We want to explore the use of some of these clichés and identify the criteria of science and technology invoked by visual clichés set to music. Corporate advertising often appropriates signifiers of science to build narratives celebrating the positive power of global capital. Lab technicians in white coats inspecting test tubes or peering in microscopes followed by a shot of the look of wonderment in the human eye visually attest to the commitment of corporate research and development. No matter how facile, the presence or absence of tightly abbreviated signifiers of science and technology can be telling.

Once the privileged icon of modern technology, the atomic icon is now very much a retro item

We have noticed that absent from any contemporary list of common science signifiers is the imagery of the atomic era. The icon of the atom, electrons in orbit, that so predominated as an image of technological progress from the 1950s through the 1980s, has been banished in favor of the images of digital micro-landscapes and icons of DNA strands. This is not, we submit, accidental. Rather it reflects the fact that big Capital now finds more lucrative returns on investment in biotechnology and digital electronics than it does in nuclear physics labs.

It is clear in these television commercials that the corporation or some form of business unit is now represented as the center of the scientific world. The state, the military, and academia are absent in these ads.

The market dictates corporate science. And, according to corporate advertising that market is us -- our illnesses, our suffering, our desires for a better life. These problems are filtered through the market into the corporation where capital meets science. There is no pure science here. No science for the sake of science. The production of knowledge is contingent upon the estimation of potential future profits, even though the ads refuse to acknowledge that profit is a motive for developing new technologies.