Radically Changing Science

An article at Technology News Daily says:

Nanotechnology Will Turn Science Fiction Into Reality

Nanotechnology has long left the laboratory and its discoveries and products are all around us -- from longer lasting tennis balls, waterproof pants and drug delivery patches to quicker and more powerful computers, and faster burning rocket fuels. Last year alone, nano-business garnered $32 billion in sales of household products in the U.S.

Using nanotechnology, scientists have found ways to manufacture molecules - - some of the smallest building blocks of nature -- and put them together a few at a time. According to many experts, nanotechnology is triggering a revolution in building materials that is radically changing science and technology.

Descriptions of nanotech's beneficial possibilities for medicine, robotics, display technologies, and so on, are in the article. But it ends with:

[M]any experts caution that the more powerful technologies become, the more they can affect society, the economy, politics and even human identity. Stanford University’s Paul Saffo says that’s all the more reason to develop policies for the use of nanotechnology.

“The lessons from the atomic bomb and nuclear technology in the last fifty years are instructive. We first invented the bomb and then we had to invent a regime to try and keep people from shooting off the bomb. And we still don’t know how that story is going to end. And we are going to do that same thing with these new technologies. As a friend of mine likes to say, “Technology is making us like gods.” Well, if we have become like gods, then we better learn to be good at it,” cautions Professor Saffo.

Still, Saffo agrees with many experts who say that nanotechnology ultimately stands to produce much more benefit than harm for society.

More benefit than harm? Perhaps. But we may not get to find out unless, as Saffo says, we are smart about developing effective and responsible policies in advance.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Comments

[Hank]

I think that people are debating the ethical issues well in advance is a good sign.

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