Let us make an in-depth study of the social and ethical implications of nanotechnology. The below given article will help you to learn about the following things:- 1. Introduction to Nanotechnology 2. Applications and Social Impacts 3. Technological Convergence 4. Major Socio-Technical Trends 5. Sources of Ethical Behavior 6. Public Opinion and 7. A Research Agenda.
Introduction to Nanotechnology:
Science and engineering have only begun to explore the potential for discovery and creativity at the Nano scale, but already some intemperate voices call for government regulation or outright banning of nanotechnology. Such action would be extremely premature, because we have just started on a very long road of research that we must traverse before we will know what is technically practical, what real-world applications nanotechnology might actually have, and what the appropriate societal responses would be to any hazards that might be directly or indirectly related to these applications.
Some writers in the popular press seem to treat nanotechnology as a new kind of Frankenstein’s Monster, but it is worth remembering that biological science is still not able to create such a monster, nearly two centuries after Mary Shelley imagined one. A good starting point for consideration of social and ethical issues is a formal definition of the topic, but unfortunately a somewhat different definition has lodged in the public mind from that employed by professionals working in the field.
For example, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines nanotechnology as: ‘the art of manipulating materials on an atomic or molecular scale especially to build microscopic devices (as robots).’ Similarly, the online reference about, com defines it thus: the development and use of devices that have a size of only a few nanometers. Later, we will examine public conceptions more closely, but it is worth noting here that these definitions focus on robot-like devices constructed at the Nano scale.
A more authoritative if long-winded definition of nanotechnology has been provided by the US Government’s National Nanotechnology Initiative: ‘Research and technology development at the atomic, molecular or macromolecular levels, in the length scale of approximately 1-100 nm range, to provide a fundamental understanding of phenomena and materials at the Nano scale and to create and use structures, devices and systems that have novel properties and functions because of their small and/or intermediate size.
The novel and differentiating properties and functions are developed at a critical length scale of matter typically under 100 nm. Nanotechnology research and development includes manipulation under control of the Nano scale structures and their integration into larger material components, systems and architectures.’
While this definition includes the word ‘devices’, it also covers materials, structures, and systems. Significantly, it envisions that many nanotechnology advances will be integrated into ‘larger material components, systems and architectures,’ which means that we would need to understand the social and ethical implications of the larger-scale systems of which Nano scale structures are only components.
There is good reason to believe that engineering at the Nano scale will have very broad applications across all fields of technology and most fields of science. Therefore, it will be an enabler or amplifier of the effects of other technologies. This means that it is foolish to ask, ‘Is nanotechnology harmful?’ Nanotechnology is not one thing, either ethical or unethical.
Rather, it is a myriad of different things—many nanotechnologies—each of which has a range of potential uses and misuses in conjunction with other technologies and applied to different goals. This line of reasoning could lead some people to conclude that we did not need to worry at all about the social and ethical implications of nanotechnology, because they will be subsumed by the implications of larger systems.
Others might conclude that it is far too early in the history of Nano scale engineering to consider societal implications, because we cannot study the impact of a technology that does not yet exist. However, the very fact that some writers are urging regulation or banning of nanotechnology suggests that the debate about its value to humanity has begun, and we need to bring the best possible thinking and information to that debate.
In addition, a few relatively simple but significant applications have begun to appear, so in those cases at least an impact can be observed. Social scientists, natural scientists, philosophers, and engineers have indeed begun considering the future of nanotechnology, so we can draw upon the very first serious intellectual efforts in this important field.
Applications and Social Impacts:
In the year 2000, the National Science and Technology Council sponsored a major workshop at the National Science Foundation, which led to a published report, Societal Implications of Nano science and Nanotechnology. Sixty-four representatives of academic science, government laboratories, and corporate research listed a large number of potential nanotechnology applications, a few of which has already entered production, but many of which could be expected only after decades of research.
Following are diverse examples of possible applications suggested by workshop participants concerning a variety of sectors of the economy and spheres of life:
I. More efficient components for the semiconductor industry such as integrated circuits containing transistors constructed from carbon nanotubes.
II. Nanostructured catalysts for the chemical industry and for more effective converters to handle pollution from automobile exhausts and other combustion.
III. Lighter and stronger Nano-materials in bulk quantities to enable safer and more efficient transportation vehicles, including automobiles, aircraft, and train systems.
IV. Improved pharmaceuticals with features such as programmed delivery to desired targets like tumors and the ability to employ substances that are not soluble in water as medications.
V. Cost-effective and reliable filters for water decontamination, desalination, containment of industrial pollutants, and air purification.
VI. More efficient solar energy conversion, thereby reducing current reliance on oil and offering an alternative to nuclear power for future electricity needs.
VII. Efficient fuel cells and hydrogen storage systems, leading to non-polluting automobiles, trucks, and buses.
VIII. More durable composite materials, such as nanoparticle-reinforced polymers, designed for optimal performance in specific uses with reduced waste and greatly increased lifetime.
IX. Molecularly engineered biodegradable fertilizers and insecticides designed for precision agriculture with efficient delivery to where they are needed and prevention of unwanted side effects.
X. Revolutionary launch vehicles with high mass ratios, non-polluting but powerful engines, and low electric power need in order to finally realize the promise of space exploration.
XI. Nano scale components in sensor systems that can quickly detect and identify pollutants and disease organisms, as well as chemical or biological warfare agents to allow quick and appropriate medical treatment or security responses.
XII. Coatings that would give ordinary materials extraordinary properties like self- cleaning window glass and heat-reflecting exterior architectural surfaces.
Knowledgeable scientists and engineers reported that these and many other similar applications were plausible benefits of nanotechnology research, but they recognized that progress has costs. For example, the creation of a new industry often results in the decline or complete destruction of an older industry, as in the proverbial case of buggy-whip manufacturers who were rendered obsolete by the automobile.
