Thinking like an artist about new technologies
The introduction of nanotechnology and biotechnology into our lives is one of the most challenging undertakings we will face in our lifetime. The benefits, both proven and potential, are great. Human testing is now underway on nanomedicines that have proven one hundred percent effective in fighting certain cancers in rats. Genetically modified goats produce milk containing drugs that can treat diseases as severe as anthrax. But with these modern miracles come grave concerns about the consequences of new technologies. What is life like for genetically modified animals? Should we modify living things to suit our own desires? How will nanoparticles affect our bodies?
Much of the fear that some people have of nanotechnology and biotechnology stems from the fact that there are no quick easy answers to these questions. These are some of the most complex technologies we have ever employed, and their outcomes and interactions are often impossible to predict. Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter at the molecular scale, a level of nature at which quantum phenomena take charge over the Newtonian phenomena we experience at the macro level. Our conventional thinking about materials and effects don’t even work at this level.
Biotechnology can be equally perplexing, as we design and construct living things using DNA, the most fundamental building block of life, as a sculptor uses clay. How can we predict the consequences of something as complex as a new life form?
But if our conventional thinking about new materials and their effects falters faced with the complexity of nanotechnology and biotechnology, what alternative do we have for guiding or even grasping their outcomes? First, regardless of complexity, the use of any technology should be guided by principles. What do we want and why do we want it? Who benefits as a result of its use? What is its effect on the environment? Defining what we want gives us a yardstick by which to measure the success or failure of specific applications of new technologies.
However, once we have defined the what, why, and for whom, we need to bring a new level of open-mindedness to the question of how. In other words, our thinking about how to apply nanotechnology and biotechnology should not follow the patterns of past technological applications. These complex new technologies behave in new ways and raise new questions. Nanoparticles behave differently in the body and the environment than their macroscale counterparts. Genetically modified organisms occupy a strange new territory between living and non-living things.
Often I’ve found it helpful when faced with complexity and uncertainty to focus on relationships rather than entities. For example, looking past the novelty of the gold nanospehers used to treat cancer to consider their interaction with human tissue. Or looking past the mammalian clone whose mother is also its sister to ask what effects their relationship has on their quality of life.
Focusing on qualities and relationships may help us find our way through the new territory opened by nanotechnology and biotechnology better than past frameworks focusing on quantities and entities could. But thinking in this way often clashes with conventional thinking, and with the methods and mindset of many scientists. It is important, however, not only in guiding the outcomes of new technologies, but also in guiding initial experimental work. One of the greatest differences between nano/bio and earlier technologies is that they are design disciplines. Nanotechnology is the design of materials at the molecular level and biotechnology is the design of living things. This makes designers out of nanoscientists and biotechnologists and demands a new way of thinking about these sciences.
Artists are trained and perhaps innately adept at focusing on qualities and relationships. They’re inclined to ask, “What effect am I trying to achieve and why is it important,” before asking “How can I achieve it?” Scientists have been trained more to work from the bottom up, examining materials and aspects of nature to find their applications in society. Artists have learned much from scientists to aid in their pursuit of qualities and relationships. Perhaps with the advent of nanotechnology and biotechnology it is time for all of us to adopt their focus on qualities and relationships and think in new ways about the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.