Slashdot Mirror

Makes the smallest web server seem pretty huge, hunh?

But seriously, the ramifications of nanotechnology are pretty scary. I thought the Foresight Institute was supposed to be about becoming aware of them, and keeping the scary ones from becoming reality. Now it seems like they just push the science forward as fast as possible. Did they get so much resistance to the idea of nanotechnology being real that they got permanently distracted into proving that it is?

This is one technology which might not let us clean up the mess afterwards (like what's happening now with genetic modification).

Will Foresight succeed in educating people, or will the public inflate nanotech companies with their hopes and dreams, in the same way as biotech/internet companies, expecting another [stock appreciation] revolution in a "new-new economy?" Of course, we'll get the revolution [of abundance], but I wonder how long it will take people to figure out that there will be even more FuckedCompany's when it finally sinks in what it means to be able to manipulate matter with the same ease as bits of data.

...and we all know how easy it's been to convince the public that artificial digital scarcity is a good thing, right? But, without real material scarcity, there's no motivation to try and rationalize the sale of intangibles in order to pay for once scarce tangibles.

Give me some molecules, some sunlight, a molecular blueprint, the magic nano bootstrap process, and I'm in business!.........unless someone claims a monopoly on atoms or sunlight that is. :)

Interestingly, ATPase is a nano-scale rotor/generator. There are some great movies of the proposed operation from a berkley server. The ATP synthase motor is driven by the flow of protons from an area of high to a low concentration. Therefore it is not brownian motion directly, but osmosis that powers all life.

biobox

"Picture 1980. Ted Nelson is running around with his Xanadu guys: Roger Gregory, H. Keith Henson (now waging war against the Scientologists) and K. Eric Drexler, later to build the Foresight Institute. They dream of creating what is to become the World Wide Web. Nowadays guys at hacker cons might dress like vampires. In 1980 they wear identical black baseball caps with silver wings and the slogan: 'Xanadu: wings of the mind.'"

1994-current. Work continues on the second XOC fine-grain hyper-sharin transpublishing server, under Roger Gregory and Keith Henson.

o In 1992, the Church of Scientology had become the first religious organization in Canada to be convicted of criminal conduct. Specifically, stealing documents from law firms, public associations and government entities -- and breach of trust. In addition, in the Casey Hill litigation, Scientology was ordered to pay millions of dollars to Canadian lawyer, Casey Hill, for slandering his reputation.

If you want to facilitate and accelerate progress towards the kind of future I imagine you are all interested in, then I suggest you stop arguing and find a distributed project which has a greater potential than SETI or this cancer project/scam. Your best bet is folding@home Why? When we solve this problem, we may quickly find a route to full-blown molecular nanotechnology. So what? This will: 1) Cure all diseases including aging (no need to waste time on the distributed cancer project/scam) 2) Launch real space exploration/space industry (then SETI can listen for ET on a receiver the size of the solar system while the rest of us just go find them) 3) Push computers and AI way past Moore's law (haven't you been infected with the Singularity meme yet?) 4) Provide us with (nearly) unlimited wealth of material and energy (then you can do nearly anything you imagine - hey you could even keep arguing and wasting time if you wanted!) For more info just check out Foresight and KurweilAI Net et. al.

Anyway, here's one set of Top 10 Recent achievements in Nanoelectronics

And a set of Top 10 Hard Problems.

In recent years the Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology has been awarded for experimental work as well as theoretical. Some people have been designing cool devices at the molecular level, other people have been building them, and they work. There's no reason to think progress of this sort will stop any time soon.

For all the revolutionary talk about how [the computer] will free us from the burdens of work, now all we do is spend more time working, because computers have enabled us to do more!

As the AC notes above, this may be nanoscale assembly, but it is not the molecular engineering with precise placement of individual atoms that Drexler talks about.

BTW if you look at Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation cited above you'll see that he actually argues not for top-down regulation but for a synthesis of strategies to deal with dangers from nanotech.

