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Christine Peterson is a long-time futurist who co-founded the nanotech advocacy group the Foresight Institute in 1986. One of her favorite tasks has been contacting the winners of the institute's annual Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, but she also coined the term "Open Source software" for that famous promotion strategy meeting in 1998.

Christine took some time to answer questions from Slashdot readers.
What exactly happened in 1998?
by Anonymous Coward

Prior to 1998, had you heard anyone using the phrase "open source" before? Or was it something you came up with on your own as the only logical set of words to describe source code which is openly shared.

Starting earlier, our non-profit, Foresight Institute, had been holding a series of small invitational meetings at our office in Los Altos, focused on our free software project and the field in general. One topic of discussion that came up now and then was the problem of the name free software and how it confused newcomers into thinking that the main point was the price because, sadly, in English our word for "free as in freedom" and "free as in price" are the same. (In Spanish they wisely use different words for these two concepts.) But nothing had yet been suggested that seemed good enough to catch on.

Sometime after that the term "open source software" popped into my mind, and my immediate thought was "that's good enough." Not ideal, not great, but good enough to solve the problem. I ran it by a few friends including Mark Miller and Eric Drexler, and they agreed it was probably good enough. One other friend, who worked in PR, thought that "open" had already been overused in the software field, which was true, but it seemed appropriate in this context so I decided to go ahead with the idea anyway.

Eric Raymond came to visit Silicon Valley in connection with the transition of the Netscape code from proprietary to publicly available, so we met again to discuss these new developments. While there Eric took a call from two people from Netscape, and when he was done I asked to speak to them, a man and a woman (possibly Mitchell Baker?). I mentioned the name problem and they agreed, but none of us then had a better term to suggest.

When Eric Raymond visited again, he needed to have other local meetings and doesn't drive, so I offered to drive him around. That's when I found myself sitting in on the meeting at VA Research that included Larry Augustin, Sam Ockman, and "maddog" by phone; I wasn't invited to it. Probably the others thought I was Eric's chauffeur or even his girlfriend. Prior to the meeting I had discussed the "open source software" idea with Todd Anderson, who was also at this meeting, but not with Eric himself, whom I didn't know as well at this point. Being a non-programmer, I had pretty much zero status at this meeting, except with the two who already knew me, so I didn't feel it would work to just say "Hey, here's why you guys all need to use my terminology for your field." The meeting was primarily on broader free software topics anyway, so I just listened and didn't see an opening. Fortunately, Todd was on the ball and tried an interesting tactic: he just used the term casually, not introducing it formally but just throwing it out there in another context. Of course then I perked up and started paying closer attention to see what would happen, if anything. A few minutes later someone else, who hadn't been informed in advance, spontaneously used it, again in a context unrelated to a change in terminology. Todd and I looked at each other and smiled: the meme had jumped successfully!

Later in the meeting, as a rather minor matter compared to the rest of it, the group had a brief discussion and agreed that open source software would be a useful term. No attention was paid then to who suggested it originally, which was fine with me. Later on, Eric even briefly thought it was he himself who came up with it (which would be quite a plausible thing for him to do), but Todd took the initiative to let him know that it was me, and immediately Eric was super gracious about correcting the record on that.

At the time, Todd told me that someday I would be glad to have credit for this, and he was quite right about that. So thank you Todd, wherever you are (and please get in touch).

I don't recall hearing the phrase before it popped into my head, though I found out later that it has long been widely used in the "intelligence" (i.e., spy) field to refer to publicly available information content, so the usage is similar enough to not be a problem. Since the recent coverage of the 20th anniversary, a couple of previous uses in a software context have turned up also. But since I was neither in software nor in intelligence, I probably did not see any of these uses.

I've seen a couple of commenters suggesting that I should defend a claim to having coined the term. Fortunately for me, I don't need to do this, because that decision is not based on my current input or comments. It's an open source community decision based on past experiences, and as a non-programmer I don't even get a vote on this. I just have to accept whatever the community decides, which is why I waited twenty years to let things settle out before publishing my own account.

For a more of the history, see my longer version at Opensource.com. (The OSI history page lists Michael Tiemann also at the VA Research meeting, which is probably correct though I don't recall it. It also has the meeting dated two days earlier than my notes indicate; sadly my calendar data from those days is not accessible format-wise anymore.)

What was it like in 1998?
by DevNull127

As someone who worked closely with Eric Raymond (and had interactions with Jon "maddog" Hall), what were they like in 1998? I'm curious what the whole "mood" of the development community was like in 1998 at that historic meeting. Maybe you could also talk about how things changed -- what they were like before the Open Source movement revved into high gear, and what they were like after.

And how does it all compare to when you first joined the tech scene in the 1980s?

CP: When I arrived in Silicon Valley in 1985, we were still in the early days of the personal computer. Most people did not have an email address or even a fax machine. Only visionaries like Ted Nelson and Doug Engelbart were talking about hypertext and the future of online personal computing. At that time, working on Nelson's Xanadu Hypertext Project was one of the few ways available to move toward that future, and it was through that project that I met many very smart software people including Mark S. Miller and Dean Tribble (who have just started a new company, Agoric, to advance secure smart contracts). It was an exciting time in terms of knowing the potential, but frustrating because the underlying chips were still slow, with little memory or graphics functionality, and online communications were done over regular phone lines using modems, painfully slow.

I vividly recall when Martin Haeberli came to the Foresight office to show us an early MOSAIC browser. It wasn't super impressive at that time, but he explained that this was the start of what would become a world of online hypertext, and he was right. The early days of the World Wide Web were extremely exciting to those of us who had been inspired by Nelson's and Engelbart's visions of hypertext. FINALLY we got to make links! But also they had an undercurrent of intense frustration, because so many of the visionary features were missing, such as automatic micropayments to authors for their original publications and even their quotes used elsewhere online. But the term micropayment was seen by many as anathema, because "information should be free." Even back then, some of us knew that there was no such thing as a free lunch, and that expenses must be paid somehow. It's this lack of micropayments to content providers that has led to today's ubiquitous business model of selling users' personal information and manipulating them using highly-targeted ads, and the negative effects of that on society.

At the time, the open-sourcing of Netscape was seen as yet another innovative Silicon Valley company succumbing to unfair pressure by the all-powerful behemoth Microsoft. This sad situation had the silver lining of bringing an exciting browser project into the free software world. But the small startups trying to do support for free software were having a heck of a time explaining to customers why they should have to pay anything at all to use "free software". (And of course they don't, if they are good enough at dealing with code...which most people, including me, are not.) This awkwardness is what led to the addition of "open source software" to the original -- and still useful -- name "free software".

I did not get to know maddog, but in 1998 Eric Raymond was the one who was most active in doing public outreach, especially media, on behalf of open source. He worked very hard for months or years, unpaid to my knowledge, to promote these ideas and the community. There were many others of course, including Bruce Perens who with Eric co-founded Open Source Initiative to defend the ideas and approve licenses that met the new Open Source Criteria they wrote. Tim O'Reilly played a key role by convening and hosting the community in meetings to make group decisions. And of course we should remember Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation, which had been and still are doing similar work under the original term.

To me as a relative outsider, it seemed that there was a big change when the new term was introduced, which happened very close in time to the Netscape open-sourcing. I had been reading Slashdot occasionally, mainly to admire the way it was designed and enabled users to interact much more effectively that other systems I'd seen. But when the new term arrived, it seemed that suddenly there was a fast ramp-up of attention and especially media coverage of the field. For a while it seemed like every day there was a new exciting development in "open source", which often appeared in quotes because it was so new. And these were appearing in non-programmer publications, ultimately in mainstream news media. Reading Slashdot became a daily necessity, especially for me, since I was getting some kind of thrilling brain chemistry surge every time I saw the term used. I still do, but it's smaller now: a nano surge.

Nanotech Prognosis / Open Source Utopia
by qaute

What's the current outlook for nanotechnology? Technically speaking, do we get Star Trek replicators soon, or is that still a 25+ year thing?

The ultimate dream in nanotechnology is a molecular assembler (atomic 3D printer) on every desktop, with a widespread community of hardware designers/developers analogous to open source software today. You'll be able to, say, download files to build a new car from GitHub. Hackaday has a good writeup. Suppose that someone finally figures out how to build such a molecular assembler. Chances are it'll be patent-encumbered and NDA'd. How can we [get] from here to there...? Politically, how do regulations, industry, and patents look?

Socially, is it generally viewed as positive or negative these days?

CP: Let's say that the goal is an open-source molecular 3D printer able to construct molecular machinery, plus a large library of open-source designs to use with the device. Let's divide this into the hardware components and software components.

It's taken decades and billions of dollars investment to get us where we are today in conventional hardware chips. That kind of investment has not been made yet in molecular machinery. I think eventually we would get there using human chemists, but it appears that instead there will be a shortcut. Progress in artificial intelligence is moving faster now, and I expect that instead of human chemists and human designers of molecular machinery and associated construction pathways, this work will be done faster via AI. We do not need AGI (artificial general intelligence) to do this. Targeted knowledge of chemistry and design engineering are what is needed, and that's coming sooner than AGI. So it could well be sooner than 25+ years depending on AI progress, but (and here's the catch) if that happens, the world will be changing in many other ways also, both positive and negative, to the extent that we may have other issues to deal with instead of having the opportunity of focusing on writing open source code for atomically-precise manufacturing.

Regarding regulations and patents: there's no particular regulatory focus on molecular machinery just now, and there probably won't be much until an actual problem crops up. As an example, consider the recent hearings on Facebook: the US legislators are not educated enough on those issues to grapple effectively with them. Patents seem likely to continue to be used whenever a company does the work, unless it sees a strategic advantage to open-sourcing the work.

I don't think that nanotech or atomically-precise manufacturing is on the public radar these days, either positive or negative. The nanotech term itself has become a marketing term for anything with at least one nanoscale dimension, so the average person who hears it probably thinks that we already have nanotech and therefore it's not a big deal. But it's not clear that we need or want the average person to be paying attention to atomically-precise manufacturing just now anyway, so maybe that's just as well.

Open source or free software
by Jim Hall

Some people prefer one term over the other. I'm curious: all these years later, do you still prefer the term open source software or are you more aligned to Free software?

CP: I use both terms, depending on context. When I'm with longtime hackers such as John Gilmore who naturally use the earlier term, I use it too. And of course if one is at a meeting of the Free Software Foundation, it's polite to use their preferred terminology.

However in dealing with non-software people or young people, I believe that the open source term is much clearer and therefore more useful. I tried doing a search on the two terms, and they are both in active use, but I found more "open source software" than "free software" usages. (This is a very crude measure and may be wrong, of course.)

Probably in Spanish-speaking countries, where they have the words gratis and libre to distinguish our two meanings for the English word free, there is less reason to use the new term. Someone could do a PhD dissertation comparing how the new term spread in the English-speaking world vs. the Spanish-speaking world. That would enable us to tease apart how much the newer term spread due to the free/free confusion problem vs. any more intrinsic value it may have, e.g., implying that the source code is open to public view.

Open source and medicine
by AmiMoJo

How can we get more open source medical software? Given that medical devices are so heavily regulated it seems like it will be hard to get, say, an open source pacemaker system that users can hack, or at least audit.

Radio software seems to be in a similar state - cellular modems, wifi chipsets etc. are all heavily regulated and closed source, with signed code required for updates.

CP: As far as I can tell, the Internet of Things world is still using the "security through obscurity" model. Given that, regulators are naturally going to favor closed source code, since that seems to be a way to reduce the likelihood of attacks.

If we want regulators to approve open source software for important devices, we need to show that it's as secure, or preferably more secure, than closed source code.

Although I am not a programmer, I have paid enough attention to this general issue to be intrigued with object capabilities (ocaps) as a path forward toward more secure code, whether closed and open source.

Currently the most serious effort I'm aware of in this area is Agoric.

There are (at least) two problems that ocaps does not solve. Social engineering will continue to be an issue, though my understanding is that ocaps reduces the damage that these can cause. Finally, there is the problem of compromised hardware: deliberate back doors designed into our computer chips; this is a huge problem with only very expensive solutions; see the hardware question below for more on this.

For more on security, see the paper Cyber, Nano, and AGI Risks: Decentralized Approaches to Reducing Risks, by myself, Mark S. Miller, and Allison Duettmann, from the proceedings of UCLA's First International Colloquium on Catastrophic and Existential Risk (2017).

Pollution
by lhowaf

Nano-materials, in general, seem to be becoming a significant source of hard-to-cleanup pollution. Do you see nano-tech heading in the same direction?

CP: The long-term goal of atomically-precise nanotech is the complete control of the structure of matter (to the extent we care about that structure). This would include extremely advanced abilities to clean up the natural environment. The question is what the pathway looks like to get there, and how clean can we make that pathway? This last question is a matter of what we decide to do. If society decides that preventing nanoscale pollution is a priority, then we'll do much better than if we don't try. It's at least possible to consider how to make this happen commercially, through traditional regulatory mechanisms. The more difficult challenge is military use, and use in regions which don't prioritize environmental values. No easy answers here. But the ultimate goal, at least, is a very clean environment, and it should be achievable eventually. It was this prospect that drew me into trying to advance this field in the first place.

How to deal with nanotech hype problem?
by Goldsmith

I am a nanotechnologist. I've done great academic research, worked for the government, managed a few grants, and started a few companies. It's very easy to hype the potential of nanotechnology. On the other hand, it's very hard to get attention put on results from serious commercial efforts. Granting agencies and our community are not good at supporting companies that do what we all tell each other needs to get done (i.e. NanoIntegris). We are great at supporting academic research groups that have a patina of commercial application (i.e. IBM).

As a field we've missed celebrating a number of major commercialization milestones. CNT and graphene electronics are available commercially! Who knew? For five years or so, you could find commercial graphene electronics in cell phone screens in Shenzhen. For the last two years, you could find commercial graphene biosensors at many big pharma companies. For the last year, you could buy CNT based high power RF electronics.

If we were interested in showing the real potential of the field, wouldn't the leaders want to show everyone that it IS working? We have actually met the NNI timeline for commercialization set in the 1990s. The goals we set out with 20 years ago seem to mean nothing to the hype machine we've created.

Simply put, how do we deal with the addiction to hype in nanotechnology, and focus a bit more on substantive accomplishment?

CP: I'm speaking here from a US perspective. This problem is not unique to nanotechnology, or even to technology in general. It's part of a general decline that has at least two sources, the decline in education standards and the decline of serious journalism, resulting in a hype culture with hype consumers who cannot tell the difference among exciting current technologies, valid engineering prospects, and complete nonsense.

It takes substantial science background to understand why nanotech and atomically-precise manufacturing are interesting, and few in our society today have that background. Our K-12 system is largely broken. Many of our colleges and universities now optimize for student entertainment and enjoyment, rather than the hard road of learning science and engineering.

Serious journalism has been decimated -- worse than decimated, including science and technology journalism. Consumers want all their information for free, and in many cases, you get what you pay for in this area as in others. Could micropayments help? Perhaps something built into the browser sending pennies or fraction of pennies to content originators? I am not sure. It seems worth a try. It could at least help with the privacy problem.

As for the education problem: we need to admit the disaster and try some major experiments. For example, some blame the decline of university standards on deceptively easy loans to students who don't realize what they are getting into. Glenn Reynolds has written books worth reading on this general problem of educational decline in the US, and I would look to him for ideas on solutions.

To me, compared to earlier decades, US society overall seems kind of decadent, cynical, in a cultural decline. I hope we can turn this around somehow. People like Slashdot readers give me hope. And there are still many, many people truly working to make the world a better place, including here in Silicon Valley. My view of Silicon Valley has a positive bias because I meet people through Foresight Institute, which helps select for good folks. I invite you all to join our email list (use blue button on this page) and come to our events. Some are research workshops (e.g., application form for Atomic Precision for Longevity workshop) and some are more accessible, such as our salons and Vision Weekend (videos). If you like what you see, consider donating; we are entirely supported by individual donations from great folks like the open source community.

Why Nanotechnology, for Laypeople
by qaute

Integrated circuits, solar panels, and GMOs are some pretty big results in nanotech these days. What are some future benefits we can look forward to that help justify further research to non-techies?

CP: My own focus is on the long term, very advanced applications such as molecular repair of the human body, ending disease and even aging itself. To me this is highly motivating! That's on top of the original goal of restoring the environment that drew me in originally.

Coming up with near- and intermediate-term applications is harder. This is why venture capitalists make lots of money, when they do their job well. Picking winning new applications is so challenging, especially in getting the timing right.

I can say this: amazing new catalysts and filtration technologies are on the way. Sound boring? It is totally not. Huge energy savings, cheap clean water for everyone (this would even help prevent wars), even blood filtration to take out all the stuff that should not be there.

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Nanotech threat landscape
by bjorng

How concerned should we be about nanotechnology equivalents of the software threats we see today? I would hate to have my circulatory system held hostage for bitcoin.

The Nanotechnology Corollary to Metsploit
by Anonymous Coward

The Internet of Things (IoT) seems to be a ramp-up to Micro-Electromechanical Machines (MEMs), which, in turn, will prime another ramp into atomic-scale nanotechnology. But already, security is atrocious. Worse than Windows XP's exploitation, endless automatic updates and a constant avalanche of zero-day patches.

What will a metasploit framework and CVE database for IoT, MEMs and smaller systems look like? How will biomedical bug bounties, vulnerabilities, exploits and weaponized payloads play themselves out?
________________________________________________________________________________

CP: We should be very concerned and more important, very vigilant. We need to solve today's Internet of Insecure Things as soon as possible, before even more of our world is controlled by software. As mentioned above, I am placing my hope in Agoric and object capabilities in general. There are also suggestions for how to address the insecure chip problem, though they are expensive and have performance costs as well; see the question from AmiMoJo below.

Recent improvements in physical security
by AmiMoJo

Recently big gains have been made in physical security. Many phones are encrypted by default and relatively difficult for unauthorized persons to unlock. Encrypted storage is increasingly common for computers too, although open source support for technologies like OPALv2 seems to be lagging behind closed source systems. In 2017 AMD introduced encrypted RAM.

All of these rely on special hardware to protect encryption keys and perform encryption functions at speeds fast enough to avoid any significant performance loss. It seems like hardware is necessary for very high levels of physical security anyway, e.g. tamper-proof boot ROMs.

