Nanotechnology: Scared of nano-pants?

» Normxxx - Scared of nano-pants?

By Kevin Maney, USA TODAY | 22 June 2005

In the late 1950s, my Uncle Jim and his teenage buddies would sometimes roam downtown Binghamton, N.Y., and stop at a little shoe store that had its very own X-ray machine.

It was the latest technology for getting your shoe size. Customers would come in, flick a switch, stick their feet in, and see how their foot bones lined up on a sizing chart. My uncle and his friends did this for kicks. The thing probably spit out hundreds or thousands of times the dosage you'd get from a dental X-ray today.

It's a wonder Uncle Jim never grew a few extra toes.

Contrast that with the naked folks in Chicago a few weeks ago.

A handful of young men and women filed into an Eddie Bauer store and took off their clothes to protest the selling of khaki pants treated with nanotechnology.

So far, there seems to be no reason to think anyone could be hurt by nano-pants, but a lot of people are terribly worried about nanotechnology. They've heard stories that it could self-replicate until it covers the Earth like a virulent kudzu, or that nanotech particles might damage brain cells or cause cancer. They're assuming the worst now, ahead of any proof of danger.

In fact, people today are raising all kinds of alarms about technology. They worry that RFID chips might track our every move until we have less privacy than the Osbournes. Or that genetically modified foods could make us morph like the Fantastic Four. Or that cell phones could be giving us brain cancer and are distracting drivers.

And yet an earlier generation thought dangerous X-rays were fun. What gives?

As it turns out, these things go in cycles, and extreme reactions to technology are nothing new.

"It's been going on as long as innovation has been going on," says Clinton Andrews, past president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Society on Social Implications of Technology. "The guy selling the innovation is often optimistic. But there's often this fear, and the fear is not entirely groundless."

In fact, IEEE preaches that technologists should welcome the protesters and skeptics because they force issues to the surface early, before something gets out of hand and causes widespread damage. The fears push technologies to improve, and get society to look at consequences and decide what trade-offs are acceptable.

"You always need both camps" - the optimists and the pessimists, says Brian O'Connell, current president of the Society on Social Implications of Technology.

Feelings about technology can also wax and wane with eras. In the 1920s, anything scientific and modern was seen as progress, and progress was good. In the 1960s, the space race lit up a generation of tech believers. In the 1990s, we all thought the Internet was going to "change everything" and swore it was the most significant human development since the Sumerians invented writing.

The crummy economies of the 1930s, 1970s and early 2000s wiped out a lot of that smiley-faced buoyancy. Once in a while, progress would take a devastating blow, such as in 1979, when Three Mile Island threatened to melt through the Earth's crust and make half of Pennsylvania even less habitable than normal. Nuclear power never regained its footing in the USA.

The odd part, though, is that while in the middle of the debate about some technology, it's impossible to know which side is right. History is packed with examples of skepticism that turned out to be unfounded, and sanguinity that was misplaced.

In the early 1900s, natural gas companies struggled to persuade homeowners to switch from wood or coal stoves to gas stoves.

"Gas is invisible and potentially explosive," says Marian Calabro, president of CorporateHistory.net. Wood or coal stoves "were messy and labor-intensive, but at least homeowners knew what they were dealing with."

Gas companies mounted a PR campaign behind the slogan, "Now you're cooking with gas." By 1930, people saw that the homes of early adopters didn't get blown up, and the ease of the use of gas won out over any remaining safety concerns, Calabro says. The fears had been unfounded.

Similarly, when Edward Jenner invented the smallpox vaccine in the late 1700s, the public protested, even setting up anti-vaccination leagues, IEEE's Andrews says. Typists at first resisted carbon paper, thinking it would threaten their jobs. The first electronic computers stirred fears that companies were building "electric brains." IBM CEO Thomas Watson Sr. made speeches saying the machines would never be able to think.

Then there's the flip side. In the 1940s, people labeled DDT the wonder pesticide. By the 1960s, Rachel Carlson published Silent Spring, alleging that DDT caused cancer and other environmental problems. The stuff was banned in the USA in 1973.

The story of X-rays and other radiation is among the most bizarre. In the early 20th century, beauty shops used doses of X-rays to make unwanted facial and body hair fall out. Physicians prescribed radioactive radium for heart trouble, arthritis and other ailments. For a while in Europe, a candy company marketed chocolate bars laced with radium as a "rejuvenator."

Obviously, none of that was a very good idea.

We really can't tell whether the naked protesters in Chicago are flakes or prophets. Nanotechnology might turn out to be like natural gas - an efficient, safe technology that benefits millions of people. Or it could be this generation's X-ray, and our grandchildren will guffaw at our naiveté for putting it in our pants. The same goes for RFID or any other technology that's making people wary.

Either way, it seems like it's better to ask the questions rather than swallow the optimism whole.

Kevin Maney has covered technology for USA TODAY since 1985. His column appears Wednesdays. Click here for an index of Technology columns. E-mail him at: kmaney@usatoday.com

-- posted by Normxxx