Nano & Me - Technology in our lives

But what's it got to do with me?

Nanotechnologies are likely to have a huge impact on all our lives and we thought you might like to know a bit more about them. Not just because of the new products they may help create or even the potential safety issues which may arise from the use of some nanomaterials or applications, but because of the potential life-changing impact on our health, environment, societies and perhaps even our understanding of life itself.

With this website we have tried to give a clear and balanced picture to help you make up your own mind about nano and to give you the opportunity to get involved in the debate about where the technology might take us.

But this is only a pilot website. Your views will be incorporated with those of other scientists, campaigning and consumer groups, businesses, governments and ordinary people to help us prepare the final site which will give more information and opportunities to get involved with real debates.

What about the iPod Nano or the
Tata Nano car?

Sometimes companies use the term nano as a funky way of saying their product is small and perhaps a bit high tech, regardless of whether nano is used or not. The Tata Nano Car is pretty small but, as far as we know, doesn’t use nano, and the iPod Nano, like most of the other iPods, may have some nano features in its memory devices, but the name is used more because it’s cool and small than to describe its nano-enhancement.