How can open source provide this level of security when high end hardware is increasingly difficult for individuals to fabricate? Should we be thinking about how we can fabricate our own security processors and key storage, or is there another way to achieve high levels of physical security?

CP: My understanding from Mark S. Miller is that yes, we need to be thinking about fabricating our own chips, if we want to get around the problem of deliberately-installed backdoors.

In the paper cited above we write, "In the near term one can imagine a technology example that can be secure against those risks: a good open source processor design for which there is a proof of security comparable to the proof of security of the seL4 software. There are many open source processor designs that are sufficiently high performance that, when run on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), can run fast enough to be practical for many applications. By combining these well-designed processors with a layout algorithm that randomizes layout decisions, the processor could be randomly laid out for each individual hardware instance. Given this randomized layout, there is no feasible corruption of the FPGA hardware that can escape notice under electron microscopes and that would also be able to successfully corrupt most instances of the processor."

UPDATE: After writing the above, I met with Mark and he explained that another approach has been found to the problem of insecure chips. At the recent Zcon0 conference, a method was described using zkSnarks and/or Coda. It's not financially practical yet, and doesn't fix leakage of data, but addresses the integrity issue. This is way outside my area of expertise. Eventually, the Agoric website will have many relevant documents on these topics, but not yet.

50 years ahead
by EngineeringStudent

I heard a myth a few decades ago, that top-secret work in most fields is at least 50 years ahead of the current published state of the art. I can't begin to imagine what that would look like here. What sorts of things do you think are solidly plausible within the next 50 years of work in the field of nano-technology, and how would we detect them "in the field" today, if we were to look for them...?

I know there were published discussions about silicon based listening and transmitting devices, bugs, that were smaller than grains of salt. I also know that there was great published fervor over single-pixel cameras, and, in my personal opinion, I have seen a surprising gap in entangled non-return imaging. I expect "they" have working, single-photon, non-return-imaging cameras on grains of silicon too small for the eye to work with, so perhaps nano drone swarms used for data gathering/surveillance, where each drone is less than 0.1mm across?

When I look at robo-cat, and the alleged robo-squirrels or robo-insects, I think they have such swarms that can be ingested/injected/otherwise-implanted inside animals that don't realize they have become "listening posts". What would you do with a fully-functional jet-engine that was only a few microns across? I remember sub-cellular size bar-codes made by shooting proton based cylindrical holes in silicon, then lithographing layers of gold or other stuff to make the code, then removing the silicon substrate. Could we put markers into people to inform future medical reconstruction such as "non-invasive" 3d printing of organs in-vivo? How would we detect sub-cell-size tagging, or fabrication? I like the idea of nanotech-driven bio-energy harvesting. Why can't we turn trees into solar panels by hacking into their organic photosynthesis?

CP: These areas are above my pay grade, but for inspiration on what could be possible in 50 years I would look at high-quality hard science fiction. Some of those writers pay close attention to physical limits. Yes, the surveillance technology should be amazingly good (or bad, depending on one's point of view). I'm not sure we would need advance markers in the body in order to do great 3D printing of organs in vivo, but I could be wrong on that. Eventually I expect we will come up with physical barriers that only allow understood molecular structures to pass though, to avoid having to detect sub-cell size tagging inside our bodies, when it's harder to find. But that's very long-term and ambitious.

Is physical security a political problem?
by Anonymous Coward

How to defend against molecule-sized machines is a question, but there is a meta-question there: will we be subject to constant false flag attacks and entrapment? Year 2030: Great Leader or Deep State accuses you of carrying a nanotech attack. You and perhaps people of your supporting network get disappeared into high security facilities, solitary confinement and all. Can we disprove the authorities' lies? Will people be able to know... Will there be anyone left to speak for you?

CP: Yes, this is a meta question and not about nanotech per se. If government is so dysfunctional and corrupt that the scenario above can take place, we have already lost. Our goal has to be to prevent that level of corruption from taking hold. Edmund Burke wrote, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." To take a US perspective, there have been various times in our country's history when the smartest and most civic-minded people have turned their attention to political matters, to get them straightened out for their own generation and those to come. Jefferson wrote, "We will be soldiers, so our sons may be farmers, so their sons may be artists." Sadly, it's looking like it's time to turn from being artists to being soldiers -- not physical soldiers, but soldiers in the fight for freedom, openness, and other values the open source community cares about.

You asked questions, we've got the answers!

Christine Peterson is a long-time futurist who co-founded the nanotech advocacy group the Foresight Institute in 1986. One of her favorite tasks has been contacting the winners of the institute's annual Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, but she also coined the term "Open Source software" for that famous promotion strategy meeting in 1998.

Christine took some time to answer questions from Slashdot readers.
What exactly happened in 1998?
by Anonymous Coward

Prior to 1998, had you heard anyone using the phrase "open source" before? Or was it something you came up with on your own as the only logical set of words to describe source code which is openly shared.

Starting earlier, our non-profit, Foresight Institute, had been holding a series of small invitational meetings at our office in Los Altos, focused on our free software project and the field in general. One topic of discussion that came up now and then was the problem of the name free software and how it confused newcomers into thinking that the main point was the price because, sadly, in English our word for "free as in freedom" and "free as in price" are the same. (In Spanish they wisely use different words for these two concepts.) But nothing had yet been suggested that seemed good enough to catch on.

Sometime after that the term "open source software" popped into my mind, and my immediate thought was "that's good enough." Not ideal, not great, but good enough to solve the problem. I ran it by a few friends including Mark Miller and Eric Drexler, and they agreed it was probably good enough. One other friend, who worked in PR, thought that "open" had already been overused in the software field, which was true, but it seemed appropriate in this context so I decided to go ahead with the idea anyway.

Eric Raymond came to visit Silicon Valley in connection with the transition of the Netscape code from proprietary to publicly available, so we met again to discuss these new developments. While there Eric took a call from two people from Netscape, and when he was done I asked to speak to them, a man and a woman (possibly Mitchell Baker?). I mentioned the name problem and they agreed, but none of us then had a better term to suggest.

When Eric Raymond visited again, he needed to have other local meetings and doesn't drive, so I offered to drive him around. That's when I found myself sitting in on the meeting at VA Research that included Larry Augustin, Sam Ockman, and "maddog" by phone; I wasn't invited to it. Probably the others thought I was Eric's chauffeur or even his girlfriend. Prior to the meeting I had discussed the "open source software" idea with Todd Anderson, who was also at this meeting, but not with Eric himself, whom I didn't know as well at this point. Being a non-programmer, I had pretty much zero status at this meeting, except with the two who already knew me, so I didn't feel it would work to just say "Hey, here's why you guys all need to use my terminology for your field." The meeting was primarily on broader free software topics anyway, so I just listened and didn't see an opening. Fortunately, Todd was on the ball and tried an interesting tactic: he just used the term casually, not introducing it formally but just throwing it out there in another context. Of course then I perked up and started paying closer attention to see what would happen, if anything. A few minutes later someone else, who hadn't been informed in advance, spontaneously used it, again in a context unrelated to a change in terminology. Todd and I looked at each other and smiled: the meme had jumped successfully!

Later in the meeting, as a rather minor matter compared to the rest of it, the group had a brief discussion and agreed that open source software would be a useful term. No attention was paid then to who suggested it originally, which was fine with me. Later on, Eric even briefly thought it was he himself who came up with it (which would be quite a plausible thing for him to do), but Todd took the initiative to let him know that it was me, and immediately Eric was super gracious about correcting the record on that.

At the time, Todd told me that someday I would be glad to have credit for this, and he was quite right about that. So thank you Todd, wherever you are (and please get in touch).

I don't recall hearing the phrase before it popped into my head, though I found out later that it has long been widely used in the "intelligence" (i.e., spy) field to refer to publicly available information content, so the usage is similar enough to not be a problem. Since the recent coverage of the 20th anniversary, a couple of previous uses in a software context have turned up also. But since I was neither in software nor in intelligence, I probably did not see any of these uses.

I've seen a couple of commenters suggesting that I should defend a claim to having coined the term. Fortunately for me, I don't need to do this, because that decision is not based on my current input or comments. It's an open source community decision based on past experiences, and as a non-programmer I don't even get a vote on this. I just have to accept whatever the community decides, which is why I waited twenty years to let things settle out before publishing my own account.

For a more of the history, see my longer version at Opensource.com. (The OSI history page lists Michael Tiemann also at the VA Research meeting, which is probably correct though I don't recall it. It also has the meeting dated two days earlier than my notes indicate; sadly my calendar data from those days is not accessible format-wise anymore.)

What was it like in 1998?
by DevNull127

As someone who worked closely with Eric Raymond (and had interactions with Jon "maddog" Hall), what were they like in 1998? I'm curious what the whole "mood" of the development community was like in 1998 at that historic meeting. Maybe you could also talk about how things changed -- what they were like before the Open Source movement revved into high gear, and what they were like after.

And how does it all compare to when you first joined the tech scene in the 1980s?

CP: When I arrived in Silicon Valley in 1985, we were still in the early days of the personal computer. Most people did not have an email address or even a fax machine. Only visionaries like Ted Nelson and Doug Engelbart were talking about hypertext and the future of online personal computing. At that time, working on Nelson's Xanadu Hypertext Project was one of the few ways available to move toward that future, and it was through that project that I met many very smart software people including Mark S. Miller and Dean Tribble (who have just started a new company, Agoric, to advance secure smart contracts). It was an exciting time in terms of knowing the potential, but frustrating because the underlying chips were still slow, with little memory or graphics functionality, and online communications were done over regular phone lines using modems, painfully slow.

I vividly recall when Martin Haeberli came to the Foresight office to show us an early MOSAIC browser. It wasn't super impressive at that time, but he explained that this was the start of what would become a world of online hypertext, and he was right. The early days of the World Wide Web were extremely exciting to those of us who had been inspired by Nelson's and Engelbart's visions of hypertext. FINALLY we got to make links! But also they had an undercurrent of intense frustration, because so many of the visionary features were missing, such as automatic micropayments to authors for their original publications and even their quotes used elsewhere online. But the term micropayment was seen by many as anathema, because "information should be free." Even back then, some of us knew that there was no such thing as a free lunch, and that expenses must be paid somehow. It's this lack of micropayments to content providers that has led to today's ubiquitous business model of selling users' personal information and manipulating them using highly-targeted ads, and the negative effects of that on society.

At the time, the open-sourcing of Netscape was seen as yet another innovative Silicon Valley company succumbing to unfair pressure by the all-powerful behemoth Microsoft. This sad situation had the silver lining of bringing an exciting browser project into the free software world. But the small startups trying to do support for free software were having a heck of a time explaining to customers why they should have to pay anything at all to use "free software". (And of course they don't, if they are good enough at dealing with code...which most people, including me, are not.) This awkwardness is what led to the addition of "open source software" to the original -- and still useful -- name "free software".

I did not get to know maddog, but in 1998 Eric Raymond was the one who was most active in doing public outreach, especially media, on behalf of open source. He worked very hard for months or years, unpaid to my knowledge, to promote these ideas and the community. There were many others of course, including Bruce Perens who with Eric co-founded Open Source Initiative to defend the ideas and approve licenses that met the new Open Source Criteria they wrote. Tim O'Reilly played a key role by convening and hosting the community in meetings to make group decisions. And of course we should remember Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation, which had been and still are doing similar work under the original term.

To me as a relative outsider, it seemed that there was a big change when the new term was introduced, which happened very close in time to the Netscape open-sourcing. I had been reading Slashdot occasionally, mainly to admire the way it was designed and enabled users to interact much more effectively that other systems I'd seen. But when the new term arrived, it seemed that suddenly there was a fast ramp-up of attention and especially media coverage of the field. For a while it seemed like every day there was a new exciting development in "open source", which often appeared in quotes because it was so new. And these were appearing in non-programmer publications, ultimately in mainstream news media. Reading Slashdot became a daily necessity, especially for me, since I was getting some kind of thrilling brain chemistry surge every time I saw the term used. I still do, but it's smaller now: a nano surge.

Nanotech Prognosis / Open Source Utopia
by qaute

What's the current outlook for nanotechnology? Technically speaking, do we get Star Trek replicators soon, or is that still a 25+ year thing?

The ultimate dream in nanotechnology is a molecular assembler (atomic 3D printer) on every desktop, with a widespread community of hardware designers/developers analogous to open source software today. You'll be able to, say, download files to build a new car from GitHub. Hackaday has a good writeup. Suppose that someone finally figures out how to build such a molecular assembler. Chances are it'll be patent-encumbered and NDA'd. How can we [get] from here to there...? Politically, how do regulations, industry, and patents look?

Socially, is it generally viewed as positive or negative these days?

CP: Let's say that the goal is an open-source molecular 3D printer able to construct molecular machinery, plus a large library of open-source designs to use with the device. Let's divide this into the hardware components and software components.

It's taken decades and billions of dollars investment to get us where we are today in conventional hardware chips. That kind of investment has not been made yet in molecular machinery. I think eventually we would get there using human chemists, but it appears that instead there will be a shortcut. Progress in artificial intelligence is moving faster now, and I expect that instead of human chemists and human designers of molecular machinery and associated construction pathways, this work will be done faster via AI. We do not need AGI (artificial general intelligence) to do this. Targeted knowledge of chemistry and design engineering are what is needed, and that's coming sooner than AGI. So it could well be sooner than 25+ years depending on AI progress, but (and here's the catch) if that happens, the world will be changing in many other ways also, both positive and negative, to the extent that we may have other issues to deal with instead of having the opportunity of focusing on writing open source code for atomically-precise manufacturing.

Regarding regulations and patents: there's no particular regulatory focus on molecular machinery just now, and there probably won't be much until an actual problem crops up. As an example, consider the recent hearings on Facebook: the US legislators are not educated enough on those issues to grapple effectively with them. Patents seem likely to continue to be used whenever a company does the work, unless it sees a strategic advantage to open-sourcing the work.

I don't think that nanotech or atomically-precise manufacturing is on the public radar these days, either positive or negative. The nanotech term itself has become a marketing term for anything with at least one nanoscale dimension, so the average person who hears it probably thinks that we already have nanotech and therefore it's not a big deal. But it's not clear that we need or want the average person to be paying attention to atomically-precise manufacturing just now anyway, so maybe that's just as well.

Open source or free software
by Jim Hall

Some people prefer one term over the other. I'm curious: all these years later, do you still prefer the term open source software or are you more aligned to Free software?

CP: I use both terms, depending on context. When I'm with longtime hackers such as John Gilmore who naturally use the earlier term, I use it too. And of course if one is at a meeting of the Free Software Foundation, it's polite to use their preferred terminology.

However in dealing with non-software people or young people, I believe that the open source term is much clearer and therefore more useful. I tried doing a search on the two terms, and they are both in active use, but I found more "open source software" than "free software" usages. (This is a very crude measure and may be wrong, of course.)

Probably in Spanish-speaking countries, where they have the words gratis and libre to distinguish our two meanings for the English word free, there is less reason to use the new term. Someone could do a PhD dissertation comparing how the new term spread in the English-speaking world vs. the Spanish-speaking world. That would enable us to tease apart how much the newer term spread due to the free/free confusion problem vs. any more intrinsic value it may have, e.g., implying that the source code is open to public view.

Open source and medicine
by AmiMoJo

How can we get more open source medical software? Given that medical devices are so heavily regulated it seems like it will be hard to get, say, an open source pacemaker system that users can hack, or at least audit.

Radio software seems to be in a similar state - cellular modems, wifi chipsets etc. are all heavily regulated and closed source, with signed code required for updates.

CP: As far as I can tell, the Internet of Things world is still using the "security through obscurity" model. Given that, regulators are naturally going to favor closed source code, since that seems to be a way to reduce the likelihood of attacks.

If we want regulators to approve open source software for important devices, we need to show that it's as secure, or preferably more secure, than closed source code.

Although I am not a programmer, I have paid enough attention to this general issue to be intrigued with object capabilities (ocaps) as a path forward toward more secure code, whether closed and open source.

Currently the most serious effort I'm aware of in this area is Agoric.

There are (at least) two problems that ocaps does not solve. Social engineering will continue to be an issue, though my understanding is that ocaps reduces the damage that these can cause. Finally, there is the problem of compromised hardware: deliberate back doors designed into our computer chips; this is a huge problem with only very expensive solutions; see the hardware question below for more on this.

For more on security, see the paper Cyber, Nano, and AGI Risks: Decentralized Approaches to Reducing Risks, by myself, Mark S. Miller, and Allison Duettmann, from the proceedings of UCLA's First International Colloquium on Catastrophic and Existential Risk (2017).

Pollution
by lhowaf

Nano-materials, in general, seem to be becoming a significant source of hard-to-cleanup pollution. Do you see nano-tech heading in the same direction?

CP: The long-term goal of atomically-precise nanotech is the complete control of the structure of matter (to the extent we care about that structure). This would include extremely advanced abilities to clean up the natural environment. The question is what the pathway looks like to get there, and how clean can we make that pathway? This last question is a matter of what we decide to do. If society decides that preventing nanoscale pollution is a priority, then we'll do much better than if we don't try. It's at least possible to consider how to make this happen commercially, through traditional regulatory mechanisms. The more difficult challenge is military use, and use in regions which don't prioritize environmental values. No easy answers here. But the ultimate goal, at least, is a very clean environment, and it should be achievable eventually. It was this prospect that drew me into trying to advance this field in the first place.

How to deal with nanotech hype problem?
by Goldsmith

I am a nanotechnologist. I've done great academic research, worked for the government, managed a few grants, and started a few companies. It's very easy to hype the potential of nanotechnology. On the other hand, it's very hard to get attention put on results from serious commercial efforts. Granting agencies and our community are not good at supporting companies that do what we all tell each other needs to get done (i.e. NanoIntegris). We are great at supporting academic research groups that have a patina of commercial application (i.e. IBM).

As a field we've missed celebrating a number of major commercialization milestones. CNT and graphene electronics are available commercially! Who knew? For five years or so, you could find commercial graphene electronics in cell phone screens in Shenzhen. For the last two years, you could find commercial graphene biosensors at many big pharma companies. For the last year, you could buy CNT based high power RF electronics.

