Nanotechnology is a technology that enables materials at microscopic scales to exhibit new properties, and is used in a variety of industries every day. However, rapid advances in nanotechnology can raise social and ethical concerns, including potential toxicity, military imbalances, and the socialization of surveillance. A careful approach is needed to advance this technology safely and ethically.
When most people hear the word “nano,” they tend to think of something very small. Technically, nano is a prefix that means one billionth of a meter. A nanometer is the size of three to four atoms, or to put it into a more mundane context, it’s one-eighty-thousandth the thickness of a human hair, or a soccer ball inside the Earth. The nanometer-scale world is governed by completely different laws than the physical world we experience every day. For example, the surface of a substance that we can feel with our hands will appear completely different at the nanoscale, and its properties will be completely different.
The science that studies the unusual properties and phenomena of nanomaterials is called “nanoscience,” and the technology that uses nanoscience to make materials and parts that are necessary for our daily lives and make our daily lives more convenient is called “nanotechnology. The essence of nanoscience is to understand new phenomena that occur at such small scales and develop innovative technologies through it. The path to commercialization of these technologies is a long one, and new challenges arise at each stage. For example, there is still uncertainty about how nanotechnology, which only manifests itself under certain conditions in the laboratory, will behave in the real world.
In everyday life, a centimeter (cm) is a small unit, but in nanoscale terms, it is a very large unit. As mentioned above, when a material is shrunk to the nanoscale, it develops unique properties that are not present at larger sizes. Specifically, it may become stronger or more electrically conductive, change color, or become catalytic. These changes in properties are due to the different interactions between atoms and molecules that occur at the nanoscale. For example, gold nanoparticles change color depending on their size, and silver nanoparticles exhibit new properties such as stronger antibacterial effects. Harnessing these properties opens up the possibility of developing innovative products in a variety of industries.
Nanotechnology is already used in everyday life. It is used in chemical materials, automotive machinery, electronics, telecommunications, environmental energy, and much more. Familiar examples include dust masks made of nanofibers, sunscreens made of nanoparticles, ultra-light laptops, QLED displays, exhaust systems for cars, and filters for water purifiers. These products are already deeply embedded in our lives, and we can see that many of the products we use are products of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is also a key factor in the development of new materials, playing an important role in creating lighter and stronger materials to replace or complement existing materials.
Nanotechnology has been nicknamed the “alchemy of the 21st century” and is considered a breakthrough technology because it can change the bonding structure of atoms and molecules to create new materials by harnessing the new properties of these materials. Nanotechnology can be used to artificially create properties that cannot be found in nature, which can lead to breakthroughs in a variety of industries. However, nanotechnology is more than just a technological advancement; it can also bring with it social and ethical issues, as we must consider the risks as well as the promise of this technology.
But as nanoscientist Andrew Meynard said during a 2008 House hearing on the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative Amendments Act, “Moving into the future of nanotechnology is like diving underwater with your eyes closed.” The New York Times, in its list of the “Top 10 Disasters That Will Doom Humanity,” named nanotechnology, along with climate change and genetic modification, as one of the technologies that will doom the planet. Therefore, we need to think deeply about the risks and social issues involved in the development of nanotechnology. What are the possible negative consequences? The voices warning of these risks remind us that technological advancements don’t always have positive consequences. Technological advancements must be made to benefit humanity, and this requires more careful and thorough consideration.
First, I would like to talk about “new chemical reactions,” which are currently being tested for toxicity at the rate of 10,000 a week using high-throughput screening technologies. However, as I mentioned earlier, nanomaterials have different properties, and their properties change depending on the material. Therefore, the number of toxicity tests required for nanomaterials is much higher than for ordinary chemicals. While nanotechnology is developing at a very fast pace, the technology to verify that it is safe has not yet kept pace. In particular, there is no guarantee that unfiltered nanomaterials will not come into contact with certain substances in the environment and create new chemical reactions, such as toxic or explosive ones. For example, if they accumulate in the body over a long period of time and become toxic after a long period of time, as in the case of the humidifier, consumers and workers of the nanoproduct may be at risk, and compensation issues will follow. In particular, this issue of toxicity should be taken more seriously as it is often impossible to predict how nanomaterials will behave in the body.
The second is the issue of inequality in terms of military power. Nanotechnology is a valuable technology that can be used to create impact-resistant military security equipment or to develop better military communications. However, we need to pay attention to the dangers of small objects. Despite the intimidation and power that comes with large size, there are certain advantages and abilities that only small objects have. In other words, there is a scary side to smallness. If we become greedy for smaller and smaller technologies and develop small, unobtrusive military weapons, the power relationship between nations could be defined by the possession of sophisticated and successful nanotechnology and the capital and knowledge to continue developing it, just as the power relationship between nations is defined by the presence or absence of nuclear weapons. The development of such a powerful weapon could exacerbate the current invisible power relations between industrialized nations and third world countries, further exacerbating inequality between nations. In such a situation, invisible fears would begin to emerge, and we would be looking at a world where trust between nations is completely broken. This military imbalance is likely to eventually become a threat to world peace.
