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The Dangers of Nanotech
Krees writes "Small Times talked with the Foresight Institute's Christine Peterson, Ralph Merkle of Zyvex, and Ray McLaughlin of Carbon Nanotechnologies about the potential of nanotechnology, which has benefited greatly from open source research methods, and nanotech weapons in particular falling into the wrong hands. Recent recognition of potential abuses will likely lead to incrased secrecy in nanotech research." This topic comes up every so often - what happens when nanotech falls into the wrong hands? I think that's a "when", not an "if", as that happens with almost everything.
People theoretically see the need for lots of nice protections. Then they go ahead and cut corners unless someone has been burned and the memory is fresh.
I cannot think of any area of technology from automobile design to nuclear power plants to office suites where this principle of human nature has not been operational. I can personally list examples from NASA to genetics research to the SNMP spec. (It was nicknamed Security - Not My Problem for a reason!)
IMNSHO anyone who thinks that nano has the potential to be any different is just kidding themselves about human nature...
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Surely this goes for most technology in the wrong hands, if genetic cloning and modifying got into the wrong hands imagine what terror you could do with superbugs and the like
or nanobots that deliver and contain deadly explosive triggers or toxins straight to the intended target
It looks like everyone has already brought up the point that the danger in putting a "self-destruct" mechanism in a nanite. With millions or billions of nanites, even if the odds of one of them surviving that self-destruction are one in a million, those odds are too high. And if that nanite is designed to construct other nanites (or, worst case, copies of itself) then you have a problem on your hands.
If nanotechnology ever reaches the total control of matter, self-replicating machine, Diamond Age "Seed" level (I don't have enough information to argue either way, but it seems to me that it'd be easier to create macroscopic Von Neumann machines than microscopic ones, and we haven't even done that yet) we're going to need more protection than a self destruct mechanism.
What I'd like to see, in a world swarming with potential nanotech viruses, is an analogous nanotech immune system to take care of them, nanites which can be set to recognize and rip apart other nanites which meet certain parameters. Got a rogue oil-spill cleaning nanite ripping up asphalt in San Francisco? Get the standby security nanites in Oakland to kill it.
There was an interview with a somewhat apocalyptic tech giant (a veep at Sun? I forget) who believed that the ever increasing technological power available to humanity (nanotech, biotech, and AI being three examples I remember) would cause the world to be ripped apart by terrorism in the coming century. He likened it to an airplane in which every passenger had a "Crash" button in front of their seat, and only one psycho was necessary to bring everyone down with him.
I don't think it will be that way. With nanotechnology specifically, if our available defenses are kept up to the level that our potential offenses would require, then having a small set of nanites go rogue wouldn't be a concern; they would be overwhelmed by their surroundings. Going back to that analogy, if everybody had a "Crash" button in front of their airplane seat, but the plane was guaranteed to survive unless 50% of the passengers voted to crash, that would be the safest flight in history.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Bill Joy, cofounder and chief technologiest of Sun Microsystems, wrote an article for Wired awhile back called "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us."
He said there were three looming dangers to humanity's future: genetics, robotics, and nanotechnologies, largely because they were so accessible to those with less money than it'd take to, say, develop a nuclear weapon.
The article is one of the most well-reasoned examinations of the issue of nanotech and the dangers in the future of technology I've ever read, and it's given extra weight simply by the position and history of the author himself. Check it out at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html. It's long, but it's certainly worth the read.
To avoid having runaway nanotechs, you make them highly oxidizable so that exposure to o2 would rust them quickly. Then they can only work in inert gasses.
Sure, it limits a lot of the practical use of nanotechs, but since this is a new technology proceed carefully. Give them 20 years testing and using nanotechs in inert gas before you think about deploying them in environments containing oxygene, that way they have real world tests of how well nanotech's work and how likely they are to run away.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I belive that is the term used for it. It is a theory that states if one nanotech bot is formed incorrectly and reproduces at a much faster rate the entire world can be turned into whatever it is supose to be fixing. IE: If the nano's are creating a certian protien the whole world would become replicas of the protien (and nanos changing eachother into them). The biggest problem would be how to stop it since putting it into conatinment would just turn the containment into the protiens as well.
But what do we do if they hijack the ship and ressurect the crew? They'll never believe me when I try to tell them that they all died millions of years ago when Rimmer caused a leak in the reactor...
Oh, never mind.
Sham on
Wait until we evolve into a race of psychic super beings! Able to stop a mans heart with a thought. Bending time and space to allow us to travel to distant stars. The ability to read a man's mind will render the entire Judicial system obsolete!
Sorry, futurists annoy me.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
"In the future, everyone will be +50 karma whore for fifteen minutes." - Andy Wartroll (1928 - 1987)
While Human nature is one thing, I think the past 60 years...maybe 100 years have started to show a shift from using "ultimate weapons" whenever you have them, to only using them once in a while.
