Search Results for: nanotechnology

Longevity: Now Available in Cans!

Leave a reply Jonny Hankins

Through my work at the Bassetti Foundation (a Technology Bloggers partner) I have been fortunate enough to lecture at universities and schools about responsibility in innovation. At the Foundation we have a concept that we call Poiesis intensive innovation, and I try to put this idea into practice during my lessons. Poiesis could be thought of as the art or craft of being able to do something. It resides within an individual as well as an institution. It might be the ability to use a machine or piece of technology in a way that it was not necessarily designed for, or to use skills that could be seen as from a different field.

With Angelo Hankins as collaborator, I use my theatre training and secondary school teaching experience in a lecture called Longevity: Now Available in Cans! This lecture aims at getting students to think about the role of technology design in future-making, based on the idea that technological development plays a role in steering society and as a result the way we behave and experience life. We only have to think about the development of the internet, or its commercial development from an initial military role, to see how our lives have been changed by a few individuals who built the system we now use every day.

And I would say that they crafted these developments, or that they are crafting them as they develop.

During the lecture we present a (near future) drink called Longevity. The drink contains nanobots, a form of nanotechnology. The nanobots are really switches that can be turned on and off. These switches stimulate your body to produce different levels of adrenaline. The user downloads an app which they use to control their own adrenaline levels, offering the possibility to lower levels at night so that sleeping patterns can be made regular, and once asleep, levels can be lowered to such an extent that they go into a form of hibernation. This allows the body to rest more, offering the chance to live 30% longer!

The presentation brings in lots of topics for discussion related to how the introduction of such a product might affect society. Will it be fairly distributed? How will it change demographics? Which questions does it raise about marketing and claims about truth, values and life itself?

After the product launch, we have a sketch in which a great grandchild comes home to his/her grandparent to discover that they no longer want to take the drink. They say it is unnatural (currently 107 years old) and that all of their friends (including partner) have died. This means that they can’t look after the great great grandchildren any more, and this causes a conflict in the house. Are they just being selfish? What are societal and familial expectations.

The students then play with the props (pictured above) and improvise conversations, before reporting to the class. The idea is that the design process can be seen and decision-making moments can be talked about.

This game is not limited to schools and universities though. It makes a great party game. We have published an article which is free to download here that explains everything. It has a description of how to make the props, a fake video of the company announcement of its discovery, as well as notes so that anyone can use it anywhere. Everything is open access and free to use.

And I didn’t even mention the Happiness: Now available in cans! version. Dopamine on demand. With adrenaline!

So why not take a look and play it with your friends?

Ninth Annual Winter School on Emerging Technologies

Leave a reply Jonny Hankins

Do you fit the requirements for the Ninth Annual Winter School on Emerging Technologies: Accelerating Impactful Scholarship supported by The National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure January 3-10, 2022?

The National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure Coordinating Office is now supporting the winter school, run by the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University, covering fees and accomodation costs..

The Winter School will give junior scholars and scientists an introduction to and practical experience with methods and theory for better understanding the social dimensions of emerging technologies, focused on the broad notion of impact with an aim to explore ways for participants to increase and diversify the impact of their work.

This year’s program will begin with a series of interactive sessions with faculty members to explore a variety of ways in which research can have a positive impact beyond the specific studies involved. The program will conclude with a multi-day immersive “sandpit” experience, where participants will form teams and pitch projects aimed at increasing the impact of scholarship. Successful teams will be awarded funding to help them implement their ideas over the year following the program.

Ample work time and breaks are built into the Winter School schedule to encourage participants to guide their own learning experience throughout the week. Mentorship sessions with attending faculty will also be offered.

The Winter School is an immersive experience for scholars to share their own unique research and learn from peers and experts. The faculty at the Winter School will offer theoretical framings, analytical tools and hands-on lessons in how social science, natural science, and engineering research on emerging technologies can have a greater impact on the world.

Participating in the Winter School will enrich your networks and provide ample opportunities to share ideas, collaborate with peers, and develop proposals to enhance the impact of your work.