If we were interested in showing the real potential of the field, wouldn't the leaders want to show everyone that it IS working? We have actually met the NNI timeline for commercialization set in the 1990s. The goals we set out with 20 years ago seem to mean nothing to the hype machine we've created.

Simply put, how do we deal with the addiction to hype in nanotechnology, and focus a bit more on substantive accomplishment?

CP: I'm speaking here from a US perspective. This problem is not unique to nanotechnology, or even to technology in general. It's part of a general decline that has at least two sources, the decline in education standards and the decline of serious journalism, resulting in a hype culture with hype consumers who cannot tell the difference among exciting current technologies, valid engineering prospects, and complete nonsense.

It takes substantial science background to understand why nanotech and atomically-precise manufacturing are interesting, and few in our society today have that background. Our K-12 system is largely broken. Many of our colleges and universities now optimize for student entertainment and enjoyment, rather than the hard road of learning science and engineering.

Serious journalism has been decimated -- worse than decimated, including science and technology journalism. Consumers want all their information for free, and in many cases, you get what you pay for in this area as in others. Could micropayments help? Perhaps something built into the browser sending pennies or fraction of pennies to content originators? I am not sure. It seems worth a try. It could at least help with the privacy problem.

As for the education problem: we need to admit the disaster and try some major experiments. For example, some blame the decline of university standards on deceptively easy loans to students who don't realize what they are getting into. Glenn Reynolds has written books worth reading on this general problem of educational decline in the US, and I would look to him for ideas on solutions.

To me, compared to earlier decades, US society overall seems kind of decadent, cynical, in a cultural decline. I hope we can turn this around somehow. People like Slashdot readers give me hope. And there are still many, many people truly working to make the world a better place, including here in Silicon Valley. My view of Silicon Valley has a positive bias because I meet people through Foresight Institute, which helps select for good folks. I invite you all to join our email list (use blue button on this page) and come to our events. Some are research workshops (e.g., application form for Atomic Precision for Longevity workshop) and some are more accessible, such as our salons and Vision Weekend (videos). If you like what you see, consider donating; we are entirely supported by individual donations from great folks like the open source community.

Why Nanotechnology, for Laypeople
by qaute

Integrated circuits, solar panels, and GMOs are some pretty big results in nanotech these days. What are some future benefits we can look forward to that help justify further research to non-techies?

CP: My own focus is on the long term, very advanced applications such as molecular repair of the human body, ending disease and even aging itself. To me this is highly motivating! That's on top of the original goal of restoring the environment that drew me in originally.

Coming up with near- and intermediate-term applications is harder. This is why venture capitalists make lots of money, when they do their job well. Picking winning new applications is so challenging, especially in getting the timing right.

I can say this: amazing new catalysts and filtration technologies are on the way. Sound boring? It is totally not. Huge energy savings, cheap clean water for everyone (this would even help prevent wars), even blood filtration to take out all the stuff that should not be there.

________________________________________________________________________________
Nanotech threat landscape
by bjorng

How concerned should we be about nanotechnology equivalents of the software threats we see today? I would hate to have my circulatory system held hostage for bitcoin.

The Nanotechnology Corollary to Metsploit
by Anonymous Coward

The Internet of Things (IoT) seems to be a ramp-up to Micro-Electromechanical Machines (MEMs), which, in turn, will prime another ramp into atomic-scale nanotechnology. But already, security is atrocious. Worse than Windows XP's exploitation, endless automatic updates and a constant avalanche of zero-day patches.

What will a metasploit framework and CVE database for IoT, MEMs and smaller systems look like? How will biomedical bug bounties, vulnerabilities, exploits and weaponized payloads play themselves out?
________________________________________________________________________________

CP: We should be very concerned and more important, very vigilant. We need to solve today's Internet of Insecure Things as soon as possible, before even more of our world is controlled by software. As mentioned above, I am placing my hope in Agoric and object capabilities in general. There are also suggestions for how to address the insecure chip problem, though they are expensive and have performance costs as well; see the question from AmiMoJo below.

Recent improvements in physical security
by AmiMoJo

Recently big gains have been made in physical security. Many phones are encrypted by default and relatively difficult for unauthorized persons to unlock. Encrypted storage is increasingly common for computers too, although open source support for technologies like OPALv2 seems to be lagging behind closed source systems. In 2017 AMD introduced encrypted RAM.

All of these rely on special hardware to protect encryption keys and perform encryption functions at speeds fast enough to avoid any significant performance loss. It seems like hardware is necessary for very high levels of physical security anyway, e.g. tamper-proof boot ROMs.

How can open source provide this level of security when high end hardware is increasingly difficult for individuals to fabricate? Should we be thinking about how we can fabricate our own security processors and key storage, or is there another way to achieve high levels of physical security?

CP: My understanding from Mark S. Miller is that yes, we need to be thinking about fabricating our own chips, if we want to get around the problem of deliberately-installed backdoors.

In the paper cited above we write, "In the near term one can imagine a technology example that can be secure against those risks: a good open source processor design for which there is a proof of security comparable to the proof of security of the seL4 software. There are many open source processor designs that are sufficiently high performance that, when run on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), can run fast enough to be practical for many applications. By combining these well-designed processors with a layout algorithm that randomizes layout decisions, the processor could be randomly laid out for each individual hardware instance. Given this randomized layout, there is no feasible corruption of the FPGA hardware that can escape notice under electron microscopes and that would also be able to successfully corrupt most instances of the processor."

UPDATE: After writing the above, I met with Mark and he explained that another approach has been found to the problem of insecure chips. At the recent Zcon0 conference, a method was described using zkSnarks and/or Coda. It's not financially practical yet, and doesn't fix leakage of data, but addresses the integrity issue. This is way outside my area of expertise. Eventually, the Agoric website will have many relevant documents on these topics, but not yet.

50 years ahead
by EngineeringStudent

I heard a myth a few decades ago, that top-secret work in most fields is at least 50 years ahead of the current published state of the art. I can't begin to imagine what that would look like here. What sorts of things do you think are solidly plausible within the next 50 years of work in the field of nano-technology, and how would we detect them "in the field" today, if we were to look for them...?

I know there were published discussions about silicon based listening and transmitting devices, bugs, that were smaller than grains of salt. I also know that there was great published fervor over single-pixel cameras, and, in my personal opinion, I have seen a surprising gap in entangled non-return imaging. I expect "they" have working, single-photon, non-return-imaging cameras on grains of silicon too small for the eye to work with, so perhaps nano drone swarms used for data gathering/surveillance, where each drone is less than 0.1mm across?

When I look at robo-cat, and the alleged robo-squirrels or robo-insects, I think they have such swarms that can be ingested/injected/otherwise-implanted inside animals that don't realize they have become "listening posts". What would you do with a fully-functional jet-engine that was only a few microns across? I remember sub-cellular size bar-codes made by shooting proton based cylindrical holes in silicon, then lithographing layers of gold or other stuff to make the code, then removing the silicon substrate. Could we put markers into people to inform future medical reconstruction such as "non-invasive" 3d printing of organs in-vivo? How would we detect sub-cell-size tagging, or fabrication? I like the idea of nanotech-driven bio-energy harvesting. Why can't we turn trees into solar panels by hacking into their organic photosynthesis?

CP: These areas are above my pay grade, but for inspiration on what could be possible in 50 years I would look at high-quality hard science fiction. Some of those writers pay close attention to physical limits. Yes, the surveillance technology should be amazingly good (or bad, depending on one's point of view). I'm not sure we would need advance markers in the body in order to do great 3D printing of organs in vivo, but I could be wrong on that. Eventually I expect we will come up with physical barriers that only allow understood molecular structures to pass though, to avoid having to detect sub-cell size tagging inside our bodies, when it's harder to find. But that's very long-term and ambitious.

Is physical security a political problem?
by Anonymous Coward

How to defend against molecule-sized machines is a question, but there is a meta-question there: will we be subject to constant false flag attacks and entrapment? Year 2030: Great Leader or Deep State accuses you of carrying a nanotech attack. You and perhaps people of your supporting network get disappeared into high security facilities, solitary confinement and all. Can we disprove the authorities' lies? Will people be able to know... Will there be anyone left to speak for you?

CP: Yes, this is a meta question and not about nanotech per se. If government is so dysfunctional and corrupt that the scenario above can take place, we have already lost. Our goal has to be to prevent that level of corruption from taking hold. Edmund Burke wrote, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." To take a US perspective, there have been various times in our country's history when the smartest and most civic-minded people have turned their attention to political matters, to get them straightened out for their own generation and those to come. Jefferson wrote, "We will be soldiers, so our sons may be farmers, so their sons may be artists." Sadly, it's looking like it's time to turn from being artists to being soldiers -- not physical soldiers, but soldiers in the fight for freedom, openness, and other values the open source community cares about.

An anonymous reader writes "A new method of DNA sequencing published this week in Science identifies incorporation of single bases by fluorescence. This has been shown to increase read lengths from 20 bases (454 sequencing) to >4000 bases, with a 99.3% accuracy. Single molecule reading can reduce costs and increase the rate at which reads can be performed. 'So far, the team has built a chip housing 3000 ZMWs [waveguides], which the company hopes will hit the market in 2010. By 2013, it aims to squeeze a million ZMWs [waveguides] onto a single chip and observe DNA being assembled in each simultaneously. Company founder Stephen Turner estimates that such a chip would be able to sequence an entire human genome in under half an hour to 99.999 per cent accuracy for under $1000.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Looks like Foresight Institute, the nanotechnology public policy think tank founded way back in 1986, is heading to Washington DC this October with their new event, the 1st Conference on Advanced Nanotechnology. The government's original motivation for funding nanotechnology was in large-part due to Foresight's leading educational role and vision for molecular manufacturing. That vision, led by their co-founder K. Eric Drexler, has now become extremely politicized, as Ed Regis discusses in this month's Wired Magazine feature on Drexler."

Ineffable 27 writes "Today's New York Times has an interesting article looking at some of the emerging research into the health and safety risks of nanotech and nanomaterials." Free reg. blah blah. It's a decent article, but it's the same type of questions that groups like The Foresight Institute have been thinking about for a long long time now.

gui noir writes "The first annual Accelerating Change Conference will go from September 12-14 at Stanford University. It will be 'the first conference in the world to focus on the multidisciplinary implications of accelerating change and the consequences of a technological singularity'. The all-star cast of speakers includes Ray Kurzweil, Tim O'Reilly, John Koza, Eric Drexler, and more than fifteen others (full list here). Attendance starts at $100. The closest the academic world has come to these subjects in recent memory was Douglas Hofstadter's standing-room-only Spiritual Robots Symposium back in 2001."

Crashmarik writes "Small times has an article detailing UCB advances in desktop manufacturing. They raise the possibility for effectively downloading physical objects through the net. We have allready seen the reaction "Property Holders" over downloading music, what is the likely upshot of being able to copy physical objects. More importantly what are the implications for our society as we move out of an age of scarcity to an age of plenty ?" Great article - the author of it also won The Foresight Institute's prize in communications for 2002.

Kaz Riprock writes "Mark Baard, author of this Wired article was a recent attendee at The Future of Human Nature symposium (that I helped organize). The talks were held at Boston University through the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. A high profile assemblage of well-known thinkers, such as Steven Pinker, Lee Silver, and Marvin Minsky, were invited to speak at the 3 day conference to examine what 'Human Nature' would be like in 50-200 years. While the article describes a good amount of the 'doom and gloom' which was presented and discussed, it does not quite capture the upside to our potential future aims. One example from the conference was the talk by Christine Peterson, head of The Foresight Institute, on the future use of nanotechnology to better the human condition."

Glenn Reynolds has written an interesting, albiet a bit speculative, in regards to the role of the US Government in the possible quieting of nanotechnology research. As Gleen points out, there's some good pre-existing guidelines to research as well, from the Foresight Institute.

Baldrson writes: "The New York Times reports that architect Stephen Valentine has been commissioned to build a $180 million cryonics "Noah's Ark" theme park and hospice. The purpose will be the preservation, and amusement, of all manner of biological samples, including humans. Among the supporting groups is the nonprofit Stasis Foundation which has been involved in bail-outs of cryonics companies (euphemism for cryonics companies in necrosis). This announcement is particularly timely given this weekend's Foresight Institute Senior Associate Gathering. Biblical themes may evoke religious contributions from aging boomers to push the envelope, but never underestimate the passion of the dog breeders." The vision that comes to mind is Michael Jackson's head in a glass jar.

In this episode of slashback, there's more on NanoStuff, censorship in various forms and venues, and further proof that the word "upstart" uttered or tapped in computer journalism regarding Linux is ever so much twaddle. You have been warned.

Sorry, but the print doesn't get any smaller. If the recent release of the Foresight Institute's nanotech guidelines intriguing to you, you might want to check out the new forum for nanotech advances and issues. bento writes: "From the press release: "I'm happy to report that one of Foresight's long-term goals -- to have a way to meet online that truly works -- is now a reality at http://nanodot.org. We think of this site as our daily newspaper -- all the news that's fit to "print" -- combined with a continual Nanoschmooze discussion. No login is needed to read the site." For those who are interested in nanotechnology's social and technological implications, this site should prove a great resource in finding out what's up in the field of nanotechnology."

One man's trash is other people's trash, too. psxndc writes: "FGNOnline has the scoop about the Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association unveiling new packaging options for PC Games at their annual conference. It brings up the point about games with large documentation not fitting into smaller DVD-type Keep Cases, but wasn't the digital revolution supposed to cut down if not eliminate the need for paper in the first place?? Most game-box contents are a jewel-cased CD, some docs, some ads, and a whole lot of unused space? Why?" Well, in the bad old days of the CD longbox (which are not that long ago), the most commonly cited reasons for the box of mostly-air were 1) the space is helpful for marketing purposes (pictures and blurbs and artwork, oh my!) and 2) everyone's favorite eupehmism for shoplifting, "shrinkage." Probably the same rules apply; game makers want to "stand out on the shelf." But if CDs can handle the switch, I bet games can, too.

How will the children survive? CuriousGeorge113 writes: "In a major decision today, a Federal Appeals Court has struck down COPA (The Children's Online Protection Act). According to this ACLU Press Release, a federal appeals court has deemed the law unconstitutional in nature and 'impossible to establish one "community standard" by which Internet speech could be governed.' You can also see the official court case here."

And in news that can only be called related ... Rude Turnip writes: "It looks like Mattel, one of the most despised toy companies discussed on Slashdot, is sellling off its notorious Cyber Patrol censorware. Cyber Patrol's parent company, The Learning Co., which is also owned by Mattel, is being sold off separately. Mattel said they would like to concentrate on their "core competency" of toys. The lucky buyer of Cyber Patrol is the British firm, JSB Software Technologies, PLC, who paid $100 million. With people like Jamie McCarthy out there fighting these purveyours of censorship and great sites like peacefire.org, I bet JSB will soon realize they paid just a little too much :-)" Maybe it's just not a sellers market; the article indicating that Cyber Patrol was to be sold went up a few months ago.

In six years, Tux will be driving. xannax writes: "I just bought a new IWILL VD133 motherboard, and after the usual setup and such, popped in the configuration cdrom - and was suprised to see a Linux kernel boot up on the monitor. When the cd boots, it gives users without an fdisk'ed partition a chance to make disks for board and chipset config; but the neat thing is the use of Linux for the cd. I mean, two years ago, when I wore my "Penguin Power" t-shirt, most of the attention I got was from hockey fans. But just as the logo on the shirt has faded from repeated washing, the exact opposite has happened to the visibility of the Linux OS; it's gone from hackers and nerds only to mainstream. Great to see a company with a reputation like IWILL use Linux in this fashion."

Come sirrah Jack Straw! MrM writes: "An IDG.net story on CNN says that in the face of increasing pressure from privacy groups, business groups and Internet service providers (ISPs), the U.K. government is backing away from some of the more controversial aspects of its e-mail surveillance bill currently under consideration in the House of Lords." The controversy is mostly over little things like, oh, (from the article) "Under the provisions of the RIP bill, the U.K. government -- specifically the Home Office and its head, the Home Secretary -- can demand encryption keys to any and all data communications with a prison sentence of two years for those who do not comply with the order."

aibrahim writes "The Foresight Institute has released its guidelines on molecular nanotechnology. Background information on the dangers from Engines of Creation in the chapters Engines of Destruction and Strategies of Survival. The document describes how to deal with the dangers of the coming nanotech revolution. Among the reccomendations: making the nanodevices dependent on external factors, such as artificial "vitamins" and industry self-regulation. The guidelines were cosponsored with the Institute of Molecular Manufacturing. So, is it enough ? Is it too much ? What measures should be taken to secure our safety during the nanotech revolution?" The Foresight Institute sounds like hubris, but it's got a masthead that fairly drips with smart people, like Stewart Brand and Marvin Minsky. Remind anyone of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics?

aibrahim writes "The Foresight Institute has released its guidelines on molecular nanotechnology. Background information on the dangers from Engines of Creation in the chapters Engines of Destruction and Strategies of Survival. The document describes how to deal with the dangers of the coming nanotech revolution. Among the reccomendations: making the nanodevices dependent on external factors, such as artificial "vitamins" and industry self-regulation. The guidelines were cosponsored with the Institute of Molecular Manufacturing. So, is it enough ? Is it too much ? What measures should be taken to secure our safety during the nanotech revolution?" The Foresight Institute sounds like hubris, but it's got a masthead that fairly drips with smart people, like Stewart Brand and Marvin Minsky. Remind anyone of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics?

aibrahim writes "The Foresight Institute has released its guidelines on molecular nanotechnology. Background information on the dangers from Engines of Creation in the chapters Engines of Destruction and Strategies of Survival. The document describes how to deal with the dangers of the coming nanotech revolution. Among the reccomendations: making the nanodevices dependent on external factors, such as artificial "vitamins" and industry self-regulation. The guidelines were cosponsored with the Institute of Molecular Manufacturing. So, is it enough ? Is it too much ? What measures should be taken to secure our safety during the nanotech revolution?" The Foresight Institute sounds like hubris, but it's got a masthead that fairly drips with smart people, like Stewart Brand and Marvin Minsky. Remind anyone of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics?

aibrahim writes "The Foresight Institute has released its guidelines on molecular nanotechnology. Background information on the dangers from Engines of Creation in the chapters Engines of Destruction and Strategies of Survival. The document describes how to deal with the dangers of the coming nanotech revolution. Among the reccomendations: making the nanodevices dependent on external factors, such as artificial "vitamins" and industry self-regulation. The guidelines were cosponsored with the Institute of Molecular Manufacturing. So, is it enough ? Is it too much ? What measures should be taken to secure our safety during the nanotech revolution?" The Foresight Institute sounds like hubris, but it's got a masthead that fairly drips with smart people, like Stewart Brand and Marvin Minsky. Remind anyone of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics?

aibrahim writes "The Foresight Institute has released its guidelines on molecular nanotechnology. Background information on the dangers from Engines of Creation in the chapters Engines of Destruction and Strategies of Survival. The document describes how to deal with the dangers of the coming nanotech revolution. Among the reccomendations: making the nanodevices dependent on external factors, such as artificial "vitamins" and industry self-regulation. The guidelines were cosponsored with the Institute of Molecular Manufacturing. So, is it enough ? Is it too much ? What measures should be taken to secure our safety during the nanotech revolution?" The Foresight Institute sounds like hubris, but it's got a masthead that fairly drips with smart people, like Stewart Brand and Marvin Minsky. Remind anyone of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics?

aibrahim writes "The Foresight Institute has released its guidelines on molecular nanotechnology. Background information on the dangers from Engines of Creation in the chapters Engines of Destruction and Strategies of Survival. The document describes how to deal with the dangers of the coming nanotech revolution. Among the reccomendations: making the nanodevices dependent on external factors, such as artificial "vitamins" and industry self-regulation. The guidelines were cosponsored with the Institute of Molecular Manufacturing. So, is it enough ? Is it too much ? What measures should be taken to secure our safety during the nanotech revolution?" The Foresight Institute sounds like hubris, but it's got a masthead that fairly drips with smart people, like Stewart Brand and Marvin Minsky. Remind anyone of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics?

