Friday, November 17, 2006

Facing the Dangers of Nanotech

Continued from page 2

By Kevin Bullis

AM: The beauty of the Web is you can use it in innovative ways to summarize information and to provide portals for information. There's so much information out there at the moment that it's virtually impossible to find anything of use unless you spend a lot of time and effort trying to do that. The only way that I can work effectively is if there's a way of accessing synthesized and summarized information which is easily digestible and easily assimilatable.

TR : Have you considered a Wikipedia for nanotechnology research?

AM: The Wikipedia idea is something that has been talked about. And I think that either that or something like that is a very exciting idea. Of course you've always got the issue of validating the information which is there. But certainly I think that's one of the innovative ways that we can look at this.

TR : Has anyone actually looked into establishing a sort of nanowiki?

AM: Not to my knowledge. But there are the beginnings of it. If you look at what Rice University has been doing, they have their publications database. The aim has always been to include in that a synthesis of the information to make it very accessible, and also to integrate that database with other information sources. So you're beginning to see the basis of a reasonably holistic data portal there.

TR : Your article in Nature , though it provided some interesting challenges, still leaves out details about who should do what, and how it should be funded. Do you plan to release something with a bit more detail?

AM: The hope is that the decision makers will rise to the occasion and start doing this themselves. The hope is that this will happen quickly, but if it doesn't, the question is, Can we flesh this out to help them put a framework in place? But I think the first step is to see how people respond to the challenge.

TR : Are there any signs that governments are going to do something?

AM: Yes, there are a couple of signs. At the last House science committee, the federal government in the U.S. was very strongly charged with taking the next steps, and taking them rapidly. If you look beyond the U.S. to some of the European countries, and to some extent Japan, you begin to see governments understanding the importance of taking strategic action. So I am hopeful. But of course the proof will be to see these strategies coming out and enacted.