The potential benefit from a new technology must be calculated in a sophisticated manner, taking into account the full life-cycle costs. For example, an electric car may reduce some forms of pollution while increasing others such as the release of lead or other dangerous substances into the environment during the manufacture of the electric battery and the disposal of it when the car is eventually junked. Many ethical issues of fairness will arise within nanotechnology industries themselves. For example, it will be important to invest in appropriate safeguards for workers engaged in hazardous production processes.
In general, scientific discoveries cannot be patented, whereas new products and production methods can, so there will be serious issues of intellectual property protection in Nano science, a non-traditional field where the legal line between discovery and invention has not yet been clearly drawn.
Often it will be necessary to bring together information and expertise from several different sources in order to create an economically profitable application, drawing upon government- funded university research projects, as well as several specialized industrial corporations, which will require improved models of collaboration across organizations.
As the Societal Implications report observed, the general public has a significant stake in the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) that must be managed both directly through public participation and indirectly through the involvement of social scientists: It is important to include a wide range of interests, values, and perspectives in the overall decision process that charts the future development of nanotechnology.
Involvement of members of the public or their representatives has the added benefit of respecting their interests and enlisting their support. The inclusion of social scientists and humanistic scholars, such as philosophers of ethics, in the social process of setting visions for nanotechnology—is an important step for the NNI.
As scientists or dedicated scholars in their own right, they can respect the professional integrity of Nano scientists and nanotechnologists, while contributing a fresh perspective. Given appropriate support, they could inform themselves deeply enough about a particular nanotechnology to have a well-grounded evaluation.
At the same time, they are professionally trained representatives of the public interest and capable of functioning as communicators between nanotechnologists and the public or government officials. Their input may help maximize the societal benefits of the technology while reducing the possibility of debilitating public controversies.
Social scientific and economic research can help manufacturers and the government makes the right decisions when deploying a new technology, maximizing its benefit for human beings. In addition, technically competent research on the societal implications of nanotechnology will help give policymakers and the general public a realistic picture free from unreasonable hopes or fears.
As the report notes, the National Nanotechnology Initiative is just now commencing, so ‘there is a rare opportunity to integrate the societal studies and dialogues from the very beginning and to include societal studies as a core part of the NNI investment strategy.’ The workshop developed a number of recommendations for government, academia, and industry suggesting how the social and ethical implications of nanotechnology could best be addressed.
Here are some of the most important principles in education, social science, and ethics:
I. Nano scale concepts should be introduced into science and engineering education at all levels, thereby giving the widest possible range of students a fundamental understanding of the field while intellectually linking nanotechnology to many other fields.
II. The training of nanotechnologists should include societal implications and ethical sensitivity, so their future work will be guided by principles that will maximize human benefit.
III. A sufficient number and variety of social and economic scientists should receive effective multidisciplinary training, so they will be well prepared to work in the nanotechnology area.
IV. Formal measurement methods, such as social and economic indicators, should be developed and consistently employed to chart the actual widespread changes in industry, education, and public welfare as they occur.
V. Government agencies, private foundations, and industry should support a wide range of high quality, theory-based social and economic research studies on nanotechnology, examining both the decision processes that shape the emerging technology and its specific impacts once it is deployed.
VI. A knowledge base and institutional infrastructure must be created to evaluate the probable future intellectual and societal impacts of Nano science and nanotechnology over the short, medium, and long term.
VII. Government and the private sector should establish effective channels for informing the public promptly about new concepts, projects, potential applications, and ethical issues as they emerge.
VIII. There should be formal organizations and mechanisms to ensure participation by diverse societal institutions and the general public in setting priorities for research and development and in providing timely input to decision-makers.
IX. Government and industry should develop management plans and policies that can effectively incorporate all relevant information and legitimate stakeholder interests to ensure that we can respond flexibly to social, ethical, legal, and economic implications as they appear.
It will take time and effort to implement these recommendations, but some progress has already been made. The National Science Foundation has recently funded Rosalyn Berne at the University of Virginia to study the developing ethics of nanotechnology through a narrative analysis of discourse from engineers and scientists in the field, and a team headed by Michael Gorman at the same institution was funded to explore the potential for multidisciplinary research on social and ethical dimensions of nanotechnology.
The Environmental Protection Agency, which has supported several research projects on how nanotechnology might remedy conventional forms of pollution, has funded Darrell Velegol and Kristen Fichthorn at Pennsylvania State University to study ‘Green Engineering of Dispersed Nanoparticles,’ exploring how valuable nanoparticles might be produced without the use of polluting additives.
In its review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, the National Research Council has recommended the development of a new funding strategy to ensure that the societal implications of Nano scale science and technology become an integral and vital component of the NNI.’
Technological Convergence:
In the year following the Societal Implications workshop, NSF and the US Department of Commerce staged an even larger meeting to examine the potential for nanotechnology to combine with three other powerful scientific and engineering trends: biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science—four ‘NBIC’ fields.
The resulting report, Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance, examined benefits of technological convergence that would specifically enhance the ability of humans to satisfy their needs and achieve their legitimate goals. Convergence of diverse NBIC technologies will be based on the material unity of nature at the Nano scale and on technology integration from that scale.
This is the scale at which much future biotechnology and the hardware for information technology will operate, and it is the scale from which fundamental research on the human nervous system will take place. Key transforming tools, including research instruments and production methods, will arise in the conjunction of previously separated fields of science. Drawing upon advances in mathematics and computation, it will be possible to model phenomena from the Nano scale to the cosmic scale as complex, coupled, hierarchical systems.
