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The Law And Nanotechnology

Posted by michael on from the digital-millennium-nanotechnology-act dept.

YIAAL writes: "An article in Smalltimes raises the issue of legal implications of nanotechnology in all sorts of areas. Would nanoweapons be treated as chemical or biological weapons, or do they need a new treaty? If you can use nanotechnology to copy anything and then share the "plans" with friends who can use nanotechnology to make copies of their own, is it like Napster for the material world?" The gray goo problem - accidentally releasing a self-replicating device that turns the entire world into copies of itself - is going to be a huge spur for close regulation of nano-devices.

3 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Re:diamond age by Bearpaw · · Score: 3, Insightful
    One thing that would prevent Grey-Goo is the massive amounts of energy required to produce nanotech machines ...

    What "massive amounts of energy"?

    and the fact that no-one has developed a self-replicating machine outside of theory.

    ... yet. Why does the fact that no one has done it yet mean that it can't happen?

    That said, it's not clear how likely accidental "grey goo" would be. I'd be more concerned about intentional grey goo.

    Neal Stephenson did a good book on nanotechnology called The Diamond Age.

    That was not a book on nanotechnology, that was a novel that had a particular version of nanotechnology as part of the context.

    Some people have written good books on nanotechnology, Here's a list.

  2. Gray goo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Stop for a moment, and think it over; why hasn't any organism yet managed to turn the entire world into copies of itself? Cause they've sure been trying - for a long time now. This makes me think that even if we tried our best, we would no be able to create a nanomachine that did this. It would face the same challenges that natural organisms do - e.g. competing organisms (that may well evolve into nanomachine-eating organisms or at least thrive on their by-products), local resource depletion, maybe even mutation.

  3. Almost enough to stop living... by srvivn21 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Isn't it tragic that legislation and treaties are needed to control stuff like this? I find it very depressing that "common sense" and "good of the community" are such hard concepts to follow. I know all about the "tragedy of the commons" and understand that it is a reality, but it just seems absurd that an intelligent (maybe that's my mistake?) species can't see that we would make much more progress and be much more comfortable (albeit as a species) if we could cooperate.

    It's tough being an idealist.