If you are interested in issues related to molecular nanotechnology, come on over and join us at www.Nanodot.org. Among other things we're currently having a discussion about regulation and nanotech.

As the AC notes above, this may be nanoscale assembly, but it is not the molecular engineering with precise placement of individual atoms that Drexler talks about.

BTW if you look at Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation cited above you'll see that he actually argues not for top-down regulation but for a synthesis of strategies to deal with dangers from nanotech.

If you are interested in issues related to molecular nanotechnology, come on over and join us at www.Nanodot.org. Among other things we're currently having a discussion about regulation and nanotech.

If you haven't read the book linked to above (or one like it), go read it now. Otherwise you're not going to understand what happens to us over the next decade.

(As a bonus question, students may want to prepare a paper on how open source methodologies can be used to circumvent the Grey Goop problem, in place of the top-down regulation that Drexler seems to be advocating :)

It sounds like Bill Joy has found a wonderfully matched partner then: the deaf arm-in-arm with the blind and both totally insensitive to anything except their own agendas.

I didn't know about Hatch, but Bill Joy is notorious in nanotech circles for his Proposal to relinquish development of robotics, genetic engineering and nanotechnology, ie. abandon the research that the world's top visionaries see as not only the next major phase of engineering, but also quite possibly the next major milestone in the evolution of Mankind.

Be that as it may, Bill Joy is totally oblivious to even the simplest and most clearcut of arguments when it conflicts with his own point of view, to the point of farce. The fact that abandoning robotics, genetic engineering and nanotechnology would be the most unenforceable directive in the history of ineffective directives seems to matter not at all to him --- it doesn't support his position, so it can't be relevant and isn't even worth a response.

Even if there were a significant buy-in to the idea of relinquishment in the west, which there is most patently not, a single undercover research team achieving any significant advance in the nanotech field would have the potential to effectively destroy the western economy and possibly a lot more, unless counter-agents are developed before that time. Given that a simple SPM (one of the primary tools in nanotech research) can be created for just a few thousand dollars in nothing more fancy than a school lab, Joy's proposal is so akin to trying to bury our collective head in the sand that it's quite astounding.

"Foresight Institute's goal is to guide emerging technologies to improve the human condition. Foresight focuses its efforts upon nanotechnology, the coming ability to build materials and products with atomic precision, and upon systems that will enhance knowledge exchange and critical discussion, thus improving public and private policy decisions.

One of the things they're doing is pushing for open source nanotech designs and tools.

Also check out their slash-based news site.

Engines of Creation

"Self-replicating doodads" can be found in nature everywhere. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that you'd not be reading this article in the first place were it not for some self-replicating doodads in your head. =)

paulb

Yes, read Drexler. The full text of Engines of Creation is at http://www.foresight.org/EOC/index.html .
And read Stephenson's The Diamond Age, while you're at it, for a pretty good SF treatment of nanotech.

(Drexler gets hand-wavy too, sometimes, but at least he seems to be clearer on the inherent uncertainty.)

Pardons, the nanotechnology link was intended to point to the Foresight Institute's website, but I was in a hurry and didn't notice until too late that the wrong address was linked. Oops :-)


---

I know some of those people planning to freeze their heads when they die, and they do have some reasons-- by isolating the head, the freezing process can be conducted more carefully with less body mass to mess with in the limited timeframe before the body decays too much after death. And they expect that the level of nanotechnology neccessary for the cell-repair functions needed for proper 'reanimation' will also be able to either create a new body for them or 'upload' their consciousness into a non-biological state. For further information on cryonics, you can visit Alcor Life Extension Foundation's site (they do head-freezes) or the Cryonics Institute (they only do whole bodies).


---

In Chapter 9 of Drexler's Engines of Creation, the author states, "It is a common myth that freezing bursts cells; in fact, freezing damage is more subtle than this - so subtle that it often does no lasting harm. Frozen sperm regularly produces healthy babies. Some human beings now alive have survived being frozen solid at liquid nitrogen temperatures - when they were early embryos."

