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."
What a class! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What a class! (Score:1)
I'm taking one of these too.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'm taking one of these too.... (Score:1)
Re:I'm taking one of these too.... (Score:1)
May I suggest you also calm down? Just a bit? Just because you're anonymous doesn't mean you shouldn't be polite...
Re:I'm taking one of these too.... (Score:1)
Recent descent to third world status you mean... (Score:2, Interesting)
You just said a mouthful there... Nothing is going to pull things out of this nose-dive but a radical restructuring of the US's political and social structures. Not even nanotechnology:
July 15, 2005
America's Descent Into The Third World [vdare.com]
By Paul Craig Roberts
The June payroll jobs report did not receive much attention due to the July 4 holiday, but the depressing 21st century job performance of the US economy continues unabated.
Re:Recent descent to third world status you mean.. (Score:1)
Re:Recent descent to third world status you mean.. (Score:2)
There are "high value products" for sale in the US that simply won't sell in any third-
Re:Recent descent to third world status you mean.. (Score:2)
1) folks with property
2) folks in positions protected from both trade and immigration.
Its the cheapskates and Benedict Arnold CEOs (Score:2)
With
Doom and gloom crap (Score:2)
Young people should look at the hot technologies and pursue those - that will give them a start in life. Biotech is one. Microwave is another. Of course there is also the old favourite: Military products.
It is the mature and sweatshop technologies that gets outsourced. Software development is one of them.
And that's why the software profession is crap (Score:2)
What you are doing with software is coming up with formal systems that model reality. It is easy to come up with complex models of reality -- just enumerate all the data you have and call that a "theory".
Where science gets its power is where software gets its quality: Parsimony. The problem with parsimony is that it's hard [google.com]. It's so hard you can't find a better definition for artificial intelligence quality than Kolmogorov compression [geocities.com]
Re:Recent descent to third world status you mean.. (Score:1)
USA != America!! (Score:1)
Re:Recent descent to third world status you mean.. (Score:2)
Dr Robert's Perpetuates Industrial Age mentality (Score:1)
It is true that jobs are disappearing but blaming it on the third world is incredibly short-sighted. You only have to visit a modern factory and realize that automation is here, and it is just the beginning. Experts like Rifkin suggest that industry has not fully embraced automation (probably for fear of community backlash) and automation remains at about 5% of what is possible. What will happen to jobs when automation moves to 50% or 100%?
Re:Dr Robert's Perpetuates Industrial Age mentalit (Score:2)
And the real problem as I continue to point out [geocities.com] is that you should solve the equity problem before you remove people's means of livelihood -- not after you have disenfranchised and rendered them politically impotent as most certainly they have been by the globalists [rescueamericanjobs.org].
Re:Dr Robert's Perpetuates Industrial Age mentalit (Score:1)
Unfortunately, humans always resist new ideas and change, at least initially. Then there is luddite factor which is wedded to doing things the 'old' way.
It is too late to close the barn doors, the horse has bolted. But this does not mean we can't do anything about it. In fact, the restoration of people's means of livelihood can be achieved, at least in part, by utilising advances in production technologies to bring down the cost of living.
The problem is th
Re:Dr Robert's Perpetuates Industrial Age mentalit (Score:2)
I'll tell you what's "ideal".... the idea that non-subsistence property rights aren't a mere social construct that could fall apart with catastrophic consequences.
I'm not saying there is no technical fix here -- there is -- its not "nanotechnology" as people have been discussing it and I really am fed up with people going on about "nanotechnology". I suggest if you care about solving the hard social and political problems arising from technological civilizat
Re:Dr Robert's Perpetuates Industrial Age mentalit (Score:1)
Re:Typical Jim Bowery (Score:2)
Re:Typical Jim Bowery (Score:2)
If you're saying it is unreasonable to investigate the possibility of foul
International vs National (Score:2)
What you are talking about is International Capitalism, aka Globalization. It has a counterpart in National Capitalism or traditional capitalism which gives national security priority over multinational profits. BTW: "Homeland Security" and the associated loss of civil liberties domestically is simply the manifestation of national insecurity predictably arising by this shift in priorities.
Re:Recent descent to third world status you mean.. (Score:2)
Re:Country? (Score:1)
Heh (Score:2, Informative)
During my comprehensive exams, one of my committee members cynically advised me to rephrase my answer using the prefix "nano", since that's what funding agencies like to see on grant proposals.
Before you bet the farm on this.... (Score:1)
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.