The Converging Technologies scientists, engineers, and policymakers sketched six general areas in which the human benefits and social issues are likely to result:
1. Overall potential of converging technologies
2. Expanding human cognition and communication
3. Improving human health and physical capabilities
4. Enhancing group and societal outcomes
5. National Security
6. Unifying science and education
Numerous valuable applications were sketched in greater or lesser detail that could reasonably be expected to result from a decade or two of vigorous research and development, including the following ideas that depend on partnerships between Nanotechnology and one or more of the other NBIC fields:
a. Comfortable, wearable sensors and computers will enhance every person’s awareness of his or her health condition, the environment, chemical pollutants, potential hazards, and information of interest about local businesses, natural resources, and the like.
b. The human body will be more durable, healthier, more energetic, easier to repair, and more resistant to many kinds of stress, biological threats, and aging processes.
c. Machines and structures of all kinds, from homes to aircraft, will be constructed of materials that have exactly the desired properties, including the ability to adapt to changing situations, high energy efficiency, and environmental friendliness.
d. A combination of technologies and treatments will compensate for many physical and mental disabilities and will eradicate altogether some handicaps that have plagued the lives of millions of people.
e. National security will be greatly strengthened by lightweight, information-rich war fighting systems, capable uninhabited combat vehicles, adaptable smart materials, invulnerable data networks, superior intelligence-gathering systems, and effective measures against biological, chemical, radiological, and nuclear attacks.
f. The ability to control the genetics of humans, animals, and agricultural plants will greatly benefit human welfare; widespread consensus about ethical, legal, and moral issues will be built in the process.
g. Agriculture and the food industry will greatly increase yields and reduce spoilage through networks of cheap, smart sensors that constantly monitor the condition and needs of plants, animals, and farm products.
h. Transportation will be safe, cheap, and fast due to ubiquitous real-time information systems, extremely high-efficiency vehicle designs, and the use of synthetic materials and machines fabricated from the Nano scale for optimum performance.
i. The work of scientists will be revolutionized by importing approaches pioneered in other sciences, for example, genetic research employing principles from natural language processing and cultural research employing principles from genetics.
j. Formal education will be transformed by a unified but diverse curriculum based on a comprehensive, hierarchical intellectual paradigm for understanding the architecture of the physical world from the Nano scale through the cosmic scale.
Several of these application areas depend upon the development of Nano scale components for sensor, computation, and communication networks. Others involve a synergy between inorganic Nano scale engineering and organic chemistry or biology.
Others extrapolate that it will be possible to build large-scale structures that are engineered at the Nano scale to enhance the qualities of architecture, transportation vehicles, or even the human body. Fundamental to all of the application areas is a conceptual revolution that unifies science and provides humanity with a comprehensive view of nature and technology.
Contributors to the report showed how Nano scale science and engineering were essential for progress in biology, information science, and cognitive science. The result of NBIC convergence will be the strengthening of science and the empowerment of humanity, as we will find solutions too many of humanity’s problems in health, natural resources, environment, security, and even communication with fellow human beings.
Often, the technologies based in the sister sciences will raise ethical issues. In such cases, nanotechnology may become implicated in controversies without being central to them. The correct policy response would then be to ignore the superficial nanotechnology aspects and focus directly on the core problem that lies in a different field.
Converging Technologies contributors examined how technological convergence highlighted such existing issues as the treatment of the disabled, communication breakdowns, economic stagnation, and threats to national security. For greater clarity, we can consider here the very specific example of the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear physics and atomic technology were specifically not included in the constellation of NBIC converging technologies considered by the workshop, so the following discussion supplements its findings. As scientists already understood in the early 1940s, there are fundamentally two ways that a rogue nation can build up its own supply of weapons-grade nuclear materials.
One is breeding plutonium in a nuclear reactor fuelled by uranium, transmuting the common uranium isotope of atomic weight 238. But this is hard to conceal from other nations, especially if reactors are open to international inspection.
The other way is separation of the relatively rare uranium isotope 235U, which, like plutonium, is suitable for use in weapons. The original separation method was gas diffusion, but then the centrifuge method was developed, and other approaches are possible such as laser or electromagnetic separation.
In the gas diffusion method, chemical containing uranium (uranium hexafluoride) is passed through a porous barrier such as a ceramic wall that has tiny holes in it. Molecules containing 235U travel through the barrier slightly faster than molecules containing 238U. This is a very inefficient process, because the isotopes are very similar to each other, so many passes through a barrier are required to enrich the proportion of 235U sufficiently for use in a nuclear weapon.
The other approach uses centrifuges, rapidly spinning rotors containing the uranium hexafluoride to separate the two isotopes on the basis of their slight difference in mass. Both approaches are very difficult and costly, however. Conceivably, nanotechnology could slightly reduce the difficulty—by producing porous barriers with exactly the optimum sized holes and by providing lighter and stronger centrifuge rotors that could operate at higher speeds.
Therefore, without a more careful analysis someone might leap to the conclusion that nanotechnology is a danger because it facilitates proliferation of nuclear weapons. This Ignores Several Crucial Facts.
First, the world already faces a very severe crisis of nuclear proliferation without nanotechnology.
Second, the fundamental requirement for production of nuclear weapons is the availability of uranium, so the most logical preventive would be international monitoring and control over its mining and distribution.
Third, there are many other technical requirements for production and delivery of nuclear weapons, and it is the whole collection of them that presents a threat, not any one alone.
Fourth, nanotechnology is inherently nonnuclear, because nuclear reactions occur at a smaller scale than the Nano scale, so its connections to proliferation of nuclear weapons will always be highly indirect if they exist at all.
Finally, the fundamental problem is not nuclear proliferation, but weapons of mass destruction in general, and nanotechnology has a major role to play in the defense against chemical and biological warfare agents in sensor systems that can detect them before they have caused harm.
Perhaps a very few Nano products will need to be controlled substances’, analogous to narcotics, insecticides, asbestos, and antibiotics. Conceivably, porous barriers with exactly the right pore size for uranium isotope separation would be controlled in some way. Some products could be produced and used under strict regulations, whereas a few others might be banned altogether. Most would not require restrictions of any kind.
Such decisions would need to be based on the careful analysis of facts related to the specific issue at hand. For example, it may be that no improvements in gas diffusion separation are possible through nanotechnology, or they are so slight as to be negligible.
