Just this week, our book What Is Nanotechnology and Why Does It Matter?:  From Science to Ethics was published by Wiley-Blackwell; I co-wrote it with Patrick Lin and Daniel Moore.  The book has three parts:  the first is a primer on basic nanoscience; the second explores general frameworks for thinking about risk and regulations of new technology; and the third explores particular social and ethical issues raised by nanotechnology (viz., environment, military, privacy, medicine, and enhancement).  Feedback welcome!  Here’s the cover: 

And the endorsements from the back of the book:

“The authors of What Is Nanotechnology and Why Does It Matter? answer their question with a broad and balanced examination of the nature of nanotechnology, how it is unfolding, and how these developments will affect issues of global concern: the impact of emerging technologies on the environment, medicine, military affairs, and civil society, and how we can act to achieve better outcomes.”
—Eric Drexler, author of Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation

“What Is Nanotechnology and Why Does It Matter? provides a concise but clear introduction to the subject of nanotechnology as well as an excellent overview of nanotechnology’s ethical and social implications. I highly recommend it.”
—James Moor, Dartmouth College

I’m closing in on a draft of my book, Terrorism, Ticking Time-Bombs, and Torture; this will come out with University of Chicago Press in late 2010.  In the meantime, I wanted to post some of the draft chapters here in case anyone wanted to start reading and offer feedback.  Since this is still in progress, please don’t cite to it without permission, but comments are certainlty welcome.

UPDATE:  WMUK (the WMU radio station) did an interview about the book ahead of the workshop we recently hosted; listening would be a quick way to get an overview of the project.  I’ve uploaded two audio files:  the full interview (23:56) and the abridged version that was aired (4:49).  Thanks to Gordon Evans for the invitation and for his excellent preparation!

On February 11-12, we’re hosting an informal workshop at WMU to go through a draft of my book manuscript, Terrorism, Ticking Time-Bombs, and Torture (University of Chicago, forthcoming).  The full schedule is now available.  Registration is open to the public; please just send an email to the workshop organizer, Vishal Garg (vishal.k.garg@wmich.edu).  Any graduate students wanting to attend can ask Vishal for housing as well; we’re happy to get that worked out.

For the past three years, I’ve been working on a grant from the National Science Foundation with my colleagues Pat Lin, John Weckert, and Jim Moor.  The topic was ethical issues in nanotechnology and human enhancement, and we were trying to figure out how nanotechnology will come to bear on human enhancement and what the associative ethical issues are therein.  It’s been a great project and we’re very grateful to the NSF for their support.  The final report has just been published, and feedback is very welcome; we also put out a press release.  Also, see some of the other things we’re doing on the ethics of human enhancement.

Update:  Science and Engineering Ethics has just published an executive summary of the NSF report.

Update:  Studies in Ethics, Law, and Society has just published the entire report.  Please cite to this version.