Decision Ethics and Emergent Technologies: The Case of Nanotechnology

Discussions of emerging technologies are steeped in hyperbole. Promises of abundance are associated with assurances of safety and predictions of doom are frequently made by the prognosticators. In an address to the National Association of Science Writers meeting in New York on 16 September 1954, Lewis L. Strauss,chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, forecasted nuclear power would be too cheap to meter. [2] In 1964 Marshall McLuhan predicted that television would alter man's central nervous system. It would 'end the consumer phase of American culture' and change city life so that 'New York will become a Disneyland, a pleasure dome'. [3] Newsweek's Clifford Stoll used contrarian hyperbole when writing about the Internet in 1995: 'The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works'. [4]