First Annual Conference of The Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies

The Choice is Yours

column by Gregor Wolbring 

September 15th, 2009 

http://politicsofhealth.org/wol/2009-09-15.htm

I just attended the First Annual Conference of The Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies in Seattle USA. It was a very interesting conference and I look forward to the second conference to be held in Darmstadt Germany 29 September – Oct 02, 2010. The conference chair was Davis Baird from the University of South Carolina, USA, Suzanne G. Brainard and Deborah Bassett both from the Center for Workforce Development at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, and Alfred Nordmann from the Institute for Philosophy, at Technical University, Darmstadt,  Germany. The conference had a Pre-Conference Workshop organized by the Centre for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University CNS-ASU  on Nanoethics. The list of papers can be found here . From the list one can see that the issues were quite diverse. I found many sessions very interesting and especially the presentations of the graduate students. 

The society was constituted at this meeting. The mission statement first draft is as follows

“The Society for the Study of Nanocience and Emerging Technologies (S.NET) is an international organization to promote open intellectual exchange towards the advancement of knowledge and understanding of nanotechnology in society, including its connections with social and other technological developments. S.NET seeks participation from those working within a diversity of communities, viewpoints, and methodologies, and aspires for its intellectual conversation to be informed by this diversity. S.NET seeks interaction with stakeholders and intermediaries, as those interactions contribute to its core mission. The Society pursues its mission primarily through the organization of a regular meeting, and aims for these meetings to reflect its diversity and international membership.“

The organization will work in the next year on an official mission statement and bylaws.

 

The Choice is Yours:

I look forward to the development of this organization and to the generation of a venue where one can discuss diverse topics with a diverse community (academics and non academics) around nano and emerging science and technologies . Its up to you to get involved.
 

 
All of the "The Choice is Yours" articles till June 2009 can be found here, after June 2009 here

Gregor Wolbring is an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary. He is Affiliated Scholar, Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University, USA; Part Time Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa Canada; Adjunct Faculty Critical Disability Studies, York University, Canada. He is a science and technology governance scholar, a disability/vari-ability/ability studies scholar, and a health policy and science and technology studies researcher. He is the Chair of the Bioethics Taskforce of Disabled People's International. He publishes the Bioethics, Culture and Disabilitywebsite, authors a weblog on NBICS and its social implications and on  Ableism and Ability Ethics and Governance  and contributes to the What Sorts of People blog.

 
Please contact the author for additional information on this article or for other references at gwolbrin@ucalgary.ca 
 
© Gregor Wolbring, All Rights Reserved, 2009. Please contact the author for permission to reprint.