The third is a “labor society of surveillance. Among the many “power-power” relationships, let’s limit ourselves to the employer-employee relationship. If nano-CCTV is adopted by employers in the name of monitoring and supervising workers in enterprises, factories, companies, department stores, etc. Furthermore, it is worth considering the harsh situation that such surveillance may be carried out without the knowledge of the workers. To borrow a phrase from the circular prison panopticon, a panopticon is a prison designed with a tall watchtower in the center and prisoners’ cells around the perimeter of a circle outside the watchtower. The watchtower is darkened and the prisoners’ cells are lit so that the prisoners cannot see where the central watcher’s gaze is directed. This makes prisoners feel that they are always under surveillance, and they internalize the discipline and surveillance, which leads them to monitor themselves. In the modern world, CCTV is often criticized as an “electronic panopticon,” but I would like to warn that in the future nano era, we will have a “nano-panopticon” society, where we will not even know where the CCTV is hiding. In such a society, personal privacy may no longer exist, and the fear of surveillance will suppress personal freedom.
It is not only the one-dimensional problems that arise from nanotechnology itself that we need to think about, because while nanotechnology is revolutionary in its own right, it becomes even more valuable when it is applied to other fields of technology. We mentioned at the beginning that the essence of nanotechnology is to utilize the properties of nanomaterials in each field, but if we flip this idea of nanotechnology as a versatile and applicable technology on its head, we can see that it can cause problems everywhere. For example, it can be combined with A to cause a problem in A, and it can be combined with B to cause a problem in B. It is possible that nanotechnology could act as a catalyst to expand or accelerate the problematic consequences of each of these technologies. These are just some of the possible side effects of nanotechnology advances, and we need to anticipate and prepare for them.
First, consider the case where nanotechnology is combined with “artificial intelligence” to further advance artificial intelligence. According to Professor Jin Young Kim of Seoul National University’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, semiconductors are at the core of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This is because the storage, transmission, and management of data are ultimately dependent on semiconductors. The thinner the circuit line width, the better the speed and performance of these semiconductors, and it is hoped that nanotechnology will enable the creation of more accurate and faster AI. But will this be as positive as hoped? It could exacerbate the already severe problems of income, social and cultural disparities, and learning inequalities caused by the information divide, and lead to an extreme situation where the individual, social, and national haves and have-nots are completely divided. The information divide is already a serious problem, and nanotechnology could accelerate it.
Let’s think about nanotechnology in the context of healthcare. In the field of medical science, nanotechnology is expected to create “nanobots”. The idea is that tiny nanobots can enter the body and destroy cancer cells. It sounds like the perfect cancer-killing operation, but what about in practice? Will the nanobots be successful 100 out of 100 times? There is also the possibility that the nanobots could attack cells other than cancer cells. There are also concerns that nanobots inserted into the body to treat a disease could have unintended medical side effects, or that they could cause side effects that lead to the emergence of new diseases. A team of researchers from the Department of Synthetic Biology and Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin predicted that if nanobots that target and directly attack virus-infected cells or cancer cells are commercialized, the nanoparticles could cause disease. This is because no matter how biocompatible a material is, once it reaches the nanoscale, its physicochemical properties change from its original size and it can become toxic in the body. For example, they can interact with immune cells and cytokines, which are signaling proteins, to over-activate or suppress immune responses such as inflammation. The team published their findings in the June 2013 issue of the Royal Society’s Chemical Society Review. In addition, experts are concerned that because nanoparticles are smaller than most biomolecules, they could damage DNA and cause serious, untreatable diseases.
These are all concerns that have been raised, but I’d like to take it a step further and ask what happens when nanobot therapies start to be commercialized, and who is responsible if such adverse events do occur? Is this a simple medical error? The manufacturer is the one who created the malfunctioning nanobot, and the doctor is the one who put it into the patient’s body. In this situation, if the cancer cells are not cured, we have to think about whether it is a malfunction of the nanobot or another condition. The doctor in the hospital should have the ability to make the final judgment. Doctors using nanobot therapies should also be knowledgeable, informed, and accountable. If there is no sense of responsibility on the part of the doctor in the event of a malfunction of the nanobot, wouldn’t it be irresponsible for the doctor to use the nanobot and check on the patient’s condition? However, others may say: “Doctors should just use the nanobot. “The doctor is just inserting the nanobot, and the manufacturer is the one who caused the problem, so why should the doctor be held responsible?”
A similar issue arises when it comes to accident liability for self-driving cars. If a self-driving car causes an accident, is the driver responsible or the manufacturer? If something goes wrong with a treatment using a nanobot, is the doctor responsible or the manufacturer responsible, or who should be held more accountable? These are questions that need to be discussed further.
As you can see, nanotechnology is an interdisciplinary field that involves chemistry, medicine, life, environment, information and communication, energy, and biology, and it is closely related to human life and will continue to be researched as long as humanity exists. However, we need to fully study the safety and purpose of the technology, as well as the negative aspects of its applications. Blind optimism about technology is dangerous, and we need wisdom to keep up with the pace and consequences. We will need to develop nanotechnology rationally and ethically, lest we end up with a situation where nanotechnology dominates and eventually spirals out of control.