I personally recommend a read of the entire book (it's all online), but this chapter seems to have the most to do with the discussion.

Jonathan Desp, an early open source nanotech pioneer, might have some insightful comments on this.

Drexler already has a degree in nanotechnology. If I remember the book jacket correctly (it's been a while), he went to some board at MIT, outlined a course of study for himself and asked for a PhD in Nanotech.
Here's the excerpt from wwww.foresight.org:
"Dr. Drexler received an S.B. degree from M.I.T. in Interdisciplinary Science, an S.M. degree from M.I.T. in Engineering (while a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow), and a Ph.D. from M.I.T. in Molecular Nanotechnology..."
-B

Anybody heard of nanotechnology? Another good link is the Foresight Institute. I can see this becoming a reality within my lifetime (ie. much less than 1000 years). If you don't know what I'm talking about, read Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation or Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.

Once we get nanotech, this will all be moot. We'll either wipe ourselves out or become something much more than human. Either way, it should be interesting...

Nanobots, have been fairly well defined and well described. See for example, the respirocytes paper from the Nanomedicine page at the Foresight Institute. The operating parameters for diamondoid nanobots are described in depth in Nanomedicine, Volume I . A dozen or more types of nanobots are described in the current and future volumes of Nanomedicine.

Biobots, is a term that I personally have used at several conferences to describe what chainsaw1 refers to as "nanites". However they do not have many of the qualities he attributes to them. They might make you somewhat stronger, but your ultimate strength is limited by your bone strength . People who abuse steroids can become so strong they snap their bones. It will be difficult to construct biobots/nanites that create stronger bones because you need a stronger structural material. The only possible material that currently exists, for which we have manufacturing systems in nature, would be very strong sea shells (e.g. abalone shells). But your body would probably have an immune reaction if you loaded them up with biobots that augmented your natural bone with the proteins that are used to strengthen the shells. Biobots, could perhaps do things like influence whether your muscle fibers are fast twitch or slow twitch, which would change you from a sprinter into a marathoner and back. Biobots could also produce erythropoetin, causing you to make more red blood cells, increasing your oxygen capacity, and perhaps at the same time your risk for forming blood clots or overloading your heart due to increased blood viscosity. Biobots could also give you the skin of a cameleon or octopus (color changing). Biobots will not have significant communications capabilities because it would have to be encoded chemically and there is no system in nature for "writing" new information into DNA (all it does is erroneously copy old information) or writing a variety of chemical molecules that would be required for communicating any volume of information.

Biobots do have uses however. I came to the conclusion in watching the movie X-men, that about 1/3 of the capabilities in the movie, you could do with biobots, 1/3 the capabilities would require diamondoid nanobots and the final 1/3 would probably require changing the laws of physics or "tricks" using microelectronics.

It is worth noting, that the term biobots is overloaded, because it is used in some contexts to describe small insect-like robots that have neural-net control systems.

Nanobots, have been fairly well defined and well described. See for example, the respirocytes paper from the Nanomedicine page at the Foresight Institute. The operating parameters for diamondoid nanobots are described in depth in Nanomedicine, Volume I . A dozen or more types of nanobots are described in the current and future volumes of Nanomedicine.

Biobots, is a term that I personally have used at several conferences to describe what chainsaw1 refers to as "nanites". However they do not have many of the qualities he attributes to them. They might make you somewhat stronger, but your ultimate strength is limited by your bone strength . People who abuse steroids can become so strong they snap their bones. It will be difficult to construct biobots/nanites that create stronger bones because you need a stronger structural material. The only possible material that currently exists, for which we have manufacturing systems in nature, would be very strong sea shells (e.g. abalone shells). But your body would probably have an immune reaction if you loaded them up with biobots that augmented your natural bone with the proteins that are used to strengthen the shells. Biobots, could perhaps do things like influence whether your muscle fibers are fast twitch or slow twitch, which would change you from a sprinter into a marathoner and back. Biobots could also produce erythropoetin, causing you to make more red blood cells, increasing your oxygen capacity, and perhaps at the same time your risk for forming blood clots or overloading your heart due to increased blood viscosity. Biobots could also give you the skin of a cameleon or octopus (color changing). Biobots will not have significant communications capabilities because it would have to be encoded chemically and there is no system in nature for "writing" new information into DNA (all it does is erroneously copy old information) or writing a variety of chemical molecules that would be required for communicating any volume of information.

