Forms of Intrusion Comparing Resistance To Information Technology and Biotechnology in The USA

-18-
Forms of intrusion: comparing

resistance to information technology
and biotechnology in the USA1
DOROTHY NELKIN
Exploring the public resistance to technology in America, one is immediately

struck with a paradox. Some technologies provoke organized opposition; others,
no less invasive, no more benign, are welcomed, or, at the least, they are accepted
with comparatively little debate. The contrast is rather extraordinary when we
compare the response to two important technologies that have burgeoned over
the past decade: information technology and biotechnology. These are both
pervasive and rapidly expanding technologies, and both have their share of social
costs as well as benefits. But they have evoked a very different public reaction.
In this chapter, I will first briefly remark on the diverse responses to these two
technologies in the United States, and then explore these differences along several
dimensions. Note that by resistance, I refer to overt opposition, not to the passive
reluctance of individuals to use word processors or to buy bio-engineered
products (see Bauer, Chapter 5). My purpose in the comparison is to shed light on
the values and priorities that shape the public response to new technologies in
America, and to highlight some fundamental contradictions between the rhetoric
of support for science and technology and the reality of public attitudes as
expressed in behaviour.
Responses to information technologies
Information technologies - from computers to communications - have obviously

had an overwhelming social impact and their economic and social benefits hardly
need explanation. But they have also intruded on our privacy, threatened our
civil liberties, and imposed on many of our rights (Westin 1970). Computerized
data banks empower bureaucratic authorities by providing easy access to
personal information - about credit ratings, school performance, housing,
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380 Dorothy Nelkin
medical histories and tax status. And in the future, they will no doubt allow access
to genetic profiles, providing information about our predisposition to certain
behaviours or disease. Such information may be available to employers, insurers,
product advertisers, banks, school systems, university tenure committees, and
other institutions that exercise enormous control over our lives (Nelkin &
Tancredi 1994). Computerization might be called the 'cursor' of our time.2 It has
enabled the relentless extension of advertising through sophisticated distribution
of mailing lists. Telephone propaganda and telemarketing solicitations shame-
lessly intrude on our home life, disturbing us at mealtimes with automated
messages that have got out of hand. Information technologies have displaced
people from jobs and turned many potentially skilled workers into low-level
computer technicians. Computers have, in many ways, facilitated our work as
scholars, but they have also turned us into typists; yet, from this most articulate
community, one hears hardly a complaint. They have turned the simple act of
buying a plane ticket into an endless manipulation over frequent flyers and fares,
but we welcome the so-called convenience. They have encouraged new forms of
crime and fraud, but we describe them with grudging admiration. They have
allowed new types of vicious weaponry, but we call them 'smart bombs'.
Perhaps most important, information technologies have extended the power of
the mass media, creating unprecedented possibilities for political manipulation
and changing the very nature of political life. The media creation of politicians
was obvious during the 1992 United States presidential campaign. But, also, the
use of electronic communication has reduced accountability, threatening one of
the most important ways we protect democratic values. And in many other ways,
they limit speech, restrict exchange, and challenge First Amendment Freedoms
(Solla Pool 1983).
Many years ago, George Orwell predicted that information technologies would
bring about an era of mind-control; but the symbolic year, 1984, came and went
as if his scenario were only a science fiction plot. While there have been many
critiques of information technologies, they mainly come from an elite-
sociologists, ethicists and others professionally concerned about the problematic
legal, social and political implications of electronic technologies. Humanists
worry about the blurring of image and reality brought about by tele-
communications (Winner 1988). Sociologists worry about the effects of these
technologies on work (Garson 1988). Educators worry that computers in the
classroom may undermine the child's desire to read, reduce careful thinking to
impulse shopping, and turn dynamic problem solving into predigested programs.
Computers, as one educator put it, are 'the high-tech pacifiers of a vacuous
information age'.3
I could go on with examples, but my point is to suggest that reservations mainly
Forms of intrusion 381
come from scholars and their warnings have never gained a public following.
There is nearly total absence of organized public concern about a set of
technologies with profound and highly problematic social and political impli-
cations.
Responses to biotechnology
What a contrast to the response to technological advances in biotechnology!

