This paper is not about nanotechnology. It will not present a debate on the subject of nanotechnology. It will not argue on the relevancy of such a debate. Those points have been already discussed sufficiently to be considered thoroughly covered. But I don't see much of a debate on the debate on the debate on nanotechnology. You thought the title was a joke? Think again.
<!--break-->
When the government sets up channels for the opposition
Because, as nanotechnology becomes more and more researched on, some administrative entities have found it necessary that the citizen should talk about the subject. A bit like if back in the 50s, government had set up a public debate on the good and bad sides of nuclear power. Which was not done, and few people were really shocked when nuclear power was first abused. Because few people understood what it really was. Still today, few people do as a matter of fact...
This government sponsored debate has been going on for a while already in France. Here is how it is conducted:
Every week or so, an amphitheater is dedicated to the event in some university in one given city. People are informed through various media a bit before and invited to attend. No entrance fee, anyone can come. A team of experts, each in his own speciality, is there and tries to present to the unsuspecting crowd what are the possible benefits and dangers of nanotech. Most of their time is spent answering questions, thus the term "debate" in place of "conference".
The latest was held in Lyon, where I was at the time, so I went.
Now, it is obvious that the administrative entity that is responsible for setting up the stage is deeply interested in making people understand that nanotech is good for them. Because that administrative entity is funded and staffed by the government, that in turn is good friend with the industrial lobbies that manufactures nanotools.
So, inevitably, little after the debate started, there has been some concerned that the debate on nanotech is actually a trick to get the people to accept it faster. That's the debate on the debate. And that's what will be debated here.
Here is how it happened:
Getting inside
I got there 15 min early. There were plenty of people already. I was actually expecting that it would be empty because I figure that nobody knows what "nanometer" means and, of those that can, I figure that most lack the scientific background or imaginative power to actually conceive what a nanometric object looks like. Hell, I believe that even you, reader, don't! A freaking millionth of a millimeter! 10 ångströms! Ångströms are used to measure atoms!
But public debate seem to stir a citizen fiber in the french people and I was glad that it wasn't just me and a couple of nerds dreaming of quantic computers already.
Just before the entrance, there was two people waving flyers. I picked one and it gave the political posture of the party "Europe Ecology" on the issue of nanotechnology. The paper was obviously written by someone that had some knowledge on the topic but it still gave the impression of missing the point. In any case, this was going to be a debate on science, not politics. Or so I thought..
I could see through the windows of the building that the room was only half full. But there was still a queue at the entrance. I was half reading a book so the line wasn't bothering me and I didn't question its usefullness. But a sign caught my attention: "Please present your bags open". Were they expecting people to bring weapons? Then I remembered reading a most interesting article on a previous debate that had been disrupted by the throwing of an ammoniac bottle in the debate room. It is wondering how anyone could feel so strongly about such a tech subject that I opened my bag to the enquiring security officer.
"No bottle". I had to leave my water bottle at the door. A guy near me that was eating an apple was told: "You're gonna have to finish that outside". I was a bit disturbed at that I couldn't help wondering how far France had slid toward totalitarism under the impulse of Mr Sarkosy in the 4 years I had been gone.
I wanted to sit at the front row. Ever noticed how people fill the middle and back rows first? I always found that habit silly. But one of the organising staff told me the two front row were somehow reserved so I went back to the third and sat one seat away from the next person. That was a girl around my age. She told me she was waiting for friends and that I had to sit somewhere else. Ok then, 4th row... Stick around, this detail is relevant to what's coming.
The kick-off
The team of experts arrives, all of them dressed in freaking suits and ties. For fucks sake! This is a public debate! They are quite on time and, at 19:30, everything is ready to start. The organiser says hello in the microphone, and the girl that kicked me out of the 3rd raw began to applaud him and cheer loud enough. A bit like if she was at a Kiss concert. The people around her start cheering and whistling too. The guy that sat on my right throws a handful of tracts in the air, the one of my left starts blowing painstakingly loud in a whistle. And suddenly, half of the attendance is behaving pretty much like on a carnival day. Confettis are thrown, people jump around screaming, whistles are blown... I was at the epicenter of a subversion attempt.
I felt a tiny bit hurt that I wasn't aware of that action, given my penetration of the local activist scenery.