Biobots do have uses however. I came to the conclusion in watching the movie X-men, that about 1/3 of the capabilities in the movie, you could do with biobots, 1/3 the capabilities would require diamondoid nanobots and the final 1/3 would probably require changing the laws of physics or "tricks" using microelectronics.

It is worth noting, that the term biobots is overloaded, because it is used in some contexts to describe small insect-like robots that have neural-net control systems.

Nanobots, have been fairly well defined and well described. See for example, the respirocytes paper from the Nanomedicine page at the Foresight Institute. The operating parameters for diamondoid nanobots are described in depth in Nanomedicine, Volume I . A dozen or more types of nanobots are described in the current and future volumes of Nanomedicine.

Biobots, is a term that I personally have used at several conferences to describe what chainsaw1 refers to as "nanites". However they do not have many of the qualities he attributes to them. They might make you somewhat stronger, but your ultimate strength is limited by your bone strength . People who abuse steroids can become so strong they snap their bones. It will be difficult to construct biobots/nanites that create stronger bones because you need a stronger structural material. The only possible material that currently exists, for which we have manufacturing systems in nature, would be very strong sea shells (e.g. abalone shells). But your body would probably have an immune reaction if you loaded them up with biobots that augmented your natural bone with the proteins that are used to strengthen the shells. Biobots, could perhaps do things like influence whether your muscle fibers are fast twitch or slow twitch, which would change you from a sprinter into a marathoner and back. Biobots could also produce erythropoetin, causing you to make more red blood cells, increasing your oxygen capacity, and perhaps at the same time your risk for forming blood clots or overloading your heart due to increased blood viscosity. Biobots could also give you the skin of a cameleon or octopus (color changing). Biobots will not have significant communications capabilities because it would have to be encoded chemically and there is no system in nature for "writing" new information into DNA (all it does is erroneously copy old information) or writing a variety of chemical molecules that would be required for communicating any volume of information.

Biobots do have uses however. I came to the conclusion in watching the movie X-men, that about 1/3 of the capabilities in the movie, you could do with biobots, 1/3 the capabilities would require diamondoid nanobots and the final 1/3 would probably require changing the laws of physics or "tricks" using microelectronics.

It is worth noting, that the term biobots is overloaded, because it is used in some contexts to describe small insect-like robots that have neural-net control systems.

Take one of my favorite nanite designs: the Respirocyte. This artificial blood cell does nothing more than load and unload oxygen and CO2. Infuse a person's blood with it, and they can spend hours underwater, run 12 minutes at top speed without taking a breath, or live for 3.8 hours with their heart stopped .

Yes, there's a dangerous side -- the Biovorous Nanoreplicator or 'Gray Ooze'. We need to ask ourselves if the risks are worth the rewards. I think you'll find most scientists are cautious, but optimistic about the possibilities.

Take one of my favorite nanite designs: the Respirocyte. This artificial blood cell does nothing more than load and unload oxygen and CO2. Infuse a person's blood with it, and they can spend hours underwater, run 12 minutes at top speed without taking a breath, or live for 3.8 hours with their heart stopped .

Yes, there's a dangerous side -- the Biovorous Nanoreplicator or 'Gray Ooze'. We need to ask ourselves if the risks are worth the rewards. I think you'll find most scientists are cautious, but optimistic about the possibilities.

