1. W.T. Lhamon, Jr., Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s (Washington, DC Smithsonian Institution Press,1990).
2. Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams. The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond (New York Grove Weindenfeld, 1992 [1985]), p. 7.
3. Far from condoning these particular experiments or promoting a general valorization of the practice of spying, I am deploying the metaphor here for two effects: first, to recall another set of meanings of “to spy”, troped less around secrecy and espionage and more around notions of “observing closely” and “keeping watch”; and second, as a reminder that these meanings of spying, like the meanings of genomics discussed in this essay, are being renegotiated under the changed circumstances of the post-Cold War world. On this latter point—especially as it has to do with the accelerated flows of detailed public information on natural resources, economic indicators, and so on, and the challenge these speeds present to the CIA analyst — see Herbert E. Meyer, “Reinventing the CIA,” Global Affairs (Spring 1992), pp. 1-13. On the linkages between spying, terrorism, and speed, see James Der Derian, “Spy Versus Spy: The Intertextual Power of International Intrigue,” in International/ Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics, ed.J ames Der Derian and Michael J. Shapiro (Lexington, Mass Lexington Books, 1989), pp. 163–187.
4. See Michael Fortun, “Mapping and Making Genes and Histories: The Genomics Project in the United States, 1980-1990,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, History of Science, Department Harvard University, 1993.
5. Paul Virilo, Speed and Politics, trans. Mark Polizzotti (New York Semiotext(e), 1986 [1977]), pp. 119–120.