These advances have been the focus of persistent public opposition, and indeed
biotechnology has replaced nuclear power as the symbol of 'technology-out-of-
control'. This is a technology with many positive benefits, for example, for the
development of more productive agriculture, the creation of disease-resistant
crops, the development of new pharmaceutical products and therapeutic
procedures, and the enhancement of biomedical research. But biotechnology is
actively resisted on many grounds. Critics of biotechnology have mobilized to
oppose the siting of research laboratories, the marketing of better-tasting
tomatoes, the field testing of genetically engineered bacteria intended to inhibit
frost damage, and the creation of transgenic animals designed to provide special
breeds of laboratory animals useful in cancer research (Krimsky 1991). They
have opposed the development of bovine growth hormones, the creation of
genetically engineered food products, and, indeed, nearly every biotechnology
application.
The opposition to biotechnology is not limited to a few articulate individuals
such as Jeremy Rifkin. He is surely a ubiquitous gadfly, but he has an active and
diverse following, willing to participate in public hearings and engage in public
demonstrations and civil disobedience. Resistance has engaged the farm
organizations representing small farm interests who view biotechnology develop-
ments as symbolizing the decline of the family farm. It has engaged animal rights
groups concerned about the exploitation of animals (Jasper & Nelkin 1992).
Religious groups have opposed biotechnology as a threat to' natural' boundaries,
and they anticipate with horror a future of genetic engineering that will violate
the sanctity of life.4 Chefs have agreed to boycott the 'Flavr Savr' Tomato.
Environmentalists have organized against biotechnology applications as a
violation of safety standards. Communities have blocked laboratory facilities as
constituting 'biohazards'. And gene splicing techniques have brought forth
anxieties about the role of biological weapons in warfare, evoking fears about the
creation of virulent strains that may be used as weapons (Wright 1990).
382 Dorothy Nelkin
The issues of concern
It is clear that both of these rapidly developing and pervasive technologies have
costs as well as benefits. But, aside from occasional professional critiques and
some concern about radiation exposure from computer screens, there has been no
popular or organized resistance to the remarkable development and diffusion of
information technologies. Indeed, they are viewed as the symbol of progress, the
icon of ingenuity, and the test of American competitiveness in the economic
marketplace. Biotechnologies, on the other hand, have become the focus of
sustained and vocal public opposition. I believe that this striking difference reveals
something about what matters in American society, about certain values that
guide our response to science and technology; so let me try to explain the paradox
by examining, in greater detail, the issues at stake.
In drawing out the contrast in the public response to these technologies, I have
suggested that information technologies pose three types of problems; they
intrude on personal privacy; they offer the means for institutions to control their
clients; and they encourage practices that threaten certain democratic values. In
the case of biotechnology, the stakes are very different. New biotechnologies can
directly affect the economic interests of particular groups such as small farmers.
They may be a source of environmental risks. And, they are seen as a moral
threat, involving 'tampering' with fundamental aspects of nature. Let me look
more closely at these six issues, exploring in each case the ways in which they
affect, more generally, the public response to technological change.
Intrusion on individual rights