Chemical Weapons - Used in mass during the First World War, then used against civilian prisoners during the Second World War. Mass produced by members of NATO and WP during the Cold War, but not used that much except by Third World nations since the Second World War.
Nuclear Weapons - Used only twice by the United States during combat, even though the US had them for 56 years at this point. Never used in combat by any of the other nations to have them (USSR/Russia, South Africa, Israel, India, Pakistan, France, UK, China).
Biological Weapons - Not used in combat by any nation-states that we know of in the Modern era. (Simple biological agents have been used for centuries, but nothing like the modern biological weapons have been used).
I think that the West would not use/abuse nanotechnology unless someone else moved first. For an example...only three time since the Second World War have US political leaders or Congressmen spoke about using a nuclear device until a few weeks ago. Those times were the Chinese attack against the UN in '50, the Siege of Khe Sahn/Siege of Hue and a proposal in '81 for the US to fire a "warning shot" high above the Inter-German border.
Mankind is getting better, slowly but surely.
Exploited this topic. Of course, I can't actually find it to give you a title (just moved and I have around 1000 books to unpack still)
.... the team is killed. Immediately an elaborately orchestrated effort is made to 'retrieve' a sample of whatever is over there... and the idea of a 'clean' work area is presented.
... don't count on it. But if you want to know it and post under here ... i'll look for ya ;P
Basically, a strange object has started 'growing' on the backside of the moon, and when people are sent to investigate
The fascinating aspect of the clean room is that it contains a series of self-interlocking mechanisms that, as a fail safe, can dump enough power into an XRay apparatus to sterilize everything with the building's sheilds. This is the ONLY allowed method of handling nanotech, and they claim it's extremely immature compared to what's going on on the moon
If I can find the title I'll post it, but
Who said that it was in right hand right now..?
I thought the point that Americans are meant to be noticing is that it is low-tech which is a real danger, not high-tech. Osama bin Laden took out the WTC with fanatics, box-cutters and commercial airliners, not cruise missiles or stealth operations, or even a bomb.
Assuming the anthrax is even down to him (which is far from certain), it is not being distributed with cluster bombs, overhead sprays or even by infecting the water supply. It is simply put in some powder in the mail.
The point is, high-tech can be defended against. Computer systems can be secured, fighter jets can be shot down and bombs can be defused. The real danger occurs when something that is taken for granted, something that is very low-tech and forms a basic part of society, is used for ill means.
No doubt that nanotechnology could be used for war purposes. But I consider it far more likely that a Western power would do this than Osama bin Laden.
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
If all the science was open, then everyone could have an understanding of all the risks and work together to prevent anything terrible happening. If governemnts/scientists/corporations try to keep it secret, they can't. With the Internet and fast transfer of information, any small leak will be immediately available to the world.
Instead of putting the effort into protection, put it into prevention.
It is unrealistic to prevent information to be hidden in our modern would, instead we need to control how it can be used and by who.
I'm not someone who advocates trying to resist the progress of technology, I believe we have to embrace it and change our lives accordingly, but its interesting that Nano-technology research is not more controversial considering the possible dangers involved.
The "dangers" involved in debated and even banned areas such as human cloning, bio engineering, and true AI are really pretty small compared with Nanotech, where one invisibly small nanomachine, programmed to multiply and destroy its host could eradicate life on earth and still not stop. Does Clinton want to be known for having started a second Manhattan project (I suppose it is a lot better than what he will most likely be known for)?
And the prospect of Nanotech has some _very_ interesting implications on the current RIAA, MPAA, and other "evil forces of the world" situation with the freedom of Information. When nanotech comes along, will we have a Copyright Act that forbids programming nanomachines to work-around "nano-scan protection systems"? Will Ford sue me for writing a Nano-assembler that can make a copy of your neighbors Mustang? Will Coca-Cola go after me for having bought one bottle and then copied it to all my friends at the party? And most importantly, if its true as the Copyright defenders say, that copy protection is necessary for the economy to work, will society then end with Nanotech? Maybe all the companies that produce physcial items ought to be out lobbying congress to not spend another cent on Nano-research, which could cripple their bussiness!
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
The link in this guys signature is link to jerks.com's browser crasher. He put it in that way to work aroudn the slashcode's posting of the primary HTTP address of a link. In otherwords he's an asshole.
m
The site he links to does a massive repetitive browser opening until it crashes the OS (or you log if you are using Win2K)
Just thought you might want to know. Personally I use Opera, but many viewing from work have no choice as to the OS and browser and get tripped by his deliberate and maliciosu deception.
the link is (add your own http:) rd.yahoo.com/*http://www.jerks.com/crash/crash.ht
Impossible if you dont have an unlimited energy source. This is why the energy source for nano technology should be RESTRICTED to say solar energy, or special laser based energy so it only works in certain lighting.