But it was still an opportunity to write a nice paper with an outsider point of view. I got my phone out and started logging everything. I never had the intention to write about that event to begin with. Through the thick layer of noise produced by one half of the audience, I could almost hear the amplified voice of the host trying to say something obviously, but I couldn't make out his words. Nobody could. Still, he kept speaking, probably unaware of the fact. I felt sorry of the poor bastard... Banderoles were spread that read anti-nanotech slogans, the noisy ones started chanting...
Anti-nanotech? Is there such a concept? They make antis for everything these days. They started chanting slogans that they must have rehearsed somehow before. A sheet of paper was passed to me with some on it and I will now attempt at translating them for your appreciation. You have to figure that they all rhyme:
- "nanos are not green / only totalitarian"
- "We don't give a fuck about the debate / We want no nano at all"
- "With or without debate, we don't want nanos"
- "Nanos already there / We don't debate"
- "Refund Minatec"
- "Cop, researcher or soldier / What would one not do for a salary"
- "Close Minatec and the CEA, then we will talk"
- "Order, growth and security / Order, growth and security (looping crescendo)"
- "Order, growth, progress, profit (idem)"
- "Not robots, not sheeps / Close Clinatec"
- "We'll be in each debate"
I feel I must explain this one. They are talking about the fact that nanotools are already being used in some fields and a handful of consumer product.
I had to research this one. Minatec is a research center on micro-nanotech that has opened in 2006 in Grenoble.
The CEA is the french administrative entity for the management of nuclear power.
"All bugged, all ruled / Close Minatec"
Clinatec in a biomedical research that is experimenting with nanotech in the field of brain disease like that of Parkinson or Alzheimer.
But they mainly stuck to the second. I didn't hear the others too much.
Now, is it just me, or 90% of these "arguments" have nothing to do with the issue? Is it just me or 50% of those arguments would make wonderful rethoric in the mouth of a nazi propagandist? Lumping together unrelated concepts like nuclear power and nanotechnology, like research and war, like nanotechnology and police-statism.
But so far, the most shocking to me is the dedication of the subverters to block the debate. Not only they will not talk about the issue, but they will not allow others to talk. Freedom of expression is indeed a pretty disturbing notion...
"Of course people should be allowed the right to free speech, but not when they piss me off so much!"
Ousting out the usurpers
Obviously, when so large a proportion of the crowd is organized, there is nothing the unorganized part can do. Of the people that actually came to either learn about nanotechnologies, or like me, to debate, some were leaving the amphitheater by small waves. I pray God for them not to vote for the next populist that will promise a police state if he is elected president. But I know some will. Personally, I sort of like these atmosphere of total mess. And I wanted to see how it would end. So I sticked around, frantically logging everything and taking pictures. I felt like a Reuters reporter in Baghdad hey!
Through the sudden mess, one of the organizer took the microphone and walked straight to the edge of the stage. There, he began a long harangue on how everyone would be allowed to speak, in particular the people that are skeptical... Paper balls were bouncing on his face.
Yep, in the amphitheater, the ground was now littered with anti-stuff propaganda flyers. Many protesters were picking them up, rolling them into little balls and using them as missiles. Take that piece of argument in your face!
After half-an-hour of continuous noise, the noise-people got bold enough to climb up the stage. Amazingly, the team of experts had bore through it until then. Most looked outrageously pissed off, but they sat tight. The only thing they could do apart from leaving. The activists-for-a-nano-object-free-world spread a banner in front of them. After that, you couldn't even see them anymore. From behind the curtain, you could hear the voice of the host still speaking words of appeasement in his not-loud-enough microphone. It was really a heart-breaking situation. The men of good will were broken in their attempt of a participative and free approach by a horde of barbarians that probably didn't have a clue about the topic and felt like if they were too stupid to understand, then nobody should. Or that's certainly the impression that came out of it. Free speech was being murdered before my eyes.
At one point, the host managed to ask loud enough if there were "any people in the room that wanted to debate". I raised my hand enthusiastically, knowing that the activists would never attempt to physically contain me. But I suppose that a lot of the "other half" of the room was too intimidated to do so. I was alone with my hand up... So far, what was left of the "other half" just sat tight as well.
And finally, the organizers gave in to the protesters. The team was evacuated, the hosts too, there was a moment of frantic joy in the ranks of the little disruption army.
It wasn't the end though.
Taking the power back
It was rather clear that the ultimate goal of the disruption faction was reached. There started to be some disagreement on whether they should leave now, stay to occupy the space to prevent the suit-an-tie people to come back or start a debate of their own. One girl faced the crowd from the stage and screamed that "now that the assholes were gone, the real debate could start". But her voice was lost to the noise of her own squad. Some were still screaming "fuck the debate!".