First, the potential intrusion on individual rights - in particular, the right to
privacy. In the individualistic culture of America, resistance to technology is often
cast in the rhetoric of rights. Animal advocates call for animal rights, anti-
abortionists make claims for fetal rights, environmentalists advocate the rights of
future generations, and the elderly claim the right to die. Rights talk has become
the way that Americans express the fundamental and frequent tensions between
individual expectations and social or community goals. Thus even technologies
intended to improve public health, such as fluoridation, universal vaccination, or
the automobile air bag, have all been resisted because they intruded on the rights
of individuals to make their own choices.5
Rights, as defined by philosopher H. L. H. Hart, are 'moral justifications for
limiting the freedom of another' (Hart 1955). Thus, rights claims are inevitably
a source of conflict and contradiction. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than
in claims to the right of privacy where those who claim the right of access to
information must necessarily confront those concerned about confidentiality, and

who fear the abuse of information.
Privacy in America appears to be an important value. While not specifically
mentioned in the constitution, the right to privacy is inferred from various
provisions of the Bill of Rights such as the right of association and the protection
against unreasonable searches and seizures and against self-incrimination.
Rhetorical support for the right to privacy is extremely high. A survey in the
1970s found that 76% of the public believed that privacy should be added to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness as a fundamental right. But, in fact, how deep
is the commitment to privacy when it conflicts with other values ? Another survey
suggests that most people support measures that would require psychiatrists to
report to the police a patient's expressed intention to commit a crime. And
attitudes towards wiretapping are equivocal; political extremists and potential
enemy sympathizers are considered fair game (McCloskey & Brill 1986).
In fact, observing the American scene, I would argue that most Americans
seem to care little about privacy. We all know about data snoopers who, helped
by sophisticated software, have become a veritable industry. Spying and
surveillance gimmicks have made many millionaires.6 But there is little public
outcry in a society often willing to challenge industrial practices. A survey by the
March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation in October 1992 found that most
Americans believe that genomic information (probably about others, not
themselves) should be available - not only to directly affected relatives, but also to
employers and insurers.
As a society, Americans tolerate an extraordinary amount of intrusive noise:
people accept Musak in shopping malls, supermarkets and airports. They accept
televised surveillance in department stores and other public places. Media
audiences seem to relish the intrusions on personal privacy when the networks
explore the sex lives of publicfigures.And to an amazing degree, people talk about
their own personal problems in public. Thus, popular magazines and media talk
shows are full of lurid and embarrassing personal confessions. The remarkably
popular self-help movement is characterized by a confessional mode of discourse.
The confessional style of Alcoholics Anonymous has been extended to deal with
smoking, gambling, and overeating, suggesting that relinquishing privacy is seen
as a way to solve personal problems. Far from demanding privacy, Americans let
it' all hang out' (Kaminer 1992). Perhaps this explains why, despite their obvious
intrusion on privacy, information technologies have not been resisted.
Potential for social control

The second issue at stake in the development of information technology has to do
with its potential for social control. The availability of computerized data on many
384 Dorothy Nelkin
aspects of personal behaviour has enabled a striking level of institutional control

over individuals. This has been the source of some professional and philosophical
concern, but has not brought about significant public resistance. Computers and
fax machines have been marketed as a means of empowering and liberating the
individual: of expanding individual choice. Perhaps no industry has been more
successful in turning the latest gimmick-the extra megabyte, the latest fax
machine, call waiting and now the videophone - into dire necessity. For the
middle class who form the core of most resistance movements, these are familiar
and useful technologies that seem to give people more, not less, control.
Discriminatory abuses of computerized information, for example its use for
surveillance or for denying insurance, have been examined in legislative debates,
and in investigations by civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties
Union. But such inquiries seldom raise fundamental structural questions. While
protests against biotechnology question how these technologies are developed
and diffused, those concerned about information technologies focus on particular
incidents and often treat them as aberrations. And some of the abuses - for
example, computer crime-are admired as creative, clever, a way to 'beat the
system'. And such issues seldom generate a popular outcry; for consumers who
are affected by the abuse of personal information are dispersed and difficult to
organize. There are few groups prepared to mobilize protest against such abuses.
The Gay activists who have organized resistance to the flagrant abuses of
information from HTV tests are an exception that proves the point.
Related to concerns about social control are the questions of trust that
commonly underlie popular resistance to technology: will the inevitable corporate
control over technological applications sacrifice public or individual interests to
the imperatives of private profit ? Recall that the computer industry was generated
by commercial entrepreneurs, while biotechnology came directly out of academia.
Yet it is biotechnology that evokes dour images of the military industrial complex
and overt mistrust of commercial motives (Kenney 1986). For some reason, few
seem to mind the tradeoffs between corporate efficiency and individual rights
when people become digits in data banks.
Nor do we seem to care that along with the Global Village comes the risk of
hegemonic control over the images and messages we receive from the media. We
welcome the advances in information technology that have brought cable
systems and multiple channels as 'pluralism'. But this pluralism, as one critic
cynically suggests, may just be ' code for a corporate controlled mediasphere that
isolates consumers into ever narrower pigeonholes of taste and cashflow'.7Today
there are plans for digital broadcast satellite services offering no less than 1000
channels - truly technology out of control. Yet the most common popular
response is that expressed in Bruce Springstein's song:' 5 7 Channels and Nothing

