British Breakthrough Highlights Nanotechnology Policy Gap

January 26, 2007 | Source: KurzweilAI

An urgent need for new nanotechnology policy is highlighted by breakthrough results from a recent British government funded project, according to a statement by the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN).

In the one-week “IDEAS Factory on the Software Control of Matter” project, sponsored by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, scientists produced three “ground-breaking research proposals that bring the nanofactory concept closer to reality.”

The goals of the IDEAS Factory project were to make progress toward the vision of a “matter compiler” that could build atomically precise products under computer control. The forward-looking proposals coming from the IDEAS Factory should expand expectations as to what’s possible at the nanoscale, and hold the potential to accelerate the development of nanofactory systems, CRN said.

“If, as expected, nanofactories can be used to build more nanofactories, then the impacts on society may be extreme,” said Mike Treder, CRN Executive Director. “From remarkable advances in health care, environmental repair, and poverty reduction, to severe economic disruption, political upheaval, and the possibility of a new arms race: all these implications and more must be understood. Now it appears that our time to prepare is getting shorter.”