Big Tobacco.
Big Oil.
Big Pharma.
Big Biotech.
Big Nanotech?
Each of these phrases are examples of frame devices, words that act like triggers in activating underlying cultural meanings.
In fact, these frame devices instantly communicate the public accountability frame: Who benefits? Who controls the science? Is this science in the public or in the private interest?
As nanotechnology climbs up the media agenda over the next decade, watch out for the "Big Nanotech" frame device. It will be a sign that interpretations of the issue are moving from a promotional emphasis on social progress and economic development to a potentially more controversy-laden emphasis on public accountability.
- Log in to post comments
An intriguing idea, but I'm not sure I agree.
My experience in trying to write about nanotech suggests to me that it is different than the other examples you cite, because it is a means to a variety of ends in a variety of fields. So rather than being a business sector of its own, as each of your examples is, it's a technological tool being adapted by big oil and big pharma etc. to support their business sector.
That's precisely what's made it hard for me to write about nanotech for a general newspaper audience - there's "no there there."
Prediction: every other newspaper or magazine article will say, at some point: "Big Nanotech is an oxymoron, like Dwarf Mammoth, or Jumbo Shrimp..."
I'm sure you're aware of the FDA's Nanotechnology Task Force?
From the FDA website:
(Shamelessly snagged from todays Popular Science blog)