Chris Worth has come to me (surprise!) with a review of one of the most definitive books on nanotechnology, Nanosystems. K. Eric Drexler's response to the technical issues raised by critics to nanotechnology, the book is a technical treatise Nanosystems author K Eric Drexler pages 556 publisher John Wiley & Sons rating 10/10 reviewer Chris Worth ISBN 0471575186 summary Dr Nano answers his critics with a technical treatise on nanotech.

About the reviewer

Chris Worth is a web creative director and nanotech junkie based in Paris. You'll find other ramblings on technology, literature, and red hot asian babes at chrisworth.com. He's looking for geeks to build a subversive website for fun and profit, supported by some of the world's top creatives and assorted rich bastards; email him at chris@chrisworth.com if you're interested.

The Scenario: bringing researchers together

So you think you know what nanotech is, huh? Maybe you read a book by Neal or Greg or William and dreamed of custom-built computing molecules blanketing cities a billion deep, of patterned flesh singing a song of networked biosentience, of hundred-storey polycarbon structures reaching skywards into the electric neon night. Maybe the concept seduced you into Unbounding the Future and its Lilliputian expeditions across molecular landscapes, or you notched up to Engines of Creation and its talk of assemblers and replicators in pages nude of math. I read them too. And they're good, believe me. But to really know nanotech, to bite through the soft pop-sci underbelly and champ down on its hard skeleton of applied physics, you've got to read Nanosystems .

Nanosystems: the first technical treatise on nanotechnology

Nanosystems, by K Eric Drexler, is the real deal: the first textbook on molecular nanotechnology. It's full of greek equations and exponential graphs and globular diagrams that'd scare your chemistry professor, walled in by dense paragraphs of dry prose that'll make your teeth itch. But somehow it's readable - because the book has a broader purpose that goes beyond Potential Energy Surfaces or spatial Fourier transforms or Born-Oppenheimer approximations. That purpose is to bring together researchers from different fields, to show them how their expertise fits into the broad patchwork of nanotechnology. And that means it's readable for any motivated geek, because Drexler assumes no in-depth knowledge of any one field; concepts are explained from first principles and many equations are derived step-by-step. In a nutshell: if you get C, you can get Nanosystems.

So that's the purpose of Nanosystems: to bring disparate researchers into a single conceptual framework and make nanotech a collaborative effort. But just what is nanotech? First, let's define what it isn't - because nanotech discussions often give out more heat than light. Like transgenic crops and human cloning, vast swaths of the argument would disappear if everyone understood the principles.

Nanotech: so what the hell is it?

First, it's not necessarily about small things; the nano prefix refers to precision at the molecular scale, not the size of the finished article. A rocket motor built bottom up from component atoms one by one is molecular nanotechnology; a train of tiny gears built top-down by hewing away at a silicon surface is not. Second, nanotechnology won't turn lead into gold; elements are defined by atomic nucleii, and nanotech isn't interested in the nuclear forces. Third, it isn't a cure for all the world's problems; hatred and bigotry are separate issues no technology can solve. Fourth, there won't be any day when sci.nanotech explodes with cries of "it's here!"; since it'll be the result of research across multiple disciplines, nanotech will arrive in fits and starts.

And finally, on the biggest misunderstanding of all: no, nanotech isn't impossible. The laws of physics don't prevent nanotech happening; in fact, they emphatically make it possible. (Mr Heisenberg isn't half the troublemaker you think he is.) Yes, there's a tad too much hero worship and holy rollerism surrounding the good-natured and approachable Dr Drexler. And that's given rise to some negative column inches by Scientific American's Gary Stix and Nature's David Jones (neither of whom backed up their assertions). But catcalls and hype don't change basic physical principles; nature doesn't give a damn how loud we shout. And since Nanosystems's first printing in 1992, even Drexler's most loudmouthed critics haven't found any showstopping fault with it.

But back to what matters: what is nanotech? Fundamentally, it's about that bottom-up capability: getting every atom where you want it. Once you can get every atom where you want it, you can build machine systems from the bottom up with atomic precision. Once you can build bottom up, you can build machine systems capable of making perfect copies of themselves, as ribosomes do with DNA. And once your machine's made a perfect copy of itself, you can tell those two to build another, and those four to build four more, and so on, meaning that in a day or two you've got enough to start doing serious work. That bottom up capability of "molecular manufacturing" - which Drexler defines as "the construction of objects to complex atomic specifications using sequences of chemical reactions directed by nonbiological molecular machinery" - would lead to a new world of wealth and abundance. And Nanosystems is about reaching it.

The book's structure

Inside the blue-white cover with tantalising schematics of a molecular sorting rotor, atomic-scale bearing, and a robot arm with the 50 nanometer legend, the book's 556 pages split into three parts: "Physical principles", "Components and systems", and "Implementation strategies". What it does, what to do it with, and how to get there, backed up by 450 equations. Resist the urge to skip chapters until you've skimmed the whole book once; it has a developing structure that rewards a bit of linearity. The preface - with its famous first line "Manufactured products are made from atoms, and their properties depend on how those atoms are arranged" - sets the scene, with notes on why it's reasonable to predict tomorrow's technology with today's. ("Our ability to model molecular machines has far outrun our ability to make them...") But the meat starts with the intro:

"The following devices and capabilities appear to be both physically possible and practically realizable:

Programmable positioning of reactive molecules with ~0.1nm precision
Mechanosynthesis at >10^6 operations/device.second
Mechanosynthetic assembly of 1kg objects in <10^4 s
Nanomechanical systems operating at ~10^9 Hz
Logic gates that occupy ~10^-26m (~10^8 micro^3)
Logic gates that switch in ~0.1ns and dissipate <10^-21J
Computers that perform 10^16 instructions per second per watt
Cooling of cubic-centimeter, ~10^5W systems at 300K
Compact 10^15 MIPS parallel computing systems
Mechanochemical power conversion at >10^9W/m^3
Electromechanical power conversion at >10^15W/m^3
Macroscopic components with tensile strengths >5*10^10GPa
Production systems that can double capital stocks in <10^4s"

Yeah, I was drooling too. And just a few pages further in Drexler whacks us with a nanomechanical product: a bearing with shaft and sleeve in 6- and 14-fold prime symmetry to keep it turning. It's made of carbon with the odd silicon and oxygen atom to round it out, dangling bonds capped with hydrogen, and is made of just 206 atoms. Of course it can't be built yet, but the mind boggles anyway. As it should: this diagram is a teaser for the whole book.

The rest of the intro is comparisons: how conventional solution-phase chemistry and mechanosynthetic chemistry are different, how characteristics of different approaches differ at the nanoscale, how the carbon structures described in Nanosystems are just a subset of all covalently-bonded structures, and the scope of the book. Read this: there's no sci-fi here, no what-ifs, no assuming-thats. Nanosystems is about what's possible given today's understanding of how molecules behave - as such, it's more conservative than many papers you'll see in Nature.

Chapter by chapter

Part I - Physical Principles - is the hardest, squashing a physics course into 230 pages. Ride the hump, guys; no pain, no gain. Chapter 1 takes you down into the molecular world, exploring where classical physics scales down and where it doesn't; chapters 2 and 3 get down and dirty with how molecules are shaped and how they behave when pushed. Chapter 5 is for Heisenberg fans, explaining how thermal uncertainty's a far bigger problem than quantum uncertainty at these scales, while 6 and 7 explore how nanomachine designs will be debugged, going into problems of error-checking and heat death. So far, so painful. Work with it.

It's not until chapter 8 that Drexler starts talking about "real" nanotech: mechanosynthesis. This is 1AM stuff when you know you should be putting the book down for the night but can't. You'll be reaching for the Jolt without caring about work tomorrow. There's still plenty of alkenes and alkynes and tensile bond cleavage and Pi-bond torsion talk here, but the graphs stop for a moment as Drexler deals with what later got called "fat finger" and "sticky finger" problems - how to make your reactive tool molecule slim enough to cause one reaction with a target molecule without it getting the wrong one, and how to make sure the reaction happens when you want it to. And this chapter introduces carbon, everyone's favourite element.

Carbon is one seriously cool atom. Tetrahedral covalent carbon - diamond - is a hundred or so times stronger than steel, and its components atoms are everywhere. They do have to be joined together in a precise pattern; that's why diamond is rare today, and why p.241 includes a diagram of adding two ethyne molecules to another hydrocarbon to model a step in diamondoid formation. Peppered with other common elements like oxygen, fluorine, chlorine, hydrogen, silicon, sulfur, phosphorus, and nitrogen, carbon can be assembled into tough, stiff structures with almost any mechanical or electronic property we want. And carbon molecules are surprisingly easy to model accurately on a computer. That's why Nanosystems devotes itself principally to carbon structures.

On to part II, Components and Systems. Chapter 9 kicks off with the difference between housings and moving parts, and answers one criticism levelled at Drexler: you can't extrapolate to the nanoscale from the macroscale. With a grab-bag of molecular rods and strained-shell carbon bearings, Drexler shows where we can and where we can't. Chapter 10 does the same for moving parts, salting in what happens when two structures start interacting with each other: there are some tasty diagrams of molecular gears, rollers, belts and cams here, but watch out for the graphs and equations.

By chapter 11 the components start coming together as complete systems instead of odd toys, worm gears inserted between tube sections and drive rings threaded onto toroidal housings. Some of the drawings look clunky and Victorian to our silicon-bred eyes, until you realise the transistors we know and love are huge rough-hewn logs at this scale and gravity and friction aren't problems in the same way. Nanosystems is about mechanics, not electronics, but a funky electrostatic motor on p.337 blurs the line: at these sizes both approaches are elegant.

It's at chapter 12 that Drexler gets around to computers. Shapes reminiscent of Babbage engines and Jacquard looms parade across the pages in diagrams of rod-logic gate and register apparatus. (Yes, this is the chapter that inspired a scene in The Diamond Age.) Neal Stephenson got it wrong: this is unlikely to be how we'll build tomorrow's PCs, because Nanosystems is an exploration of engineering techniques, not a recommendation to Intel. The chapter pivots on a finite-state machine built with nanomolecular AND/OR rod logic, with text stating a million-transistor CPU would fit inside a 400nm cube, run at 1GHz, and perform at 10^16 instructions per second. Nanoelectronic designs will be many orders of magnitude faster, but they're outside the scope of this book.

Chapter 13 starts the segue into part III, chunking up to how all these nanomachines can be linked into a complete machine system. A sorting rotor extracts the right molecules from a mix with precisely-shaped reactants attached to a cam; a set of them washes a mix progressively cleaner and cleaner (more feedstock for Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age.) Molecular conveyor belts grab molecules from a toothed gear and take them elsewhere. But the chapter's wow-factor (wow being a relative term in Nanosystems) is the nanomanipulator, a squat robot arm of four million atoms, over a hundred moving parts yet just a hundred nanometers tall. It can pitch, roll and yaw in all six degrees of freedom, snaking up and down and round and round with a train of drives and clutches spliced together with worm gears and intersegment bearings. Imagine this arm reaching out and bonding to a single atom with a reactive tip, rotating that atom away from its surface and depositing it elsewhere. Remember that image, because it's at the core of what nanotech is.

Building on this, chapter 14 describes an exemplar molecular manufacturing system: the holy grail. Another chunk up, it gloms together all the machines described already, into a complete factory for building nanomachines. From single atoms to different parts to convergent assembly to parallel construction, the factory masses less than a kilogram. With a few simple instructions, millions of interacting nanomachines will build products in minutes, blocks of molecular sorting rotors, conveyor belts, and assemblers individually unaware of the big picture but working in parallel like any anthill or beehive. Open another can of Jolt, because you're on the home stretch now.

Part III - on Implementation Strategies - tacks away from what we can build and talks about how to build the things that build them. It turns out there's more than one way to do it. In chapters 15 and 16 Drexler discusses a range of cool STM and AFM scopes for pushing and shoving atoms around, and suggests ways reactive tips on the scanning needle could play with them; since Nanosystem's publication this has started happening in several labs. Biomolecular selfassembly and protein folding are other possible paths to those first primitive tools that can bootstrap us up to covalent-carbon nanotech. Talk of cyclic backbones, crosslinking and rigidity will answer a lot of critics' questions, with a forward- and backward-chaining analysis (a la computer science) "indicates that feasible developmental pathways link our present technology base to the technology base described in Part II." And there, save for a couple of appendices on methodology and related research, the book ends.

So drop the Jolt and fall asleep, because then you can dream - dream of nanotech's infinity of possibilities. And then we can start talking about it. Talking about it the way we talk about Linux, informed by sound technical issues instead of hype and soundbites. Because Nanosystems is a subversive book, subversive the way strong crypto and open source are subversive: developing thanks to the hacker ethic, developing to liberate the masses instead of control them. Published anywhere else, this review'd probably scare people off. But to you, it probably sounds like a challenge. So read Nanosystems. Imagine how ten thousand hyperlinked Slashdotters with a strong understanding of nanotech could influence this technology... and have so much damn fun doing it.

So go on, geek: read Nanosystems . I dare you.

FOOTNOTE: About the Foresight Institute

After first reading Nanosystems in 1996 I became a member of the Foresight Institute, which Eric Drexler and Chris Peterson founded to spread information about nanotech. Foresight works quietly and cost-effectively to influence public policy towards safe, informed development of molecular nanotechnology. (As Gayle Pergamit, Drexler and Peterson's technical writing collaborator, says, it's amazing what two people and a letter to the right office can achieve.) At the conferences it runs for its members you can rub shoulders with writers like Greg Bear, David Brin and Gregory Benford, Valley legends like Doug Engelbart, hackers the stature of Raymond and Gilmore, Old Media types from the New York Times and San Jose Mercury, real nanotechies like Ralph Merkle of Zyvex and Josh Hall of IMM, and of course Drexler and Peterson themselves. And this would take you through one bagel at breakfast. Thanks to Foresight I've learned a lot, made some excellent contacts, and several strong friends. You can learn more at www.foresight.org.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction and Overview

• 1.1 Why molecular manufacturing?
• 1.2 What is molecular manufacturing?
• 1.3 Comparisons
• 1.4 The approach in this volume
• 1.5 Objectives of following chapters

Part I 2. Classical Magnitudes and Scaling Laws

• 2.1 Overview
• 2.2 Approximation and classical continuum models
• 2.3 Scaling of classical mechanical systems
• 2.4 Scaling of electromagnetic systems
• 2.5 Scaling of classical thermal systems
• 2.6 Beyond classical continuum models
• 2.7 Conclusions

3. Potential Energy Surfaces

• 3.1 Overview
• 3.2 Quantum theory and approximations
• 3.3 Molecular Mechanics
• 3.4 Potentials for chemical reactions
• 3.5 Continuum representations of surfaces
• 3.6 Conclusions
• 3.7 Further readings

4. Molecular Dynamics

• 4.1 Overview
• 4.2 Nonstatistical mechanics
• 4.3 Statistical mechanics
• 4.4 PES revisited: accuracy requirements
• 4.5 Conclusions
• 4.6 Further Reading

5. Positional Uncertainty

• 5.1 Overview
• 5.2 Positional uncertainty in engineering
• 5.3 Thermally excited harmonic oscillators
• 5.4 Elastic extension of thermally excited rods
• 5.5 Elastic bending of thermally excited rods
• 5.6 Piston displacement in a gas-filled cylinder
• 5.7 Longitudinal variance from transverse deformation
• 5.8 Elasticity, entropy, and vibrational modes
• 5.9 Conclusions

6. Transistions, Errors, and Damage

• 6.1 Overview
• 6.2 Transitions between potential wells
• 6.3 Placement errors
• 6.4 Thermomechanical damage
• 6.5 Photochemical damage
• 6.6 Radiation damage
• 6.7 Component and system lifetimes
• 6.8 Conclusions

7. Energy Dissipation

• 7.1 Overview
• 7.2 Radiation from forced oscillations
• 7.3 Phonons and phonon scattering
• 7.4 Thermoelastic damping and phonon viscosity
• 7.5 Compression of potential wells
• 7.6 Transitions among time-dependent wells
• 7.7 Conclusions

8. Mechanosynthesis

• 8.1 Overview
• 8.2 Perspectives on solution-phase organic synthesis
• 8.3 Solution-phase synthesis and mechanosynthesis
• 8.4 Reactive species
• 8.5 Forcible mechanochemical processes
• 8.6 Mechanosynthesis of diamondoid structures
• 8.7 Conclusions

