Are the results of our increasingly sophisticated technological abilities inevitable, as a fundamental matter of technological evolution? Or, might we be the cognizant designers of our own future, making moral choices along the way? Nanotechnology, bio technology, information technology and cognitive sciences are emerging and converging toward the potential to radically alter the fundamental nature of human bodily life. Berne will explore ideological issues that are enmeshed in values, meanings and beliefs about who we are and how we wish to live in the material world.

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Saturday, September 29, 2007
10:00 - 11:00 a.m.
Alumni Hall
211 Emmet Street South
Charlottesville, VA 22903

Rosalyn Berne is Associate Professor of Science, Technology and Society in the school of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia. Professor Berne has three UVA degrees: BA in 1979, MA in 1982, and PhD in 1999 (she is a “Triple Hoo!”). She has taught in the College of Arts and Sciences, in the former Speech Communication department; at Darden; and now at the Engineering School.

Professor Berne’s primary research concern is the societal and ethical implications of nanotechnology, and its convergence with bio and information technologies, and cognitive sciences. Supported by an NSF Career Award, her first major study focused on individual principle investigators of nanoscale science and engineering. In that study she sought to understand how the personal motivations, beliefs, and aspirations of research scientists and engineers may inform or shape their ethical frameworks of nanotechnology. Her book on the subject; Nanotalk: Conversations with Research Scientists and Engineers about Ethics, Meaning, and Belief in the Development of Nanotechnology (Erlbaum Associates, 2006), identifies a three dimensional conceptual framework for the conscientious development of nanotechnology.

Berne’s current research uses science fiction to probe the ethical and social implications of the emerging and convergence technologies. She is founder and director of the Nano-Science Fiction Writing Project; an endeavor to use alternative, fictive environments to engage the moral imagination in thinking about the socio-technological future. The project aims to encourage nanoscale science and engineering investigators world wide to write and contribute fiction, which considers the broader, macro-ethical implications the convergence of nano-bio-and information technologies in the future. Berne is currently completing her first novel; a speculative science fiction entitled, Waiting in the Silence. Berne’s second non-fiction book, Nanotechnology and the Moral Imagination, is also underway.