Technology and ecological economics: Promethean technology, Pandorian potential

Second, we argue that even a 'technologically optimistic' scenario (employed by some economists) may not actually deliver Utopian outcomes. With technological advancement and diffusion there is a “technological trickle down effect” whereby potent technologies, once available only to governments and powerful elites, become available to greater numbers of groups and individuals. The more accessible a technology, the more likely its social and ecological impacts will be shaped by the full range and extremes of human nature. These issues have implications for the development and regulation of Promethean technologies such as nuclear energy, genetic engineering and nanotechnology; technologies with unprecedented power and reach through nature. Development and diffusion of such technologies may also have implications for the ethics of the social structure of society.