ABSTRACT
Nanotechnology is the study, manipulation and application of functional materials, devices and systems through control of matter at the nanometre scale at the atomic and molecular levels, and the exploitation of novel phenomena and properties of matter at that scale. Alongside the practical development of nanotechnology, ethical considerations have also begun to emerge, and it has been suggested that one needs a new kind of ethics, 'nanoethics', to handle the ethical problems inherent in nanotechnology. The chapter argues that the implications of nanotechnology, one can find a group of commentators who hold a view which can be called 'nano-dystopian' and nano-utopians who predict that nanotechnologies are going to solve all problems. The strongest case for the need for specific nanoethics could be made if either the predictions of the nano-dystopians or the nano-utopians are correct. The chapter describes that these predictions are correct, and that nanotechnology has great destructive and other worrying potentials, or great beneficial potential.
