Posts in Personal Technology

We know that nanotechnology can build a golf club that will extend your drive by a few feet, but will it help the poor in South Africa? The CNS Thematic Research Cluster on Equity, Equality, and Responsibility is conducting fieldwork in South Africa, interviewing scientists, researchers, policy officials, NGOs, corporations, funders, government employees, and local people to find out how nanotechnology is being researched, developed, and used and possibilities for the future of nanotechnology as a transformative technology the way cell phones seem to have become.

For most of my adult life I have looked out at the world from massive cities. Recently, however, I moved to rural Western Massachusetts. I am using this time of transition from metropolis to hamlet to reflect on what I will affectionately call “the progress narrative.”

Several weeks ago, a colleague and I discussed what constitutes technological determinism and why it is problematic.  I argued that, colloquially, technologically deterministic arguments are often implicit and subtly erase human agency from social interactions with technology.

To tell you the truth, my biological clock exploded a long time ago, and I have no desire to reproduce. But after the explosion of weddings in the last couple of years, most of my friends are becoming parents. Inevitably, our conversations turn toward child-rearing, and linger around the host of anxieties that accompany the prospect of bringing new life into the world.

On my drive to work this morning, a sports radio talk show host warned his presumably largely male fan base that Valentine’s Day was coming soon.  Not to fear, he argued. If the holiday has caught you off guard, he claimed he still had the perfect gift that every woman would love.  He summed up his advice in two words: “power down.”