This is an article that appeared on one of my favorite nanotech Web sites, www.azonano.com. I saw this late last night, and it struck me that, although this was written by the international environmental group Friends of the Earth (FOE, www.foe.co.uk), it reinforces the fact that friend and foe alike see the enormous potential that nanotechnologies will inevitably deliver to the world.

The Woodrow Wilson Center and its Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies is an excellent US-based think tank that’s already grappling with many of the issues FOE has brought to the fore in its report.

The fact is that life is all about risk management; nothing is completely safe all the time. We mitigate risk. The Chinese character for “crisis” is the combination of the characters “risk” and “opportunity.”

However you slice it, for the great things this technology can bring, it also has the potential for harm. Don’t forget: Alfred Nobel invented dynamite and perceived it as such a horrific weapon that it would bring an end to war. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that works for both sides of the nanotech debate.

We can neither be too paranoid nor too lax in evaluating the implications–health, environmental, economic–that nanotech will bring. But the fact is that its implications, whether friend or foe, are going to be enormous.