Haptic Visions. Valerie Hanson
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Visual Rhetoric
Series Editor: Marguerite Helmers
The Visual Rhetoric series publishes work by scholars in a wide variety of disciplines, including art theory, anthropology, rhetoric, cultural studies, psychology, and media studies.
Other Books in the Series
Locating Visual-Material Rhetorics: The Map, the Mill, and the GPS by Amy D. Propen (2012)
Visual Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design, ed. by Leslie Atzmon (2011)
Writing the Visual: A Practical Guide for Teachers of Composition and Communication, ed. by Carol David and Anne R. Richards (2008)
Ways of Seeing, Ways of Speaking: The Integration of Rhetoric and Vision in Constructing the Real, ed. by Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Sue Hum, and Linda T. Calendrillo (2007)
Haptic Visions
Rhetorics of the Digital Image,
Information, and Nanotechnology
Valerie L. Hanson
Parlor Press
Anderson, South Carolina
www.parlorpress.com
Parlor Press LLC, Anderson, South Carolina, USA
© 2015 by Parlor Press
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hanson, Valerie L., 1969-
Haptic visions : rhetorics of the digital image, information, and nanotechnology / Valerie L. Hanson.
pages cm. -- (Visual rhetoric)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60235-550-7 (pbk. : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-551-4 (hardcover : acid-free paper)
1. Technical literature--Philosophy. 2. Visual communication. 3. English language--Rhetoric. 4. Nanotechnolgy. 5. Nanoart. 6. Haptic devices. 7. Scanning tunneling microscopy. I. Title.
T11.H275 2015
601’.4--dc23
2015006894
2 3 4 5
Visual Rhetoric Series
Editor: Marguerite Helmers
Cover design by Danielle Shuff.
Cover image: “Swirl” by Vladimir Kramer. From Unsplash. Used by permission.
Printed on acid-free paper.
Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. This book is available in paper, cloth and eBook formats from Parlor Press on the World Wide Web at http://www.parlorpress.com or through online and brick-and-mortar bookstores. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications, write to Parlor Press, 3015 Brackenberry Drive, Anderson, South Carolina, 29621, or email [email protected].
Contents
Introduction: Imaging and Imagining Science in the Information Age
1 Imaging Atoms, Imagining Information: Rhetorical Dynamics of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope
2 Camera Haptica: Blindness, Histories, and Productions of Haptic Vision
3 Haptical Consistency: Emerging Conventions of the STM Image-Interface
4 Visual Intelligence: Reading the Rhetorical Work of STM Images in Tropes
5 Conclusion Haptic Visions of Science and Rhetoric: Interaction and Its Implications
Illustrations
Figure 1. Six images showing the assembly of the letters I B and M.
Figure 2. Color image of Eigler and Schweizer’s arrangement of xenon atoms into the letters I, B, and M.
Figure 3. “How an STM Works.”
Figure 4. “Quantum Corral” image.
Figure 5. Journal cover depicting carbon nanotube gate wires.
Figure 6. “Molecular Switches.”
To all my family
Acknowledgments
This book has been a project long in the making. The ideas for this book originally started in my PhD dissertation work at the Pennsylvania State University; I am grateful to my friends, my teachers, and my dissertation committee—Richard Doyle, Stuart Selber, Susan Squier, and Robert Yarber—for their inspiring and enlightening conversations, provocations, insights, and advice. I am also grateful for graduate fellowships from Penn State and from a National Science Foundation grant (Science, Medicine, and Technology in Culture; Pennsylvania State University, 2002–2003; principal investigators: Londa Schiebinger, Robert Proctor, Richard Doyle, and Susan Squier) that gave me time to pursue these ideas.
The collegial and intellectual support I have received at Philadelphia University helped me continue this project. In particular, I want to thank Marion Roydhouse, Katharine Jones, John Eliason, and Julie Kimmel for their encouragement and conversation. A Philadelphia University Research and Design grant helped expand my research through funding interviews conducted with scientists using the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) during 2005 and 2006. I am deeply grateful for the generosity, time, and good will of those scientists who agreed to be interviewed for this project. Thanks also go to the members of the Philadelphia-area nano-studies reading group for their intellectual support, insights, and discussions of things nano and beyond, including a few of this book’s topics in earlier stages.
A slightly modified form of parts of Chapter 4 and the conclusion originally appeared in Science Communication (“Amidst Nanotechnology’s Molecular Landscapes: The Changing Trope of Subvisible Worlds,” Science Communication, 34.1 (2012): 57–83. Pre-published May 19, 2011 (DOI: 10.1177/1075547011401630)). I am grateful to the editor, Susanna Hornig Priest, and the anonymous reviewers for their guidance. An earlier version of the argument in Chapter 3 appeared in a different form in Augenblick (“Nature as Database? Microscope Images’ Impact on Visual Cultures of the Natural World,” Augenblick, 45 (2009): 9–25). I thank the guest editor, Angela Krewani, for inviting me to be part