W. Patrick McCray

Will small be beautiful? Making policies for our nanotech future

With the passage of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) in 2000, US investment in nanotechnology research and development soared quickly to almost US

MBE deserves a place in the history books

1 billion annually. The NNI emerged at a salient point in US history as lawmakers worked to reshape national science policies in response to growing international economic competition and the increasing commercialization of academic science. This paper examines how advocates of nanotechnology successfully marketed their initiative. It pays especial attention to their optimistic depiction of societies and economies improved by nanotechnology, and considers why utopian techno‐visions continue to flourish despite their tendency to ultimately disappoint.

From Lab to iPod : A Story of Discovery and Commercialization in the Post-Cold War Era

Molecular beam epitaxy is widely used in research and industry to make semiconductor devices and structures. However, despite its ability to control matter with near-atomic precision, the technique is overlooked in most histories of nanoscience and nanotechnology.

How spintronics went from the lab to the iPod

The 1988 discovery, made simultaneously in two European laboratories, of giant magnetoresistance (GMR) became the basis for the Nobel prize in physics two decades later. Companies like IBM rapidly commercialized the discovery, which paved the way for major advances in data storage commonly seen in computers and portable music players. GMR also helped catalyze a new field of research known as “spintronics” and provided a rationale for a major global investment in nanotechnology. This article examines the process through which a basic physics discovery was made and then commercialized. In this narrative, military agencies and commercial firms acting as “institutional entrepreneurs” fostered the growth of spintronics (and nanotechnology) in the post-Cold War environment. Finally, it concludes by exploring the validity of the linear model for research and the shifting boundaries between contemporary science and technology.

Amateur scientists, the international geophysical year, and the ambitions of Fred Whipple.

The commercial success of products based on giant magnetoresistance is often cited as a reason for supporting basic physics research. The reality is more complex, given the range of bodies, including IBM and the US military, involved in developing new technologies based on this Nobel-prize-winning discovery.

How Astronomers Digitized the Sky

The contribution of amateur scientists to the International Geophysical Year (IGY) was substantial, especially in the arena of spotting artificial satellites. This article examines how Fred L. Whipple and his colleagues recruited satellite spotters for Moonwatch, a program for amateur scientists initiated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in 1956. At the same time, however, the administrators with responsibility for the IGY program closely monitored and managed—sometimes even contested—amateur participation. IGY programs like Moonwatch provided valuable scientific information and gave amateurs opportunities to contribute actively to the research of professional scientists. Moonwatch, which operated until 1975, eventually became the public face of a vast satellite‐tracking network that expanded the SAO’s global reach and helped further Whipple’s professional goals. Understanding amateurs’ interactions with the professional science community enables us better to understand the IGY as a phenomenon that enlisted broad participation and transcended traditional boundaries between professional and amateur scientists.

‘Globalization with hardware’: ITER’s fusion of technology, policy, and politics

Starting in the 1960s, astronomers’ analog view of the universe gradually transformed as scientists and engineers introduced digital computers, electronic detectors, and magnetic recording media into observatory domes and laboratories. The advantages of this were considerable: once the underlying technical architecture and social practices were in place, digital data can be more easily analyzed, manipulated, transported, and communicated. As they replaced and supplemented older technologies, astronomers’ basic research practices changed accordingly. This helped reshape norms and behaviors in the research community, altering astronomy’s moral economy. The importance of collecting, processing, and sharing digital data transcended specific institutions, individual research questions, and national boundaries. This article explores this process, using representative examples and the metaphor of data friction, focusing on both the development of hardware and data standards. For astronomers, the transition from analog to digital was, in both senses of the phrase, a universal concern.

The Contentious Role of a National Observatory

This article explores the history of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a fusion energy megaproject currently being built in southern France. It examines three main aspects of the project’s history, focusing largely on the European research community’s perspective. First, it explores how European scientists and science managers constructed a transnational research community around fusion energy after 1960 that was part of Europe’s larger technological integration. This article also expands Gabrielle Hecht’s concept of ‘technopolitics’ to the larger international dimension and explores how the political environment of the late Cold War and the post‐9/11 era helped shape ITER’s history, sometimes in ways not entirely within researchers’ control. Finally, this essay considers ITER as a technological project that gradually became globalized. At various stages in the project’s 30‐year history, we discover processes whereby national borders became less important while social, economic, legal and technological linkages created a shared social space for fusion research on an expanding scale.

The Biggest Data of All: Making and Sharing a Digital Universe

For 50 years, astronomers have debated, Should large optical telescopes be under the auspices of national centers, or should access to them be controlled by a “benevolent dictatorship of the elite?”

The Visioneers: How a Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies, and a Limitless Future

Throughout the twentieth century, astronomers moved from and between different data-collection regimes, from the photographic to the electronic and, finally, to the born-digital era. At the same time, the focus of scientific discovery shifted away from the telescope itself to the hard drive, the database, and digital archives. This essay builds on the assumption that the sharing and circulation of astronomical data—as with other kinds of scientific data—have become core research activities that demand an increasing fraction of researchers’ time, money, and expertise. The examples presented here give insights into the larger and gradual digitization process that unfolded throughout the entire international astronomy community. Although the examples chosen here depict local processes, the importance of sharing digital data transcended specific institutions, individual research questions, and national boundaries.