[_ Old Earth _] The "Ethics" of Nanotechnology

[Sparkey]

I ran across an article recently discussing the "The Ethics of Nanotechnology," published at the Jesuit University of Santa Clara written by Andrew Chen.

Potential Benefits...
It would not take much of a leap, then, to imagine disassemblers dismantling garbage to be recycled at the molecular level, and then given to assemblers for them to build atomically perfect engines. Stretching this vision a bit, you can imagine a Star Trek type replicator which could reassemble matter in the form of a juicy steak, given the correct blueprints and organization of these nanomachines.
Just given the basic premises of nanotechnology, you can imagine the vast potential of this technology. Some of it's more prominent benefits would be:

• Manufacturing
• Precision Manufacturing
• Material Reuse
• Miniaturization
• Medicine
• Pharmaceutical Creation
• Disease Treatment
• Nanomachine-assisted Surgery
• Environment
• Toxin Cleanup
• Recycling
• Resource Consumption Reduction

On the flip-side the article continues:

Potential Dangers...
The flip side to these benefits is the possibility of assemblers and disassemblers being used to create weapons, be used as weapons themselves, or for them to run wild and wreak havoc. Other, less invasive, but equally perilous uses of nanotechnology would be in electronic surveillance.

• Weapons
  
  Miniature Weapons and Explosives
  Disassemblers for Military Use​
• Rampant Nanomachines
  
  The Gray Goo Scenario
  Self Replicating Nanomachines​
• Surveillance
  
  Monitoring
  Tracking​

 

[Arch Angle]

like a "hammer". Like volcano. And just like the sun.

there is no "ethics of nanotechnology". There is in only o"ethics" in how we usetechnology. And the risk to innocentpeople. There will be innocent victims,there are in every endeavor of man. Liketransportation.

But we get to chose whwer, and how many. With Christin mind, we can limit those numbers better than we can without "Christ Ithink.