Perhaps technological developments in laser or electromagnetic separation, completely unrelated to nanotechnology, may render both the gas diffusion and centrifuge methods obsolete. Therefore, the mere fact that we can imagine a way in which nanotechnology might possibly encourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons is far too weak a justification for international regulation.
We would need to go beyond vague fears to precise analysis based on rigorous scientific research to distinguish real dangers from imaginary ones and design appropriate safeguards in those rare cases when they are necessary.
The costs of excessive regulation would be extremely high, harming the very human beings it was intended to protect. Porous barriers precisely designed at the Nano scale are among the high benefit applications we can anticipate early in the history of nanotechnology. They would have a wide range of applications, from water purification and desalination to separation of valuable substances in biotechnology production processes.
Similarly, new high-performance materials with great strength but low weight will have a myriad of applications throughout the civilian sectors of the economy. Among the products that would benefit millions of ordinary people are light but indestructible eyeglass frames, safety helmets, and hand tools.
Nanotechnology has the potential to increase the effectiveness of biotechnology, information technology, and technologies based on cognitive science through NBIC convergence. Therefore, it could become entangled in ethical issues that already involve those other technologies such as the conflict over genetically modified foods, the dispute over information privacy, and the debate over treatment of mental illness. These are not fundamentally nanotechnology issues, however, and it will be important to keep a proper perspective on their real nature.
Major Socio-Technical Trends:
The significance of nanotechnology depends not only on its own accomplishments and on convergence with other technologies, but also on how these purely technical developments relate to wider trends going on in the world. At present, many of these trends are confused and are the subject of great controversy in the social science and public policy arenas. It is always hazardous to extrapolate trends from any particular moment in history, but the present time appears so chaotic that the events of a single day might send humanity down a very different road.
A few years ago, there was a broad consensus that the rapid growth in the number of people on the planet—the so-called population explosion—was the dominant quantitative trend that needed to be factored into any projections. But by the mid-1980s, it became obvious that population growth had been replaced by the threat of population decline in most advanced industrial nations, with the possible exception of the United States.
Even before collapsing fertility begins to reduce the number of people in the affected nations, their average age and pension costs increase, social dynamism and creativity decrease, and governments become gridlocked trying to deal with ultimately insoluble problems of funding demanded services. This is one of the explicit reasons why the United States has begun to discount the influence of its European allies and Japan.
Although nanotechnology has little obvious direct connection with fertility, there are two potentially counterbalancing, indirect connections. Rapid progress in nanotechnology could revitalize economic expansion and technical creativity, thereby to some extent offsetting the negative consequences of fertility collapse.
However, the aversion to change that marks societies having a high proportion of elderly citizens may dampen the intellectual inquisitiveness and investment risk-taking required to develop nanotechnology and technological convergence.
A related trend is the constant improvement in health resulting from progress in medical science and the economic growth needed to fund increasingly costly health care. Continued progress in health is by no means assured, however. During the nineteenth century, American health may actually have declined significantly for a number of decades, despite economic growth.
We tend to attribute the undeniable improvement in health over the twentieth century to medical progress, but health education and public sanitation may have been more important. The US Centers for Disease Control argue that substantial improvements in health and longevity could be achieved by lifestyle changes, notably, exercising more, reducing the fats in our diet, and avoiding smoking.
The introduction of antibiotics helped increase longevity, and modern cardiology saves the lives of many people who might otherwise die prematurely of heart attacks, but the progress against cancer, AIDS, and most aging-related illnesses has been agonizingly slow. On balance, economists find that the increasing investments in health care are paying off, but not necessarily in all areas, or with very great benefit.
There are several reasons to be pessimistic about the future benefits of medicine, unless there are very major scientific breakthroughs. We have yet to find a cure for any chronic viral infections, of which AIDS is merely the most publicized example. Bacteria are rapidly evolving resistance to antibiotics, yet the rate of development of new prescription medicines is declining. The average white American male born in 1900 could expect to live 48 years, but in 2000 this life expectancy had increased to 74 years. For white females, the average life expectancy increased from 51 to 80.
Projecting these figures forward at the same rate of increase suggests that life expectancy in 2100 might be 114 for males and 125 for females. However, using more realistic assumptions, the US Census Bureau has projected that life expectancy for Americans born in the year 2100 might be only around 88 for males and 92 for females.
This does represent progress, but at a steeply declining rate, and it depends upon continued economic growth. Perhaps the most economically significant technical trend of recent years has been Moore’s Law, Gordon Moore’s observation that the density of transistors on the most advanced microchip doubles about every 18 months. The rapid improvement of computer and communications hardware has been fundamental to the implementation of new software applications, networking, and information technology in general.
These, in turn, have been responsible for much economic growth. However, the semiconductor industry is approaching physical limits in the traditional methods of making integrated circuits, including computer chips, so Moore’s Law will stall without breakthroughs in Nano scale technologies such as molecular logic gates and carbon nanotube transistors.
Arguably, several of the great thrusts of twentieth century technology have already stalled. Except for the improved capacity of scientific instruments to collect and process astronomical data, the space program has hardly advanced since the mid-1970s. Civilian aviation and ground transportation have improved only in relatively minor design details since the 1950s. Despite great efforts, little progress has been made in controlling nuclear fusion for power generation.
Nuclear fission power generation has largely been halted by public controversies, and no technological breakthroughs in safe operation of reactors or disposal of radioactive wastes have assuaged the public’s concerns.
The social sciences seem no better able to define good public policies than they were decades ago. Outside of nanotechnology itself, the two main areas where rapid progress obviously continues are information technology and genetic engineering. Convergence with nanotechnology is essential for further progress in both of these areas.
What would happen to the world economy if technological progress slowed or even halted? First, the advanced industrial nations would lose the advantage they currently hold over developing countries. For example, the American semiconductor industry would probably collapse if it lost its technological superiority, because nations with lower wage rates could produce the same things more cheaply.
