Nanotechnology and Society?

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."

Comments

Country?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are similar experiences going on across the country?

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

[MyLongNickName]

This section of the syllabus seems to capture what the course is about the most concisely.

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

[Frumious Wombat]

Actually, *The Market* did not determine the fate of Nuclear Power, an underinformed public, led by demagogues on both sides, couldn't tell Reactors from Bombs and therefore litigated the industry into submission. Before that, the type of reactors to be used was determined in part by military desires (capable of producing plutonium), not by economic factors (thorium, for instance, which is more plentiful but doesn't produce divertable byproducts).

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.

Understanding nano politics

[argoff]

Politics 101,

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

[sakusha]

This class represents everything that is wrong with modern college education. Some poor physics teacher is stuck spending hisr time giving "Science and Society" classes to students seeking an easy A to fulfill their core science requirements. What ever happened to teaching real science classes involving math and physics, instead of "soft science" classes involving primarily politics and social issues?

Re:The class: science for dummies

[Carnage Pants]

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:The class: science for dummies

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're saying is that English majors should be ignorant of Math and Science, they don't have to bother with such things.

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.

America's Downward Spiral

[Carnage Pants]

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:Do they teach anything useful in university yet

[dballanc]

If you read the article you might notice this is a social studies course, not a science course. I suppose you also think that requiring a certain number of humanities courses to earn a bachelor of science from a 4 year college is useless too?

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

[mako1138]

"Nano" is getting redundant, because most technical fields have an interest in getting to smaller and smaller scales. Whether it's electronics or chemistry, things are going nano. It's not like you can major in nanotechnology alone and expect to handle anything in the nanoscale. Realistically, you have to choose a field of concentration.

Nano not as exciting as one first thinks

[typical]

My first thoughts on nano were probably the same sci-fi ideas that everyone else has -- self-assembling nanobots could build just about anything, and do anything.

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.