The frontier technologies that enable atomic scale construction, rearrangement and design of materials, has quickened the debate over global regulation of new technologies in the 21st century. Governments in the industrialised world recognise the 'transformative' potential of nanotechnologies and have reacted by channeling billions into national research programmes - without creating the regulatory institutions to monitor the health, social or environmental impacts.
Organisations such as Greenpeace and the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group) have advocated a moratorium on the commercial production of new nano-materials and a 'transparent global process for evaluating the social, health and environmental implications of the new technology'.
There is an emerging consensus that more sophisticated approaches to democratic participation is required than that which took place in the development of previous technologies. In its 10-year framework for science and technology, the UK Government has called for projects that facilitate a greater public engagement in the potential development of future nanotechnologies.
Compared to any other previous technological step-change, there are unprecedented levels of uncertainty that surround which different nanotechnologies could and should emerge. With the acknowledged lack of knowledge about the potential environmental and socio-economic impacts that may arise from the diverse applications of these new technologies, nanotech raises major challenges for efforts at non-specialist involvement in their development and regulation.