ABSTRACT
The promise of modem biotechnology has driven investment in research and development (R&D), in new product development and in the continuing, even if precarious, success of small (and now larger) biotechnology R&D companies. The rhetorics and dynamics of promising technologies are not limited to modem biotechnology; they may well be constitutive of modem technology (Van Lente, 1993; see also this volume Chapter Three). Future worlds are sketched as a justification for investing in technological development. Different actors contend, and do this also by sketching their particular future worlds (see, for example, Hughes, 1983). In biotechnology, the arena of contestation has been expanded to include critical professionals, consumer and environmental groups, which are concerned about the possible impacts on environment and evolution, and about the risks of genetic modification to produce ‘Frankenstein’ foods. These are all public or semi-public arenas. In this chapter, we focus on a biotechnology firm, and in particular on the future worlds projected through its product creation processes - the product in this case being an industrial enzyme.