The host must have been listening through the door, because he came back on stage, walked his way through the crowd of protesters that had taken it over and gave his microphone to the girl. I was quite close so I heard him say: "I'm glad that you still want to debate, thank you for staying".
The noise died down a little bit, there was like one second of confounded simili-silence. And then the protesters burst again in roar: "fuck your microphone", "Get out" and the likes. I wondered for a while if the protesters were not actually paid by the nanotech lobby, if there is such a thing. They were happily banging in the nails of their own coffins, as one of their argument against nanotechnologies is that it will launch a dark age of surveillance that will be the end of... guess what... free speech. The noise level that accompanied the guy on his way out was worse than in a metal concert. And I know what I'm talking about.
After the microphone was kicked out from the amphitheater along with the evil corporate dummy that was carrying it, the idea of resuming the debate did not surface again. I noticed that there was a strong argument going on between a group of pissed off people-that-came-to-debate and one don't-give-a-shit-about-society punk. The punk and one of them started fighting each other and were separated by the people around them.
The return of the corporate assholes
As the stage was occupied by the protesters, the organizers came back from behind. Three of them stood there with a mic, repeating the same appeasing speech over and over. I was a little surprised that they still believed a debate could take place tonight. The noise had seriously died down as the protesters grew tired of screaming, so you could understand a lot of what the guy was saying. He was using rhetorics to try and convince the protesters of their good faith. Was it not clear enough that there would be no dialogue with the anti-people? But there he stood, talking about how everyones voice counted...
Then, one of the protesters with a powerful voice screamed: "The riot-police is here!" And the protesters lined up like a freaking battalion to leave the anphitheater. First I thought they wanted to run before the riot police was ready to mash them to pulp, but it occured to me that they were actually waiting for it to happen. I don't really want to judge that. Being chased by the police is quite an enjoyable adrenaline rush. I, myself, was quite getting into the skin of my character of a reporter in a war zone. I rushed after them to see the massacre. Behind me, the organizers were inviting the people that still wanted to have the debate to stay.
The second round
There wasn't much police abuse to report. No blood was spilt so far. There was just a tightly knit group of maybe 10 riot-policemen in full armor waiting by the door and the protesters marched in front of them out to some new thing to protest against. So I went back in the amphitheater. Luckily, I wasn't wearing one of my anarchist T-shirts...
Somehow the organizers had a plan B in case such a takeover attempt would happen. They had set up another conference hall without audience and were already broadcasting online. In the conference hall, there were still maybe 20 people that were interested in the topic of nanotechnology. So the organizers managed to beam the conference on the big screen of the amphitheater AND also to have a duplex audio-video link between the two rooms. So that the audience could still ask questions to the team of experts.
At 20:20, 1 hours after the time planned, the conference started.
I'm not covering the content of the conference here. But I logged that too, so I could do it in another post.
Footage of the debate
from latelevisionpaysanne
The reson why
It just happens that, a few days later, I stayed at a friends place who lives at his parents. His mother was aware of the controversy on the topic. I acted like I was interested but knew nothing about it and she lectured me. She told me what her activist friends told her. That they were going to make tracking devices that are too small to be seen, that nanos (she used the generic word "nano" to refer to the whole thing) were make it easy to track people from satelite, that they were going to put it in our food, that it would be the beginning of a new era of control and genetical modifications and dumping nuclear waste in nature.
Wow! If I had known that, I would have been screaming along...
Indeed this is the beginning of a new era. An era when information is available in amounts that are impossible to assimilate for a human, and a human has to select the sources to reduce the flow. It is a new era of ignorance through abundance. Of censorship through proliferation. The truth about nanotechnology is out there, in the middle of the lies. And it takes a freaking PHD in quantic physics to be able to part the nonsense from the relevant. Who's gonna trust the advices of a guy with a PHD in quantic physics when it comes to nanotechnology?
Hammering the hypocracy: Two weeks after, I was in a guerilla-gardening meeting where someone raised the issue of producing food in cities, where there is a lot of pollutant. The general consensus was that we shouldn't run analysis because they were most probably going to be negative, but most of the home gardens would not pass industrial-grade analysis anyway.
Links
Article in Chemistry World
AttachmentSize
nanao1.jpg279.91 KB
nano5.jpg275 KB
