National Citizen’s Technology Forum held on nanotechnology

A while back Senior Associate Stuart Scott let us know that he had been selected to participate in a National Citizen’s Technology Forum process on nanotechnology, sponsored by Arizona State and University of North Carolina, among other schools. Presumably this is funded by the social science budget of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative, via NSF. Regarding topics covered, Stuart commented: “Their interest seems to be transhumanism, nanotechnology as applied to augmentation, and ‘public policy’ implications such as how should ‘we’ allocate things when not all can afford them.”

He sent the URL for notes on interests and concerns from the human enhancement policy discussions: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~pwhmds/notes.html
and the final reports: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~pwhmds/final_reports.html

Stuart commented:

I thought that Arizona’s was one of the better and that Wisconson and New Hampshire were about as expected. What, if any, impact they will have is open to speculation. From the response the project operators made, this technique might be used more in the future. It was a part of the experiment as well as the topic.

If you have thoughts on the process or reports, we’d like to hear them. Just comment on this blog post. —Christine