The Nanotech BC Blog: Social Issues in Nanotechnology

Soft Machines is one of my favorite nanotechnology blogs -- lucid, balanced and informed. Richard Jones's latest is a two-part article on the history of nanotechnology and the social interests that are propelling it.

The first part focuses on where nanotechnology has come from. The second looks at the social issues and groups that are affecting where it's going.

What particularly impressed me was Jone's recognition that science in general and nanotechnology in particular serve as a mirror for social and cultural fears and aspirations.

Technologies don’t exist or develop in a vacuum, and nanotechnology is no exception; arguments about the likely, or indeed desirable, trajectory of the technology are as much about their protagonists’ broader aspirations for society as about nanotechnology itself.