Technological products, from computer chips to pharmaceuticals, would become commodities, manufactured wherever it was cheapest to do so. With their heavy pension burdens and costly social services, governments of advanced nations would face fiscal crises of unprecedented magnitude. Indeed, the economies of these nations could fall rapidly down to the average of all nations, unleashing social discontent that could lead to unpredictable violence.
At the same time, some developing nations would advance economically, which would mean increased net world industrial production with concomitant increase in environmental pollution and resource depletion.
Without technological progress to solve these problems, the average human welfare could decline, rather than remaining stable. In order to improve human welfare, technological progress must continue. Perhaps the best way to achieve that is through Nano science and nanotechnology in convergence with the other NBIC fields, gaining understanding and control at the physical scale that is the basis for most science and technology.
It is impossible to predict how rapidly the conditions in the richest nations would deteriorate, or whether humanity could navigate through these crises to achieve a stable world. But clearly a halt in technological progress would be a shock to the world economy, global political institutions, and human welfare—which it would be wise to avoid.
Sources of Ethical Behavior:
Ethical questions related to nanotechnology are not limited to the ways people might use it to harm others intentionally, but also include obligations to avoid potentially harmful unintended consequences. An example of the former might be a weapon, and, of the latter, a kind of environmental pollution. In either case, the harm might be morally justified, as when a nation employs a weapon to defend against attack, or when limited pollution of the environment is offset by substantial benefits to humanity.
Other ethical questions concern harm to the owners of nanotechnology, for example, if a competing company violates a nanotech patent, or if a government bans a Nano-related product without careful examination of scientific evidence about its value.
News reporters or popular writers who spread false information about nanotechnology may also be acting unethically, whether they are wilfully lying or merely failing to be professionally diligent in checking their facts. It is important to recognize that there are sins of omission as well as commission.
To fail to develop a beneficial nanotechnology application could also be unethical. Imagine, for instance, that a laboratory had discovered how nanotechnology could enable a much more effective form of chemotherapy to cure cancer reliably and cheaply, but the company owning the patents prevented it from being developed, because its less effective traditional chemotherapy products were more profitable. This could be considered just as unethical as doing aggressive harm.
For over a century, social scientists have been studying the origins of ethical behaviour—or it’s opposite, unethical behaviour— in fields like the social psychology of groups, the sociology of deviance, and criminology. Although it is impossible to predict when a particular person will commit a specific ethical or unethical act, we can identify with good confidence the general factors that steer human behaviour in one direction or another.
An individual’s behaviour is determined by a complex of factors, few of which can be measured accurately, and chance seems to play a significant role in human affairs. Thus, the findings of social science tend to be statistical or conditional in nature. This does not render them useless, because one can develop rational laws, government policies, and investment strategies based on probabilities rather than certainties.
The theoretical and empirical scientific literature on the topic is vast, including literally thousands of publications dating back to the 1840s, expressing the views of countless schools of thought, often employing idiosyncratic terminology. For present purposes, we must distill that huge and incoherent intellectual heritage down to its most meaningful essentials.
A good start is the following set of four themes, each of which can be expressed as a theory about why people might violate an ethical rule:
1. Learning:
A person violates a rule because the person has learned it is rewarding to do so.
2. Strain:
A person violates a rule because the person is frustrated in the attempt to fulfil one of the expectations of society.
3. Control:
A person violates a rule because the person lacks stable social bonds that might prevent it.
4. Subculture:
A person violates a rule because the person belongs to a group or network of other people who encourage violation. When each of these ideas first appeared in the social scientific literature, the theory’s proponents tended to present it as the complete explanation for deviant behaviour, but now we understand that each of these four has merit and the correct explanation is usually a mixture of two or more. We will illustrate each of the theories with hypothetical illustrations, because actual examples may not exist yet.
Learning Theory is sometimes interpreted in economic or ‘rational choice’ terms, as meaning that a person will do whatever he or she perceives it is profitable to do. But human life is not spent entirely in a marketplace where one can compare prices and shop for a good deal. Rather, there are many quite different contexts in which people make decisions. Regardless of whether options can be quantified in dollars, people tend to rely upon their own past experiences in selecting between familiar courses of action.
If the managers of an industrial corporation have learned they can achieve higher profits by ignoring regulations against polluting the environment, and they have not suffered heavy fines from the government for doing so, they will be more likely to pollute in the future.
Therefore, a corporation guilty of polluting with conventional technologies is apt to continue with this history of pollution when it adopts new nanotechnologies. This suggests that one way to reduce the likelihood that industrial companies will pollute when they adopt new nanotechnologies is to enact and enforce strong regulations against pollution in general, to make them learn to avoid polluting.
In Strain Theory, a person violates a norm because he or she is frustrated in the attempt to achieve one of the values endorsed by society. This idea has been used to explain why many members of poor communities or groups that have been subject to discrimination turn to crime to gain wealth and status, but it can also explain why a major corporation might begin to engage in dubious accounting practices when its growth in real business stalls.
The central idea is that an individual or group becomes committed to a particular kind of success that society encourages—whether it is wealth, political power, widespread fame, or honor within a particular sector of society— then experiences frustration in attaining success, which motivates ethical violations. Conceivably, a nanotechnology corporation could be affected by strain if it has committed itself to a new and untested line of products that turns out to be less effective, more harmful, or more costly than originally estimated.
The corporation has committed not only its money and effort, but also its public prestige to success, but success may elude it. It may then unethically advertise its products as more effective than they really are, conceal knowledge of their danger to human health or the environment, and cook its financial records to deceive investors.
Of course, many ordinary companies have done this in the past, and, ironically, they sometimes solve their problems before the public becomes aware of them, thereby becoming ethical and successful again. When Merton proposed the most influential version of Strain Theory in 1938, he identified three modes of adaptation to three increasing levels of strain. If a person was unable to achieve society’s values by following conventional norms, frustration might drive him or her to violate the norms in pursuit of the value, what Merton called innovation.
