News from the UK-based Guardian should warm the hearts of every anti-technologist and conspiracy-minded individual and group. It turns out that the military “has a disproportionate influence on science and technology in modern Britain,” according to a reportentitled “Soldiers in the Laboratory,” published by Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR).
The report makes particular mention of nanotechnology. While currently nanotechnology is finding applications in non-threatening work such as “smart” uniforms, according to the report, in fifteen years nanotechnology will result in “a new generation of nuclear weapons” and “the same research applied to chemical or biological warfare could end in “entirely new threats”.”
Ouch…the fear mongering around nanotechnology is really reaching a feverish pitch. While we haven’t read the entire report, we were intrigued at the number of years they decided to go out into the future to get really scary: fifteen years. Our guess is that twenty years wasn’t scary enough, but in a mere ten years someone might remember the doomsday report and if it turned out to be (ahem) inaccurate, it might be seen as, well, fear mongering.
But with bad comes good, we always say. Take a look at the recent research being done at the University of Toronto in developing infrared nanoparticles. While the researchers are mainly targeting night-vision applications (sounds kind of like a miliary application), it may also make polymer solar cells more efficient.
So, seeing the world in black and white, killing people is bad, and reducing CO2 emissions is good. Now, if only separating the spectrum of uses of nanotechnologies was that easy…