way that images help constitute science is that visualizations focus the attention of viewers on what the images constitute as the main object, or, in science, the scientific object. As Lynch observes, drawing on his considerable and influential ethnographic work on images in science, “instrumental and graphic faculties are implicated in the very organization of what the specimen consists of as a scientific object” (“Externalized Retina” 170). Images then also communicate what a field like nanotechnology establishes as scientific objects. The images used to communicate in a given field also affect that field’s formation. As historian of science Martin Rudwick argues in the case of the development of the field of geology, images play a significant role in establishing scientific fields because they help construct “a visual language that [is] appropriate to the subject matter of the science, and which could complement verbal descriptions and theories by communicating observations and ideas that could not be expressed in words” (177).8 Rudwick and Lynch’s comments highlight the importance of analyzing images like Eigler and Schweizer’s “IBM” images, because the images function in three ways: they form elements of discourse, they help constitute nanotechnology’s scientific objects, and they help establish nanotechnology as a field.

      Further, following the rhetorical roles of images can reveal important details about how a different or new visualization technology may influence a field’s development. Historians Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison comment that images that show manipulation at the nanoscale, such as images made with the STM and its relative, the atomic force microscope (AFM), differ from others in the history of scientific images through the use of nanoscale images as tools to build objects at the nanoscale (382–84), such as, for example, Eigler and Schweizer’s letters in the “IBM” images, or images of the boy, the ball, and the trampoline in A Boy and His Atom. Daston and Galison argue that the function of images that allows scientists to construct nanoscale objects alters what images like Eigler and Schweizer’s express; images like the “IBM” series do not communicate a representation of nature as much as a presentation—presentation of new objects, wares, and art (47). While Daston and Galison do not present a full analysis of nanoscale images in their history of scientific objectivity, their claims suggest possible connections between new functions of images in nanotechnology and broader trends in visualization and scientific work. Analysis of how manipulation becomes a topos in nanotechnology then may also articulate how images are used in arguments, in terms of the images’ functions and messages. Focusing on manipulation and the functions of images together draws a few other important factors into the analysis, including: the visualization technology that Eigler and Schweizer and the makers of A Boy and His Atom used, the STM; the imaging processes researchers use to produce STM images; and the vision practices we engage in as we use the STM and other visualization technologies like it. Thus, following the concept of manipulation with attention to image functions also allows us to examine current, cultural visual shifts that affect scientific fields, knowledge, and discourse while exploring the rhetorics of visualization technologies and digital images.

      If images and visualization technologies help constitute scientific objects and fields, and if the use of images to manipulate comprises a new function of images, then how the combination of scientific object and new function affect what is depicted in images that are used to communicate nanotechnology becomes a key area for rhetoricians. How the combination of depicting and manipulating atoms affects STM images’ uses in discourses—especially those that help to establish nanotechnology—and how STM images are used to persuade within these discourses form two themes of Haptic Visions.

      Insights about how images like those Eigler and Schweizer published help constitute nanotechnology may also be useful for studies of other disciplines, especially as the social sciences, other sciences, and (increasingly) the humanities rely more on data and computation as part of knowledge-making.9 As scholars in emerging or established fields manage and communicate massive quantities of data as part of their research, the role images play in communication and knowledge-making strategies becomes more important to understand. Following how images function to communicate—and communicate persuasively—helps articulate the impact on fields and on the rhetorics those fields are composed of and compose.

      Digital Data Visualization Rhetorics and Nanotechnology

      Eigler and Schweizer’s “IBM” images also are significant as examples of productions of recent digital visualization technologies within broader cultural trends of image creation and circulation that are occasioned by technological developments in digital imaging. Technological developments, such as computer-wrought changes to the processes used to create images as well as the uses of images, are potentially more encompassing than those sparked by previous media technologies. While the introduction of the printing press altered distribution processes for communication, and the introduction of photography changed the composition of images, media studies scholar Lev Manovich argues, “the computer media revolution affects all stages of communication, including acquisition, manipulation, storage, and distribution; it also affects all types of media—texts, still images, moving images, sound, СКАЧАТЬ