If this did not work, he or she might substitute both new values and new norms for those of society, in what he called rebellion. But if this failed as well, the person might abandon values, as well as norms and fall into a demoralized state of inaction called retreatism.
Retreatism is inconsequential, and successful rebellion tends to radicalize society, but innovation (in Merton’s sense of the term) can promote scientific and technical progress. In other work, Merton was one of the founders of the sociology of science and technology, but he never followed through on the implications of Strain Theory for science, and his distinctive concept of innovation was chiefly used to explain criminal behaviour by poor people who violated the law in order to get the values (i.e., money) endorsed by capitalist society.
There are many examples in the history of science in which Strain Theory can be used to explain scientific and technological innovations that turned out to be beneficial, rather than unethical, and others where the result was a mixture of benefit and harm that presumably could have been managed to emphasize the benefit.
In the seventeenth century, England led the world in scientific progress, perhaps in a nationalistic reaction to its inferiority in population and other resources relative to France and Spain. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Germany lacked access to as abundant a supply of natural resources as had the great colonial powers, Britain and France.
This inferiority may have stimulated many advances in German chemistry such as Adolf Bayer’s synthesis of indigo dye and the nitrogen fixation method developed by Fritz Haber and Karl Bosch, which allowed Germany to continue producing explosives for World War I (1914-1918) after it had lost access to foreign sources of nitrates. When the Treaty of Versailles concluding World War I limited German long-range artillery, the Germans developed the V-2 rocket largely to get around this restriction, thereby ushering in the age of space flight.
In Control Theory, a person violates norms because he or she lacks stable social bonds that might prevent it. This is a very successful scientific explanation of many common crimes, such as ordinary theft, and many kinds of criminals tend to lack stable friendships or family relationships that might restrain their deviant behaviour.
Control Theory might seem irrelevant to nanotechnology ethics because no isolated individual is in a position to make major decisions about new applications. The theory perfectly fits the Hollywood image of Dr. Frankenstein living like a hermit in a remote castle, where he is free to conduct any ghastly experiment he wishes, but no real-life scientist lives like this.
However, a variant of Control Theory explains that a community or organization can suffer from a partial but pervasive form of isolation, called social disorganization, in which communication channels are poor and many people deviate to a moderate degree because they are somewhat detached from each other.
In a socially disorganized research laboratory studying the properties of a new Nanostructured material, the quality of the science could suffer, pieces of information could fail to get to scientists who need them, and management would get incorrect impressions about the material’s properties.
This could lead to a chain reaction of unethical behaviour in which no one individual was primarily to blame. For instance, the result could be a corporate decision to put into production a new kind of aircraft component that was subject to unpredictable catastrophic failure, causing crashes and loss of life.
In a case such as this, the unethical behaviour is scattered in many small pieces, committed by many individuals, any time one of them presents a dubious observation as a scientific fact. The best way to reassert the truth-oriented professional norms of science would be to rebuild good channels of communication and cooperation, reattaching the researchers to each other and to the scientific community.
Subculture Theory is similar to Control Theory, but operates on the level of groups rather than individuals. A person violates a rule because he or she belongs to a subculture that rejects the rule and even encourages violation of it.
A subculture is a group or network having a set of norms, roles, and values that differ from those of the surrounding culture. At the extreme, it can have a radical ideology or dogma, but practically every social group is a subculture to at least a very mild extent. Social psychologist Janis has shown that even very powerful groups can become deviant subcultures, if they isolate themselves from the wider community, as the Nixon White House did during the Watergate episode.
Even if a research laboratory is functioning properly, the organization of which it is a part can make harmful decisions if the top management is a subculture practicing what Janis calls groupthink’, the refusal to accept information that conflicts with the group’s beliefs and commitments. Sometimes this may result in harm to others, for instance, if a new nanotechnology-enabled treatment for cancer were put into production before safe methods for administering it to patients in hospital settings were worked out.
Or the harm could fall on the organization itself, for example, if a semiconductor company decided to invest its future in molecular logic gates without fully assessing the potential of carbon nanotube transistors instead. In that case, we might say the company deserves what it gets, but there is the ethical issue of its responsibility to stockholders and employees, including to the scientists in the research laboratory who were ready to do the studies needed for a correct decision.
As the example of Strain Theory illustrates, sometimes strain has positive consequences, rather than negative ones. Similarly, Learning Theory explains why an individual or organization might develop habits of ethical innovation, and both Control Theory and Subculture Theory could show that a person or group may innovate best when somewhat detached from conventional thinking. Thus, the issue is not one of avoiding these four factors, but of finding the right levels of them to encourage healthy innovation without unleashing serious unethical behaviour. This is the fundamental trade-off in any free society:
How to liberate human creativity while restraining greed, immorality, and inhumanity. Strain Theory has been used to explain the emergence of collective behaviour and social movements, including reform movements such as the environmental movement or crusades to establish professional codes of ethics.
Concern about the social and ethical implications of nanotechnology can, therefore, energize the development of appropriate institutions to manage it wisely. Learning Theory suggests that a rewarding market for beneficial nanotechnology products could teach scientists, engineers, and managers to invest their energy in projects that would serve the needs of humanity. Both Control Theory and Subculture Theory stress the importance of strong networks of communication in restraining unethical behaviour.
Convergence of nanotechnology with the other NBIC fields would support healthy communication by unifying science, providing a universal technical language for interaction across fields, and creating a network of collaborative relationships across sciences, institutions, and sectors of society.
Public Opinion:
Ethics and social implications are largely matters of social perception, and the public conception of nanotechnology is still in the early stages of developing. Nano scale science and engineering are evolving from conventional work in materials science, physics, chemistry, and related fields, as the gradual emergence of new methodologies permits many kinds of observation and experimentation with inorganic structures having at least one dimension less than about 100 nm. This progress in real nanotechnology is solidly based in existing scientific knowledge, even as it achieves new discoveries and inventions.
