From the category archives:

Emerging Technology

Rethinking nanotechnology – responding to a request for Information on the US Nanotechnology Strategic Plan

by Andrew Maynard August 30, 2010

Back in July, the US National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) posted a Request For Information in the Federal Register for input to the next NNI strategic plan – to be published later this year.  The closing date for comments was a couple of weeks ago now.  I got mine in in the nick of time.  My [...]

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Is nanotechnology suffering from “silent rave” syndrome?

by Andrew Maynard August 26, 2010

I couldn’t resist finishing the August in the Archives series with this piece on “silent rave” syndrome, which I am sad to say still seems to inflict the emerging technologies community! Originally posted October 5 2008 The silent rave might seem a rather bizarre social phenomenon; a group of strangers converging in a public place [...]

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Value-added nanotechnology

by Andrew Maynard August 24, 2010

The more the debate over what precisely nanotechnology is goes on, the more inclined I am to think that it’s something of an illusion.  Sure, nanoscale science is real.  And there are clearly technologies that exploit this.  But are they nanotechnologies, or are they simply clever uses of science, technology and engineering across multiple length [...]

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Smart science for the 21st century

by Andrew Maynard August 3, 2010

In February 2008, the National Academy of Engineering launched 14 grand challenges for engineering.  These were the inspiration for this post, but rather than focus on the challenges themselves, I thought it would be interesting to consider how science and technology are going to help address them.  Over two years on, the ideas I was [...]

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The safety of nanotechnology-based sunscreens – some reflections

by Andrew Maynard July 18, 2010

A few weeks ago, I set Friends of the Earth a challenge – What is your worst case estimate of the human health risk from titanium dioxide and/or zinc oxide nanoparticles in sunscreens? The challenge came out of an article from FoE on nanomaterials and sunscreens, which I subsequently critiqued on 2020 Science.  Georgia Miller [...]

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The Global Redesign Initiative and the need for up-front investment in sustainable technology innovation

by Andrew Maynard May 31, 2010

The global financial crisis of 2008-09 laid bare the inadequacies of global systems in an increasingly interdependent world, and highlighted the need to rethink the “architecture of global cooperation” – the idea at the core of the World Economic Forum Global Redesign Initiative.  As the World Economic Forum publishes and discusses the outcomes of this [...]

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As scientists create the first synthetic cell, the future safety of synthetic biology will depend on sound science

by Andrew Maynard May 26, 2010

Last week’s announcement from the J. Craig Venter Institute that scientists had created the first-ever synthetic cell was a profoundly significant point in human history, and marked a turning point in our quest to control the natural world.  But the ability to use this emerging technology wisely is already being dogged by fears that we [...]

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White House plans a new government policy coordination group on emerging technologies

by Andrew Maynard April 10, 2010

According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) plans to form a new interagency group on emerging technologies, including nanotechnology and synthetic biology.  The announcement was make by Tom Kalil, deputy director for policy at OSTP, at a government-organized workshop on Risk [...]

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Cultivating ingenuity & humility in an increasingly complex world

by Andrew Maynard April 6, 2010

To coincide with my move to the University of Michigan, Seed Magazine has just published a series of ten questions and answers on what I do and what motivates me as a scientist.  You can read how well I fared (or didn’t, as the case may be) with questions as diverse as “How do you [...]

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Why we need technology ratchets

by Andrew Maynard March 7, 2010

A lot of things keep me up at night – everything from the trivial (“did I remember to brush my teeth?”) to the to the profound (“does it matter?” ).  But recently, I’ve been plagued more than usual in the wee small hours by the challenge of developing sustainable and resilient technologies. Blame it on [...]

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Nanotechnology and cancer treatment: Do we need a reality check?

by Andrew Maynard March 2, 2010

Cancer treatment has been a poster-child for nanotechnology for almost as long as I’ve been involved with the field.  As far back as in 1999, a brochure on nanotechnology published by the US government described future “synthetic anti-body-like nanoscale drugs or devices that might seek out and destroy malignant cells wherever they might be in [...]

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Getting from A to B: Technology innovation, global challenges and the Davos process

by Andrew Maynard January 29, 2010

There’s been something of a theme running through my day at The World Economic Forum Meeting in Davos today – getting from A to B.  The “A” in this case is technology innovation, and the “B” the problems we hope it will solve – the big ones like world hunger and disease, as well as [...]

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Owning the carbon cycle

by Andrew Maynard January 28, 2010

This evening I was invited to talk to a group of industry leaders on alternative solutions to the “carbon” problem at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos.  The brief was to be one of three “firestarters” – a bit of a dangerous one if you ask me.  Given the informal setting (this was [...]

