Societal Impacts of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology
The emergence of nanotechnologies is challenging social scientists, including anthropologists, to synthesize new ways of studying and understanding the impacts of technology on human societies. Nanotechnology not only reflects a completely new type of science, but science done in new ways across previously impermeable boundaries and conceptual territories. Social scientists are being asked to respond to questions from natural scientists and the "general public" about how best to continue to innovate while ensuring public welfare, and how to minimize unintended negative consequences of nanotechnologies. In an era of post-industrial environmental crises and hard won insights about the complexities of generalizing about human cultures, many citizens and scientists are speaking to the issues of relationships between society and technology. Members of human societies have a well-documented diversity of world views based on cultural belief systems and local ecologies of knowledge. This includes different measures of 'truth' and what counts as knowledge as well as how readily it can be acquired or shared.