Take one of my favorite nanite designs: the Respirocyte. This artificial blood cell does nothing more than load and unload oxygen and CO2. Infuse a person's blood with it, and they can spend hours underwater, run 12 minutes at top speed without taking a breath, or live for 3.8 hours with their heart stopped .

Yes, there's a dangerous side -- the Biovorous Nanoreplicator or 'Gray Ooze'. We need to ask ourselves if the risks are worth the rewards. I think you'll find most scientists are cautious, but optimistic about the possibilities.

Take one of my favorite nanite designs: the Respirocyte. This artificial blood cell does nothing more than load and unload oxygen and CO2. Infuse a person's blood with it, and they can spend hours underwater, run 12 minutes at top speed without taking a breath, or live for 3.8 hours with their heart stopped .

Yes, there's a dangerous side -- the Biovorous Nanoreplicator or 'Gray Ooze'. We need to ask ourselves if the risks are worth the rewards. I think you'll find most scientists are cautious, but optimistic about the possibilities.

Now, the truly cool thing to build would be a self-assembler; an assembler that can build copies of itself. That's a toy for which people have yet to draw up a design.

Now, the truly cool thing to build would be a self-assembler; an assembler that can build copies of itself. That's a toy for which people have yet to draw up a design.

Now, the truly cool thing to build would be a self-assembler; an assembler that can build copies of itself. That's a toy for which people have yet to draw up a design.

We have two space habitats now, MIR and the International Space Station. The history of the development of space habitats shows that, using current technology, we produce very high cost habitats that are dependent upon the Earth. O'Neill in his promotion of real space habitats makes it clear that to be built cost effectively, the material for their construction must come from someplace other than the Earth. That requires future technology.

Given current habitat dependence on earth, a civilization destroying asteroid, would presumably doom the crews on the station(s) as well. If the impact is not too large (sufficiently large to vaporize the oceans), then we should expect crews in submerged nuclear submarines to survive. Because they have long life power sources and extensive food stores, they would presumably be able to emerge someplace where even longer term energy resources are available (e.g. the Middle East). This would potentially allow them to construct green houses that could support a small population until the dust clears from the atmosphere. There are possible locations (deep valleys, underground facilities, etc.) that could survive the impact as well. Collectively, these would form the seeds of a new civilization. There are of course problems such as how do you identify locations where there are likely to be preserved the seeds, power sources, light sources, etc. in relative proximity that would allow you to maintain an agricultural base. But I think people could figure this out. It would be interesting to start a project that created a number of protected "humanity shelters" around the world that were widely know about just to be able to know we had a solution to the most probable doomsday scenarios.

Now, with regard to moving extensive numbers of people into space habitats or colonizing other planets with self-sustaining groups. This is going to require nanotechnology to be done cost effectively. If you have self-replicating systems based on nanotechnology (discussed by Josh Hall in this paper), then you can rapidly move people off the planet. You can also dissassemble a planet or two and build in the vicinity of ~100 billion telescopes the diameter of the moon. This array of telescopes would fill most of the inner solar system out to the orbit of Jupiter. At that point we would certainly be able to identify all of the Oort Cloud objects. Nanoprobes would then be launched to these objects using mass drivers. Once they arrive at these objects, they can be disasssembled into useful construction material and reoriented on orbits to deliver that material to useful locations. If objects were found that were on killer trajectories that could not be reformatted/redirected in time by the nanoengineers, then the mass drivers could also be used to deliver high velocity projectiles into the oncoming path of the object to deflect or vaporize it.

So the answer, as it is with most things, is we need molecular nanotechnology and self-replicating engineering systems. The last time I looked at some of the sites suggested, they did not include nanotechnology in their habitat development strategies. Without nanotechnology, the costs are likely to be so high that serious people can only consider them fantasies.

I have this theory that with nano, EE/CS will become in less demand, and mechanical engineers will be forced to reexamine rod logic if they want the good jobs. However, we're really moving at a snail's pace here, and haven't had any real developments in a while. nano-saxaphones for Pres. Clinton! ;-)

I was assuming very infrequent communication, sending email over modems every few days. If these guys can maintain direct net connectivity, the amount of overlap needed between neighboring nodes is much smaller. It would be a big win.