Re:Silly bus (Score:1)
I believe this was addressed (albeit in a roundabout way) in the second post for this article. It absolutely is using the buzzword "nano" to generate interest in a class which has a much larger scope.
That is not to say that the class is worthless, social reaction to new technology needs to be studied (imo) more intensively than it is now (i.e. real funding, not just hyped up studies).
Re:Silly bus (Score:2)
A lot of the funding today is going to actively involve the public in sci/tech policy. The controversy around GMO food and the Euro market (GMO-free until recently) being largely closed to the pro-GMO U.S. food industry has opened a lot of eyes. If we're going to avoid this kind of controversy in the future, we need to dump research dollars into finding out what people think about new tech and developing it accordingly rather than expecting people to just get used to whatever
Re:Silly bus (Score:2)
Re:Silly bus (Score:3, Insightful)
A class like this could be very valuable, if it trained t
Re:Silly bus (Score:1)
Re:Silly bus (Score:2)
Some technologies disturb people due to the so-called "yuck" factor. They feel that it will lead to unemployment, societal breakdown or moral decay. Other technologies are aguably so dangerous that they threaten the very existence of human life (as opposed to the sta
Re:Silly bus (Score:1)
CBEN at Rice (Score:4, Informative)
The course also explored the possible environmental effects of nanotechnology, and the possible regulation that might help manage those effects. When dealing with one class of nanotech, like fullerenes, this is quite a broad and complex topic. When on introduces the everything that might be nanotech, it becomes nearly unmanageable.
Another project that has some popularity is the nanokids [rice.edu].
There is actually quite a bit from the course that can be used in any number of high school courses. And, since Nanotech is likely to tbe defining technology of the next generation, kids who are familiar with the concepts are going to be better prepared than those who are not.
Re:CBEN at Rice (Score:2)
Now, the poster says nanotech seems like a good career path. Here are some things I can tell you right now that I never did as an undergrad that I should have:
1) Take chemistry. Lots of it. Even if you do physics, take at least up through organic, if not physical chem.
2) Take so
Text book for class right here... (Score:1)
i hope hendrik schoen isnt giving the lectures (Score:2, Interesting)
Pales to transhumanism (Score:1, Interesting)
But it's easy to see how transhumanism is the greater of the two. When we are posthumanism, we'll be able to analyze nanotechnology much better.
EH&S issues? (Score:4, Interesting)
By virtue of their size, nanoparticles can cross the blood/brain barrier. For some materials this new route of entry could be the difference between toxic and nontoxic. Materials that previously were thought of as nontoxic in the micron and above particle range could now have toxic effects. - Material data safety sheets generally don't consider a material's particle size, except to state "dusty" type warnings.
That the nanoparticles can have this new route of entry is proven - that this results in new toxic effects for previously nontoxic compounds is not (at least not that I've seen in the lit) - so there may be no issue - or there may be a big issue. Hopefully we don't find out the asbestos way where we make the material ubiquitous then be stuck with huge remediation and civil lawsuit issues!
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".
Re:Understanding nano politics (Score:2)
Re:Understanding nano politics (Score:1)
In business having a known set of expectations is even more important. Rational persons will want a known baseline so that everyone can compete from the same expectations. For example, builders have codes that must be followed. Without regulation, a builder might gain a
prestige (Score:1)
Re:prestige (Score:1)
Re:prestige (Score:1)
Its got a top-notch engineering school and also is in the big ten. If you're looking for a school to get a world class educ
The class: science for dummies (Score:4, Insightful)
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 technologica
Re:The class: science for dummies (Score:2)
I take it back. The Nanoscience and Society class is not representative of everything that is wrong with college education. It is people like YOU who represent everything that is wrong with college education.
Re:The class: science for dummies (Score:2)
No, that's not what was said. How much English did you take during your time studying? You don't have to be such a troll -- but it is harder to use your head. Try it sometime.
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 i
Re:The class: science for dummies (Score:1)
Yes, my priorities be damned. I can see where several grueling classes in microbiology or biochemistry would come in handy for someone who wants to live out their days writing fiction novels and/or short stories. Why should I bother to take difficult science classes? I've taken college level AP courses for calculus and biology, and am far more competent in those and other sciences than the average person need be. Why should I spend more of my valuable time taking rigorous classes for which I have no use whe
Re:The class: science for dummies (Score:2)
Like what? What part of you major will impact the lives of people as much as science has?
Will anything you learn prevent children from being crippled by a virus? Will anything you learn feed millions of people? Name a work of fiction that has the same impact on peoples lives as the clean drinki
Re:The class: science for dummies (Score:1)
Re:The class: science for dummies (Score:2)
" I have far more important things to worry about."
