ABSTRACT
The question of who bene˜ts from nanotechnology is worth asking, especially if nanotechnology is to serve as a means for addressing aspects of global poverty and its associated challenges. After all, the lack of clean water and other resources in small villages around the world does not occur because the technology is unavailable but because the technology is out of the ˜nancial reach of the marginalized community. Even if the technology is ˜nancially accessible, it may remain operationally inaccessible. For example, the residents of a small village may collect taxes through a community Water Board to buy a nano˜ltration membrane sterilization system to have clean water, but they may still not have the operational and technical know-how
CONTENTS
9.1 Introduction ................................................................................................ 191 9.2 What Does Nanotechnology Have to Do with Patents?....................... 193
9.2.1 Life in the Anti-Commons ........................................................... 193 9.2.2 Open Source As an Alternative ................................................... 195
9.3 Open Nanotechnology: To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before................................................................................................. 198 9.3.1 Open Information .......................................................................... 199 9.3.2 Software .......................................................................................... 199 9.3.3 Hardware ........................................................................................ 199 9.3.4 Open Standards and Regulations ...............................................200 9.3.5 Appropriate Business Models ...................................................... 202
9.4 Open Nanotechnology Applications ...................................................... 204 9.4.1 Clean Water for All ........................................................................ 204 9.4.2 Ef˜cient Solar Power ...................................................................... 205 9.4.3 New Construction Materials ........................................................ 206
9.5 Conclusion: Where Could Open Nanotechnology Go from Here? .... 206 References ............................................................................................................. 208 Endnotes ............................................................................................................... 212
to set up and maintain the system because that knowledge is proprietary. Similarly, while nanotechnology may hold options for addressing challenges of the marginalized everywhere, the bene˜ts of nanotechnology may not be shared equally, thus propagating the same inequities in access to resources that currently exist or even further disfranchising the poor (Bruns 2004). Nanotechnology knowledge is currently locked away in property systems, making it inaccessible for those who need it the most. How-to knowledge, as well as actual nanotechnologies, are also locked away in the proprietary system. This means that even if an alternate process to create a nanotechnology is developed, the inventors would not be legally able to use or produce that technology. This form of locking away knowledge is clearly against the best interests of the poor, as it tends to concentrate knowledge into the hands of wealthy corporations-as knowledge that once belonged to the intellectual commons is being privatized for the purposes of pro˜t making even though that knowledge is often produced using public funding (ETC Group 2005). This restricts public research and service organizations from spreading the fruits of nanotechnology research to the general public (Sampat 2003). In this way, the gap between the ability of experts and the general public to access nanotechnology knowledge increases physically, intellectually, and ˜nancially. Nanotechnology cannot simply provide ideas for addressing poverty without taking into account the social context in which it is introduced and the political process through which it is developed (Foladori and Invernizzi 2005).
