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ОглавлениеIntroduction: 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: 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, and spatial constructions” (19). The changes in what and how we communicate that Manovich enumerates affect the production of digital images in science no less than in other areas of our culture. While discussions of digital media (or “new media” 10) tend not to include scientific images, the similar production processes and circulation of images made with the STM (as well as other digital scientific images) suggest that they could—and should—be discussed. Haptic Visions contributes to rhetoricians’ developing body of knowledge about the rhetorics of digital imaging through analysis of the rhetorics of digital images in nanotechnology, especially through this book’s focus on the effects of interaction on viewers, who are also users, and on the effects of communicating information in digital image form.
Digital media’s inclusion of interaction is particularly interesting in relation to nanoscale images, as the focus on interaction connects in suggestive ways to Daston and Galison’s identification of images-as-tools in instances of nanomanipulation. Manovich argues that digital images change our “concept of what an image is—because they turn a viewer into an active user” (183). The shift in image functions that Daston and Galison and Manovich (and others) observe raises questions for rhetoricians about the roles of researchers and image viewers in the production and reception of digital images that show nanomanipulation. Insights about what becomes persuasive in the context of nanomanipulation, and how those involved are persuaded to shift from viewers to users, may then also inform how other digital media operate. In addition, the exploration of the rhetorical effects of digital images on the scientific cultures from which the images emerge in Haptic Visions may also reveal insights about the development of digital media.
Studies of scientific digital images also contribute important analyses of how images shape and express information, especially because the primary function of images in science is to convey data. (However, the functions of scientific digital images are not limited to expressing information, as is discussed in Chapter 3.) Studying in detail how informational images—images designed to convey data11–function rhetorically in discourse is especially important because informational images do not create an inherent relation between the image’s appearance or resemblance and what the image represents. For example, while the “IBM” images contain elements that “look like” atoms, the image elements are not actual depictions, like photographs; yet, the images are depictions—of data about objects built through interaction with the image and atoms. Digital, informational images blur the boundaries between presenting information and resembling objects—objects that cannot be visualized with the eye, or even with light microscopes, as atoms are smaller than the minimum resolution of light waves. Exploring how informational images such as STM images function rhetorically within discourse, given the blurred boundary between presenting information and resembling objects, can articulate how informational images function persuasively as well as how the images’ form and expression of information affect the arguments in which the images appear. Studying the rhetorical role of images important to the discourse of nanotechnology can thus show the impact of digital media on a field, as well as a field’s impact on digital media.
Toward A Visual Rhetoric of Digital Images in Nanotechnology
To explore the rhetorics of images in nanotechnology that exist at the intersection of emerging science and technology and digital data visualization, such as those Eigler and Schweizer created, Haptic Visions considers how instruments, scientific imaging practices, and image-viewing practices may influence and produce rhetorics. To do so, this book focuses on how, in addition to producing images, the particular configurations of practices that allow the STM to visualize and manipulate atoms also make for a new visibility. Atoms do not only become “visible” in the general sense of the word, showing up on the computer screen or in journal articles, but also more specifically become places within what Michel Foucault calls a field of visibility. As Gilles Deleuze explains in his book on Foucault, fields of visibilities are not only physical spaces, but also are ways of distributing light: “If different examples of architecture, for example, are visibilities, places of visibilities, this is because they are not just figures of stone, assemblages of things and combinations of qualities, but first and foremost forms of light that distribute light and dark, opaque and transparent, seen and non-seen, etc.” (Foucault 57). Thinking of what becomes visible in terms of a field of visibility expands inquiry from what is or is not seen to how it becomes possible to see what is seen—how forms of light that distribute light and dark, seen and non-seen, for example, make it possible to see interaction with atoms.