This is all part of the attack of the Liberal Arts people. That they have some keen insight into human nature that those that study science do not. It is not just English but History, Sociology, and Philosophy that are in a clueless daze of self inspection. They have become nothing more than mental masturbation. You asked "Why do I care how much an English major impacts the world relative to science?" I
Re:The class: science for dummies (Score:1)
Re:The class: science for dummies (Score:2)
Re:The class: science for dummies (Score:1)
Re:The class: science for dummies (Score:1)
Re:The class: science for dummies (Score:1)
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:America's Downward Spiral (Score:1)
Really? I think "rest of the world" is overstating it a little bit. Have you had extensive exposure to foreign media or residents on a global basis to know that these issues have been resolved universally? Seems like we don't hear that much here in the U.S. about other countries social issues unless it involves people getting blown up. I don't really see
Re:America's Downward Spiral (Score:1)
Implications of MNT not BS hype (Score:2)
When anybody can make anything, virtually for free(1), they are then self-sufficient and truly liberated from the wage-slave supply-chain-gang. This "make anything
Re:Implications of MNT not BS hype (Score:2)
Re:Implications of MNT not BS hype (Score:2)
That's largely because the scarcity that matters is material, so while that's still a fact of life, many will want to create artificial scarcity in order to trade to put food on the table, and clothes on their children. But, once material scarcity becomes material abundance, the incentive for artificial scarcity is MUCH less.
However, mater
Re:Implications of MNT not BS hype (Score:2)
There will still be wheeling and dealing SOB's out there, until you can tell me there's a machine that can create a SAFE and delicious range of food products in a very short period of time. Food has always been the one scarcity that is not only real scarcity, but a life-and-death issue.
Jasin NataelRe:Implications of MNT not BS hype (Score:2)
Sorry, what do you mean? Living creatures replicate themselves but there are no general purpose programmable replicators in nature that I'm aware of.
Re:Implications of MNT not BS hype (Score:1)
Re:Implications of MNT not BS hype (Score:1)
Re:Implications of MNT not BS hype (Score:2)
Even assuming some post-scarcity robber barrons were hoarding every square inch of land and sea, you could still extract nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, and other elements directly from the atmosphere, and return them back when disassembling the old object.
A person doesn't require mass quantities of molecular feedstock, either. Even billions of people would only be using a fraction of the Earth's abundant mass as at any one time.
Understanding nano politics (part II) (Score:2)
Once nano takes off, people will likely be able to manufacture things in their homes, and there will be two types of industries.
One will see the entire purpose and meaning of the nano age as a tool to leverage their patnet holdings for unlimited growth and profit, extracting royality for every last thing that everybody creates in every private home. They will try to secure this "right" by force.
The other side will see the entire purpose and meaning of the nano age as an opportunity to provid
Talked to a nano researcher the other day (Score:2)
Apparently 1/4 of every dollar has to go to impact research, evaluating whether it will destroy the world.
I think Bill Joy has done more than his fair share of damage, this field of research is hamstrung by paranoia about the possibility of a grey goo which is impossible.
After all, Bacteria would LOVE to be a grey goo, eat everything, reproduce endlessly, destroy the world. That's really what bacteria are all about, they just can't manage it. So how in t
Re:Talked to a nano researcher the other day (Score:2)
After all, Bacteria would LOVE to be a grey goo, eat everything, reproduce endlessly, destroy the world. That's really what bacteria are all about, they just can't manage it. So how in the hell is mankind supposed to outdo several billion years of evolution's attempt to make grey goo.
That's because bacteria live in an ecosystem with natural
Seems like alot (Score:2)
my career advice (Score:1)
For example, most of electrical engineering is now nanotechnology. Microbiology is where most of the work in biology is being done.
Other schools (Score:1)
nano hype (Score:3, Insightful)
Can someone give some real examples... (Score:1)
Why nano weapons won't happen (Score:3, Informative)
For reasons which will become apparent as you read this I doubt that true nano scale weapons will ever exist. What could possibly be built are micro
scale robotic devices of a non self replicating type which could possibly be used as weapons. Let us find out how practical they might be.
Let us start by examining the effects of scaling on things. We'll start with my Nissan Maxima and reduce it in size by a factor of ten. Instead of being about 17 feet long the scaled car will be about 1.7 feet long. Instead of weighing about 3000 lbs it will weigh about 3 lbs. Why is that? The answer is that the mass of a scaled object is proportional to its volume - which goes as the cube of the dimensional ratio. Ten times as long, ten times as wide, ten times as high has 1000 times the volume.