Part II 9. Nanoscale Structural Components

• 9.1 Overview
• 9.2 Components in context
• 9.3 Materials and models for nanoscale components
• 9.4 Surface effects on component properties
• 9.5 Shape control in irregular structures
• 9.6 Components of high rotational symmetry
• 9.7 Adhesive interfaces
• 9.8 Conclusions

10. Mobile Interfaces and Moving Parts

• 10.1 Overview
• 10.2 Spatial Fourier transforms of nonbonded potentials
• 10.3 Sliding of irregular objects over regular surfaces
• 10.4 Symmetrical sleeve bearings
• 10.5 Further applications of sliding-interface bearings
• 10.6 Atomic-axle bearings
• 10.7 Gears, rollers, belts, and cams
• 10.8 Barriers in extended systems
• 10.9 Dampers, detents, clutches, and ratchets
• 10.10 Perspective: nanomachines and macromachines
• 10.11 Bounded continuum models revisited
• 10.12 Conclusions

11. Intermediate Subsystems

• 11.1 Overview
• 11.2 Mechanical measurment devices
• 11.3 Stiff, high gear-ratio mechanisms
• 11.4 Fluids, seals, and pumps
• 11.5 Convective cooling systems
• 11.6 Electromechanical devices
• 11.7 DC motors and generators
• 11.8 Conclusions

12. Nanomechanical Computational Systems

• 12.1 Overview
• 12.2 Digital signal transmission with mechanical rods
• 12.3 Gates and logic rods
• 12.4 Registers
• 12.5 Combinational logic and finite-state machines
• 12.6 Survey of other devices and subsystems
• 12.7 CPU-scale systems: clocking and power supply
• 12.8 Cooling and computational capacity
• 12.9 Conclusion

13. Molecular Sorting, Processing, and Assembly

• 13.1 Overview
• 13.2 Sorting and ordering molecules
• 13.3 Transformation and assembly with molecular mills
• 13.4 Assembly operations using molecular manipulators
• 13.5 Conclusions

14. Molecular Manufacturing Systems

• 14.1 Overview
• 14.2 Assembly operations at intermediate scales
• 14.3 Architectural issues
• 14.4 An examplar manufacturing-system architecture
• 14.5 Comparisons to conventional manufacturing
• 14.6 Design and complexity
• 14.7 Conclusions

Part III 15. Macromolecular Engineering

• 15.1 Overview
• 15.2 Macromolecular objects via biotechnology
• 15.3 Macromolecular objects via solution synthesis
• 15.4 Macromolecular objects via mechanosynthesis
• 15.5 Conclusions

16. Paths to Molecular Manufacturing

• 16.1 Overview
• 16.2 Backward chaining to identify strategies
• 16.3 Smaller, simpler systems (stages 3-4)
• 16.4 Softer, smaller, solution-phase systems (stages 2-3)
• 16.5 Development time: some considerations
• 16.6 Conclusions

Appendix A. Methodological Issues in Theoretical and Applied Science

• A.1 The role of theoretical applied science
• A.2 Basic issues
• A.3 Science, engineering, and theoretical applied science
• A.4 Issues in theoretical applied science
• A.5 A sketch of some epistemological issues
• A.6 Theoretical applied science as intellectual scaffolding
• A.7 Conclusions

Appendix B. Related Research

• B.1 Overview
• B.2 How related fields have been divided
• B.3 Mechanical engineering and microtechnology
• B.4 Chemistry
• B.5 Molecular biology
• B.6 Protein engineering
• B.7 Proximal probe technologies
• B.8 Feynman's 1959 talk
• B.9 Conclusions

Afterword Symbols, Units, and Constants Glossary References Index

Chris Worth has come to me (surprise!) with a review of one of the most definitive books on nanotechnology, Nanosystems. K. Eric Drexler's response to the technical issues raised by critics to nanotechnology, the book is a technical treatise Nanosystems author K Eric Drexler pages 556 publisher John Wiley & Sons rating 10/10 reviewer Chris Worth ISBN 0471575186 summary Dr Nano answers his critics with a technical treatise on nanotech.

About the reviewer

Chris Worth is a web creative director and nanotech junkie based in Paris. You'll find other ramblings on technology, literature, and red hot asian babes at chrisworth.com. He's looking for geeks to build a subversive website for fun and profit, supported by some of the world's top creatives and assorted rich bastards; email him at chris@chrisworth.com if you're interested.

The Scenario: bringing researchers together

So you think you know what nanotech is, huh? Maybe you read a book by Neal or Greg or William and dreamed of custom-built computing molecules blanketing cities a billion deep, of patterned flesh singing a song of networked biosentience, of hundred-storey polycarbon structures reaching skywards into the electric neon night. Maybe the concept seduced you into Unbounding the Future and its Lilliputian expeditions across molecular landscapes, or you notched up to Engines of Creation and its talk of assemblers and replicators in pages nude of math. I read them too. And they're good, believe me. But to really know nanotech, to bite through the soft pop-sci underbelly and champ down on its hard skeleton of applied physics, you've got to read Nanosystems .

Nanosystems: the first technical treatise on nanotechnology

Nanosystems, by K Eric Drexler, is the real deal: the first textbook on molecular nanotechnology. It's full of greek equations and exponential graphs and globular diagrams that'd scare your chemistry professor, walled in by dense paragraphs of dry prose that'll make your teeth itch. But somehow it's readable - because the book has a broader purpose that goes beyond Potential Energy Surfaces or spatial Fourier transforms or Born-Oppenheimer approximations. That purpose is to bring together researchers from different fields, to show them how their expertise fits into the broad patchwork of nanotechnology. And that means it's readable for any motivated geek, because Drexler assumes no in-depth knowledge of any one field; concepts are explained from first principles and many equations are derived step-by-step. In a nutshell: if you get C, you can get Nanosystems.

So that's the purpose of Nanosystems: to bring disparate researchers into a single conceptual framework and make nanotech a collaborative effort. But just what is nanotech? First, let's define what it isn't - because nanotech discussions often give out more heat than light. Like transgenic crops and human cloning, vast swaths of the argument would disappear if everyone understood the principles.

Nanotech: so what the hell is it?

First, it's not necessarily about small things; the nano prefix refers to precision at the molecular scale, not the size of the finished article. A rocket motor built bottom up from component atoms one by one is molecular nanotechnology; a train of tiny gears built top-down by hewing away at a silicon surface is not. Second, nanotechnology won't turn lead into gold; elements are defined by atomic nucleii, and nanotech isn't interested in the nuclear forces. Third, it isn't a cure for all the world's problems; hatred and bigotry are separate issues no technology can solve. Fourth, there won't be any day when sci.nanotech explodes with cries of "it's here!"; since it'll be the result of research across multiple disciplines, nanotech will arrive in fits and starts.

And finally, on the biggest misunderstanding of all: no, nanotech isn't impossible. The laws of physics don't prevent nanotech happening; in fact, they emphatically make it possible. (Mr Heisenberg isn't half the troublemaker you think he is.) Yes, there's a tad too much hero worship and holy rollerism surrounding the good-natured and approachable Dr Drexler. And that's given rise to some negative column inches by Scientific American's Gary Stix and Nature's David Jones (neither of whom backed up their assertions). But catcalls and hype don't change basic physical principles; nature doesn't give a damn how loud we shout. And since Nanosystems's first printing in 1992, even Drexler's most loudmouthed critics haven't found any showstopping fault with it.

But back to what matters: what is nanotech? Fundamentally, it's about that bottom-up capability: getting every atom where you want it. Once you can get every atom where you want it, you can build machine systems from the bottom up with atomic precision. Once you can build bottom up, you can build machine systems capable of making perfect copies of themselves, as ribosomes do with DNA. And once your machine's made a perfect copy of itself, you can tell those two to build another, and those four to build four more, and so on, meaning that in a day or two you've got enough to start doing serious work. That bottom up capability of "molecular manufacturing" - which Drexler defines as "the construction of objects to complex atomic specifications using sequences of chemical reactions directed by nonbiological molecular machinery" - would lead to a new world of wealth and abundance. And Nanosystems is about reaching it.

The book's structure

Inside the blue-white cover with tantalising schematics of a molecular sorting rotor, atomic-scale bearing, and a robot arm with the 50 nanometer legend, the book's 556 pages split into three parts: "Physical principles", "Components and systems", and "Implementation strategies". What it does, what to do it with, and how to get there, backed up by 450 equations. Resist the urge to skip chapters until you've skimmed the whole book once; it has a developing structure that rewards a bit of linearity. The preface - with its famous first line "Manufactured products are made from atoms, and their properties depend on how those atoms are arranged" - sets the scene, with notes on why it's reasonable to predict tomorrow's technology with today's. ("Our ability to model molecular machines has far outrun our ability to make them...") But the meat starts with the intro:

"The following devices and capabilities appear to be both physically possible and practically realizable:

Programmable positioning of reactive molecules with ~0.1nm precision
Mechanosynthesis at >10^6 operations/device.second
Mechanosynthetic assembly of 1kg objects in <10^4 s
Nanomechanical systems operating at ~10^9 Hz
Logic gates that occupy ~10^-26m (~10^8 micro^3)
Logic gates that switch in ~0.1ns and dissipate <10^-21J
Computers that perform 10^16 instructions per second per watt
Cooling of cubic-centimeter, ~10^5W systems at 300K
Compact 10^15 MIPS parallel computing systems
Mechanochemical power conversion at >10^9W/m^3
Electromechanical power conversion at >10^15W/m^3
Macroscopic components with tensile strengths >5*10^10GPa
Production systems that can double capital stocks in <10^4s"

Yeah, I was drooling too. And just a few pages further in Drexler whacks us with a nanomechanical product: a bearing with shaft and sleeve in 6- and 14-fold prime symmetry to keep it turning. It's made of carbon with the odd silicon and oxygen atom to round it out, dangling bonds capped with hydrogen, and is made of just 206 atoms. Of course it can't be built yet, but the mind boggles anyway. As it should: this diagram is a teaser for the whole book.

The rest of the intro is comparisons: how conventional solution-phase chemistry and mechanosynthetic chemistry are different, how characteristics of different approaches differ at the nanoscale, how the carbon structures described in Nanosystems are just a subset of all covalently-bonded structures, and the scope of the book. Read this: there's no sci-fi here, no what-ifs, no assuming-thats. Nanosystems is about what's possible given today's understanding of how molecules behave - as such, it's more conservative than many papers you'll see in Nature.

Chapter by chapter

Part I - Physical Principles - is the hardest, squashing a physics course into 230 pages. Ride the hump, guys; no pain, no gain. Chapter 1 takes you down into the molecular world, exploring where classical physics scales down and where it doesn't; chapters 2 and 3 get down and dirty with how molecules are shaped and how they behave when pushed. Chapter 5 is for Heisenberg fans, explaining how thermal uncertainty's a far bigger problem than quantum uncertainty at these scales, while 6 and 7 explore how nanomachine designs will be debugged, going into problems of error-checking and heat death. So far, so painful. Work with it.

It's not until chapter 8 that Drexler starts talking about "real" nanotech: mechanosynthesis. This is 1AM stuff when you know you should be putting the book down for the night but can't. You'll be reaching for the Jolt without caring about work tomorrow. There's still plenty of alkenes and alkynes and tensile bond cleavage and Pi-bond torsion talk here, but the graphs stop for a moment as Drexler deals with what later got called "fat finger" and "sticky finger" problems - how to make your reactive tool molecule slim enough to cause one reaction with a target molecule without it getting the wrong one, and how to make sure the reaction happens when you want it to. And this chapter introduces carbon, everyone's favourite element.

Carbon is one seriously cool atom. Tetrahedral covalent carbon - diamond - is a hundred or so times stronger than steel, and its components atoms are everywhere. They do have to be joined together in a precise pattern; that's why diamond is rare today, and why p.241 includes a diagram of adding two ethyne molecules to another hydrocarbon to model a step in diamondoid formation. Peppered with other common elements like oxygen, fluorine, chlorine, hydrogen, silicon, sulfur, phosphorus, and nitrogen, carbon can be assembled into tough, stiff structures with almost any mechanical or electronic property we want. And carbon molecules are surprisingly easy to model accurately on a computer. That's why Nanosystems devotes itself principally to carbon structures.

On to part II, Components and Systems. Chapter 9 kicks off with the difference between housings and moving parts, and answers one criticism levelled at Drexler: you can't extrapolate to the nanoscale from the macroscale. With a grab-bag of molecular rods and strained-shell carbon bearings, Drexler shows where we can and where we can't. Chapter 10 does the same for moving parts, salting in what happens when two structures start interacting with each other: there are some tasty diagrams of molecular gears, rollers, belts and cams here, but watch out for the graphs and equations.

By chapter 11 the components start coming together as complete systems instead of odd toys, worm gears inserted between tube sections and drive rings threaded onto toroidal housings. Some of the drawings look clunky and Victorian to our silicon-bred eyes, until you realise the transistors we know and love are huge rough-hewn logs at this scale and gravity and friction aren't problems in the same way. Nanosystems is about mechanics, not electronics, but a funky electrostatic motor on p.337 blurs the line: at these sizes both approaches are elegant.

It's at chapter 12 that Drexler gets around to computers. Shapes reminiscent of Babbage engines and Jacquard looms parade across the pages in diagrams of rod-logic gate and register apparatus. (Yes, this is the chapter that inspired a scene in The Diamond Age.) Neal Stephenson got it wrong: this is unlikely to be how we'll build tomorrow's PCs, because Nanosystems is an exploration of engineering techniques, not a recommendation to Intel. The chapter pivots on a finite-state machine built with nanomolecular AND/OR rod logic, with text stating a million-transistor CPU would fit inside a 400nm cube, run at 1GHz, and perform at 10^16 instructions per second. Nanoelectronic designs will be many orders of magnitude faster, but they're outside the scope of this book.

Chapter 13 starts the segue into part III, chunking up to how all these nanomachines can be linked into a complete machine system. A sorting rotor extracts the right molecules from a mix with precisely-shaped reactants attached to a cam; a set of them washes a mix progressively cleaner and cleaner (more feedstock for Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age.) Molecular conveyor belts grab molecules from a toothed gear and take them elsewhere. But the chapter's wow-factor (wow being a relative term in Nanosystems) is the nanomanipulator, a squat robot arm of four million atoms, over a hundred moving parts yet just a hundred nanometers tall. It can pitch, roll and yaw in all six degrees of freedom, snaking up and down and round and round with a train of drives and clutches spliced together with worm gears and intersegment bearings. Imagine this arm reaching out and bonding to a single atom with a reactive tip, rotating that atom away from its surface and depositing it elsewhere. Remember that image, because it's at the core of what nanotech is.

Building on this, chapter 14 describes an exemplar molecular manufacturing system: the holy grail. Another chunk up, it gloms together all the machines described already, into a complete factory for building nanomachines. From single atoms to different parts to convergent assembly to parallel construction, the factory masses less than a kilogram. With a few simple instructions, millions of interacting nanomachines will build products in minutes, blocks of molecular sorting rotors, conveyor belts, and assemblers individually unaware of the big picture but working in parallel like any anthill or beehive. Open another can of Jolt, because you're on the home stretch now.

Part III - on Implementation Strategies - tacks away from what we can build and talks about how to build the things that build them. It turns out there's more than one way to do it. In chapters 15 and 16 Drexler discusses a range of cool STM and AFM scopes for pushing and shoving atoms around, and suggests ways reactive tips on the scanning needle could play with them; since Nanosystem's publication this has started happening in several labs. Biomolecular selfassembly and protein folding are other possible paths to those first primitive tools that can bootstrap us up to covalent-carbon nanotech. Talk of cyclic backbones, crosslinking and rigidity will answer a lot of critics' questions, with a forward- and backward-chaining analysis (a la computer science) "indicates that feasible developmental pathways link our present technology base to the technology base described in Part II." And there, save for a couple of appendices on methodology and related research, the book ends.

So drop the Jolt and fall asleep, because then you can dream - dream of nanotech's infinity of possibilities. And then we can start talking about it. Talking about it the way we talk about Linux, informed by sound technical issues instead of hype and soundbites. Because Nanosystems is a subversive book, subversive the way strong crypto and open source are subversive: developing thanks to the hacker ethic, developing to liberate the masses instead of control them. Published anywhere else, this review'd probably scare people off. But to you, it probably sounds like a challenge. So read Nanosystems. Imagine how ten thousand hyperlinked Slashdotters with a strong understanding of nanotech could influence this technology... and have so much damn fun doing it.

So go on, geek: read Nanosystems . I dare you.

