The growing trend for public workshops on nanotechnology has spread to Melbourne, where CSIRO, the Australian research funding organisation recently held a citizens panel. Coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the worlds worst industrial accident, involving nothing more sinister than chemistry and a faulty valve, it is no surprise that there is concern over the release of new materials into the environment, although this concern should not be directed at nanotechnology alone.
The panel also expressed broader concerns that nanotechnology might cause further invasions of privacy and exacerbate the divide between rich and poor. We are often puzzled why nanotechnology is singled out as the culprit in both these areas. While nanotechnology can make smaller more sensitive detectors, these have already come down several orders of magnitude in size due to advances in semiconductor manufacturing, and other semiconductor technologies have given them the ability to communicate wirelessly. Similarly, the divide between rich and poor is more the result of the global political and economic climate over the past five hundred years than of nanotechnology.