The scaled engine would be 3 cc in displacement instead of 3000 cc. Instead of 222 Hp it would produce
However, the fuel consumption of the smaller vehicle is proportionally greater. Why? The smaller vehicle is one thousandth the weight but the frontal area of the vehicle - the size of which determines the drag - is one hundredth of that of the larger vehicle. Thus at the same speed the drag of the smaller vehicle is proportionally ten times as great as the larger vehicle.
The optimal speed of the smaller vehicle is lower than that of the larger vehicle. Because drag goes as the square of the velocity, one thousandth of
the fuel consumption will drive the smaller vehicle at a speed which is about 32% of the speed of the larger car and its range will also be about
32% of the full sized car's range.
If we tried to make a car scaled down by a factor of 100 its speed and range would both be only one tenth (square root of a scale factor of 100) that of a full size car. We are forced to conclude that the product of speed and range of any vehicle with an internal fuel supply will scale directly with
the scale factor.
For example reducing the size of a jet plane by a factor of 100 makes it fly at one tenth the speed and one tenth as far. By the time we scale to nano
sizes we have objects which won't go very far or very fast. A nano device is an exceptionally crappy weapon delivery system compared to a full sized device; it can only move slowly, and it can't go very far.
However there are other things which occur which would effect our attempt to simply scale an engine down in size. The first of these is the change in
heat loss. In simplest terms the rate of heat production is proportional to the volume of a heat source, which means that heat production scales with the cube of the scale factor, but heat loss is proportional to the surface area of the object which scales as the square of the scaling factor.
A smaller engine requires much less of a cooling system than a large engine does, if the engine is small enough it doesn't require a cooling system at all - it will lose heat naturally fast enough without one.
Because of the square - cube relationship for heat loss there is a minimum size flame which is possible. A small ball of flame loses heat faster than a large one. If a ball of flame is too small it can't produce enough heat from internal combustion to maintain its temperature above the ignition point, and the flame can't exist.
This means that if we try to scale our engine far enough it will refuse to run, it will lose heat too fast for the fuel to burn. Even making the engine out of heat resistive materials like ceramics only works to a certain size;
eventually the heat loss will keep things from burning.
This is part of the reason that biological cells use c
Re:Why nano weapons won't happen (Score:1)
Re:Why nano weapons won't happen (Score:2)
Just to name one example, there was Red Death, a.k.a. the Seven Minute Special, a tiny aerodynamic capsule that burst open after impact and released a thousand or so corpuscle-sized bodies, known colloquially as cookie-cutters, into the victim's bloodstream. It took about seven minutes for all of the blood in a typical person's body to recirculate, so after this interval the cookie-cutters w
nanotech is the next hacker / cracker paradise (Score:1)
Total disaster.
The end of the world as we know it.
THe sky is falling!
Univ of Florida (Score:1)
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:Nano not as exciting as one first thinks (Score:2)
The goal is to build lots of nanobots able to work with molecules directly.
The only way to build enough nanobots to be useful is self-assembly, but self-assembling in itself is not interesting.
It is also likely that self-assembling is only useful for step 0: with self-assembly you build a factory of nanobots, those nanobots are powerful but complex and not very efficient, so you use this nanofactory to build a specialised factory to produce e
Lame class, no MNT (Score:1)
The NNI promotes this kind of thinking. I call it 'Nanotechnology: By Chemists, For Chemists' because it shies away from the most powerful applications of molecular manufacturing in order to not offend the gray-haird 'experts' trying to defend their turf.
So what we're left with is buckyballs and other stuff we can already do with bulk processes. Yawn.
Plastics (Score:1)
NANO (Score:1)
A book about nanotech and society (Score:1)
The story is about a little girl, Gordona, who is thrown into a situation as the result of being exposed to advanced technology in the form of an escaped lab animal with a bloodstream full of microbots (based on nanotech, it will be a REALLY long time before we have true nanobots). She gets "infected".
While those near to Gordona struggle with the understanding of what happened to her, the corporation behind the research is
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.
A great many years ago (Score:2)
Representative quote nicked from wikipedia entry although he wrote quite a bit more than soundbites on the matter:
"A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them c
Re:Do they teach anything useful in university yet (Score:1)
The sources and readings were especially lame. For example, the only required book for the class was the 150-page SciAm hack job on nanotech. The readings had only one chapter from Engines of Creation and nothing from Nanosystems. Even the popular, non-technical