Communicating Nanotech to the Public

“In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles – micro-robots – has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive.
“It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour.
“Every attempt to destroy it has failed.
“And we are the prey.” – introduction to Michael Crichton’s 2002 novel, Prey

To the popular media, nanotechnology often means something futuristic and frightening.

In 2007 researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany found, in a computer simulation, that a dust cloud of nanoparticles will form into DNA-like helical structures when immersed in an ionized gas. This dust behaves almost frighteningly like the fundamental chemical processes that make life possible. The dust forms a complex series of small and wide sections, and can even copy this information to another dust strand -- just like DNA. Scientists stress that these minute dust particles are not life. . . . But they are close. Research is going on to see if this scenario exists in nature -- such as in Saturn's rings -- or if it can be reproduced. (NASA)

In the news and in popular fiction, nanotechnology often takes the form of the outlandish, dangerous or far-off. From nano-powered medical systems on “Star Trek,” to nano-designed cyborgs on “The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” to the media coverage surrounding Prince Charles’ comments about nanotechnology, word of nanotechnology has been reaching the public. Yet studies have shown that public understanding of nanotechnology stops short of scientific competency.

“Our country has a legacy of being simultaneously fascinated by the products of new science and also turned off by the nitty-gritty of the real science behind them,” said Michael Bennett of Vassar College.

Bennett is an expert on nanotechnology, and teaches several courses dealing with the social issues of emerging science and technology.

According to Bennett, the depiction of nanotechnology in the media is a problem because the power of science and technology is alluring but also mysterious. New technologies are desired but their inner-workings are not commonly viewed as something understandable to the public at large.

“It’s been so entangled with science fiction and science fictional tropes that it has been very difficult for social scientists and scholars to effectively educate the public,” Bennett said. “It’s irresponsible to just take these scenarios at face value.”

One of the most famous and terrifying theoretical byproducts of nanotechnology is what has come to be known as “grey goo,” said James Hughes, bioethicist and sociologist at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. He is the executive director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies – a U.S.-based non-profit company purporting to promote the ethical use of technology to enhance human capabilities.

Another "sci-fi" dream of nanotechnology is to develop a method for coaxing stem cells to morph into whatever human organ might happen to be needed. This is an image of one such stem cell, which is skewered by dozens of tiny electrodes on a substrate. The idea is that certain electrical signals, delivered by these silicon nanowires, could trigger different reactions in the cell or deliver genetic material. So far, developing entire organs is a far-off dream. But this sort of nano-scale configuration might be able to someday get scientists there. (Berkeley Lab).

“This is the idea that self-replicating nanites or nano-robots could start using the environment as food and consume the entire planet,” he said.

K. Eric Drexler first brought the “grey goo problem” to the public’s attention in his landmark book Engines of Creation in 1986. In theory, molecular manufacturing in nanotechnology could produce minute technologies able to mimic animal biology, he reasoned. Human beings could build molecules able to replicate and reproduce on their own – just like cells replicating DNA and then dividing. Drexler hypothesized that if the wrong reactions were initiated, these synthetic beings could outcompete real biological organisms, run wild and leave planet Earth a wasteland.

Drexler underscored the unlikelihood of this scenario in the book and in his later writings, but the grey goo problem has continued to captivate minds.

“It’s unrealistic, but this sort of scenario is very often the first thing people hear about dealing with nanotechnology,” Hughes said.

Michael Crichton’s 2002 novel Prey depicts a grey-goo type scenario.

In the book, a swarm of nanometer-sized robots goes rogue. It begins to feed on human beings and evolve the ability to bend people to its will. All of this is depicted as the end result of researchers initiating an experiment allowing these tiny materials to grow and adapt without direct human intervention.

In 2004, British headlines read “Prince fears grey goo nightmare” following Prince Charles’ attempt to bring the risks of nanotechnology to the public’s attention. The Prince later wrote that media attention surrounding his efforts misrepresented his concerns by linking them to science fiction.

Self-replicating processes are theoretically real, Hughes said. But the uninformed fears surrounding things like grey goo are keeping the public from asking the questions that really matter.

Just a bunch of gears and a chain . . . maybe from the inside of a mechanical clock, right? Wrong. With the distance between chain links at only 50 microns -- less than the width of a human hair -- this microelectromechanical machine is arguably the smallest "micro-machine" yet made. It is imaginable, certainly by science fiction authors, that such a device could power super-advanced robots. However, technology is still quite far behind the imagination. This MEM is still tens or hundreds of times larger than a nanobot would be, and certainly is not self-replicating. (Sandia National Labs image).

