nanoscience and society - IAP/TU Wien

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History-in-the-Making 315
Several inventions in the 1980s made nanotechnology
and the use of nanomaterials a reality.
Among these are the scanning tunneling microscope
(STM), which provided the first images of individual
atoms on the surfaces of materials, and won the German
scientist Gerd Binnig and his colleague, the Swiss
scientist Heinrich Rohrer, the Nobel Prize in Physics
in 1986. In 1990, Dr. Donald M. Eigler and Dr. Erhard
K. Schweizer of the IBM Almaden Research Center at
San Jose, California, demonstrated for the first time the
ability to build structures at the atomic level by spelling
out "I-B-M" with individual xenon atoms. Other
nanomaterials, such as the discovery of fullerenes, a
new crystalline form of carbon C GO
that could emerge
as the building blocks of molecular machines, and carbon
nanotubes that are extremely strong and flexible
that give nanotechnology its raw material, the properties
of semiconductors of nanocrystals, and the atomic
force microscope. In 1987 researchers at Bell Labs in the
United States created the first single electron transistor
based on the idea of Konstantin K. Likharev, a scientist
at Moscow State University that it would be possible
to control the flow of single electrons. Similarly, today
biotechnologists can create DNA sequences and artificial
viruses, which can be considered an example of
molecular manufacturing.
See Also: Definitions of Nanotechnology; IBM; Indigenous
Nanotechnology; Nanomanufacturing; Quantum Dots.
Further Readings
Ashby, M.E, et al. Nanomaterials, Nanotechnologies and Design:
An Introduction for Engineers and Architects. Oxford:
Butterworth -Heinemann, 2009.
Cao, Guozhong. Nanostructures and Nanomaterials: Synthesis,
Properties and Applications. London: Imperial College
Press, 2004.
Drexler, K. Eric. Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology.
New York: Anchor Books, 1986.
Edelstein, Alan S. and Robert C. Cammarata. Nanomaterials:
Synthesis, Properties. Oxfordshire, UK: Taylor & Francis,
1998.
Nordmann, Alfred. "Invisible Origins of Nanotechnology:
Herbert Gleiter, Materials Science, and Questions of Prestige."
Perspectives on Science, v.17/2 (2009).
Sabil Francis
University of Leipzig
Hi sto ry-in -t h e-M a ki n 9
The History-in-the-Making project, started in 2006, attempts
to understand the history of nanotechnology as
it emerges. The project, funded by the National Science
Foundation (NSF), is handled by a research group based
at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at the University
of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Heading
the project is W. Patrick McCray, Co-director of the center
and Associate Professor in the UCSB Department of
History. The center is collaborating with the Kimberly
Jenkins Chair for New Technologies and Society at Duke
University (Timothy Lenoir), and the Center for Contemporary
History and Policy at the Chemical Heritage
Foundation in Philadelphia (Cyrus Mody). The goal of
the project is to make policy makers, scientists and engineers,
and the general public understand the opportunities
and the risks that the nanoenterprise affords.
The wide range of possible applications makes the
understanding of the development and its impact on
society a complex task. New technologies do not enter
society on their own; ultimately people and societies
make technologies and decide how they are used. The
History-in-the-Making concept focuses on the historical
and social developments around this purely technological
area. It acknowledges that social sciences and
humanities have significant roles to play in nanotechnology
beyond addressing the issues of public perception
and media coverage.
One problem that needs to be addressed is that scientists
and engineers do not have the time, expertise, or resources
to survey the influence their research has on the
markets and society. They also have little information of
how their research results are implemented and commercialized.
Historians, social scientists and humanities
scholars have the insights and methods that can help to
monitor and document the impact of nanotechnology
on society as "history in the making."
One problem the project will have to deal with is the
growing amount of information that in combination
with the limited ability of the human mind to process
data leads to a collective memory loss (stored to forget).
A proper documentation and structuring of the events
will have to be established to help future historians extract
the actual chain of events out of the huge amounts
of raw data stored. Otherwise, electronic mail, Websites,
conversations, and experiments about the emerging field
of nanotechnology might quickly slip into the past.