Heralding a Century of Hype and Hope:
Nanotechnology and Its Transformative Potential

  Nigel M. de S. Cameron, Ph.D., Director
  Center on Nanotechnology and Society

The chief goal of the Center on Nanotechnology and Society (Nano & Society) is, at one level, simple: to catalyze the national conversation on the ethical, legal, and wider societal implications of research and development on the nanoscale.As some of us know well, both its advocates and some of its most vigorous critics see nanotechnology as the transformative technology of the 21st century,looking to the convergence of technologies on the nanoscale as the key to a future in which we have not simply added one more technology to our arsenal, but achieved a final mastery over matter.

If these high-end projections are credible,they proffer not one more technology, but that most ancient desideratum, the Holy Grail of the medievals and early moderns, what was known as the "philosopher's stone" - the alchemy that would enable us even to convert base metals to gold, putting an end to want and scarcity and more besides. Put in these terms, the word "hype" seems understatement. But followers of the nanotechnology story are familiar with the extraordinary claims that have been published in the sober context of reports from the National Science Foundation, and some of its projections are so extravagant as to be hard to caricature. We are offered "world peace" and a cure for every diagnosed case of cancer.While early industrial applications on the nanoscale are a good deal more prosaic (like sunscreen), the context is heady. This is one reason why there are annual appropriations for research and development of around $1 billion.

Nano & Society is intent on driving a conversation that spans parties from across disciplines and perspectives,as well as cultural, religious, and political communities, with a focus on the human future. Technologies Ð all the way from flint axe-heads to the steam engine and the particle accelerator - are essentially levers; they give us more power than we had before to do whatever it is we choose to do. Their results can be very hard to predict; axes,like nuclear energy, have non-peaceful uses, but what happens when the "bad guys" get them? They may have entirely unintended consequences, or consequences that their enthusiasts just hope will not arise.The sobering tale of the collapse of the European market for "genetically-modified" food offers a parable of how a putatively transformative technology can, as it were, bite the hand that is trying to sell it.

But if the nanotechnology talk is to be believed, this is transformative technology on an altogether new scale, what we might somewhat indelicately call the "killer application," the technology that will change everything. The questions we are asking at Nano & Society are these: What does this mean for us as people Ð for those who value our common humanity; who would love to have world peace, though not at the price of freedom and privacy; who want medi- cines to cure disease and restore function, though not at the cost of commodifying our bodies and brains; who spend our lives striving for success, but not for a success that can be obtained without striving? Moreover, what does this mean for those who are aware of the final technological paradox: that the more power we attain to determine ourselves and our children, the more we become creatures of our own design?

While we revel in every new power we gain "over nature," as has been noted, technologies, in fact,give some people power over other people, with "nature" as an instrument. These are sobering questions, and, if nanotechnology is even half as significant as the pundits are telling us, they will be the great questions of the 21st century.

Nigel M. de S. Cameron, Ph.D., is the Director of the Center on Nanotechnology and Society and President of the Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future.