Future Tense

Future Tense Newsletter: Go Big or Go Nano

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Shoot for the moon.

3DSculptor/thinkstock.com

Greetings, Future Tensers,

As we’ve learned throughout this month’s Futurography course, it can be difficult to determine what we’re talking about when we talk about nanotechnology. The term is an enormous umbrella, one that can cover synthetic biology, materials science, computer engineering, and much more. That enormous conceptual range helps explain why some researchers find themselves under the spell of what Andrew Maynard and others call nanofatigue. Since nanoscale research draws on a host of older field, it’s often become a means of branding work that’s been in progress for ages, and the endless cycles of hype and disappointment around that brand can be exhausting.

But there’s also a related, much more miniscule, problem of definition, which is that it’s hard to define just how small something has to be before it counts as a nanomaterial. As Gary Marchant explains, that challenge becomes especially pronounced when we’re working to regulate nanotechnological products and processes. Indeed, such ambiguities are complex enough that, as Marchant puts it, we may need “to forget about developing nanospecific regulations altogether.”

Back at the macroscale, this week Future Tense looked into some highly aspirational plans from a few very rich people. Charles Kenny turned a skeptical eye to Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s announcement that they were committing $3 billion to an attempt to end all disease. Though that sum is, as Kenny puts it, “underscaled to the ambition,” their approach is still promising, so long as it proves to be just one component of wider “eradication efforts that will have to involve an army of others.”

In any case, where that’s a figurative moonshot, Elon Musk wants to literally kickstart civilization on Mars. To that end, he outlined a formidable plan to start sending hundreds—and eventually hundreds of thousands—of people to the red planet. Would you make the trip?

Here are some of the other articles we read while trying to figure out if our Yahoo accounts had been hacked (they had):

  • Voting rights: Should we be allowed to take pictures of our ballots? Mark Joseph Stern argues that such images “have become a fundamental mode of political speech in America.”
  • Drones: Viral stories about people shooting down drones may seem fun, but actually firing at unmanned aircraft is astonishingly dangerous.
  • Social media: Trying to use the courts to stop parents from posting embarrassing pictures of their kids online is to “too blunt an instrument,” writes Priya Kumar.
  • Cyberlaw: Josephine Wolff offers a concise history of the now 30-year-old Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a law that ultimately serves as “a living testament to the considerable challenges of trying to regulate new and emerging technologies.”

Events:

  • The 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act remains one of the most controversial federal tech-regulating laws on the books. On Thursday, Sept. 29, Future Tense and New America’s Open Technology Institute will host a lunchtime conversation in Washington, D.C., on the legacy and future of the law—and what lessons it offers for those crafting tech-related legislation. For more information and to RSVP, visit the New America website.
  • Is it time we designed an election for the 21st century? Join Future Tense in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 5 at 6 p.m. for a happy hour and brainstorm on how to create a better, more efficient, and more just election system. For more information and to RSVP, visit the New America website.

Thinking small,

Jacob Brogan

for Future Tense

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University.