FOOTNOTE: About the Foresight Institute

After first reading Nanosystems in 1996 I became a member of the Foresight Institute, which Eric Drexler and Chris Peterson founded to spread information about nanotech. Foresight works quietly and cost-effectively to influence public policy towards safe, informed development of molecular nanotechnology. (As Gayle Pergamit, Drexler and Peterson's technical writing collaborator, says, it's amazing what two people and a letter to the right office can achieve.) At the conferences it runs for its members you can rub shoulders with writers like Greg Bear, David Brin and Gregory Benford, Valley legends like Doug Engelbart, hackers the stature of Raymond and Gilmore, Old Media types from the New York Times and San Jose Mercury, real nanotechies like Ralph Merkle of Zyvex and Josh Hall of IMM, and of course Drexler and Peterson themselves. And this would take you through one bagel at breakfast. Thanks to Foresight I've learned a lot, made some excellent contacts, and several strong friends. You can learn more at www.foresight.org.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction and Overview

• 1.1 Why molecular manufacturing?
• 1.2 What is molecular manufacturing?
• 1.3 Comparisons
• 1.4 The approach in this volume
• 1.5 Objectives of following chapters

Part I 2. Classical Magnitudes and Scaling Laws

• 2.1 Overview
• 2.2 Approximation and classical continuum models
• 2.3 Scaling of classical mechanical systems
• 2.4 Scaling of electromagnetic systems
• 2.5 Scaling of classical thermal systems
• 2.6 Beyond classical continuum models
• 2.7 Conclusions

3. Potential Energy Surfaces

• 3.1 Overview
• 3.2 Quantum theory and approximations
• 3.3 Molecular Mechanics
• 3.4 Potentials for chemical reactions
• 3.5 Continuum representations of surfaces
• 3.6 Conclusions
• 3.7 Further readings

4. Molecular Dynamics

• 4.1 Overview
• 4.2 Nonstatistical mechanics
• 4.3 Statistical mechanics
• 4.4 PES revisited: accuracy requirements
• 4.5 Conclusions
• 4.6 Further Reading

5. Positional Uncertainty

• 5.1 Overview
• 5.2 Positional uncertainty in engineering
• 5.3 Thermally excited harmonic oscillators
• 5.4 Elastic extension of thermally excited rods
• 5.5 Elastic bending of thermally excited rods
• 5.6 Piston displacement in a gas-filled cylinder
• 5.7 Longitudinal variance from transverse deformation
• 5.8 Elasticity, entropy, and vibrational modes
• 5.9 Conclusions

6. Transistions, Errors, and Damage

• 6.1 Overview
• 6.2 Transitions between potential wells
• 6.3 Placement errors
• 6.4 Thermomechanical damage
• 6.5 Photochemical damage
• 6.6 Radiation damage
• 6.7 Component and system lifetimes
• 6.8 Conclusions

7. Energy Dissipation

• 7.1 Overview
• 7.2 Radiation from forced oscillations
• 7.3 Phonons and phonon scattering
• 7.4 Thermoelastic damping and phonon viscosity
• 7.5 Compression of potential wells
• 7.6 Transitions among time-dependent wells
• 7.7 Conclusions

8. Mechanosynthesis

• 8.1 Overview
• 8.2 Perspectives on solution-phase organic synthesis
• 8.3 Solution-phase synthesis and mechanosynthesis
• 8.4 Reactive species
• 8.5 Forcible mechanochemical processes
• 8.6 Mechanosynthesis of diamondoid structures
• 8.7 Conclusions

Part II 9. Nanoscale Structural Components

• 9.1 Overview
• 9.2 Components in context
• 9.3 Materials and models for nanoscale components
• 9.4 Surface effects on component properties
• 9.5 Shape control in irregular structures
• 9.6 Components of high rotational symmetry
• 9.7 Adhesive interfaces
• 9.8 Conclusions

10. Mobile Interfaces and Moving Parts

• 10.1 Overview
• 10.2 Spatial Fourier transforms of nonbonded potentials
• 10.3 Sliding of irregular objects over regular surfaces
• 10.4 Symmetrical sleeve bearings
• 10.5 Further applications of sliding-interface bearings
• 10.6 Atomic-axle bearings
• 10.7 Gears, rollers, belts, and cams
• 10.8 Barriers in extended systems
• 10.9 Dampers, detents, clutches, and ratchets
• 10.10 Perspective: nanomachines and macromachines
• 10.11 Bounded continuum models revisited
• 10.12 Conclusions

11. Intermediate Subsystems

• 11.1 Overview
• 11.2 Mechanical measurment devices
• 11.3 Stiff, high gear-ratio mechanisms
• 11.4 Fluids, seals, and pumps
• 11.5 Convective cooling systems
• 11.6 Electromechanical devices
• 11.7 DC motors and generators
• 11.8 Conclusions

12. Nanomechanical Computational Systems

• 12.1 Overview
• 12.2 Digital signal transmission with mechanical rods
• 12.3 Gates and logic rods
• 12.4 Registers
• 12.5 Combinational logic and finite-state machines
• 12.6 Survey of other devices and subsystems
• 12.7 CPU-scale systems: clocking and power supply
• 12.8 Cooling and computational capacity
• 12.9 Conclusion

13. Molecular Sorting, Processing, and Assembly

• 13.1 Overview
• 13.2 Sorting and ordering molecules
• 13.3 Transformation and assembly with molecular mills
• 13.4 Assembly operations using molecular manipulators
• 13.5 Conclusions

14. Molecular Manufacturing Systems

• 14.1 Overview
• 14.2 Assembly operations at intermediate scales
• 14.3 Architectural issues
• 14.4 An examplar manufacturing-system architecture
• 14.5 Comparisons to conventional manufacturing
• 14.6 Design and complexity
• 14.7 Conclusions

Part III 15. Macromolecular Engineering

• 15.1 Overview
• 15.2 Macromolecular objects via biotechnology
• 15.3 Macromolecular objects via solution synthesis
• 15.4 Macromolecular objects via mechanosynthesis
• 15.5 Conclusions

16. Paths to Molecular Manufacturing

• 16.1 Overview
• 16.2 Backward chaining to identify strategies
• 16.3 Smaller, simpler systems (stages 3-4)
• 16.4 Softer, smaller, solution-phase systems (stages 2-3)
• 16.5 Development time: some considerations
• 16.6 Conclusions

Appendix A. Methodological Issues in Theoretical and Applied Science

• A.1 The role of theoretical applied science
• A.2 Basic issues
• A.3 Science, engineering, and theoretical applied science
• A.4 Issues in theoretical applied science
• A.5 A sketch of some epistemological issues
• A.6 Theoretical applied science as intellectual scaffolding
• A.7 Conclusions

Appendix B. Related Research

• B.1 Overview
• B.2 How related fields have been divided
• B.3 Mechanical engineering and microtechnology
• B.4 Chemistry
• B.5 Molecular biology
• B.6 Protein engineering
• B.7 Proximal probe technologies
• B.8 Feynman's 1959 talk
• B.9 Conclusions

Afterword Symbols, Units, and Constants Glossary References Index

Chris Worth has come to me (surprise!) with a review of one of the most definitive books on nanotechnology, Nanosystems. K. Eric Drexler's response to the technical issues raised by critics to nanotechnology, the book is a technical treatise Nanosystems author K Eric Drexler pages 556 publisher John Wiley & Sons rating 10/10 reviewer Chris Worth ISBN 0471575186 summary Dr Nano answers his critics with a technical treatise on nanotech.

About the reviewer

Chris Worth is a web creative director and nanotech junkie based in Paris. You'll find other ramblings on technology, literature, and red hot asian babes at chrisworth.com. He's looking for geeks to build a subversive website for fun and profit, supported by some of the world's top creatives and assorted rich bastards; email him at chris@chrisworth.com if you're interested.

The Scenario: bringing researchers together

So you think you know what nanotech is, huh? Maybe you read a book by Neal or Greg or William and dreamed of custom-built computing molecules blanketing cities a billion deep, of patterned flesh singing a song of networked biosentience, of hundred-storey polycarbon structures reaching skywards into the electric neon night. Maybe the concept seduced you into Unbounding the Future and its Lilliputian expeditions across molecular landscapes, or you notched up to Engines of Creation and its talk of assemblers and replicators in pages nude of math. I read them too. And they're good, believe me. But to really know nanotech, to bite through the soft pop-sci underbelly and champ down on its hard skeleton of applied physics, you've got to read Nanosystems .

Nanosystems: the first technical treatise on nanotechnology

Nanosystems, by K Eric Drexler, is the real deal: the first textbook on molecular nanotechnology. It's full of greek equations and exponential graphs and globular diagrams that'd scare your chemistry professor, walled in by dense paragraphs of dry prose that'll make your teeth itch. But somehow it's readable - because the book has a broader purpose that goes beyond Potential Energy Surfaces or spatial Fourier transforms or Born-Oppenheimer approximations. That purpose is to bring together researchers from different fields, to show them how their expertise fits into the broad patchwork of nanotechnology. And that means it's readable for any motivated geek, because Drexler assumes no in-depth knowledge of any one field; concepts are explained from first principles and many equations are derived step-by-step. In a nutshell: if you get C, you can get Nanosystems.

So that's the purpose of Nanosystems: to bring disparate researchers into a single conceptual framework and make nanotech a collaborative effort. But just what is nanotech? First, let's define what it isn't - because nanotech discussions often give out more heat than light. Like transgenic crops and human cloning, vast swaths of the argument would disappear if everyone understood the principles.

Nanotech: so what the hell is it?

First, it's not necessarily about small things; the nano prefix refers to precision at the molecular scale, not the size of the finished article. A rocket motor built bottom up from component atoms one by one is molecular nanotechnology; a train of tiny gears built top-down by hewing away at a silicon surface is not. Second, nanotechnology won't turn lead into gold; elements are defined by atomic nucleii, and nanotech isn't interested in the nuclear forces. Third, it isn't a cure for all the world's problems; hatred and bigotry are separate issues no technology can solve. Fourth, there won't be any day when sci.nanotech explodes with cries of "it's here!"; since it'll be the result of research across multiple disciplines, nanotech will arrive in fits and starts.

And finally, on the biggest misunderstanding of all: no, nanotech isn't impossible. The laws of physics don't prevent nanotech happening; in fact, they emphatically make it possible. (Mr Heisenberg isn't half the troublemaker you think he is.) Yes, there's a tad too much hero worship and holy rollerism surrounding the good-natured and approachable Dr Drexler. And that's given rise to some negative column inches by Scientific American's Gary Stix and Nature's David Jones (neither of whom backed up their assertions). But catcalls and hype don't change basic physical principles; nature doesn't give a damn how loud we shout. And since Nanosystems's first printing in 1992, even Drexler's most loudmouthed critics haven't found any showstopping fault with it.

But back to what matters: what is nanotech? Fundamentally, it's about that bottom-up capability: getting every atom where you want it. Once you can get every atom where you want it, you can build machine systems from the bottom up with atomic precision. Once you can build bottom up, you can build machine systems capable of making perfect copies of themselves, as ribosomes do with DNA. And once your machine's made a perfect copy of itself, you can tell those two to build another, and those four to build four more, and so on, meaning that in a day or two you've got enough to start doing serious work. That bottom up capability of "molecular manufacturing" - which Drexler defines as "the construction of objects to complex atomic specifications using sequences of chemical reactions directed by nonbiological molecular machinery" - would lead to a new world of wealth and abundance. And Nanosystems is about reaching it.

The book's structure

Inside the blue-white cover with tantalising schematics of a molecular sorting rotor, atomic-scale bearing, and a robot arm with the 50 nanometer legend, the book's 556 pages split into three parts: "Physical principles", "Components and systems", and "Implementation strategies". What it does, what to do it with, and how to get there, backed up by 450 equations. Resist the urge to skip chapters until you've skimmed the whole book once; it has a developing structure that rewards a bit of linearity. The preface - with its famous first line "Manufactured products are made from atoms, and their properties depend on how those atoms are arranged" - sets the scene, with notes on why it's reasonable to predict tomorrow's technology with today's. ("Our ability to model molecular machines has far outrun our ability to make them...") But the meat starts with the intro:

"The following devices and capabilities appear to be both physically possible and practically realizable:

Programmable positioning of reactive molecules with ~0.1nm precision
Mechanosynthesis at >10^6 operations/device.second
Mechanosynthetic assembly of 1kg objects in <10^4 s
Nanomechanical systems operating at ~10^9 Hz
Logic gates that occupy ~10^-26m (~10^8 micro^3)
Logic gates that switch in ~0.1ns and dissipate <10^-21J
Computers that perform 10^16 instructions per second per watt
Cooling of cubic-centimeter, ~10^5W systems at 300K
Compact 10^15 MIPS parallel computing systems
Mechanochemical power conversion at >10^9W/m^3
Electromechanical power conversion at >10^15W/m^3
Macroscopic components with tensile strengths >5*10^10GPa
Production systems that can double capital stocks in <10^4s"

Yeah, I was drooling too. And just a few pages further in Drexler whacks us with a nanomechanical product: a bearing with shaft and sleeve in 6- and 14-fold prime symmetry to keep it turning. It's made of carbon with the odd silicon and oxygen atom to round it out, dangling bonds capped with hydrogen, and is made of just 206 atoms. Of course it can't be built yet, but the mind boggles anyway. As it should: this diagram is a teaser for the whole book.

The rest of the intro is comparisons: how conventional solution-phase chemistry and mechanosynthetic chemistry are different, how characteristics of different approaches differ at the nanoscale, how the carbon structures described in Nanosystems are just a subset of all covalently-bonded structures, and the scope of the book. Read this: there's no sci-fi here, no what-ifs, no assuming-thats. Nanosystems is about what's possible given today's understanding of how molecules behave - as such, it's more conservative than many papers you'll see in Nature.

Chapter by chapter

Part I - Physical Principles - is the hardest, squashing a physics course into 230 pages. Ride the hump, guys; no pain, no gain. Chapter 1 takes you down into the molecular world, exploring where classical physics scales down and where it doesn't; chapters 2 and 3 get down and dirty with how molecules are shaped and how they behave when pushed. Chapter 5 is for Heisenberg fans, explaining how thermal uncertainty's a far bigger problem than quantum uncertainty at these scales, while 6 and 7 explore how nanomachine designs will be debugged, going into problems of error-checking and heat death. So far, so painful. Work with it.

It's not until chapter 8 that Drexler starts talking about "real" nanotech: mechanosynthesis. This is 1AM stuff when you know you should be putting the book down for the night but can't. You'll be reaching for the Jolt without caring about work tomorrow. There's still plenty of alkenes and alkynes and tensile bond cleavage and Pi-bond torsion talk here, but the graphs stop for a moment as Drexler deals with what later got called "fat finger" and "sticky finger" problems - how to make your reactive tool molecule slim enough to cause one reaction with a target molecule without it getting the wrong one, and how to make sure the reaction happens when you want it to. And this chapter introduces carbon, everyone's favourite element.

Carbon is one seriously cool atom. Tetrahedral covalent carbon - diamond - is a hundred or so times stronger than steel, and its components atoms are everywhere. They do have to be joined together in a precise pattern; that's why diamond is rare today, and why p.241 includes a diagram of adding two ethyne molecules to another hydrocarbon to model a step in diamondoid formation. Peppered with other common elements like oxygen, fluorine, chlorine, hydrogen, silicon, sulfur, phosphorus, and nitrogen, carbon can be assembled into tough, stiff structures with almost any mechanical or electronic property we want. And carbon molecules are surprisingly easy to model accurately on a computer. That's why Nanosystems devotes itself principally to carbon structures.

On to part II, Components and Systems. Chapter 9 kicks off with the difference between housings and moving parts, and answers one criticism levelled at Drexler: you can't extrapolate to the nanoscale from the macroscale. With a grab-bag of molecular rods and strained-shell carbon bearings, Drexler shows where we can and where we can't. Chapter 10 does the same for moving parts, salting in what happens when two structures start interacting with each other: there are some tasty diagrams of molecular gears, rollers, belts and cams here, but watch out for the graphs and equations.

By chapter 11 the components start coming together as complete systems instead of odd toys, worm gears inserted between tube sections and drive rings threaded onto toroidal housings. Some of the drawings look clunky and Victorian to our silicon-bred eyes, until you realise the transistors we know and love are huge rough-hewn logs at this scale and gravity and friction aren't problems in the same way. Nanosystems is about mechanics, not electronics, but a funky electrostatic motor on p.337 blurs the line: at these sizes both approaches are elegant.

It's at chapter 12 that Drexler gets around to computers. Shapes reminiscent of Babbage engines and Jacquard looms parade across the pages in diagrams of rod-logic gate and register apparatus. (Yes, this is the chapter that inspired a scene in The Diamond Age.) Neal Stephenson got it wrong: this is unlikely to be how we'll build tomorrow's PCs, because Nanosystems is an exploration of engineering techniques, not a recommendation to Intel. The chapter pivots on a finite-state machine built with nanomolecular AND/OR rod logic, with text stating a million-transistor CPU would fit inside a 400nm cube, run at 1GHz, and perform at 10^16 instructions per second. Nanoelectronic designs will be many orders of magnitude faster, but they're outside the scope of this book.

Chapter 13 starts the segue into part III, chunking up to how all these nanomachines can be linked into a complete machine system. A sorting rotor extracts the right molecules from a mix with precisely-shaped reactants attached to a cam; a set of them washes a mix progressively cleaner and cleaner (more feedstock for Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age.) Molecular conveyor belts grab molecules from a toothed gear and take them elsewhere. But the chapter's wow-factor (wow being a relative term in Nanosystems) is the nanomanipulator, a squat robot arm of four million atoms, over a hundred moving parts yet just a hundred nanometers tall. It can pitch, roll and yaw in all six degrees of freedom, snaking up and down and round and round with a train of drives and clutches spliced together with worm gears and intersegment bearings. Imagine this arm reaching out and bonding to a single atom with a reactive tip, rotating that atom away from its surface and depositing it elsewhere. Remember that image, because it's at the core of what nanotech is.

Building on this, chapter 14 describes an exemplar molecular manufacturing system: the holy grail. Another chunk up, it gloms together all the machines described already, into a complete factory for building nanomachines. From single atoms to different parts to convergent assembly to parallel construction, the factory masses less than a kilogram. With a few simple instructions, millions of interacting nanomachines will build products in minutes, blocks of molecular sorting rotors, conveyor belts, and assemblers individually unaware of the big picture but working in parallel like any anthill or beehive. Open another can of Jolt, because you're on the home stretch now.

Part III - on Implementation Strategies - tacks away from what we can build and talks about how to build the things that build them. It turns out there's more than one way to do it. In chapters 15 and 16 Drexler discusses a range of cool STM and AFM scopes for pushing and shoving atoms around, and suggests ways reactive tips on the scanning needle could play with them; since Nanosystem's publication this has started happening in several labs. Biomolecular selfassembly and protein folding are other possible paths to those first primitive tools that can bootstrap us up to covalent-carbon nanotech. Talk of cyclic backbones, crosslinking and rigidity will answer a lot of critics' questions, with a forward- and backward-chaining analysis (a la computer science) "indicates that feasible developmental pathways link our present technology base to the technology base described in Part II." And there, save for a couple of appendices on methodology and related research, the book ends.

So drop the Jolt and fall asleep, because then you can dream - dream of nanotech's infinity of possibilities. And then we can start talking about it. Talking about it the way we talk about Linux, informed by sound technical issues instead of hype and soundbites. Because Nanosystems is a subversive book, subversive the way strong crypto and open source are subversive: developing thanks to the hacker ethic, developing to liberate the masses instead of control them. Published anywhere else, this review'd probably scare people off. But to you, it probably sounds like a challenge. So read Nanosystems. Imagine how ten thousand hyperlinked Slashdotters with a strong understanding of nanotech could influence this technology... and have so much damn fun doing it.

So go on, geek: read Nanosystems . I dare you.