on'.
In contrast, genetic engineering evokes scenarios of social and corporate
control that have become a part of popular culture. They appear, for example, as
central themes in recent comic books with names such as DNAgent, or Extinction
Agenda. In DN Agent, a company called Matrix Inc. exploits genetic engineering to
expand its control. In Extinction Agenda scientists from a country called Genosha
genetically engineer mutants as slaves. True, these are fantasies, but they are
reflected in the rhetoric of resistance to biotechnology, and the sense that this is
the technology that is out of control (Nelkin & Lindee 1995).
The threat to democratic values

Let me turn to the third and related issue, the threat to democratic values - an
important theme in the history of resistance to technology. Controversies over
power plant siting or the use of toxic substances in the work-place have often
focused on the question of public control over technological decisions. Typically,
opponents of a technology seek to participate in decisions that affect their
interests. Challenging the authority of experts and questioning the motives of
public officials, they seek to increase accountability. Thus, technical obfuscation
and its limiting effect on public accountability has been an important issue in the
resistance to many technologies. But the technical language of bits and bytes, of
Dos and disks, of macros and mice, has entered the vernacular. To the middle
class, the group most often engaged in resistance movements, information
technologies appear to be decentralized, comprehensible and controllable.
This is to ignore, however, the capacity of electronic technologies to reduce the
citizen's capacity for reflective engagement in politics, to substitute digitalized
responses for active participatory exchange (Lyon 1988; Winner 1988). Thus,
when the 1992 American presidential candidate, Ross Perot, proposed to revive
the old and discredited idea of electronic democracy, no-one, even in the
contentious climate of a political campaign, tried to debate its political
implications. Advocates of electronic democracy fail to see the difference between
the inundation of information and reflective political exchange. And computer
advocates fail to see the broader issues of manipulation and loss of political
accountability as problems; to them, the technology appears to enhance
individual choice.
Interests affected and resistance
The fourth issue has to do with affected interests. Resistance to a technology can
be maintained only if activists can count on a group of people who offer a base of
political support, and who will become part of a social movement. These may be
people who are directly affected by the siting of a noxious facility in their
386 Dorothy Nelkin
neighbourhood, or by the economic implications of a technology for their

