Nanotechnology
The Social and Ethical Issues

Technology and Society

Technology is a thoroughly social phenomenon. Technologies emerge from society. They are made possible and encouraged by society—e.g., through social valuing, public funding and intellectual property policies. They are implemented in and disseminated through society; they are also sometimes prohibited, resisted or rejected by society. They alter society. Indeed, without technology it is difficult to conceive of society at all or, at least, to conceive of a society such as ours with complex and evolving cultures constituted by accumulated knowledge, traditions, practices, institutions and organizations. Technology shapes every aspect of our lives—the places we inhabit, the ways we interact, how we do our work (and the work that we do), our forms of recreation, our institutional arrangements and how we organize our days and our lives.

This understanding of the relationship between technology and society militates against the naïve view of technology as simply what we create to solve problems and overcome barriers i.e., that we find a need for it, create it, use it and control it (except, of course, for the occasional unanticipated side effects, which are best handled by further technological inventiveness). Not only is technology inseparable from society, it shapes us as much as we shape it. Thus, the relationship between technology and society is deeply value laden.

Ethics and the Functions of Government

Ethics, in its most basic sense, concerns how we ought and ought not) to lead our lives. Because technology structures our experiences and shapes how we live, it has enormous ethical significance. The functions of government intersect with the ethical and value dimensions of technology in several ways:

• Science and technology policy and funding involve decisions about what ends should receive priority and how resources should be allocated in pursuit of those ends. This is evident in domains as diverse as energy policy (e.g., the balance of efficiency and production and the distribution of energy sources), intellectual property policy and research funding (from particle physics to entomology). In each case, the policy is intended to accomplish certain goals rather than some others. Its justification therefore depends on certain goals being valued more highly than their alternatives. Decisions about priorities are based on value judgments.
• Regulation of science and technology is intended to accomplish something that is thought to be worthwhile and that justifies any associated costs. Regulation has power, control, oversight and responsibility
  dimensions and often involvesallocating burdens and benefits. All of these are characteristic of ethical issues and decisions. This is evident in domains as diverse as facilities permitting (e.g., nuclear power plants and waste-transfer stations), setting research limits (e.g., human subjects research and reproductive cloning), risk management (e.g., workplace safety and environmental pollution) and technology use (e.g., privacy protection and non-therapeutic use of human growth hormone). Regulation, like policy, has ineliminable value components.
• Government can support research on, raise awareness of and promote responsiveness to social and ethical issues associated with technology. The most prominent case of this in the United States has been the Ethical, Legal, and Societal Implications component of the Human Genome Project. Supported by 3–5 percent of the project’s funding, this component catalyzed the field of bioethics by creating a cadre of professional ethicists and raising the salience of several ethical issues associated with genomics—e.g., the possibility of genetic screening by employers and insurance companies and protection of the confidentiality of genetic information. Government can also obscure social and ethical issues associated with technology. This has been the case with genetically modified crops, where inadequate government capacity (with respect to oversight, regulatory design and meaningful public participation in decision making, for example) has resulted in substantial economic, social and technological costs.

Although social and ethical issues associated with science and technology do not begin and end with government, government is not a neutral observer. Government functions and actors, from the local to the federal level and across all branches of government, respond to, engage with and act upon values and ethical issues associated with science and technology. This can be done effectively (as some have argued is the case with the Human Genome Project and embryonic stem cell research) or not (as some have argued is the case with genetically modified crops and nuclear power). How government engages these issues has substantial ethical, social, economic and technological implications.

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