by Andrew Maynard | May 31, 2010 | Emerging Technology, Policy, Technology Innovation
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...
by Andrew Maynard | May 26, 2010 | Emerging Technology, Future, Policy, Risk, Synthetic Biology, Technology Innovation
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...
by Hilary Sutcliffe | May 25, 2010 | Ethics, Guest Post, Oversight, Synthetic Biology
A guest blog by Hilary Sutcliffe, Director of MATTER, a UK think tank which explores how new technologies can work for us all. The other day, I wrote a piece on the implications of synthetic biology where I suggested that we “need to place discussions on a...
by Andrew Maynard | May 22, 2010 | Synthetic Biology
Typical. One of the most anticipated technological breakthroughs in years hits the streets, and I’m completely off the web – holed up in an Italian hotel with no internet and no phone. I’m talking of course about J. Craig Venter’s team’s...
by Barbara Herr Harthorn | May 4, 2010 | Engagement, Guest Post, Nanotechnology
A guest blog by Barbara Herr Harthorn, Director of the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at the University of California Santa Barbara. A couple of weeks back, my colleague David Guston wrote here about engaging the public on nanotechnology. In his piece he gave...