At the same time, something quite different has been emerging that also calls itself nanotechnology: a social movement based on metaphors, approximations, and hopes. Tolles calls it an ‘irrational vision’. In social science, popular enthusiasm for a loosely defined set of unreasonable hopes is often called a mania, so I will call this movement Nano mania.
The key moment in the emergence of Nano mania, but not of Nano science and nanotechnology themselves, was the 1986 publication of Engines of Creation by Drexler. This is a popular book, inspirational rather than technical, filled with verbal metaphors about what might possibly be accomplished if Nano scale assemblers could be created rather like industrial robot arms and assembly lines.
The plausibility of Drexler’s argument, such as it is, comes from his constant reminder that biological systems include ‘machines’ that assemble themselves and manufacture or manipulate other Nano scale structures: proteins, RNA, and DNA.
In a rambling discourse that reminds us that Leonardo da Vinci could not have predicted the details of late twentieth century technology, Drexler asserts that sometime in the future it will be possible to build Nano scale assemblers that are able to make anything that can be designed. At this point he has outstripped his biological analogy, because the ‘Nano machines’ of biology cannot do this; they can make only those specific things that evolution has programmed them to make. Drexler says that suitably programmed assemblers will be able to make copies of them, as living organisms do.
The specific image he offers is of tiny robot arms grabbing atoms from the surrounding raw material and putting them together in the correct configurations. These imaginary assemblers can make anything, he suggests, so they can quickly replace all the factories and construction companies on Earth, giving humankind perfect abundance of anything we might want.
The book then scans quickly through other dreams of science fiction, including artificial intelligence, cheap space flight, near immortality, and the danger to human life of uncontrolled self-replicating intelligent machines. In some ways the book is laudable, inspiring nontechnical readers with many conceivable biomedical applications of nanotechnology, some of which might actually turn out to be practical in the long run, discussing their social implications, and offering potential solutions to problems that might arise.
The problem is that many people have come to the unfounded conclusion that Drexler’s self- replicating universal assemblers are not only theoretically possible, but likely to be created in the near future. This is the fundamental error of Nano mania, and it has called forth a reaction in the form of a Nano phobia—the fear that all kinds of horrible evils will soon emerge from nanotechnology. At the 2000 Societal Implications workshop, Drexler’s assemblers were debunked by several participants, including Nobel Prize-winner Smalley, discoverer of fullerenes and a pioneer of carbon nanotubes.
Smalley observes that technical details of chemistry and a correct understanding of the properties of atoms and molecules are largely absent from Nano mania. In particular, the universal Nano scale assemblers envisioned by Drexler are physically impossible: ‘Because the fingers of a manipulator arm must themselves be made out of atoms, they have a certain irreducible size.
There just isn’t enough room in the nanometer-size reaction region to accommodate all the fingers of all the manipulators necessary to have complete control of the chemistry. Manipulator fingers on the hypothetical self-replicating Nano-bot are not only too fat; they are also too sticky: the atoms of the manipulator hands will adhere to the atom that is being moved. So it will often be impossible to release this miniscule building block in precisely the right spot.’
The difficulty of developing reasonable public policies about nanotechnology when popular thinking is dominated by fanciful notions is illustrated by Chen’s paper. ‘The Ethics of Nanotechnology’, distributed online both by the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University and by Bio- Science Productions, Inc., which describes itself as ‘a non-partisan organization whose goal is the promotion of public literacy in the biosciences’.
Following Drexler’s approach, Chen assumes that nanotechnology means the creation of molecular machines, ‘which could be used as molecular assemblers and disassemblers to build, repair, or tear down any physical or biological objects’ Recognizing that such ‘nanites’ may not be practical in the near future, Chen nonetheless suggests that we consider taking three possible actions soon:
1. Nanotechnology R&D should be banned
2. A nongovernmental regulatory or advisory commission should be set up
3. Adopt design guidelines
a. Nano machines should only be specialized, not general purpose
b. Nano machines should not be self-replicating Nano machines should not be made to use an abundant natural compound as fuel
c. Nano machines should be tagged so they can be tracked
Chen notes that the first choice would undesirably prevent beneficial applications of molecular machines, but might not prevent ‘rogue researchers’ from developing nanites anyway. However, readers of his article who are unfamiliar with real nanotechnology may not realize that most research in the field has nothing to do with these hypothetical nanites.
It would take considerable wisdom to figure out how a regulatory commission might be set up, empowered, and managed effectively in such a way that it could ensure nanotechnology will be used for human benefit without stifling worthwhile innovations.
The design guidelines flow from Chen’s assumptions about what nanotechnology is, but any formal regulations embodying them could have serious negative unintended consequences, given that they start with flawed definition of Nano machines.
Chen’s rule that Nano machines be ‘specialized, not general purpose’ may mean little, because a fully general purpose’ machine is as mythical as a ‘universal solvent’ or ‘perpetual motion machine’. However, a regulatory commission could do great harm by adopting poorly conceived definitions of Nano machine and general purpose.
Suppose a very useful new abrasive were developed consisting of nanoparticles that changed shape, perhaps in response to temperature or force fluctuations, in some complex way that helped them do their intended job.
Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary defines machine thus: ‘a system, usually of rigid bodies, constructed and connected to change, transmit, and direct applied forces in a predetermined way to accomplish a particular objective, as performance.’
By this definition, the Nano scale abrasive particles would be machines. If they could be used to shape a wide range of industrial materials, they could be called general purpose. Yet this abrasive could be no more dangerous to humanity than ordinary sandpaper.
Strictly speaking, no entities on Earth are ‘self-replicating’. Living organisms cannot replicate themselves without the help afforded them by the particular environment in which they dwell. All life is part of ecology.
