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Stakeholders in Nanotechnology Policy Ira M. Bennett The Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcome, Arizona State University. Temple, AZ, USA
A Google.com search under the key words “nanotechnology + implications” nets almost 70,000 hits, and a search for “nanotechnology + policy” will find you greater than 300,000 hits. Clearly, people are talking about these issues, but what are they saying that is useful? These discussions have expanded outside scientific journals, are progressing through the more industry specific literature and headed for the popular press. The beginning of this millennium has seen, government, venture capitalists, and increasingly corporations boosting their investment in Nanoscale Science and Engineering (NSE) research, aggressively promoting this research as the key to the next industrial revolution and a direct path to human betterment. At the same time, starting with Bill Joy’s seminal 2000 article (Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us April, 2000) other voices of alarm and concern have been calling for preventative actions. The growing cacophony of voices in the NSE debate thus comes from a variety of sources, ranging from governmental funding agencies, non-governmental organizations and academic research groups. Apart from a few extreme positions, the common theme is that “policy is needed”. Yet no process for connecting an evolving understanding of social, economic, and environmental implications of NSE to the policy process has yet emerged.
In this poster I will map out the positions and details of the major
interests and constituencies in
the NSE policy world, and their relations to various policy-making
fora. The overall picture is one of uncoordinated pursuit of
interest group agendas, with little
capacity for constructive
feedback into the policy process. I will suggest some alternative
approaches to organizing both research and policy making to take
advantage of what is known about NSE, capture new insights as they
emerge, and connect this learning to the policy process through what
Guston and Sarewitz (2002) have termed “Real-Time Technology
Assessment”.
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Presented at the
International Congress of Nanotechnology, November 7-10, 2004
San Francisco, USA
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