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Davos 2010 – first impressions

by Andrew Maynard January 27, 2010

Having just got back to the hotel at some unseemly hour (at least according to my body clock) from the first full day of meetings at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, I’m trying my best to be disciplined and write some of my impressions up.  As it’s late, I’ll be brief:

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Davos 2010 – Got the mittens, where’s the snow?

by Andrew Maynard January 26, 2010

I‘m sitting here at Dulles Airport waiting for my flight to Zurich and the annual World Economic Forum Meeting in Davos, so I thought I’d dash off a quick blog.  If you’re on the ball, you will realize that by arriving tomorrow, I will be missing most of the first day of the meeting.  This [...]

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From Davos with love

by Andrew Maynard January 24, 2010

This week I’m heading out to the World Economic Forum jamboree in Davos, Switzerland.  I’d like to play this cool – as if rubbing shoulders with politicians, business leaders and celebs is something I do all the time.  But the reality is that this is my first time to what is probably the biggest annual [...]

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No Small Matter – a taste of the nanoscale

by Andrew Maynard January 18, 2010

To accompany the review just posted of Felice Frankel and George Whitesides’ book “No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale” the authors kindly allowed me to post this series of excerpts.  What I wanted to capture here was the synergy between the images and the prose – and how together they pull the reader in. [...]

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No Small Matter – A connoisseur’s guide to delicate work

by Andrew Maynard January 18, 2010

How do you write a book about something few people have heard off, and less seem interested in?  The answer, it seems, is to write about something else. Felice Frankel and George Whitesides have clearly taken this lesson to heart. Judged by the cover alone, their new book “No Small Matter:  Science at the Nanoscale” [...]

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UK House of Lords scrutinizes nanotechnology and food

by Andrew Maynard January 7, 2010

Back in February of 2009, the UK House of Lords Science and Technology Committee launched an inquiry into the use of nanotechnology in food products and the food industry.  Chaired by Lord Krebs (the son of Hans Adolf Krebs – best known for describing the mechanisms of energy uptake and release in cells), a small [...]

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Ten emerging technology trends to watch over the next decade

by Andrew Maynard December 25, 2009

Ten years ago at the close of the 20th century, people the world over were obsessing about the millennium bug – an unanticipated glitch arising from an earlier technology.  I wonder how clear it was then that, despite this storm in what turned out to be a rather small teacup, the following decade would see [...]

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Reversing the Technological Dilemma

by Guest December 17, 2009

By George Kimbrell, International Center for Technology Assessment, and the Center for Food Safety A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series Andrew asked us to write about “how technological innovation should contribute to life in the 21st century.”  Technological innovation is often blindly referred to as “progress.”  The question is — [...]

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Ecology and Nanotechnology

by Guest December 17, 2009

By Richard Worthington, Loka Institute A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series My first scholarly engagement with environmental politics was an honor’s thesis written while I was an undergraduate at Berkeley in the early 1970s.  Back then, the term “environmentalist” was frequently deployed to profile someone held to be a naïve, [...]

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A new era of responsible innovation

by Guest December 16, 2009

By Richard Owen, University of Westminster, UK A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series This article was first published in Planet Earth, an award-winning magazine funded and published by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).  It is reproduced here with permission from Planet Earth and Richard Owen. In 1956 one [...]

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Beyond safety: some bigger questions about new technologies

by Guest December 15, 2009

By Georgia Miller, Friends of the Earth Australia A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series The promise that a given new technology will deliver environmentally benign electricity too cheap to meter, end hunger and poverty, or cure disease is very seductive. That is why the claims are made with many emerging [...]

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Biopolitics for the 21st Century

by Guest December 14, 2009

By Marcy Darnovsky, PhD, Associate Executive Director of the Center for Genetics and Society A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series Much appreciation is due to Andrew for his courage in soliciting “alternative perspectives” on technology innovation and life in the 21st century.  I can’t help but observe that his nervousness [...]

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Science and Technology Innovation – looking to the future

by Andrew Maynard December 9, 2009

The final part of a series on rethinking science and technology for the 21st century Nine months ago, I embarked on an ambitious project to flesh out the ideas presented in a seminar given at the James Martin 21st Century School at the University of Oxford.  The seminar was titled ““Rethinking science and technology innovation: [...]

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Completing the circle: Coupling science & technology outputs to inputs

by Andrew Maynard December 7, 2009

Part 9 of a series on rethinking science and technology for the 21st century Writing about completing the circle of science and technology policy at the start of the Copenhagen climate summit seems particularly fitting.  Although the climate change context was far from my mind when I started this series, it stands as a stark [...]

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