FOOTNOTE: About the Foresight Institute

After first reading Nanosystems in 1996 I became a member of the Foresight Institute, which Eric Drexler and Chris Peterson founded to spread information about nanotech. Foresight works quietly and cost-effectively to influence public policy towards safe, informed development of molecular nanotechnology. (As Gayle Pergamit, Drexler and Peterson's technical writing collaborator, says, it's amazing what two people and a letter to the right office can achieve.) At the conferences it runs for its members you can rub shoulders with writers like Greg Bear, David Brin and Gregory Benford, Valley legends like Doug Engelbart, hackers the stature of Raymond and Gilmore, Old Media types from the New York Times and San Jose Mercury, real nanotechies like Ralph Merkle of Zyvex and Josh Hall of IMM, and of course Drexler and Peterson themselves. And this would take you through one bagel at breakfast. Thanks to Foresight I've learned a lot, made some excellent contacts, and several strong friends. You can learn more at www.foresight.org.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction and Overview

• 1.1 Why molecular manufacturing?
• 1.2 What is molecular manufacturing?
• 1.3 Comparisons
• 1.4 The approach in this volume
• 1.5 Objectives of following chapters

Part I 2. Classical Magnitudes and Scaling Laws

• 2.1 Overview
• 2.2 Approximation and classical continuum models
• 2.3 Scaling of classical mechanical systems
• 2.4 Scaling of electromagnetic systems
• 2.5 Scaling of classical thermal systems
• 2.6 Beyond classical continuum models
• 2.7 Conclusions

3. Potential Energy Surfaces

• 3.1 Overview
• 3.2 Quantum theory and approximations
• 3.3 Molecular Mechanics
• 3.4 Potentials for chemical reactions
• 3.5 Continuum representations of surfaces
• 3.6 Conclusions
• 3.7 Further readings

4. Molecular Dynamics

• 4.1 Overview
• 4.2 Nonstatistical mechanics
• 4.3 Statistical mechanics
• 4.4 PES revisited: accuracy requirements
• 4.5 Conclusions
• 4.6 Further Reading

5. Positional Uncertainty

• 5.1 Overview
• 5.2 Positional uncertainty in engineering
• 5.3 Thermally excited harmonic oscillators
• 5.4 Elastic extension of thermally excited rods
• 5.5 Elastic bending of thermally excited rods
• 5.6 Piston displacement in a gas-filled cylinder
• 5.7 Longitudinal variance from transverse deformation
• 5.8 Elasticity, entropy, and vibrational modes
• 5.9 Conclusions

6. Transistions, Errors, and Damage

• 6.1 Overview
• 6.2 Transitions between potential wells
• 6.3 Placement errors
• 6.4 Thermomechanical damage
• 6.5 Photochemical damage
• 6.6 Radiation damage
• 6.7 Component and system lifetimes
• 6.8 Conclusions

7. Energy Dissipation

• 7.1 Overview
• 7.2 Radiation from forced oscillations
• 7.3 Phonons and phonon scattering
• 7.4 Thermoelastic damping and phonon viscosity
• 7.5 Compression of potential wells
• 7.6 Transitions among time-dependent wells
• 7.7 Conclusions

8. Mechanosynthesis

• 8.1 Overview
• 8.2 Perspectives on solution-phase organic synthesis
• 8.3 Solution-phase synthesis and mechanosynthesis
• 8.4 Reactive species
• 8.5 Forcible mechanochemical processes
• 8.6 Mechanosynthesis of diamondoid structures
• 8.7 Conclusions

Part II 9. Nanoscale Structural Components

• 9.1 Overview
• 9.2 Components in context
• 9.3 Materials and models for nanoscale components
• 9.4 Surface effects on component properties
• 9.5 Shape control in irregular structures
• 9.6 Components of high rotational symmetry
• 9.7 Adhesive interfaces
• 9.8 Conclusions

10. Mobile Interfaces and Moving Parts

• 10.1 Overview
• 10.2 Spatial Fourier transforms of nonbonded potentials
• 10.3 Sliding of irregular objects over regular surfaces
• 10.4 Symmetrical sleeve bearings
• 10.5 Further applications of sliding-interface bearings
• 10.6 Atomic-axle bearings
• 10.7 Gears, rollers, belts, and cams
• 10.8 Barriers in extended systems
• 10.9 Dampers, detents, clutches, and ratchets
• 10.10 Perspective: nanomachines and macromachines
• 10.11 Bounded continuum models revisited
• 10.12 Conclusions

11. Intermediate Subsystems

• 11.1 Overview
• 11.2 Mechanical measurment devices
• 11.3 Stiff, high gear-ratio mechanisms
• 11.4 Fluids, seals, and pumps
• 11.5 Convective cooling systems
• 11.6 Electromechanical devices
• 11.7 DC motors and generators
• 11.8 Conclusions

12. Nanomechanical Computational Systems

• 12.1 Overview
• 12.2 Digital signal transmission with mechanical rods
• 12.3 Gates and logic rods
• 12.4 Registers
• 12.5 Combinational logic and finite-state machines
• 12.6 Survey of other devices and subsystems
• 12.7 CPU-scale systems: clocking and power supply
• 12.8 Cooling and computational capacity
• 12.9 Conclusion

13. Molecular Sorting, Processing, and Assembly

• 13.1 Overview
• 13.2 Sorting and ordering molecules
• 13.3 Transformation and assembly with molecular mills
• 13.4 Assembly operations using molecular manipulators
• 13.5 Conclusions

14. Molecular Manufacturing Systems

• 14.1 Overview
• 14.2 Assembly operations at intermediate scales
• 14.3 Architectural issues
• 14.4 An examplar manufacturing-system architecture
• 14.5 Comparisons to conventional manufacturing
• 14.6 Design and complexity
• 14.7 Conclusions

Part III 15. Macromolecular Engineering

• 15.1 Overview
• 15.2 Macromolecular objects via biotechnology
• 15.3 Macromolecular objects via solution synthesis
• 15.4 Macromolecular objects via mechanosynthesis
• 15.5 Conclusions

16. Paths to Molecular Manufacturing

• 16.1 Overview
• 16.2 Backward chaining to identify strategies
• 16.3 Smaller, simpler systems (stages 3-4)
• 16.4 Softer, smaller, solution-phase systems (stages 2-3)
• 16.5 Development time: some considerations
• 16.6 Conclusions

Appendix A. Methodological Issues in Theoretical and Applied Science

• A.1 The role of theoretical applied science
• A.2 Basic issues
• A.3 Science, engineering, and theoretical applied science
• A.4 Issues in theoretical applied science
• A.5 A sketch of some epistemological issues
• A.6 Theoretical applied science as intellectual scaffolding
• A.7 Conclusions

Appendix B. Related Research

• B.1 Overview
• B.2 How related fields have been divided
• B.3 Mechanical engineering and microtechnology
• B.4 Chemistry
• B.5 Molecular biology
• B.6 Protein engineering
• B.7 Proximal probe technologies
• B.8 Feynman's 1959 talk
• B.9 Conclusions

Afterword Symbols, Units, and Constants Glossary References Index

Chris Worth has come to me (surprise!) with a review of one of the most definitive books on nanotechnology, Nanosystems. K. Eric Drexler's response to the technical issues raised by critics to nanotechnology, the book is a technical treatise Nanosystems author K Eric Drexler pages 556 publisher John Wiley & Sons rating 10/10 reviewer Chris Worth ISBN 0471575186 summary Dr Nano answers his critics with a technical treatise on nanotech.

About the reviewer

Chris Worth is a web creative director and nanotech junkie based in Paris. You'll find other ramblings on technology, literature, and red hot asian babes at chrisworth.com. He's looking for geeks to build a subversive website for fun and profit, supported by some of the world's top creatives and assorted rich bastards; email him at chris@chrisworth.com if you're interested.

The Scenario: bringing researchers together

So you think you know what nanotech is, huh? Maybe you read a book by Neal or Greg or William and dreamed of custom-built computing molecules blanketing cities a billion deep, of patterned flesh singing a song of networked biosentience, of hundred-storey polycarbon structures reaching skywards into the electric neon night. Maybe the concept seduced you into Unbounding the Future and its Lilliputian expeditions across molecular landscapes, or you notched up to Engines of Creation and its talk of assemblers and replicators in pages nude of math. I read them too. And they're good, believe me. But to really know nanotech, to bite through the soft pop-sci underbelly and champ down on its hard skeleton of applied physics, you've got to read Nanosystems .

Nanosystems: the first technical treatise on nanotechnology

Nanosystems, by K Eric Drexler, is the real deal: the first textbook on molecular nanotechnology. It's full of greek equations and exponential graphs and globular diagrams that'd scare your chemistry professor, walled in by dense paragraphs of dry prose that'll make your teeth itch. But somehow it's readable - because the book has a broader purpose that goes beyond Potential Energy Surfaces or spatial Fourier transforms or Born-Oppenheimer approximations. That purpose is to bring together researchers from different fields, to show them how their expertise fits into the broad patchwork of nanotechnology. And that means it's readable for any motivated geek, because Drexler assumes no in-depth knowledge of any one field; concepts are explained from first principles and many equations are derived step-by-step. In a nutshell: if you get C, you can get Nanosystems.

So that's the purpose of Nanosystems: to bring disparate researchers into a single conceptual framework and make nanotech a collaborative effort. But just what is nanotech? First, let's define what it isn't - because nanotech discussions often give out more heat than light. Like transgenic crops and human cloning, vast swaths of the argument would disappear if everyone understood the principles.

Nanotech: so what the hell is it?

First, it's not necessarily about small things; the nano prefix refers to precision at the molecular scale, not the size of the finished article. A rocket motor built bottom up from component atoms one by one is molecular nanotechnology; a train of tiny gears built top-down by hewing away at a silicon surface is not. Second, nanotechnology won't turn lead into gold; elements are defined by atomic nucleii, and nanotech isn't interested in the nuclear forces. Third, it isn't a cure for all the world's problems; hatred and bigotry are separate issues no technology can solve. Fourth, there won't be any day when sci.nanotech explodes with cries of "it's here!"; since it'll be the result of research across multiple disciplines, nanotech will arrive in fits and starts.

And finally, on the biggest misunderstanding of all: no, nanotech isn't impossible. The laws of physics don't prevent nanotech happening; in fact, they emphatically make it possible. (Mr Heisenberg isn't half the troublemaker you think he is.) Yes, there's a tad too much hero worship and holy rollerism surrounding the good-natured and approachable Dr Drexler. And that's given rise to some negative column inches by Scientific American's Gary Stix and Nature's David Jones (neither of whom backed up their assertions). But catcalls and hype don't change basic physical principles; nature doesn't give a damn how loud we shout. And since Nanosystems's first printing in 1992, even Drexler's most loudmouthed critics haven't found any showstopping fault with it.

But back to what matters: what is nanotech? Fundamentally, it's about that bottom-up capability: getting every atom where you want it. Once you can get every atom where you want it, you can build machine systems from the bottom up with atomic precision. Once you can build bottom up, you can build machine systems capable of making perfect copies of themselves, as ribosomes do with DNA. And once your machine's made a perfect copy of itself, you can tell those two to build another, and those four to build four more, and so on, meaning that in a day or two you've got enough to start doing serious work. That bottom up capability of "molecular manufacturing" - which Drexler defines as "the construction of objects to complex atomic specifications using sequences of chemical reactions directed by nonbiological molecular machinery" - would lead to a new world of wealth and abundance. And Nanosystems is about reaching it.

The book's structure

Inside the blue-white cover with tantalising schematics of a molecular sorting rotor, atomic-scale bearing, and a robot arm with the 50 nanometer legend, the book's 556 pages split into three parts: "Physical principles", "Components and systems", and "Implementation strategies". What it does, what to do it with, and how to get there, backed up by 450 equations. Resist the urge to skip chapters until you've skimmed the whole book once; it has a developing structure that rewards a bit of linearity. The preface - with its famous first line "Manufactured products are made from atoms, and their properties depend on how those atoms are arranged" - sets the scene, with notes on why it's reasonable to predict tomorrow's technology with today's. ("Our ability to model molecular machines has far outrun our ability to make them...") But the meat starts with the intro:

"The following devices and capabilities appear to be both physically possible and practically realizable:

Programmable positioning of reactive molecules with ~0.1nm precision
Mechanosynthesis at >10^6 operations/device.second
Mechanosynthetic assembly of 1kg objects in <10^4 s
Nanomechanical systems operating at ~10^9 Hz
Logic gates that occupy ~10^-26m (~10^8 micro^3)
Logic gates that switch in ~0.1ns and dissipate <10^-21J
Computers that perform 10^16 instructions per second per watt
Cooling of cubic-centimeter, ~10^5W systems at 300K
Compact 10^15 MIPS parallel computing systems
Mechanochemical power conversion at >10^9W/m^3
Electromechanical power conversion at >10^15W/m^3
Macroscopic components with tensile strengths >5*10^10GPa
Production systems that can double capital stocks in <10^4s"

Yeah, I was drooling too. And just a few pages further in Drexler whacks us with a nanomechanical product: a bearing with shaft and sleeve in 6- and 14-fold prime symmetry to keep it turning. It's made of carbon with the odd silicon and oxygen atom to round it out, dangling bonds capped with hydrogen, and is made of just 206 atoms. Of course it can't be built yet, but the mind boggles anyway. As it should: this diagram is a teaser for the whole book.

The rest of the intro is comparisons: how conventional solution-phase chemistry and mechanosynthetic chemistry are different, how characteristics of different approaches differ at the nanoscale, how the carbon structures described in Nanosystems are just a subset of all covalently-bonded structures, and the scope of the book. Read this: there's no sci-fi here, no what-ifs, no assuming-thats. Nanosystems is about what's possible given today's understanding of how molecules behave - as such, it's more conservative than many papers you'll see in Nature.

Chapter by chapter

Part I - Physical Principles - is the hardest, squashing a physics course into 230 pages. Ride the hump, guys; no pain, no gain. Chapter 1 takes you down into the molecular world, exploring where classical physics scales down and where it doesn't; chapters 2 and 3 get down and dirty with how molecules are shaped and how they behave when pushed. Chapter 5 is for Heisenberg fans, explaining how thermal uncertainty's a far bigger problem than quantum uncertainty at these scales, while 6 and 7 explore how nanomachine designs will be debugged, going into problems of error-checking and heat death. So far, so painful. Work with it.

It's not until chapter 8 that Drexler starts talking about "real" nanotech: mechanosynthesis. This is 1AM stuff when you know you should be putting the book down for the night but can't. You'll be reaching for the Jolt without caring about work tomorrow. There's still plenty of alkenes and alkynes and tensile bond cleavage and Pi-bond torsion talk here, but the graphs stop for a moment as Drexler deals with what later got called "fat finger" and "sticky finger" problems - how to make your reactive tool molecule slim enough to cause one reaction with a target molecule without it getting the wrong one, and how to make sure the reaction happens when you want it to. And this chapter introduces carbon, everyone's favourite element.

Carbon is one seriously cool atom. Tetrahedral covalent carbon - diamond - is a hundred or so times stronger than steel, and its components atoms are everywhere. They do have to be joined together in a precise pattern; that's why diamond is rare today, and why p.241 includes a diagram of adding two ethyne molecules to another hydrocarbon to model a step in diamondoid formation. Peppered with other common elements like oxygen, fluorine, chlorine, hydrogen, silicon, sulfur, phosphorus, and nitrogen, carbon can be assembled into tough, stiff structures with almost any mechanical or electronic property we want. And carbon molecules are surprisingly easy to model accurately on a computer. That's why Nanosystems devotes itself principally to carbon structures.

On to part II, Components and Systems. Chapter 9 kicks off with the difference between housings and moving parts, and answers one criticism levelled at Drexler: you can't extrapolate to the nanoscale from the macroscale. With a grab-bag of molecular rods and strained-shell carbon bearings, Drexler shows where we can and where we can't. Chapter 10 does the same for moving parts, salting in what happens when two structures start interacting with each other: there are some tasty diagrams of molecular gears, rollers, belts and cams here, but watch out for the graphs and equations.

By chapter 11 the components start coming together as complete systems instead of odd toys, worm gears inserted between tube sections and drive rings threaded onto toroidal housings. Some of the drawings look clunky and Victorian to our silicon-bred eyes, until you realise the transistors we know and love are huge rough-hewn logs at this scale and gravity and friction aren't problems in the same way. Nanosystems is about mechanics, not electronics, but a funky electrostatic motor on p.337 blurs the line: at these sizes both approaches are elegant.

It's at chapter 12 that Drexler gets around to computers. Shapes reminiscent of Babbage engines and Jacquard looms parade across the pages in diagrams of rod-logic gate and register apparatus. (Yes, this is the chapter that inspired a scene in The Diamond Age.) Neal Stephenson got it wrong: this is unlikely to be how we'll build tomorrow's PCs, because Nanosystems is an exploration of engineering techniques, not a recommendation to Intel. The chapter pivots on a finite-state machine built with nanomolecular AND/OR rod logic, with text stating a million-transistor CPU would fit inside a 400nm cube, run at 1GHz, and perform at 10^16 instructions per second. Nanoelectronic designs will be many orders of magnitude faster, but they're outside the scope of this book.

Chapter 13 starts the segue into part III, chunking up to how all these nanomachines can be linked into a complete machine system. A sorting rotor extracts the right molecules from a mix with precisely-shaped reactants attached to a cam; a set of them washes a mix progressively cleaner and cleaner (more feedstock for Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age.) Molecular conveyor belts grab molecules from a toothed gear and take them elsewhere. But the chapter's wow-factor (wow being a relative term in Nanosystems) is the nanomanipulator, a squat robot arm of four million atoms, over a hundred moving parts yet just a hundred nanometers tall. It can pitch, roll and yaw in all six degrees of freedom, snaking up and down and round and round with a train of drives and clutches spliced together with worm gears and intersegment bearings. Imagine this arm reaching out and bonding to a single atom with a reactive tip, rotating that atom away from its surface and depositing it elsewhere. Remember that image, because it's at the core of what nanotech is.

Building on this, chapter 14 describes an exemplar molecular manufacturing system: the holy grail. Another chunk up, it gloms together all the machines described already, into a complete factory for building nanomachines. From single atoms to different parts to convergent assembly to parallel construction, the factory masses less than a kilogram. With a few simple instructions, millions of interacting nanomachines will build products in minutes, blocks of molecular sorting rotors, conveyor belts, and assemblers individually unaware of the big picture but working in parallel like any anthill or beehive. Open another can of Jolt, because you're on the home stretch now.

