Public Perception of Nanotechnology.

In September of 2005 the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars published a paper, Informed Public Perceptions of Nanotechnology and Trust in Government. Contained in this paper, as you can well imagine, was information regarding how the sample selected responds to nanotechnology.

There has been a growing concern to address this issue of the public and their relation to nanotechnology. However, as we well know silicon technologies of current microprocessors can be considered nanotechnology, and all the processes used to create those nano-features which are the architecture of the function can also be considered part of a nano-constructing system (that is, makes chosen manipulations of matter at nanometer lengths). But also, an understanding of protein construction (self assembly) and the design of devices which can produce exactly chosen protein structures could also be considered nanotechnology.
How will the general public react to this broad category of nanotechnology? How will the public perspective change in time, and what factors will contribute to that change?

In essence, the requirements of knowledge which a public person must have in order to conceptually construct opinions of nanotechnology must allow them to visualize features on the nanoscale leading to macroscopic effects. This does not mean that they need formal educations in such topics, but it does mean that they must understand aspects of how nanoscale features lead up to macro scale structures and properties.
In my personal experience i have found that given a bit of time many people are able to understand features of nanoscale objects leading to macro scale effects if they are given examples which allow them to conceptualize.

For example, i once explained to a friend how the photo receptor of the eye works to transfer the energy of the light into mechanical energy and then into a neural signal. However, if the person were to have had a very simple education in psychology and biology, wouldn't they already be able to understand this concept? Would they innately know it was nanotechnology, and also micro-technology? Would they be able to see what i would like to call the general features of nano-mechanics?

Consider more contemporary things, buildings.
It does not take much more then placing ones attention upon the construction of the building to understand how it is made. And when you understand how it is made you can begin to understand where it is from. IN a wooden framed house with a concrete foundation, we know that the wood comes from a forest. We can easily talk to the public about their opinions of the relation between wood use and Forrest destruction. Even if the person were never to consider this topic before, we can be assured that a large percent of the population would be able to conceptually understand these concepts enough to form an opinion. And if they wanted to learn more we could easily navigate with them to show them more. We could zoom in on their local region and look at the amount of wood used by their local community per some unit of time. NExt, we could calculate how many trees, or how much Forrest acreage was needed to produce the wood we used... From all of these pursuits we can add to the concept, we can add spatial and temporal aspects that are easy to understand.

Now... It has also been my experience that people are not stupid in that they cannot conceptualize, but it is that we as humans have to have a "need" to put our attention towards something. Many times in discourses of "knowledge" which are foreign to ones regular type, there is a strong resistance to take the new knowledge into consideration... Especially when it is hard to relate to ones life.

I think that the hard part of explaining nanotechnology to the public is that we as a culture have not put much abstract imagination into the nano realms and mico-realms. Many people can put their attention there, but it is harder for a human to live with their attention in the small realm then it is to put attention towards the humanly scaled realm. However, what is the scale of emotions (lol)..?

With all these things said i must ask, do the scientists and engineers and investors and anyone concerned with nanotechnology really know what they are doing or why they are doing it? And by that, i mean do they answer that question in ways that explain more then their specific business missions... (I guess you call that PR?).
So a company who makes computer chips can claim that they want to spread connectivity and information throughout the world, but can we explain that goal it self in more detail? I think in current times that to build upon the idea of spreading information and connectivity around the world and think more about what this means is not something that is really culturally available in a massive way just yet. So i say these things because when we teach the public about nanotechnology what will be the most effective and useful way? Should we commodify it? How will it's commodification affect the individual's life?
Will we introduce it to the public through commodity or knowledge?
Can knowledge be a commodity, and can we increase the amount of it by changing the spatial realms which the public can consider?