UK Establishes Fragmented Nanopolicy

hlovy writes "The BBC has a piece on British Science Minister Lord Sainsbury's long-sought reaction to a yearlong Royal Society study on the environmental and societal implications of nanotechnology. I've written ad nauseam on the Royal Society report here, here and even for the Wall Street Journal here."

Comments

Just like government...

[bc90021]

...from the article:

"The UK government has responded to one major report into nanotechnologies by ordering another review."

"The Royal Society told the BBC News website it was encouraged by the government's commitment to research, but was disappointed that no extra funding was proposed for it."

The UK wants to be a world leader in nanotechnology, but they are bogging down the reports with reports on reports, and not providing funding. Looks like things will have to change if they want to reach their world-leadership goal!

Re:Just like government...

[EvilNight]

Problem is, it becomes something of an arms race. Just because you refrain, is no guarantee someone else will hold back. It's the opposite really; if the technology has some value, it'll be researched whereever it is possible to do so. Therefore, we're screwed... any technology that has potential benefits will be explored and realized by whoever can afford to do it, regardless of policy. The technology will simply move to the places where its continued development is not an issue.

This puts us in the unenviable position of trying to make sure the technologies that could cause the most harm are developed primarily in countries we can trust not to use them unwisely (mostly by fostering an environment that gives benefits to that technology's development that cannot be found elsewhere). It also requires us to not drag our feet on any ethical issues that arise with technology, because the technology will not wait for us to become comfortable with it before being used.

Nanotech, in particular, has some very lethal potential failure models that could result in world-altering problems (Ecophagy.) The kinds of problems that this failed nanotech could create can only be effectively combatted by equally advanced nanotech, so again we need the technology itself to properly guard against its own use.

Usually, the argument of "should we" when applied to technology ends up being an ineffective sidebar that has no relevance on its development. We will. We can't stop ourselves. Sometimes the "should we" has beneficial consequences, however. For example, the USA has about a hundred less pressurized/boiling water fission reactors because of it, and this is good, because the modern designs for integral and accelerator driven models are far cleaner and safer than those models; almost to the point of making fusion power irrelevant for the near future. If we build nuclear today, it will be better than if we had done it in the 70's. This is a direct result of the "should we" triggered by three mile island.