Following the practices that allow interaction with atoms to become visible requires following more than the rhetorics of published STM images such as Eigler and Schweizer’s; further insight into what and how STM images communicate also requires attention to the material and cultural conditions from which scientific knowledge about the nanoscale emerges. Richard Doyle’s coinage of the term “rhetorical software” to describe the interactions of rhetoric (in verbal or visual statements) with hardware (e.g., instruments, lab equipment, etc.) and wetware (i.e., human users) articulates how material and cultural conditions constrain and enable the others in the production of scientific discourse (7). The concept of “rhetorical software” also highlights how digital images can persuasively communicate about the nanoscale through rhetorical registers that may be new, as well as through those that may be familiar, as rhetorics interact with hardware and wetware. Haptic Visions’ study of scientific images’ rhetorical functions within the context of STM images’ production and use, as well as the field in which the images circulate, thus provides a detailed example of digital image rhetorics that expands the visual rhetoric of digital images beyond that which has been developed in conjunction with art, in new/digital media studies, or computer-mediated composition. This book also argues for the importance of material, embodied rhetorics of image production processes through focusing on the material and cultural conditions of image production and viewing, thus also contributing to scholarship of visual rhetoric and the rhetoric of science on production practices, and to scholarship on the embodied, material rhetorics of technologies. Haptic Visions extends analysis of the visual beyond representational analysis through studying images whose visual format does not always relate to what the images depict, so that analysis moves beyond how what an image looks like communicates its message. This book adds to recent work in visual rhetoric, such as the work of Bradford Vivian, who argues that we consider aspects of images besides representational ones as rhetorical. Vivian examines how images “produce and enact modes of spectatorship, subject-object relations, forms of affect, or grounds for competing attributions of sense and value in ways that cannot be explained in full by representational categories” (474). Though Vivian analyzes political images, his focus on the rhetorical aspects of images that reach beyond the representational, such as their productive capacities, is a focus that Haptic Visions shares. Following the operations of rhetorical software within the space in which the manipulation of atoms and interactions with the nanoscale become visible thus illuminates not only atoms, images, and the “software”—the rhetorics—but also the ways in which we are configured within that space of visibility.
The rhetorical dynamics surrounding STM images show how new visualization technologies and images become incorporated persuasively and understandably in communications. Studying the rhetorics of STM images also encompasses the study of how we are altered by the habit of interacting with STM images—we incorporate them into “our very humanity,” as scholars like Donna Haraway (183–201) and Langdon Winner (12) argue. How do digital visualization technologies extend our notion of seeing, and how do we change in order to see what we cannot see with our biological eyes? How do such changes affect information and objects of scientific study? These broader questions form the impetus for the more specific analysis of STM images in discourses of nanotechnology that Haptic Visions undertakes.
Organization of Haptic Visions
To articulate a space in which atoms and manipulations are made visible, this book presents a close study of nanoscale images such as Eigler and Schweizer’s to explore the rhetorical possibilities of STM images. At the same time, Haptic Visions traces the visual cultures from which the images emerge and in which the images circulate; this book also articulates the transformations occurring within science, knowledge production, and ourselves that allow us to see and manipulate atoms. I draw from work in rhetoric; the rhetoric of science, medicine, and technology; visual studies (particularly the history and sociology of scientific images, art history, and digital media studies); cultural studies; and science studies. I also draw from primary texts in physics, chemistry, and nanotechnology; and from interviews I conducted in 2005 and 2006 with scientists who use the scanning tunneling microscope.
To focus on manipulation, each chapter in this book analyzes a different aspect of how interaction functions rhetorically in the case of nanotechnology—in the workings of the STM, in Chapter 1; in changing vision practices associated with the use of the microscope and its productions, in Chapter 2; in changing visual conventions used in STM images, in Chapter 3; and in common but changing scientific tropes that appear in both text and image in nanotechnology discourses, in Chapter 4. While each chapter can be read independently, the different topics of the chapters overlap at times; together, the chapters articulate complex dynamics of the rhetorics at play in nanotechnology discourses and scientific visualization discourses.
