Presenting Futures

Welcome to the ?rst volume of the Yearbook of Nanotechnology in Society! Nanotechnology, hailed as “the next industrial revolution” (NSTC 2000) and c- tiqued for being little more than “hype” (Berube 2006), is the site of a great deal of social and intellectual contest. With some ten billion dollars being spent worldwide on nanotechnology research and development annually and a market forecast of trillions of dollars in sales in the medium-term future (Lux Research 2006), nations and ?rms are pursuing nano-related goals with high levels of both effort and - pectations. Yet according to the Woodrow Wilson International Center’s web-based Nanotechnology Consumer Products Inventory, most of the more than 500 na- products on the market as of this writing are basic consumer items―cosmetics, clothing, athletic equipment and the like―with modest, incremental improvements on their non-nano counterparts. Nanotechnology is also the site of an increasing amount of scholarship dedicated to understanding the interactions between society and an emerging knowled- based technological endeavor. Searching the Web of Science indices in social s- ence and humanities for nanotech* and nanoparticle*, for example, yields 231 hits 1 since 1990, but 75 percent of these occur in 2004 through 2007. This scholarship attempts to fathom the implications of nanotechnologies for society, as well as the implications for nanotechnologies of society. Some of it is also engaged in dialogue with both the public and with nanotechnology researchers about the hope and the hype described above.

The ideas and imagery about the future that characterize nanotechnology today are shaped by multiple values and agendas which influence public investments,business strategies, infrastructure design, and public debate. Presenting Futures highlights a variety of ways that nanotechnology actors think about and seek to shape the future. It brings together social scientists, humanists, government officials, activist groups, designers, and public relations professionals into a multifaceted and at times conflicting dialogue through press releases, government reports, and advertisements taken from the front lines of the political discourse over nanotechnology, as well as original writings that situate nanotechnological futures within broader contexts. The chapters in this volume document various approaches to the future and how contemporary cultural conceptions about science, technology, and society are created and ultimately influence our own cognitive frames, social contests, and material practices.

More than a catalogue of visions, the Yearbook is designed to give social scientists, natural scientists, and the general public an opportunity to explore, reflect on, and ultimately critique these futures. In asking not so much what the future of nanotechnology may be, but rather how different social groups and organizations imagine and anticipate it, the Yearbook offers a series of starting points for exploring the role of the future in the present.