Nanotechnology and Society? 134
VoiceOfZule writes "Bringing advanced sci-tech and humanities grad students to teach undergrads about nanotech and its implications is a great idea. I was in this class on Nanotechnology and Society at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this spring, and a lot of the course materials were just put online along with a preprint paper about the new course, and some of the student research projects. The class was a lot of fun (some nano, some scitech studies, some scifi/future stuff), I learned a lot (about the reality of nanotech and its societal implications beyond the B.S. hype out there), and the world of nano now seems like a good career path to me. Are similar experiences going on across the country? In light of recent worries concerning science and engineering in the US, I hope so."
Country? (Score:0, Insightful)
Country? Considering the small amount of population your country has compared to the rest of the world, wouldn't it be smart to ask for experiences around the world?
Silly bus (Score:5, Insightful)
to consider the societal implications of nanotech in the context of social, scientific, historical, political, environmental, philosophical, ethical, and cultural ideas applied from other fields and prior work;
My question: How is this different from any other major technological advance? For goodness sake, there were backlashes against the railroad, against the first steam engines. More recently we have backlashes against cloning, and nuclear power.
Every time we run into some topic like this, we have a very polarized debate. In practice, society adapts to the change and goes on with life. Ultimately, the market decides which innovations become wide spread, and how they are implemented.
My impression from the syllabus: fluff class looking to cash in on a hot button topic.
Understanding nano politics (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonotech is a compettitive threat to a LOT of entrenched industries who have cozy monopolies. So you can better believe that there will be strong push to "regulate" it for peoples "safety" and the "protection" of society.
The inportant thing to understand is that there are two types of laws. Ones that seek justice by punishing people who make bad choices, and ones that try to "prevent" problems by limiting the kinds of choices people are "allowed" to have. It should always be understood that the former is usually good and the latter is almost always BS, and causes more harm than it "prevents".
The class: science for dummies (Score:4, Insightful)
America's Downward Spiral (Score:2, Insightful)
America is facing a serious fulcrum. Either we can continue to busy ourselves with our moral and ethical dilemmas which I feel partly stem from our Puritan ancestors and let the rest of the world pass us by. Or, we decide that we'd like to be a recognizable technological force in the 21st century and realize that our ethical dilemmas are rather unfounded.
The rest of the world doesn't seem too have much trouble figuring out where they stand on issues like abortion, gay marriage and nanotech. Why do we?
Re:Silly bus (Score:3, Insightful)
A class like this could be very valuable, if it trained those people likely to end up making decisions (humanities and business majors) in the actual science behind the technology, or the technologists in how to present to the unschooled what they're actually doing.
Remember, DuPont used to boldly proclaim "Better Things for Better Living Through Chemistry". That's still true, but no modern Ad agency would dare say that for fear of reminding the undereducated that the world is made out of Chemicals. Courses that attempt to prevent that sort of dichotomy from occuring with Nanotech, etc, are frankly a good thing, as long as they're not led by the fear-mongering Rifkins of the world.
Not to go pop culture here, (but this is Slashdot), but I'd rather take my chances with the technology and live in the Blade Runner future, than in the unheated, unhygenic, Arthurian Agrarian past.
Re:The class: science for dummies (Score:2, Insightful)
Because not everyone is a science major. I'm going to be majoring in English in the fall, why would I want to spend my time taking grueling math and science classes? I have far more important things to worry about.
Besides, I feel classes that discuss the social repercussions of science are plenty valuable. Science always has to answer to society, it doesn't have carte blanche to do whatever it chooses (at least, here in the US, I can't really speak for the rest of the world). Generally, a new technological advancement doesn't become commonplace until it is accepted by the public. Think about cloning, we have the technology, but many people have problems with it. I personally encourage it, but I think if one is majoring in some sort of science field, it is important to realize how new advancements affect the populace
Re:Do they teach anything useful in university yet (Score:3, Insightful)
That's all we need, a buch of highly trained but out of touch scientists. Next thing you know we'll be fending off nano-sharks with tiny little laser beams.
nano hype (Score:3, Insightful)
Nano not as exciting as one first thinks (Score:3, Insightful)
But real-life applications of nano are much less groundbreaking, and much more mundane -- making circuits and storage a bit smaller, and so forth. Nano is more of a psychological barrier than anything else.
If self-assembling robots were really such an awesome idea, for getting work done, we would have done them at the far-easier-to-work-with size scales that we are comfortable with.
Re:The class: science for dummies (Score:1, Insightful)
Welcome to the real world, where for most people the ability to do complex differential equations and understand the low-level chemistry involved in their daily life is of little consequence.
OTOH, the ability of non-science majors to understand and perform complex analytical reasoning about the nature and consequences of science and technology is important, because like it or not it is these people, and not science-majors, who will be deciding the shape and direction of scientific discovery and the integration of these discoveries into scoeity.
The liberal arts majors you look down upon are the people that in the future you will call boss, legislator, judge, and taxpayer.
At the very least, these are people who know that "Math" and "Science" are not proper nouns and should not be capitalized. Maybe it is time for you to take a couple of English classes.