If your question was genuine and you seriously think that we are anywhere near to reaching practical limits on physical merging of appliances then you badly need to spend a few months reading something about nanotechnology, its near-term impact on molecular manufacturing, some wonderfully readable and seminal insight on where it might lead, and if you want more depth, a key text book in this area.

We are on rung 1 of a ladder that extends into infinity. The idea that somebody on a nerd forum could ask a question even suggesting that today's primitive toys are anywhere within a million light years of effective limits in any respect whatsoever is mind-boggling.

If your question was genuine and you seriously think that we are anywhere near to reaching practical limits on physical merging of appliances then you badly need to spend a few months reading something about nanotechnology, its near-term impact on molecular manufacturing, some wonderfully readable and seminal insight on where it might lead, and if you want more depth, a key text book in this area.

We are on rung 1 of a ladder that extends into infinity. The idea that somebody on a nerd forum could ask a question even suggesting that today's primitive toys are anywhere within a million light years of effective limits in any respect whatsoever is mind-boggling.

If your question was genuine and you seriously think that we are anywhere near to reaching practical limits on physical merging of appliances then you badly need to spend a few months reading something about nanotechnology, its near-term impact on molecular manufacturing, some wonderfully readable and seminal insight on where it might lead, and if you want more depth, a key text book in this area.

We are on rung 1 of a ladder that extends into infinity. The idea that somebody on a nerd forum could ask a question even suggesting that today's primitive toys are anywhere within a million light years of effective limits in any respect whatsoever is mind-boggling.

I for one find nanotechnology very interesting. The fact that we will be capable of making "something out of nothing" by manipulating molecules is very exciting. I for one am sick and tired of all the polution caused in the process of making simple items such as plastic cups and spoons. What if we could actually grow plastic cups and spoons? what if we didnt need to distroy thousands of hectars of rain forests to build houses? what if we could grow them??

Think about it. For once we could actually 'produce' something from scratch ,without disrupting our natural ecosystem or burning up reasources.

My friends, nanotechnology simpely is the dawn of a techonological revolution. The purpose is to invent a way to over come our current obsticals; lack of natural reasources, economical problems, increase in consumer demands. And hopefully reverse some of our stupid mistakes; holes in the ozone layer, forest fires, oil spills (I could go on forever), by providing a way to 'produce' our needs from the molecules up. Not only will this discontinue our need for reasources, it will also make more things cheaper with out any reduction in quality; as a matter of fact, if things were designed from the molecules up, products will be 100% flawless!

Well, don't take my word for it, visit The Forsite Institute for the bare details of what I'm talking about. There you can find an electronic book to download that will give you a broader understanding of the subject matter.

I hope you find this subject as interesting as I did. Implementing this technology means major changes in the way we live. Positive changes...

If you are interested then there is more info on the general ideas of nanotechnology at the foresight institute's web site. In particular Engines of Creation - the book that started the whole thing - is online there, and might be worth a read/skim if you are interested. It is a bit dated though, but it is amusing when he mentions this wonderful new idea called "hypertext".

They also have a book that gives more of a "what it means" or "what would it be like" viewpoint here .

The announcement in this story is obviously a long way off being what is described in the books, but even if what is described never comes to pass it is still an interesting read.

If you are interested then there is more info on the general ideas of nanotechnology at the foresight institute's web site. In particular Engines of Creation - the book that started the whole thing - is online there, and might be worth a read/skim if you are interested. It is a bit dated though, but it is amusing when he mentions this wonderful new idea called "hypertext".

They also have a book that gives more of a "what it means" or "what would it be like" viewpoint here .

The announcement in this story is obviously a long way off being what is described in the books, but even if what is described never comes to pass it is still an interesting read.

