Joint Seminar: On the Mythology of Nanotechnology (Professional)
Cornell University	New York	CNS, STS, NNIN and Communication
The National Nanotechnology Initiative [NNI] was signed into law by President Clinton near the close of his Presidency in 2000. The NNI provides considerable funding for 2001 for work at the nanoscale, with significant increases through the first decade of the 21st century. The initiative comes with its own founding myth. In a now widely quoted speech, Plenty of Room at the Bottom (1959), Richard Feynman prophesied the development of nanotechnology. He foretold of our ability to see and manipulate matter on an atomic scale, suggesting that we might store and manipulate information on this scale. The major innovation that Feynman suggested was necessary to make this possible was the development of an electron microscope 100 times more powerful than those available in 1959. According to nanotechnologys founding myth, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer provided Feynmans dream microscope with their invention of the scanning tunneling microscope in 1981. By 1986 Eric Drexler, in Engines of Creation, filled out Feynmans fantasies for the possibilities opened up by atomic level manufacturing, and by 1990 scientists had demonstrated the ability to see and manipulate individual atoms, most strikingly with D. M. Eigler and E. K. Schweizers IBM, composed of 35 individually placed xenon atoms. More work and a lot of politics later and we have the NNI. In my essay I examine this founding myth. While not exactly inaccurate, its primary function is mythological, not historical. The myth is here to tell us what is fundamental and perhaps revolutionary about nanotechnology. It is a story about the origins of a new age ushered in by our ability to see--and most significantly to manipulate-- matter with atomic nanoscale precision.

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