livelihood. Or resistance may be supported by those who share broad ideological
or religious convictions. The resistance to biotechnology has been able to draw on
groups of people who were already mobilized to protect their economic interests
and moral concerns. Biotechnology was a ready-made issue for small farm
organizations concerned about the decline of family farming and organized to
oppose technological change; they felt directly threatened by new biotechnology
applications that seemed designed for agribusiness. And for the powerful and
well-organized animal rights movement, seeking ways to extend their popular
cause, the creation of transgenic animals was a perfect target. Such groups were
able to enforce a federally imposed moratorium on animal patenting from April
1988 to December 1992 when the Patent and Trademark Office issued the first
new animal patents since the infamous Harvard onco-mouse. Meanwhile the
office has a backup of several hundred applications, some pending for years.
In contrast to the specific interests of these groups, concerns about the invasion
of privacy, the potential for social control, or the threat to democratic values, are
vague and diffuse. These issues have no natural constituency, no organized group
that will speak out in protest. Thus, resistance is expressed, less through organized
protests than through the individualized procedures of the courts in response to
specific abuses. And the legal system operates more to protect individuals than to
challenge the development of the technology. Nor do information technologies
evoke the negative images of corporate abuse - that have helped to mobilize
popular protest against biotechnology. In the American mythology, the history of
agribusiness calls forth quite different associations than Silicon Valley. And
helpless animals, like besieged farmers or vulnerable fetuses, become easy
lightning rods for social movements.
'Biohazards'
The fifth issue, the possibility of 'biohazards', is one of the critical sources of the
protests against biotechnology. Concerns about endangering human health or
damaging the environment have, of course, spawned many technological
disputes. The fear of generating new and possibly dangerous organisms - an
'Andromeda strain' - was the basis of the first biotechnology controversy in the
mid-19 70s over the siting of a Recombinant DNA Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass
(Krimsky 1982). Since then, citizens have organized to oppose specific projects,
and to demand appropriate safety standards for releasing transgenic plants and
micro-organisms into the environment. The potential risk of biotechnology
applications attracts a constituency already mobilized through the environmental
and especially the anti-nuclear movements of the 1970s. Since then, their fears
have been enhanced by increased knowledge about other risks emanating from
science, creating the suspicion that science, in a context of corporate greed, can
in itself yield dangerous products. And suspicions are increased by the continued
disputes among scientists over the nature and extent of many risks.
Over the past few decades, we have been deluged with warnings about invisible
health hazards: from PCBs, freon, radiation, food additives, antibiotic-resistant
bacteria, and even the possible risk of constant exposure to video display
terminals. Indeed, this is one of the few contentious issues concerning information
technology. Biotechnology raises many of the same problems: the hazards are
invisible and there remains uncertainty about the health effects of low-level, long-
term exposure. Like nuclear power, biotechnology evokes images of warfare and
fantasies of monsters and mutations. In his analysis of the sources of nuclear fear,
historian Spencer Weart observed the pervasiveness of these images and fantasies
in popular culture, suggesting their importance in shaping public attitudes
towards nuclear power (Weart 1988). Anti-nuclear sentiments were expressed in
images of mad scientists and Frankenstein monsters. The horrorfilm,Dr Cyclops,
portrayed an irradiated scientist shrunk to 13 inches. And a series of amazing
atomic creaturefilmsin the 1950s portrayed ants, spiders and scorpions growing
to the size of 747 aircraft after straying into the path of atomic tests. These
archetypal fears are also played out in the remarkably similar imagery of
biotechnology mutations - shrunken scientists, oversized mutant cows, deformed
transgenic pigs - that appear in biotechnology protests. Thus, unlike information
technology, the response to biotechnology has been powerfully influenced by its
association with risk.
Morality and tampering with nature

