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.

      Figure 1. Six images showing the assembly of the letters I, B, and M. Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers, Ltd.: Nature (Eigler, D. M. and E. K. Schweizer, “Positioning Single Atoms with a Scanning Tunneling Microscope,” Nature 344 (April 1990): 525); © 1990.

      Why Nanotechnology?

      What and how the “IBM” images argue about nanotechnology is important for rhetoric as well as for science: Eigler and Schweizer’s demonstration spurred not only excitement and wild visions of the future,2 but also arguments for serious and funded research in nanotechnology,3 an emerging field in which researchers from various disciplines—including physics, chemistry, and engineering—study and manipulate phenomena at the nanoscale, the level of single atoms and small molecules.4 Indeed, the demonstration of atomic manipulation embedded in the “IBM” images forms a topos, or commonplace, in arguments justifying nanotechnology. Science policy justifications for the establishment and funding of this new field,5 as well as arguments directed towards a popular audience, mention Eigler and Schweizer’s demonstration. As historians of science Cyrus C. M. Mody and Michael Lynch observe, while a small proportion of the work in nanotechnology involves manipulating individual atoms, some of the examples of manipulation have become well-known (Mody and Lynch 431, note 19). Demonstrations of atomic manipulation have continued. For example, in May 2013, IBM released the stop-action film, A Boy and His Atom, as an advertisement for the company’s atomic data storage capabilities. To make the film, which shows a stick-figure boy playing with a ball and then jumping on a trampoline, a research team arranged individual carbon monoxide molecules to form the boy, the ball, and the trampoline, as well as the words “think” and “IBM,” all illustrating the researchers’ sustained ability for precise manipulation (A Boy and His Atom). While nanolithography and related techniques may comprise much of the actual work of nanotechnology, as opposed to the manipulation of individual atoms (Mody and Lynch 431), the idea of atomic manipulation remains a potent, continuing element in nanotechnology discourses, and so deserves examination.

      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:

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