Nanotechnology is such a young discipline that any issue for which the nano name is invoked is largely a reflection of a personal world view or political agenda rather than any overwhelming body of evidence. Nanotechnology advocates in business and government choose to focus on the optimistic leaps of logic, while those who see corporate conspiracies in the wallpaper can make just as many plausible or implausible leaps into the negative. As I told Neofiles a few months ago:
- A health advocate could say that once nanoparticles breach the blood-brain barrier, we’re entering into dangerous territory, while another can say that breaching that barrier will enable a range of cures for various brain disorders. Nanotechnology, right now, is an unsettled wilderness that is either abundant with resources for the picking, or a vast frozen wasteland. It’s a reflection of your own world view.
Right now, the general public is being bombarded with some amazing predictions of how nanotechnology will completely alter almost every aspect of their lives. To many, the claims seem not only fantastic, but implausible. Nanotech proponents in government and business are just as guilty of promoting selective logic as the neoluddites of the environmental movement when they ask the public to believe positive implausible scenarios and not to pay attention to the negative.
It’s a difficult concept to describe. I was asked by a reporter for NPR’s “Marketplace” last week to define nanotechnology. I gave the usual explanation (under-100-nanometers, special-properties, etc.), and then I struggled to explain how nanotechnology right now is more of a concept than anything else. We’ve created the building blocks and dumped them on the floor. What we create with them now, and how safely we do it, is yet to be determined.
So, there is nano the science and nano the business, and they’re moving along quite nicely as they take their baby steps. But when it reaches level of public debate, nano often loses its solidity to become neither science nor business, but a concept that is a reflection of the human imagination.
The full commentary can be found on Howard Lovy’s NanoBot
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Here is one thing that I think it is important to realize. Consider this quote:
A health advocate could say that once nanoparticles breach the blood-brain barrier, we’re entering into dangerous territory, while another can say that breaching that barrier will enable a range of cures for various brain disorders
We need to understand that these two view are not contradictory. Nanotech will undoubtedly bring great benefit, and great pain. Just as fire could warm an ancient cave, it could also burn and kill a careless person. Ditto damn near every technology we have ever come up with.
There will be serious ramifications with nanotech: we need to be ready to deal with them. There are real potential benefits, but they will not come unearned, nor will they come in violation of basic physics.
It is only when we pretend it is all doom or all good that we will hurt ourselves.
(Aside: I read a fascinating article a while back in Physics Today about how very small things move. Just making small particles move is VERY HARD. Random molecular motion becomes like a hurricane. Just one glimpse into some of the troubles that might face nano machines)