Chapter 1, “Imaging Atoms, Imagining Information: Rhetorical Dynamics of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope,” explores the question of how atoms become both visible and manipulable through focusing on the rhetorics of the visualization technology that Eigler and Schweizer used, the STM. In the chapter, I analyze the rhetorical possibilities inherent in the STM’s operating dynamics, and then situate these operating dynamics within wider scientific, medical, and digital visualization trends in order to highlight how the STM’s operating dynamics contribute to rhetorical actions and productions. I also follow the influence of the STM’s operating dynamics on the productions of the STM—images information, and atoms—in order to show how the rhetorics that the operating dynamics make possible help present atoms as able to be manipulated and as tangible, individual entities. I argue for my method of analyzing image production practices, including the operations of visualization technologies alongside the usual object of rhetorical analysis: productions such as STM images.
Chapter 2, “Camera Haptica: Blindness, Histories, and Productions of Haptic Vision,” examines another set of practices associated with generating STM images: the vision practices that STM users and other viewers engage in while viewing STM images like the “IBM” series. After discussing how seeing can be understood as a practice that is itself derived from culturally and historically specific practices, I argue that the practices the STM user and the STM image viewer employ should be considered practices of haptic vision, practices that fuse the senses of vision and touch. Haptic vision practices found in STM use are themselves partially formed by other practices of seeing; including practices associated with microscopy, informational imaging, and digital vision. Haptic vision practices also affect image viewers through the constitution of a different and dynamic relation between the observer and the observed than dominant vision practices that involve perspective. As I demonstrate in this chapter, these haptic vision practices thus also affect the composition and rhetorical impact of STM images.
Chapter 3, “Haptical Consistency: Emerging Conventions of the STM Image-Interface,” builds on the first two chapters as it explores some of the rhetorical effects on images brought about by engaging in the interactive, haptic practices inherent in STM use, image creation, and image viewing. I focus on how the use of STM images as interfaces affects visual conventions of STM images, thus accounting for the ways interaction affects image production and reading practices. While STM imaging conventions include references to the dominant convention of linear perspective, STM imaging conventions also exceed dominant conventions, revealing a disjunction between how images function to communicate information and the current cultural conventions for reading informational, scientific images. I argue that other visual conventions are developing, and analyze what the emerging conventions reveal about the persuasive elements of STM images. This chapter also presents a framework for understanding how the reading practices of digital, informational images and their attendant conventions create effects in readers that should be considered a crucial component of how digital, informational images function rhetorically in discourses.
Chapter 4, “Visual Intelligence: Reading the Rhetorical Work of STM Imagesin Tropes,” shifts my level of analysis of the rhetorics of STM images to specific tropes. I follow two established scientific tropes that occur frequently in scientific and nanotechnology discourses: the trope of writing that Eigler and Schweizer’s “IBM” images exhibit, and the conventional microscope trope of tiny worlds made visible. I demonstrate how the expression of these two tropes mutates in STM images, linking the change in the tropes to the image production and viewing practices that microscope users and image viewers undergo. The alteration of common scientific tropes suggests changes in the formations of scientific knowledge and the field of nanotechnology, affecting our positions in relation to the nanoscale.
Finally, the conclusion, “Haptic Visions of Science and Rhetoric: Interaction and its Implications,” explores the rhetorical elements identified in the previous chapters for how the elements may suggest possible changes in rhetorical strategies, given the deeply interactive nature of image-making, image-viewing, and the practices of haptic vision. In addition to signaling a change in rhetorical practices to include more persuasion through the experience of the image as interface, I explore why understanding more experiential, visual persuasion is important for understanding nanotechnology and other emerging sciences, especially in relation to the production of scientific knowledge. Such considerations become particularly important as practices of envisioning and arguing shift as we respond to changes such as those brought about by developments in digital media and visualization technologies, in addition to the ensuing changes in how we view, envision, and interact with the world from atoms on up.