Speaking as someone who runs a non-profit (foresight.org, nanodot.org), what most non-profits need desperately is consistently-available trouble-shooting and systems administration (i.e. boring stuff), to keep their machines working. Only after that is in place can they take on more-ambitious projects, and those are sometimes given as a treat to the person who does the boring stuff. Only a few nonprofits (like us) try to do fun, ambitious new software (crit.org, etc).

Ever heard of the Bacteriophage?

Or seen a picture of one?

Isn't the apperance mechanical like? The first time I ever heard about the phage was from a ufo freak who suggested that in reality phages are MNT devices that has been planted in our ecological system by extra terrestial intelligence. To what purpose would you say? I don't know.

But, I do know that the phage is a virus that attacks and feeds off bacterias, and that they are found in many flavours and designs. It's primary objective is to reassemble, and spread. More about the phages

Today phages are increasingly popular in biology as they are believed to keep the secrets of bacterias and might provide us with knowledge to battle resistant bacterieas.

In the end we might find out that they were created by somebody like us, maybe in a galaxy far far away, a long time ago.

Anyway, here's some more pictures

resource pages: www.phage.org and the foresight page

NanoBot

Some sort of genetically engineered plant or algae would be more realistic for planetary alterations

Scientists recently genetically engineered plants to grow faster. It's all coming to a head -- I love the idea of "singularity", it scares the heck out of people, getting them to donate to Foresight. ;-)

--

[Rob Freitas] had previously posted preliminary analyses on sci.nanotech, but DejaNews appears to have dropped them (that was around 1997).

[Rob Freitas] had previously posted preliminary analyses on sci.nanotech, but DejaNews appears to have dropped them (that was around 1997).

9.0 Conclusions and Public Policy Recommendations

The smallest plausible biovorous nanoreplicator has a molecular weight of ~1 gigadalton and a minimum replication time of perhaps ~100 seconds, in theory permitting global ecophagy to be completed in as few as ~10^4 seconds. However, such rapid replication creates an immediately detectable thermal signature enabling effective defensive policing instrumentalities to be promptly deployed before significant damage to the ecology can occur. Such defensive instrumentalities will generate their own thermal pollution during defensive operations. This should not significantly limit the defense strategy because knapsacking, disabling or destroying a working nanoreplicator should consume far less energy than is consumed by a nanoreplicator during a single replication cycle, hence such defensive operations are effectively endothermic.

Ecophagy that proceeds near the current threshold for immediate climatological detection, adding perhaps ~4C to global warming, may require ~20 months to run to completion, which is plenty of advance warning to mount an effective defense.

Ecophagy that progresses slowly enough to evade easy detection by thermal monitoring alone would require many years to run to completion, could still be detected by direct in situ surveillance, and may be at least partially offset by increased biomass growth rates due to natural homeostatic compensation mechanisms inherent in the terrestrial ecology.

Ecophagy accomplished indirectly by a replibot population pre-grown on nonbiological substrate may be avoided by diligent thermal monitoring and direct census sampling of relevant terrestrial niches to search for growing, possibly dangerous, pre-ecophagous nanorobot populations.

Specific public policy recommendations suggested by the results of the present analysis include:

1. an immediate international moratorium on all artificial life experiments implemented as nonbiological hardware. In this context, "artificial life" is defined as autonomous foraging replicators, excluding purely biological implementations (already covered by NIH guidelines tacitly accepted worldwide) and also excluding software simulations which are essential preparatory work and should continue. Alternative "inherently safe" replication strategies such as the broadcast architecture are already well-known.
2. continuous comprehensive infrared surveillance of Earth's surface by geostationary satellites, both to monitor the current biomass inventory and to detect (and then investigate) any rapidly-developing artificial hotspots. This could be an extension of current or proposed Earth-monitoring systems (e.g., NASA's Earth Observing System and disease remote-sensing programs) originally intended to understand and predict global warming, changes in land use, and so forth -- initially using non-nanoscale technologies. Other methods of detection are feasible and further research is required to identify and properly evaluate the full range of alternatives.
3. initiating a long-term research program designed to acquire the knowledge and capability needed to counteract ecophagic replicators, including scenario-building and threat analysis with numerical simulations, measure/countermeasure analysis, theory and design of global monitoring systems capable of fast detection and response, IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) discrimination protocols, and eventually the design of relevant nanorobotic systemic defensive capabilities and infrastructure. A related long-term recommendation is to initiate a global system of comprehensive in situ ecosphere surveillance, potentially including possible nanorobot activity signatures (e.g. changes in greenhouse gas concentrations), multispectral surface imaging to detect disguised signatures, and direct local nanorobot census sampling on land, sea, and air, as warranted by the pace of development of new MNT capabilities.

