“DON’T sweat the small stuff” is often good advice. But not always.
In fact, it might be precisely the wrong advice when it comes to responding to the next wave of inventions.
The last round of technologies, genetic engineering or the modification of living organisms already demonstrates the conundrum.
In response to the worrisome news that a normally routine review of Canadian canola by the Japanese may be a threat due to their concern about the introduction of genetically modified canola pollution, Barb Isman, president of the Canola Council of Canada, dismisses the problem because the amounts are really too small to worry about (Western Producer, June 9.)
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She points out that the 700 volunteer GM plants found in port areas came from a mere tablespoon of seeds. Given that Canada ships more than one and a half million tonnes of canola seed to Japan per year, a tablespoon of seeds is surely too insignificant an amount to even notice, let alone worry about.
So why are the Japanese buyers “sweating the small stuff”? Because the size and amount of the seed doesn’t represent the size of the possible impacts. A tablespoon of seed has the power of self-replication and rapid multiplication, as the plants that sprang from them demonstrate. It is the power of the technology, not its size, that matters.
This is a critical truth about the new wave of technologies – nano-scale technologies. (Nano is a measurement. A nanometer equals one billionth of a metre.)
These technologies work at the scale of atoms and molecules, manipulating and reformatting the basic units of matter. None of this is visible to the naked eye. Only the most powerful microscopes reveal it.
But it is precisely because it works with unimaginably small units that this technology is so powerful.
At the nano scale, a material’s properties can change dramatically. For example, the rather soft, malleable carbon in the form of graphite (like pencil lead) is stronger than steel and six times lighter at the nano scale.
Further, all matter, living or inanimate, is made up of the chemical elements that nano-tech uses as its raw materials. This means that the line between machines and living things can be erased. A new discipline, nanobiotechnology, focuses on integrating living and non-living parts into “living machines.”
These powerful technologies are not a flight into science fiction. Nanotechnology is fast becoming a key area of research and investment. An estimated $8.6 billion US was invested in nanotechnology in 2004.
And, although we may not know it, some of us are already using nanotech products. There are more than 450 such products in the market including food, sunscreens, cosmetics and pesticides.
Nanotechnology has enormous potential to change the world in which we live. It will have a huge impact, inversely proportionate to its size, on our environment, food systems, health and economy. With that power comes an equally large moral responsibility to assess the impacts, discuss the values and collectively decide on its direction.
Nettie Wiebe is a farmer in the Delisle, Sask., region and a professor of Church and Society at St. Andrews College in Saskatoon. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the Western Producer.