Finally, one of the most important issues underlying the resistance to bio-
technology has been the implications of' tampering' with nature, with' violating'
the sanctity of life. Embedded in this complex issue are concerns about
authenticity, about tampering with 'natural' or God-given features of human life.
Thus, biotechnology evokes Frankenstein images. The Harvard genetically
engineered onco-mouse has been called Frankenstein. Genetically altered
tomatoes are Frankenfruit. The current revival of Frankenstein films, the best
selling books such as Robin Cook's Mutation, and hundreds of x-men mutant
comics all feature images of mad scientists who engineer human souls.
I cannot resist noting, however, that information technologies present,
perhaps, more of a challenge to authenticity. While not tampering with the body,
they tamper with the mind, creating bizarre confusions between fact and fantasy,
between the image and the real. What can be more intrusive than the distortion
of mental images involved in the simulation of virtual reality? But this
manipulation of mentality, for some reason, evokes little public dismay. The mind,
388 Dorothy Nelkin
it seems, can be sacrificed while the manipulation of diseased genes for therapeutic
purposes or the creation of bio-genetic mice for research purposes becomes a
serious moral dilemma.
Concerns about the morality of biotechnology, I believe, must be understood in
terms of the strongly embedded fundamentalist tradition in American society
where moral and religious agendas have extraordinary importance. Gallup polls
suggest that some 90% of Americans profess their belief in God and 70% belong
to a church. Every US President, including Clinton, has invoked God in his
inaugural address, and surveysfindthat 63 % of adult Americans would not vote
for a President who did not believe in God.8 Indeed, religious values seem to be
increasingly important in shaping American attitudes, and in driving resistance
movements. Note, for example, the moral opposition to fetal research that
succeeded in stopping federal funds for medical research, the religious resistance
to the teaching of evolution that generated the creation controversy, the anti-
instrumental values that continue to drive the animal rights movement, and the
beliefs about the sanctity of nature that motivate ecologists. I find it interesting
that the American press paid considerable attention to the new catechism of the
Roman Catholic Church specifically condemning genetic engineering as a
violation of' the personal dignity of the human being and his unique, unrepeatable
identity'. Indeed, any technology that threatens to tamper with nature is bound
to confront organized opposition.
As research in biology touches on human evolution and the nature of life it is
increasingly subject to religious-based resistance, and scientists find themselves
increasingly engaged in moral politics. The position of those who are driven by
moral sentiments is absolute and does not countenance compromise or
negotiation. Thus, arguments about the medical, economic and social benefits of
biotechnology applications often fail to allay their concerns. There seems to be no
parallel in the response to information technologies. The Bible, after all, is on line.
Patterns of resistance reveal the hierarchy of values

Both information technology and biotechnology promise enormous benefits to
society, and both present certain risks. Comparing the public response to these
technologies - laying out the issues of concern - suggests the hierarchy of values
that more broadly shape public attitudes toward science and technology. It also
exposes certain contradictions between rhetoric and reality. We give lip service to
the importance of' rights': the right to privacy, the freedom from social control,
and the preservation of democratic values. But the issues that are most likely to
generate resistance to a given technology have more to do with its potential risk
to health, its impact on organized interests, and especially its effect on moral and
religious agendas. It is these concerns that underlie the contrasting attitudes

towards two of the most critical technologies in society today.
Notes
1 I would like to acknowledge the National Center for Human Genome Research of the National
Institutes of Health, Grant 1R01HG0047-01 for supporting the research for this paper.
2 I credit my husband, Mark Nelkin, for this awful pun.
3 David Gelernter, 'Babes in Computer-land-Op-Ed', New York Times, 23 December 1992.
4 For discussion of these diverse interests, see Nelkin 1992-3, pp. 203-10.
5 For case studies see Nelkin 1992.
6 Roger Rosenblatt 'Who killed privacy?', New York Times Magazine, 31 January 1993, pp.
24-8.
7 Julian Dibbell, 'It's the end of TV as we know it', Village Voice, 22 December 1992.
8 Time magazine poll on religion, summarized in Nancy Gibbs, 'America's holy war', Time, 9
December 1991, p. 60.
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-18-

Forms of intrusion: comparing

Exploring the public resistance to technology in America, one is immediately

Responses to information technologies

Information technologies - from computers to communications - have obviously

What a contrast to the response to technological advances in biotechnology!

The issues of concern

Intrusion on individual rights

information must necessarily confront those concerned about confidentiality, and

Potential for social control

aspects of personal behaviour has enabled a striking level of institutional control

response is that expressed in Bruce Springstein's song:' 5 7 Channels and Nothing

The threat to democratic values

neighbourhood, or by the economic implications of a technology for their

Morality and tampering with nature

Patterns of resistance reveal the hierarchy of values

religious agendas. It is these concerns that underlie the contrasting attitudes

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