Do materials even have genomes?

I’ve long suspected that physical scientists have occasional attacks of biology envy, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the US government announced last year the “Materials Genome Initiative for Global Competiveness”. Its aim is to “discover, develop, manufacture, and deploy advanced materials at least twice as fast as possible today, at a fraction of the cost.” There’s a genuine problem here – for people used to the rapid pace of innovation in information technology, the very slow rate at which new materials are taken up in new manufactured products is an affront. The solution proposed here is to use those very advances in information technology to boost the rate of materials innovation, just as (the rhetoric invites us to infer) the rate of progress in biology has been boosted by big data driven projects like the human genome project.

There’s no question that many big problems could be addressed by new materials. Continue reading “Do materials even have genomes?”

Responsible innovation – some lessons from nanotechnology

A few weeks ago I gave a lecture at the University of Nottingham to a mixed audience of nanoscientists and science and technology studies scholars with the title “Responsible innovation – some lessons from nanotechnology”. The lecture was recorded, and the audio can be downloaded, together with the slides, from the Nottingham STS website.

Some of the material I talked about is covered in my chapter in the recent book Quantum Engagements: Social Reflections of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies. A preprint of the chapter can be downloaded here: What has nanotechnology taught us about contemporary technoscience?”