Part III - on Implementation Strategies - tacks away from what we can build and talks about how to build the things that build them. It turns out there's more than one way to do it. In chapters 15 and 16 Drexler discusses a range of cool STM and AFM scopes for pushing and shoving atoms around, and suggests ways reactive tips on the scanning needle could play with them; since Nanosystem's publication this has started happening in several labs. Biomolecular selfassembly and protein folding are other possible paths to those first primitive tools that can bootstrap us up to covalent-carbon nanotech. Talk of cyclic backbones, crosslinking and rigidity will answer a lot of critics' questions, with a forward- and backward-chaining analysis (a la computer science) "indicates that feasible developmental pathways link our present technology base to the technology base described in Part II." And there, save for a couple of appendices on methodology and related research, the book ends.

So drop the Jolt and fall asleep, because then you can dream - dream of nanotech's infinity of possibilities. And then we can start talking about it. Talking about it the way we talk about Linux, informed by sound technical issues instead of hype and soundbites. Because Nanosystems is a subversive book, subversive the way strong crypto and open source are subversive: developing thanks to the hacker ethic, developing to liberate the masses instead of control them. Published anywhere else, this review'd probably scare people off. But to you, it probably sounds like a challenge. So read Nanosystems. Imagine how ten thousand hyperlinked Slashdotters with a strong understanding of nanotech could influence this technology... and have so much damn fun doing it.

So go on, geek: read Nanosystems . I dare you.

FOOTNOTE: About the Foresight Institute

After first reading Nanosystems in 1996 I became a member of the Foresight Institute, which Eric Drexler and Chris Peterson founded to spread information about nanotech. Foresight works quietly and cost-effectively to influence public policy towards safe, informed development of molecular nanotechnology. (As Gayle Pergamit, Drexler and Peterson's technical writing collaborator, says, it's amazing what two people and a letter to the right office can achieve.) At the conferences it runs for its members you can rub shoulders with writers like Greg Bear, David Brin and Gregory Benford, Valley legends like Doug Engelbart, hackers the stature of Raymond and Gilmore, Old Media types from the New York Times and San Jose Mercury, real nanotechies like Ralph Merkle of Zyvex and Josh Hall of IMM, and of course Drexler and Peterson themselves. And this would take you through one bagel at breakfast. Thanks to Foresight I've learned a lot, made some excellent contacts, and several strong friends. You can learn more at www.foresight.org.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction and Overview

• 1.1 Why molecular manufacturing?
• 1.2 What is molecular manufacturing?
• 1.3 Comparisons
• 1.4 The approach in this volume
• 1.5 Objectives of following chapters

Part I 2. Classical Magnitudes and Scaling Laws

• 2.1 Overview
• 2.2 Approximation and classical continuum models
• 2.3 Scaling of classical mechanical systems
• 2.4 Scaling of electromagnetic systems
• 2.5 Scaling of classical thermal systems
• 2.6 Beyond classical continuum models
• 2.7 Conclusions

3. Potential Energy Surfaces

• 3.1 Overview
• 3.2 Quantum theory and approximations
• 3.3 Molecular Mechanics
• 3.4 Potentials for chemical reactions
• 3.5 Continuum representations of surfaces
• 3.6 Conclusions
• 3.7 Further readings

4. Molecular Dynamics

• 4.1 Overview
• 4.2 Nonstatistical mechanics
• 4.3 Statistical mechanics
• 4.4 PES revisited: accuracy requirements
• 4.5 Conclusions
• 4.6 Further Reading

5. Positional Uncertainty

• 5.1 Overview
• 5.2 Positional uncertainty in engineering
• 5.3 Thermally excited harmonic oscillators
• 5.4 Elastic extension of thermally excited rods
• 5.5 Elastic bending of thermally excited rods
• 5.6 Piston displacement in a gas-filled cylinder
• 5.7 Longitudinal variance from transverse deformation
• 5.8 Elasticity, entropy, and vibrational modes
• 5.9 Conclusions

6. Transistions, Errors, and Damage

• 6.1 Overview
• 6.2 Transitions between potential wells
• 6.3 Placement errors
• 6.4 Thermomechanical damage
• 6.5 Photochemical damage
• 6.6 Radiation damage
• 6.7 Component and system lifetimes
• 6.8 Conclusions

7. Energy Dissipation

• 7.1 Overview
• 7.2 Radiation from forced oscillations
• 7.3 Phonons and phonon scattering
• 7.4 Thermoelastic damping and phonon viscosity
• 7.5 Compression of potential wells
• 7.6 Transitions among time-dependent wells
• 7.7 Conclusions

8. Mechanosynthesis

• 8.1 Overview
• 8.2 Perspectives on solution-phase organic synthesis
• 8.3 Solution-phase synthesis and mechanosynthesis
• 8.4 Reactive species
• 8.5 Forcible mechanochemical processes
• 8.6 Mechanosynthesis of diamondoid structures
• 8.7 Conclusions

Part II 9. Nanoscale Structural Components

• 9.1 Overview
• 9.2 Components in context
• 9.3 Materials and models for nanoscale components
• 9.4 Surface effects on component properties
• 9.5 Shape control in irregular structures
• 9.6 Components of high rotational symmetry
• 9.7 Adhesive interfaces
• 9.8 Conclusions

10. Mobile Interfaces and Moving Parts

• 10.1 Overview
• 10.2 Spatial Fourier transforms of nonbonded potentials
• 10.3 Sliding of irregular objects over regular surfaces
• 10.4 Symmetrical sleeve bearings
• 10.5 Further applications of sliding-interface bearings
• 10.6 Atomic-axle bearings
• 10.7 Gears, rollers, belts, and cams
• 10.8 Barriers in extended systems
• 10.9 Dampers, detents, clutches, and ratchets
• 10.10 Perspective: nanomachines and macromachines
• 10.11 Bounded continuum models revisited
• 10.12 Conclusions

11. Intermediate Subsystems

• 11.1 Overview
• 11.2 Mechanical measurment devices
• 11.3 Stiff, high gear-ratio mechanisms
• 11.4 Fluids, seals, and pumps
• 11.5 Convective cooling systems
• 11.6 Electromechanical devices
• 11.7 DC motors and generators
• 11.8 Conclusions

12. Nanomechanical Computational Systems

• 12.1 Overview
• 12.2 Digital signal transmission with mechanical rods
• 12.3 Gates and logic rods
• 12.4 Registers
• 12.5 Combinational logic and finite-state machines
• 12.6 Survey of other devices and subsystems
• 12.7 CPU-scale systems: clocking and power supply
• 12.8 Cooling and computational capacity
• 12.9 Conclusion

13. Molecular Sorting, Processing, and Assembly

• 13.1 Overview
• 13.2 Sorting and ordering molecules
• 13.3 Transformation and assembly with molecular mills
• 13.4 Assembly operations using molecular manipulators
• 13.5 Conclusions

14. Molecular Manufacturing Systems

• 14.1 Overview
• 14.2 Assembly operations at intermediate scales
• 14.3 Architectural issues
• 14.4 An examplar manufacturing-system architecture
• 14.5 Comparisons to conventional manufacturing
• 14.6 Design and complexity
• 14.7 Conclusions

Part III 15. Macromolecular Engineering

• 15.1 Overview
• 15.2 Macromolecular objects via biotechnology
• 15.3 Macromolecular objects via solution synthesis
• 15.4 Macromolecular objects via mechanosynthesis
• 15.5 Conclusions

16. Paths to Molecular Manufacturing

• 16.1 Overview
• 16.2 Backward chaining to identify strategies
• 16.3 Smaller, simpler systems (stages 3-4)
• 16.4 Softer, smaller, solution-phase systems (stages 2-3)
• 16.5 Development time: some considerations
• 16.6 Conclusions

Appendix A. Methodological Issues in Theoretical and Applied Science

• A.1 The role of theoretical applied science
• A.2 Basic issues
• A.3 Science, engineering, and theoretical applied science
• A.4 Issues in theoretical applied science
• A.5 A sketch of some epistemological issues
• A.6 Theoretical applied science as intellectual scaffolding
• A.7 Conclusions

Appendix B. Related Research

• B.1 Overview
• B.2 How related fields have been divided
• B.3 Mechanical engineering and microtechnology
• B.4 Chemistry
• B.5 Molecular biology
• B.6 Protein engineering
• B.7 Proximal probe technologies
• B.8 Feynman's 1959 talk
• B.9 Conclusions

Afterword Symbols, Units, and Constants Glossary References Index

Thanks to Cliff Lampe for his review of Ed Regis' book Nano: The Emerging Science of Nanotechnology. The author of Who Got Einstein's Office?, and similar books, Regis' takes a look at the personalities and social history behind nanotechnology. Click below to read more. Nano: The Emerging Science of Nanotechnology author Ed Regis pages 340 publisher Little, Brown and Company rating 8/10 reviewer Cliff Lampe ISBN summary Nice narrative about everyone's favorite fringe... The Scenario

Ed Regis, in this 1996 offering, makes the comparison between the believers of the advent of Nanotechnology and cults. K. Eric Drexler plays the role of charismatic leader, there is a belief in an utopian Breakthrough and a nearly blind faith in the correctness of their vision. The Nano faithful look at each other as if they are in on a grand joke of some sort. What Regis attempts to do with his book is to convince the non-Believing among us. By painting a human face on the technology through a description of Drexler himself, Regis converts by making this seem like a story of humanity rather than technology. It's much the same technique that Matthew used to convince people of the validity of Christianity in an earlier text on a novel idea.

Chances are that you are already in one of two camps. If you are already a Believer, you know that the inevitable march of molecular nanotechnology is knocking on the door. If you are a Doubter, it sounds like a load of steaming hooie that this drastic a change of technology could happen in our lifetime.

Whether you are a Believer or a Doubter, Regis is trying to speak to you with this engaging and readable book. By outlining the history of atom level research, and creating a parallel story related to Drexler's advocacy of the technology, Regis is able to blend a human story with a description of nanotech that is more engaging than Engines of Creation and less techy than Nanosystems.

What's Bad?

There is definitely a paeanistic edge to this book. Regis takes some pain to paint Drexler in the most positive light possible. He even seems to minimize Feynman's contributions, painting the physicist as a curmudgeon to prove that while he may have mentioned the idea twenty ideas ago, it took Drexler to get the ball rolling on manipulating matter on the molecular level.

While Regis does a good job of analyzing fuller aspects of the implications of nanotechnology, especially in the latter half of the book, he often doesn't go far enough in his analysis of these effects. "Slant" by Greg Bear is a better picture of the World After if you are interested in the topic. One last caveat is that the three year time period since publication of the book has seen some exciting changes in the field which are of course not covered therein.

What's Good?

This book has a lot going for it. The narrative voice is engaging and makes for an easy read. Regis also does a good job of balancing a plausible description of the technology with succinct scientific descriptions, avoiding some of the super techno speak of previous books on nanotechnology that threatened to cross the eyes of the simple geek. Also, it does a good job of addressing how the technology has been surprising in it's progress, moving less quickly than expected at some points and more quickly at others.

So What's In It For Me?

You get an entertaining read that, while biased, presents a view of nanotechnology that is vastly more satisfying than the smattering of magazine articles or usenet posts that have described the development of the technology so far. It's also a good book if you are a Believer dwelling amongst the unfaithful, to describe what precisely it is that gets you so excited to your friends and loved ones. I had my spouse read excerpts to prove that I wasn't coming up with this crap on my own.

The other thing you hopefully get from this book, especially if you are a Believer, is a renewed sense of vigor and excitement about the possibilities of this technology. Personally, as a Believer I came back with a strong sense of the future, and of the role this emerging technology will play in it.

Other important links... Check out the Foresight Institute and tell 'em Hemos sent ya.

Buy this fine text at Amazon

I'm sure a lot of you knew it was coming. The steady stream of emails asking "When is Slashdot gonna IPO" and messages from VCs pretty well proves that you guys knew it as well as I did. Well the cost and overhead of running Slashdot independently finally began to overwhelm us. After much deliberation and careful analysis, we're excited to announce that we've been acquired by Andover.net. Read more to learn what this means. Why did you do this?

Slashdot keeps growing. The overhead and costs associated with running this beast has become astronomical. Hemos and I work marathon weeks, and there still isn't enough time to get everything done. There are always banner ads needing selling, stories needing posting, perl needing hacking, and readers with questions needing answering. Besides that, our single channel ISDN connection is awfully saturated, and the "Business" work of running this website is beginning to be nearly as much work as the "Website" part of the site.

We had 2 options: get cash from some investors and hire a staff, or or find a company that we felt understood what we wanted to accomplish here, and use their money to hire help.

Hiring our own staff would mean hiring suits and marketing people. We decided that simply being acquried would allow someone else to worry about the suits and marketroids- we would simply benefit from their existing business infrastructure, and we could concentrate on what we already know how to do: Run a website.

What do we intend to do? Well for starters we'll be able to pay several of the guys who have been volunteering their time for so long. Plus, we'll be able to hire people to help sell banner ads, and the administer the servers, and maybe to debug code. Basically, a support staff so that Hemos and I can simplify our lives, and Slashdot won't have to depend on us 24/7. And we have new things that we want to do on Slashdot, so offloading tasks from me will us to focus on other things that we want to do around here.

We'll start doing things like content mirroring. We'll have more servers, and hopefully soon servers will pop up on each coast. And we'll be able to have experts help pull it all together. The end result will be a faster, more stable Slashdot.

Why Andover?

We talked to several companies: Some that you've heard of, and some that you haven't. We were looking for a company that would guarantee us complete and total creative control, but provide us the financial resources necessary to expand Slashdot in the way we consider best "right". And whoever became involved, they had to be "Outside" the linux/open source world to a certain degree: we didn't want anyone to think that a company might buy us simply to gain an advantage in the story select.

Andover is good for that- they aren't a "Linux" company - they run Linux, and they read Slashdot, but they don't sell a distribution, or Linux boxes, or anything related to Linux . In fact, we've only mentioned them on Slashdot a couple of times in the past.

Best of all- they're smart guys. They understand what Slashdot is, and they respect that they can't change it without destroying what it is. So they are happy to guarantee (it's even in the contract!) that Hemos and I would retain full control of the site, while taking advantage of their business resources to take care of that icky part of running this monster. To guarantee that, I've also been appointed to the Andover.Net board. (I'm still not sure if I'm supposed to wear a tie)

What is Andover

A Media Company. An internet company. They run websites. Sorta like Earthweb or Internet.com. All of their existing sites are done essentially in-house. They have several sharp hacks over there and I'm looking forward to working with them. They also have top notch guys-with-ties, and a real keen grasp of where things are going in this business.

Conclusion I couldn't be more excited about this. I finally will have the ability to expand Slashdot the way I want to. I'll have the ability to pay people that have been volunteering hundreds of hours of time to help. And I have complete control over Slashdot's future, without the financial burden that has been growing over the last year. This couldn't be better for Slashdot, and I hope I haven't offended anywone to bad. We fundamentally will not change anything, we'll just have a better infrastructure to do what we've always done.

The final cool part of this is that I get to say thanks to you guys. Most of what we're getting is a piece of Andover.Net. And after I pay off my student loans and Hemos pays off his credit cards, we want to make sizable donations to some causes that we think are important. This seems like the best way for us to give back to the community that made us successful.

• The Free Software Foundation - How can we not give back to them for making so much cool stuff possible.
• Debian - I love Debian. I just want to make sure that they keep going strong. Debian's success is critical to the future of Linux. Besides, I wanna make sure that my apt-get command gets the newest version of everything cool.
• Project Gutenberg - Keeping books online and making them available to the world is important.
• The Macatawa Area Community Network - They give free network access to our hometown. They were the original home of Slashdot- and they let us keep it there for several months even when we were saturating their T1 every afternoon.
• Hope College - We both graduated and we want to set up a scholarship or something there. I want it to be for a "Hot Chick Going into CompSci" but we'll have to see if they'll let me do that...
• Foresight Institute - So hemos is obsessed with nanotech. He wants to give them money in exchange for a campbell's soup can of nanites He's wierd, but hey.

We're happy about this, but I know not all of you will be. To those of you who think I'm wrong, I'm sorry. I really believe that this will allow me to make Slashdot into something even better then it is today, without sacrificing what it already is. Its been a crazy ride so far, and now its only going to get crazier.

If you want to contact jeff or I, you can email malda@slashdot.org or hemos@slashdot.org. We'll try to respond, but I suspect we're going to get flooded, so be patient.

Update: 06/29 02:12 by CT : Just FWIW, this has no effect on the Slash source code release. It will still be released whenever I have time to work on it. In fact, hopefully now since I'll have some help around here with the sysadmin stuff, I'll be able to focus on it some more...

Announced a few days ago, nanotech research currently in the quarter billion dollar US range is set to be doubled by the Federal Government over the next few years. The Feds are recognizing the immense possibilites of nanotechnolgy and want to set up a "peer review process" (Sound familiar?) to allocate the funds best.

According to reports from The Foresight Institute scientists at UC-Berkley have got cold fusion working using a hereto unknown aspect of nanotechnology. Further updates as more reports come in. I always knew nanotech was the ticket.

Bruce Hollebone writes "Last week, chemists at the University of Rochester reported they had figured out how to get optical plastics to self-assemble (Abstract from Science ,requires login. non-technical summary from ABC News). This material could be an important step towards better photonics, including an optical computer. This is real nano-tech, with precise molecular control. The molecular structure of the plastic was engineered to be a precise shape from the human scale right down to the atomic level. The point here is that this was done with boring old chemicals in test tubes rather than the exotic "nano-machines", proposed by the Drexlerites, shrouded in their mists of vapour. "

ragnarok writes "This story on Wired News talks about The Foresight Conference, which is being held to discuss the future of nanotechnology. We're a long way off from The Diamond Age, but this stuff is going to transform the world. "

cwilkes wrote " Went to the last meeting of the Jefferson Club. This is a monthly meeting of people interested in free enterprise markets. Heavy on Ayn Rand and von Mises. This next talk looks interesting to /. readers. I quote: "Better software is emerging today through cooperation based on full disclosure in the infosphere" with a link to opensource.org. " This thought-provoking backgrounder is available online.