Technologies like grey goo, or result brain-enhancing nanochips, or nano-robots all technically fall under the heading of nanotechnology, he said. But these technologies are decades or even centuries away – if they are even possible. The real questions the public should be asking are about nanotechnologies that are already here, or almost here.

According to Nigel Cameron, director of the Institute on Nanotechnology and Society at Chicago’s Kent College, the public needs to be asking which nano products might be toxic, what policy safeguards are in place and what sort of social impacts might be expected from nanotechnology.

“Since these things aren’t being asked, this suggests strongly that the public is uninformed,” he said. “They don’t know how to ask them.

“It’s hard to predict what’s going to happen,” Cameron said. “So the knee-jerk reaction is fear.”

“Who controls your Nano Futures? . . . Nano Futures is an experiment in creating social engagement around anticipatory governance of nanotechnology. The futuristic scenes we present are extrapolations from actual current nanotechnology developments. The technical plausibility of each scene has been vetted by scientists working in nanoscale research.” – introduction to the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University’s “Nano Futures” Web-based experiment.

Can we know what nanotechnology means in the future? Perhaps not.

For good or for ill – thanks to the writings of Drexler and others – American society is stuck with the term “nanotechnology.” It is a term that applies to hundreds of areas of scientific inquiry and has already been affixed to hundreds of consumer products.

And it is also a term that continues to evade widespread public understanding.

According to many scientists, engineers, social theorists and policy-makers nanotechnology will soon be everywhere – from the clothes we wear, to the food we eat, to the electronics in our homes, to the medicine that keeps us alive.

But since early this decade – when federal funding mechanisms were first put in place – public awareness of nanotechnology has flat-lined.

Lessons from artificial intelligence, genetically modified organisms, nuclear energy and now even the early problems of nanotechnology have all suggested the importance of involving the public in education and policy-making early, said Michael Bennett of Vassar College. Because of this, some funding is going to education.

However, studies have shown that the message is not reaching the public.

These efforts continue to try to educate by avoiding the hard science, Bennett said. Many institutions – such as the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at ASU, which is funded as an arm of the National Science Foundation’s outreach program – are focusing on issues not necessarily meaningful to nanotechnology today, according to Bennett.

“We should be educating about effects with some sort of bearing on current technological arrangements,” he said.

Nanotechnology is revealing a growing problem endemic to all science policy, he said. This is the difficulty of making democracy work with complex science.

The science may be tough. And the term may be tricky. But the impacts may be so huge that everyone has a stake.

But the trouble may purely be communication.

“We need to get policy-makers and scientists to tell better stories,” Bennett said. “This is the only way to enhance democracy.

“Unless we educate better, we can’t hope to dodge all the risks.”

Related Sites

• nanoparticle: internet encyclopedia article
• Michael Crichton: author's homepage
• Prey: Nanotechnology Now critique of Prey
• nanotechnology: National Nanotechnology Initiative's definition
• Star Trek: official site
• Sarah Connor Chronicles: official site
• Prince Charles: BBC article
• public understanding: NCF article
• trope: internet encyclopedia definition
• grey goo: Center for Responsible Nanotechnology article
• nano-robots: HowStuffWorks article
• molecular manufacturing: Institute for Molecular Manufacturing definition
• brain enhancement: google books excerpt from William Sims Bainbridge's controversial book

Further Information for Students or Professionals

• Michael Bennett: professional Web page
• Vassar College: university homepage
• James Hughes: professional profile
• Trinity College: university homepage
• Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies: institute's homepage
• K. Eric Drexler: professional homepage
• Nigel Cameron: Cameron's blog
• Institute on Nanotechnology and Society: center's homepage
• Kent College: university homepage
• Center for Nanotechnology in Society: center's Web site
• Nano Futures: scenarios and discussion

Selected Publications

1. "Nanoethics Wake; or, A Young Discipline's Illustrative Priming" (In Progress)
2. "A Nexus of Law and Technology: Analysis and Postsecondary Implications of A.V." et al. v. iParadigms. Journal of Student Conduct Administration (forthcoming)
3. "Ethics." book section in Fundamentals of Engineering, M. Potter (ed.), Meridian Press, 2008.
4. "Does Existing Law Fail to Address Nanotechnoscience?" IEEE/Technology and Science Magazine, winter 2004.

Comments