Global Waming: A Scientific Problem?

Few places are being affected more rapidly by global warming than the poles, as my recent cruise to Antarctica, with visual evidence of melting ice sheets and personal stories of retreating glaciers, showed. On the trip, Dr David Drewry, one of the ship lecturer's, gave a presentation on global warming, while a group of scientists from America's Palmer Station fielded loaded questions on climate change. In both cases, I was very impressed with how the scientists fielded the issues, making a clear case for why action has to be taken. However, my dinner table, six very intelligent people with political opinions covering a large spread of the left-right spectrum were not so impressed. Their reasons: "We expected more solutions."

Why were my intelligent dinner companions turning to scientists for a solution for global warming? It seemed to be a combination of faith in technical solutions, and a "you broke it you bought" mentality (since scientists pointed out the existence of global warming, they're also responsible for finding solutions). Of course, the solution to global warming is political, not technical, in as it relates to how people use carbon-emitting technologies. I suspect that the vast amount of literature by scientists on how to stave off global warming has been ignored because it is seen as too 'politically naive' (read: asks people to make sacrifices for the common good), while professional politicians have little creditability, because decades of passing technical issues off to scientists until there is a %110 consensus has left them institutionally unable to legislate in regions of scientific uncertainty, like the exact nature of the effects of global warming.

We always go into the future blind. Global warming won't be solved by a single technical fix, rather by robust support of carbon-free energy sources as a prelude to the creation of world economic system that does not rely on fossil fuels. Lots of wealth will be made and lost in this paradigm shift, and we need to accept that these things are never easy, and that the sooner we start, the less painful it will be. Waiting for the perfect scientific solution is only going to make the problems worse.

Avatar

Let's cut the preliminaries: Avatar is the most visually stunning movie I have ever seen. It is a feast of lush alien rain forests, lithe bodies, and the pornography of violence. Cameron invented the cinematic space marine in Aliens, he perfected it in Avatar. But this is supposedly a serious blog about science-fiction, what can we say about Avatar as sci-fi?

In that regards, I am disappointed by Avatar's failure to transcend what David Brooks calls the White Messiah fable. Not because the fable is racists or imperialist, but because it is trite, and because it ends the story too soon. The purpose of the Avatar project in the movie was to bridge human and Navi culture, but that bridge inevitably fails. "There is nothing we have that they want," and the unequal negotiations of imperialism end in violence. Two cultures clash, helicopter gunships explode, and the forces of Nature triumph. The hero leaves his human past behind, gets the girl, and lives happily ever after.

A good enough, if stereotypical story, but can there be an agreement between human and Navi, technology and nature? In Cameron's mythology, science is allied with imperialism, Austugine's research program is a smoke screen for further exploitation, intelligence on the next treasure from Pandora. Try as I might, I cannot find a compromise. Technology is a different form on life, once it has been introduced, evolution takes on a faster pace, one in which older, slower systems are at a disadvantage. The complex ecosystem of Pandora is resilient enough to defeat technology, but I doubt it could integrate it.

This may be a lesson for the Navi, contact with what few (if any) remote aborigines are left, and future space exploration, but human civilization is already part of a technosphere. In this sense, preserving "nature" is a doomed project. Instead, our focus should be on designing a new world.

Visionary Nanofutures: V

In its emergence, nanotechnology is the stuff of science-fiction made real, while science-fictions are the dreams of science. Alone each is amorphous, but together nano and sci-fi set up a mutual interference pattern that results in a visionary quantum collapse. The interactions of scientific innovation and imaginative storytelling create atoms of nanotechnoscientific belief. From these atoms, materials with miraculous properties, a revolution in chemistry, and the universal molecular assembler among others, stakeholders conceive a future which justifies their favored version of nanotechnology. Their “tall and slender tower of reasoning” acts as a scaffolding around which scientists and policymakers design the concrete basis of a nanofuture, and it is from this base that science-fiction authors write the next generation of visions; the cycle repeats itself. Nanovisions can be self-reinforcing, or mutually destructive. If the course of nanotechnology veers away from molecular assembly, Engines of Creation becomes more and more fantastical, and less relevant to contemporary discourse. Conversely, as long as Engines continues to inspire nanotechnologists, molecular assembly will be pursued, even if it is far beyond the current state of the art. Nanotechnology's visionary qualities opens doors for an examination of social and political issues. The future worlds imagined by nanotechnology call into question the failures of our current society; inequality, inefficiency, and the near unshakeable faith in technological progress that defined the 20th century. Most people possess reflexive political opinions on these issues, when questioned, they respond by instinct rather than reasoned consideration. Science-fiction shatters our preconceptions. By changing the context, it frees people to consider what is truly important without overtly threatening their self-image. Though an engineer might openly proclaim that technology is value neutral, and only its applications have moral weight, a science-fictional analysis of nanotechnology permits him to learn that technology cannot be separated from applications; every artifact is political. Because nanotechnology presents such pressing issues of economic competitiveness and national security, yet requires long term commitments, it encourages policymakers to look up from the tactical skirmishing of politics and focus on “that vision thing.” Even if the technical promise of nanotechnology falls through, like so many grandiose visions before, the deep debate it has already stimulated is valuable in and of itself. Speculation is a game, but games prepare us for the test. By prefiguring the course and implications of nanotechnology, visionary nanofictions strengthen society for the stresses of a technological revolution.

Part IV

Thank you very much for staying through this lengthly series. Originally, this was an assignment for Michael Bennett's class on nanotechnology, Molecular Coordinates. I hope that these essays have been interesting and thought provoking, and I am sure that I will return to these themes, particularly interaction of science-fiction and policy making.

Visionary Nanofutures IV: Fiction in the Laboratory

Policymakers act on technology only at a distance. To fully affect the development of nanotechnology, we go directly to the source of innovation; scientists and engineers working in the field. “Whether they like the role or not, nanotechnologists are considered the essential actors of making the greatest dreams and the greatest fears come true. Therefore, more than in any other field, students of nanotechnology must be prepared to respond to such expectations, in public discourse as well as in daily research decisions.” Scientists and engineers must be engaged with full implications of nanotechnology because their involvement is the only way to counter demagoguery and neo-luddism. When scientists isolated themselves from the public debate, they surrender defining nanotechnology and framing its implications to the loudest technocritics, to the detriment of nanotechnology and society. The complexity of nanotechnoscience implies that scientists require more than technical knowledge, “[To] understand what these visions are about, what their cultural backgrounds and driving societal forces are. Because science fiction authors are arguably the most professional and influential vision writers, their texts are an ideal source for making engineering students aware of the public expectations they will increasingly face in their professional lives.”2 The positive effects of this use of science-fiction extend beyond heightened political awareness. Educating engineers in ethics is a pressing problem. Traditional approaches, whether top down or bottom up, share the dilemma that although you can teach engineers to pass a test, you cannot force them to integrate 'soft' ethical reasoning. Science-fiction analysis, because it uses imaginative as well as logical faculties, is more effective in inculcating a mindset of ethical consideration. The density of science-fiction allows a class to cover more material, Berne and Schummer provide the example of Michael Flynn's “The Fisher at the Ford,” which arranges “Six characters with different moral positions, for each of which we find almost convincing arguments.” Finally, exposure to visionary futures can alter the direction of research. At the bottom of the Drexler-Smalley divide in nanotechnology is a disagreement over whether research should be directed towards the goal of molecular assembly. While the potential of each path is an open question, I believe that powerful visions are beneficial; the grant process rewards short-term research, scientific norms should balance approachable experiments with low-probability paradigm shifting research. One inspired scientist might be enough to break the field of nanotechnology wide open.

Part III-----Part V