For another viewpoint, check out:
http://www.foresight.org/EOC/

Drexler was one of the first to really study nanotech, giving lots of thought to its scientific underpinnings as well as the dangers that it could pose.

I saw Bill Joy on the News Hour and he struck me as incredibly naive, taking an extremely simplistic viewpoint of nanotech and biotech.

self-replication and self-assembly mean factories turn into tanks, without spewing toxic chemicals all over the place. we would probably almost entirely stop using roads for shipping (and transportation in cities) in favor of extremely fast underground subways. we can smear the roads with an extremely tough substance which essentially acts as a solar panel that you can drive on and lasts for quite a long time. it's a very good way to get power -- you take otherwise useless radiating heat from the roads outside, and you release it out your roof, and on the way it's done a little work. toxic waste? that's one of the easiest of all to take care of. think of the bacteria that scientists are developing to "eat" oil slicks. it's more than possible to break down, molecule by molecule, entire toxic waste dumps into basically whatever you would like.

disadvantages: grey goo. if something eats up the entire earth, the environment will go, along with everything else. there are quite a lot of people worrying about this -- we anticipated it, so it's likely we can take care of the risk (through blue goo or similar)

there are other advantages: perfect recycling at a molecular level, basically an end to cancer and many other lethal and debilitating diseases, a chance to explore our galaxy... there are disadvantages as well -- but the environmental condition is not likely to be one of them.

Lea

Silicon technology is still a bulk technology. The most likely candidates for a further circuit miniaturization are what is called "molecular electronics." These involve using organic molecules with dimensions of several dozen angstroms for swithces and interconnects. People are already working very hard on metal contacts to organic molcular componet. There was a special issue of the Proceedings of the IEEE on Quantum and Nanoscale Devices and an article titled "Molecular Electronics" by Prof. Reed of Yale EE dept surveyed the field.

The Most striking figures in that article were (i) a very tiny organic molecular diode which operated at room temperature with voltages around +/- 0.5 volt, and (ii) a resonant tunneling device at room temp. with similar voltages. These are highly practical voltages and temperatures! The biggest obstacle is to integrate these devices.

The variety of possibilities offered by organic molecules in conjunction with metals and other solid materials is simply staggering. What is going to open the floodgates is development of techniques to integrate these tiny devices with tiny interconnects in an inert matrix.

Zyvex and the Foresight Institute website are the best resources for information on this subject. Particularly, the writings of Eric Drexler and Ralph Merkle.

That said, you can find some nanotech links here:

• * My think tank's Innovation page has links to stories and other related sites.

  * The Open Directory Project has a number of great links here, including a link to the important Foresight Institute.

  * And, of course, there is Ralph Merkle's page.

Good luck. I wish /. had some rule that we would only offer assistance to students who let us read their finished products.

A. Keiper
Washington, D.C.

Of course, Eric Drexler's book Engines of Creation started it all. Unbounding the Future , by Drexler, Chris Peterson, and Gayle Pergamit, is a less technical popularization of the ideas put forth in Engines. Drexler's Nanosystems is the authoritative technical book on the subject.

Zyvex researcherRalph Merkle is acknowledged worldwide as one of foremost authorities on nanotechnology; his nanotech website is the definitive starting place for locating nanotech resources on the web.