Unifying Ethical Concepts

This chapter considers nanotechnology innovation, particularly in the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) in the USA, and the emergence in the NNI of fundamental unifying societal and ethical ideas that provide a basis for approaches to other emerging (and convergent) technologies. In it I employ the term “societal science” to reference these ideas and practices that emerge from the nanotechnology case and have the potential to enable the essential goal of converging technologies – that of harmonizing science and society. The chapter begins with my candidate list of the core societal implications that have emerged across the very broad sweep of nanotechnology applications. I then take up in turn each of the five basic principles for convergence cited by Roco, Bainbridge, Tonn, and Whitesides in the CKTS report (Convergence of knowledge, technology and society: beyond convergence of nano-bio-info-cognitive technologies. Springer, Dordrecht/Heidelberg/New York/London, 2013) in relation to what we have learned about societal and ethical implications of nanotechnologies. What follows is a brief assessment of the question of how much nanotechnologies’ “societal science” can generalize to other emergent technologies and also scale up in convergence. The larger purpose of this piece thus is to consider how applicable what we have learned from the case of nanotechnology in society will be to fulfilling the fundamental goal of CKTS, defined as “transformative actions to improve societal outcomes.”