Applicants should be advanced graduate students or recent PhDs (post-doc or untenured faculty within three years of completing a PhD at time of application) with an expressed interest in studying emerging technologies such a nanotechnology, robotics, synthetic biology, geoengineering, artificial intelligence, etc.

Applicants may come from any discipline and must be demonstrably proficient in English.

The program will spend its ninth consecutive year at Saguaro Lake Ranch in Mesa, AZ with access to Sonoran Desert hiking, kayaking on Saguaro Lake, horseback riding and relaxing by the Salt River.

The program fees for accepted students will be covered by the NNCI including seven nights at Saguaro Lake Ranch, meals and local transportation from Tempe, Arizona. Participants will be responsible for their own travel to Phoenix, Arizona and should arrive before 1pm on January 3rd.

To access an application and learn more about the 2022 Winter School program visit the dedicated website. Participants are requested to be fully vaccinated before they arrive at the ranch.

 DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS IS MONDAY NOVEMBER 8, 2021. Spread the word!

Part 2 The Responsible Innovation Circus Rolls into Town

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A lighthearted view of Responsible Innovation

Alternative Teaching Methods for Responsible Innovation

There are many ways of presenting complex arguments about ethics, and some interesting examples of theatre in use. The embedded video above was made for the final closing conference of a European Union funded project ROSIE.

The video presents a light-hearted look at the problems faced when trying to introduce the RI concept to small businesses. It was made in character (following the tradition of action theatre in academic use as a teaching tool for ethics) and addresses the problem of the gap found between the language used in RI publications (of all sorts) and that used in the small business world.

It uses a circus metaphor to represent the balancing act prescribed through various EU and Standards documentation related to Responsible Innovation, using the balance metaphor for a high-wire walk and their prescribed goals and approaches as juggling balls.

In making this video I was very much influenced by a US based university professor who uses radio plays, theatre and art in his teaching that he produces himself.

Richard G Epstein

Richard G Epstein works in the Department of Computer Science, West Chester University of PA, where he teaches courses on computer science, software engineering and computer security and ethics.

His university home page provides access to some of his publications, and I would like to have a look at three of them. He produces teaching aids that are extremely entertaining and require no technical understanding.

Artistic Work

The Case Of The Killer Robot is a series of fake newspaper articles that report the story of an accident at work involving an industrial robot and its operator. The early articles are descriptions of the accident but as the work moves on it slides into legal and ethical territory. Who is actually guilty for the malfunctioning of the machine and who should be held legally responsible? One of the programmers is found to have misunderstood a piece of code scrawled on a post-it and his translation error is deemed to have caused the death, so he is charged with manslaughter.

The reporters visit the factory and interview fellow workers, producing articles within which they reveal problems within the organization and managerial team and slander the poor programmer’s personality, all in perfect local journalism hack style. They have expert interviews and uncover both design faults and personal differences between members of the development strategy team.

The issue of responsibility is really brought to the fore, although in a fictional setting the ethical dilemmas faced during the development and working practices involved are laid bare. It makes for a very entertaining and thought provoking read.

The Plays

The second work I recommend is one of the author’s plays entitled The Sunshine Borgs. The play is set in the near future and tells the story of a bitter ex-playwright who has lost his job and seen the demise of human participation in the arts caused by the development of computer programmes that write plays and music for human consumption.

The play investigates the threat that high power “intelligent” computing could pose to human creativity. Robots have taken over as actors, lovers, authors and just about everything else. Pain and suffering, poverty and crime have been all but eradicated but has humanity lost its passion? The play contains a twist that I won’t reveal and the writing style even manages to portray the effect that working in a computer environment can have on language use and thought processes.

The Author describes this work as a comedy but it is too close to the bone to make you really laugh. Questions such as the legal rights of robots and the possibility of charging a human with robot abuse are raised when the main character’s unwanted robot companion commits suicide as a result of the playwright trying to educate a soul into his hated but extremely useful houseguest.


Another of his plays entitled NanoBytes addresses the problem of nanotechnology, an interesting story of the head of a nanotechnologies company and a small mishap regarding molecular sized computers that can be injected into people in order to stop anti-social behaviour. A much shorter read but with some equally interesting twists and an insightful tongue in cheek description of American family and business life.