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The National Nanotechnology Initiative and the Social Good

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Ronald Sandler  and
W. D. Kay
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Extract

The United States federal government anticipates that nanotechnology will be the platform for the next technological and industrial revolution. The vision of its ongoing National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) is “a future in which the ability to understand and control matter on the nanoscale leads to a revolution in technology and industry.” The idea that nanotechnology is revolutionary has reached the public. In one public survey, over three-quarters of respondents answered correctly that “experts consider nanotechnology to be the next industrial revolution of the U.S. Economy.”

Labeling nanotechnology as “revolutionary” promotes a general attitude towards nanotechnology by trading on a common line of reasoning: technological revolutions are constituted by significant technological progress; technological progress enables comfort, ease, health, longevity, security and wealth; therefore, technological revolutions are social goods. Thus, to claim that nanotechnology is revolutionary invites a positive socio-ethical evaluation of it, not just a positive scientific or technological one.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , Winter 2006 , pp. 675 - 681
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2006

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References

National Science and Technology Council, Committee on Technology, Subcommittee on Nanoscale Science, Engineering and Technology, The National Nanotechnology Initiative Strategic Plan (December, 2004): at 1. The National Nanotechnology Initiative was introduced by the Clinton Administration to Congress in a February 2000 report entitled National Nanotechnology Initiative: Leading to the Next Industrial Revolution, which was prepared by the Interagency Working Group on Nanoscience, Engineering and Technology of the National Science and Technology Council's Committee on Technology. The report supplemented the administration's request to double nanoscience and nanotechnology research and development funding for FY 2001. The Bush Administration has continued to promote nanotechnology as the basis for the next industrial revolution. The supplemental document to its FY 2006 Budget Request, submitted to congress in March 2005 by the Subcommittee on Nanoscale Science, Engineering and Technology of the National Science and Technology Council's Committee on Technology, is entitled The National Nanotechnology Initiative: Research and Development Leading to a Revolution in Technology and Industry.Google Scholar
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