Liberal Arts Services

Implications of Civic Engagement

A great deal of scholarly work has organized societal implications of nanotechnology by future themes. For example, Mihail Roco and William Bainbridge of the National Science Foundation summarized a December 2003 workshop where leading representatives of industry, government, and scientific and engineering disciplines “shared information and analyzed the increasing societal importance of nanotechnology.” The authors organized their summary into ten “transformative themes” for which the experts participating in the workshop were able to produce both analyses and recommendations:

Productivity and equity
Future economic scenarios
Quality of life
Future social scenarios
Converging technologies
National security and space exploration
Ethics, governance, risk, and uncertainty
Public policy, legal, and international aspects
Interaction with the public
Education and human development

The authors distill these themes to three basic areas. The first five “primarily concern the benefits … and problems” of nanotechnology, while national security and space exploration are combined based on their likely use of similar underlying technical innovations. The governance, public policy, and public interaction themes draw on common topics such as “investment and risk governance… including ethical and legal issues, policy-making institutions, and appropriate ways to include the general public in the decision process.” The education and human development theme points to the fact that “without enough well-trained scientists and engineers, we will not be able to take advantage of the benefits of nanotechnology. Without a widespread, accurate awareness of the basic facts of nanoscience, the public and policy-makers will not have the knowledge to make informed decisions about nanotechnology and its products.”

STS Civic Forum The ten initial themes, as well as the three broader, distilled topic areas identified by the authors relate to many professions and disciplines, ranging from the science and engineering disciplines to the social and human sciences. Perhaps more importantly, these themes also relate to each other, in part on the basis of these professions and disciplines. If this is the case, then a purely thematic view of nanotechnology and its implications may fail to capture subtle relationships among areas of concern. For example, the quality of life for certain individuals or groups may be affected both by future economic possibilities as well as productivity and equity concerns. If nanotechnology creates future wealth by increasing or decreasing productivity for certain kinds of work, for example, how are costs and benefits to be allocated? Similarly, public policy and legal aspects may be affected by new technical capabilities for which existing law has no precedent.

These thematic discussions are an important starting point, for several reasons. First, thematic discussions provide a means for participants in the dialogue to relate to one another, while maintaining the deep knowledge and perspective provided by individual disciplines. Most themes are sufficiently broad to find a relationship to professions and disciplines, though the degree of relationship may vary.

Second, thematic discussions provide a means to ensure coverage of a wide variety of societal concerns. By way of analogy, some technical disciplines employ “coverage models” to ensure the completeness of new technologies against both their required characteristics and planned testing. Responsibility for ensuring the completeness of themes presumably rests with all participants in the dialogue.

New issues originating from a given area of professional expertise can surface within the context of existing themes, themes themselves may take on new contours, and new themes presumably can be proposed. Consider that the themes covered by Roco and Bainbridge do not directly reference historical topics, though one can easily envision historians making important contributions to many if not all of the themes listed by the authors. A historian might argue that history or historicity should be an independent theme. Nanotechnology already exists, after all. It has a history that can be studied on its own, or referenced in relation to other histories. Historical aspects of nanotechnology will only grow with time.

Third, thematic discussions can be evaluated by a variety of criteria appropriate to a given field or point of view. Another way to say this is that thematic discussions, if appropriately formed, do not skew discussion in a single direction, instead allowing for a variety of interpretations and points of view. That the first theme involves both potential benefits and problems of nanotechnology is critical, since a theme that involved only benefits or problems would not be conducive to discussion.

Given the interdisciplinary nature of the challenge of addressing societal implications of nanotechnology, as well as the need to involve public stakeholders in the discussion, ongoing perceptions of the quality of discussion themes is critical. Professional content, completeness, and openness are important attributes of productive dialogue. And constructive discussion of these themes may occur within or outside professional or scientific disciplines. Indeed, the last theme in Roco and Bainbridge’s work, education and human development, seems to imply that developing quality information about these themes is a prerequisite to both professional and public understanding of the societal implications of nanotechnology. A catalog of societal implications, then, seems a fitting metaphor. The contents of such a catalog are likely to be produced by a variety of sources and specialties.