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By way of mapping the ecology of research into/on nanotechnology by social scientists and humanists, let me just mention another blog worthy of attention, viz. Nanoscience and Nanosociety, which is the unoffical organ of the Center for Nanotechnology and Society at UC Santa Barbara (I've added a friendly link from our little blog here). It's one of three such centers created by the NSF in 2005. The others are at Arizona State University, but they don't have a blog (shame! where is your wiki, where is your blog? And you call yourselves social scientists? :) ) and smaller grants to the University of South Carolina and apparently Harvard... but it isn't clear to me where at Harvard. The UCSB center is run by Barbara Harthorn and Patrick McCray. They have ongoing research projects in history of nanotechnology (including work being done by Tim Lenoir and Cyrus Mody), innovation, diffusion and intellectual property, and risk perception; they've produced an intitial research report for ICON (currently here at Rice), a review of safety practices in the nanotech industry. The ASU Center has a larger network, including U Wisconsin, Georgia Tech, Rutgers, NC State, and UC Boulder. They self-consciously describe themselves as a "boundary organization" in no small part because David Guston is the director, along with Clark Miller and Daniel Sarewitz. The number of people involved in the ASU-CNS is by far the largest of these centers. The focus is on "Real Time Technology Assesment" which has four methods: mapping research dynamics, measuring perceptions of nanotech and risks, engaging people in deliberative and participatory exercises, and reflexive assessment of the impact of the first three. They also have two "Cross-cutting themes": Freedom, Privacy, security and human identity, emhancement and biology. I am nominally, though not yet fiscally, associated with the ASU center. The South Carolina "nSTS" or Nano Science & Technology Studies project was by far the earliest center for this kind of research, though it has been in part eclipsed by the decision to give ASU and UCSB the biggest of the grants. Run by Davis Baird, it includes almost as many people as the ASU center, and from as many disciplines. They've been particularly active in philosophy, ethics, anthropology and history. They've produced what I think is the best edited collection of research so far: Discovering the Nanoscale ed. Baird, Nordmann and Schummer.

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