Any regulation prohibiting self-replication would have to define very clearly what self-replication meant in the context of particular environments. Today, factory robots build parts of robots, but nobody worries about the ethical implications, perhaps because anybody can see that the manufacture process is entirely under the control of human beings. Because nanites are imaginary, and only vaguely defined, there are no facts to give nontechnical people comparable confidence.
Chen’s rule against Nano machines that use an abundant natural compound as fuel’ presumably would prevent a nanite from rampaging uncontrolled in the natural environment. But this could outlaw the development of non-replicating Nano scale devices that can function only in very restricted laboratory or industrial systems, because most chemicals used in motors or batteries are abundant natural compounds.
Requiring that all Nano scale machines be ‘tagged so that they can be tracked’ is reminiscent of the British Red Flag Act of 1865, which required that each horseless carriage be preceded by someone on foot waving a red flag.
In the context of Chen’s recommendations, ‘tracked’ would seem to mean located, not merely identified once found. This could add an extremely heavy technical burden such as radioactive tagging, addition of a distinctive adulterating chemical, or even complex design features above the Nano scale to allow the Nano machine to be detected by microwave radio locators. If the machines are incapable of escaping into the natural environment, this burden would be not only ill- advised but ludicrous.
Has Nano mania distorted the reception real nanotechnology is receiving? A survey done in 1999 found that the American business community was rather unaware of nanotechnology, only 2% saying they knew what it was and a further 2% reporting they had heard of it, but did not know what it was.
Two years later, a Web-based survey sponsored by the National Geographic Society found that science-attentive members of the general public are very enthusiastic about nanotechnology, and a rather large number of ideas about its benefits have already entered popular culture.
Statistical analysis of responses from 3,909 people revealed that they associate nanotechnology with other science-based technology, but do not connect it with pseudoscience. Significantly, when 598 people wrote paragraphs about nanotechnology, not a single respondent expressed concern about hypothetical dangers from self-reproducing nanites.
Future surveys can examine the deepening popular awareness of nanotechnology, as the field itself progresses, and assess any public concerns that develop.
A Research Agenda:
Sociologist Etzkowitz has noted that the social sciences can play three different but mutually supportive roles in the development of nanotechnology:
1. Analysing and contributing to the improvement of the processes of scientific discoveries that increasingly involve organizational issues where the social sciences have a long-term research and knowledge base.
2. Analysing the effects of nanotechnology, whether positive or negative, expected or unintended, hypothetically and proactively and as they occur in real-time.
3. Evaluation of public and private programs to promote Nano science and nanotechnology.
There are several ways social scientists can study the nanotechnology innovation process as it occurs. Cultural anthropologists and participant observation sociologists can enter Nano science research teams, ethno-graphically documenting the behaviour of the researchers over time as they frame their scientific problems, seek solutions, and labour collectively to understand the meaning of research results. Fruitful sites for research on the innovation process include academe, industry, government laboratories, federal agencies, and professional societies.
Historical methods for collecting and analysing written documents are also useful, even in cases where the documents are only days or weeks old, rather than the decades- old materials employed by most professional historians.
Formal interviews, content analysis of communications such as e-mail messages, and questionnaires can provide more systematic kinds of data. Application of a scientific idea to a technical problem, a technology transfer, and the introduction of products into the marketplace can be tracked through economic statistics on research and development investments, patent applications, and advertisements for new products and services.
Some geographic areas, strata of society, and kinds of individuals and institutions experience technological change earlier than others, notably, the first adopters who try out an innovation before influencing other people to try it as well. Start-up companies are in a sense early adopters, even though they are also innovators, and thus they may be an especially fruitful if logistically difficult field for research.
There is a long tradition of systematic research on scientific publication, tracking the introduction of new concepts, charting the changing patterns of citation in scientific literature, and measuring the bulk of publications in different areas.
The progress of nanotechnology in modern culture could also be studied by tracking the introduction of new topics and courses in school and university curricula, mentions of Nano scale phenomena in the popular press, and the proliferation of both commercial and non-commercial Websites dedicated to nanotechnology. Professional societies and entrepreneurs are already creating series of new forums, symposia, journals, and job fairs oriented toward Nano science and nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology may have significant impacts in all sectors of the economy, in most spheres of life, and on both short-term and long-term time scales. The intended consequences of any particular innovation can be determined simply by interviewing its investors or promoters and by inspecting their publications about it.
Unintended consequences are much harder to study, because they require not only extensive research on the impacts on diverse areas of society, but also good scientific intuition about where to look for them. Consequences have consequences, in a continuing cascade, so the second order consequences will also have to be studied. Ultimately, this would require an extensive, vigorous interdisciplinary scientific community that is dedicated to research on social and technological change in general. Technology is an elaborate system, embedded in the even more elaborate system that is global society.
Through feedback among complex social subsystems, major phenomena can produce chaotic and unpredictable effects. Nanotechnology will have substantial impacts on many aspects of society in often different ways, so predictions of its influence will be difficult to make and evaluate scientifically. This means that researchers will have to invest considerable sophistication and effort in their work. The social and ethical implications of nanotechnology are the results not merely of what the technology itself does, but also of how people react to it.
Therefore, it will be important to understand the social acceptance, resistance, or rejection of nanotechnology at different times and in different places and human contexts. Interviews, focus groups, and questionnaire surveys can measure emotional, cognitive, and psychosocial parameters.
The combined methodologies of political science, sociology, and socio-legal studies will be required to chart the process of regulatory review and approval, court decisions that actively permit or prohibit the use of the technology, mobilization of political’ support and opposition, and the activities of relevant social movements.
Ultimately, the test of the various nanotechnologies will be their benefit for human beings, as measured by economic growth, improved health and longevity, environmental protection, strengthened security, social vitality, and enhanced human capabilities.
Convergence with other NBIC technologies will complicate the challenge for researchers and policymakers who wish to understand the social and ethical implications of nanotechnology, but it will also magnify the potential benefits to humanity many times over. Success will be most complete and most probable if scientific research on these implications is an integral part of the effort from the very beginning.