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Nano technology is dangerous, the way to stop something dangerous is to build defenses for the problems before they actually become problems.
If we had defenses for terroism we wouldnt be in this situation now.
So, what we should do is defend against grey goo problem by
Creating nano technology which only works when shined under a special light, or via solar energy.
Creating defensive technologies BEFORE offensive ones, meaning creating nano repairing technology to repair your DNA and your cells, then if someone does release a nano virus you'll have a nano cure ready and years before the nano virus is even a problem.
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The Cowboy Bebop movie now playing in Japan is very poinient with this issue.
Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, comment posting has temporarily been disabled. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner. If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down. If you think this is unfair, please email jamie@mccarthy.vg.
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The award for the most overrated science goes to - nanotechnology. Yes I know you write IBM using atoms and a tunneling microscope; you can also write "pointless hype".
There will almost always be a positive side and a negative side to just about everything. Nanotech is no different. An example is of the common #2 pencil. Positive, you can write documentation and share it, effectivly. Negatives, it hurts if you poke yourself with it. Deadly in the wrong hands. Samething for nuclear reactions. Good, power. Bad, bombs.
The same logic can be applied to nanotech. The positives that it may help us make dramatic technological leaps (it also being a major leap).But it may also
I don't want to bring back up the Sept 11 tragedy but it illustrates how common and usefull things can be turned against us. This will never change. There will always be that remote chance.
"I think that's a "when", not an "if", as that happens with almost everything."
If that's true, we can sleep easy knowing that nuclear weapons and accompanying worldwide delivery systems will make their way into the hands of people willing to use them against us shortly, and we have nothing to fear from nanotech as we'll all be dead.
The first use for nano technology will set the tone for the type of technology it is.
We have laser technology but i dont see people using laser guns which burn through bullet proof vests. WHy? Because lasers arent usually USED for that.
Nano Technology should be used for hospitals, to heal people, to ACT as the bullet proof vest meaning, realtime cell repairing, this may make it so people are harder to kill, but isnt that the point of all technologies? To extend and improve the quality of life?
If you have Nano cell repair and Nano technology in hospitals, Nano structures, then making a nano virus or weapon is going to be hard as hell, your best bet would be to exploit bugs in the current nano defensive structures such as turning a persons cell repairing nano bots against them.
Then it will come down to, repairing bugs, instead of a virus problem where we are caught off guard.
In this way, yes people will still die, but it will be freak accidents instead of millions of people dying over a nano plague
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(+5000, Insightful)
"In the future, everyone will be +50 karma whore for fifteen minutes." - Andy Wartroll (1928 - 1987)
He saved the Enterprise from the nanites, if we can just get him to talk to these nanobots before they hurt us, I'm sure everything will be alright....
Most people who are evil arent intelligent enough to create a nuclear bomb or use genetic technology
but in the information age, this all changes, evil people become genius's.
Nano technology will be as simple as writing a computer virus,
The best way to control this is to write anti virus, create nano bots which have no purpose at all but to destroy other nano bots
When a nano virus hapens, release the destroy bots which simple using say magnets attach themselves to nano bots and in the same way that a virus attacks human cells, this can attack nano bots which are bad, attach to them, and either reprogram them, or make them cease to function somehow.
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I can't think of anything more rediculous. First of all, how are you going to build a self-replicating machine? The obstacles are so large as to be practically insurmountable. Consider that we've never even come close to building a machine that can make duplicates of itself in the macro-sized world, even using pre-machined parts, and then think how complex it would be to make a microscopic machine that could replicate. First of all, data storage would be a problem. The machine would have to have incredibly advanced molecular-level storage technology, and incredibly advanced tiny molecular storage reading technology to read the information. Then it would have to have a computer to process this information, and very sophisticated sensors to tell where it was, and some sort of locomotion device that worked in three dimensions somehow, and some sort of advanced grabbing arm to move stuff with. Just the grabbing arm itself would be an achievement. How do you expect this machine to grab atoms? With other atoms? It would be a clumsy arm that was built with the things it was supposed to move! Plus, the arm would have to build itself as part of the replicating process, so it couldn't include any components that would be too small for it to build itself.
And the final requirement: Power. Where is this machine going to be powered from? It's going to have to have a lot of power in order to grab atoms, since it will have to break atomic bonds to move the atoms around. It must be a steady, reliable source of power, one that is available everywhere in the world if it is going to turn the whole world into gray goo. Sunlight you say? What is going to collect the sunlight? Solar panels? These solar panels would need to be made of certain atoms which wouldn't be available everywhere. How would the machines replicate if they couldn't find the correct elements to build their solar panels? Remember that these are tiny machines that can only roam tiny distances, they can't go out searching for the elements they need.
One must only look at nature to see what can be accomplished in terms of molecular-sized self-replicating machines. Cells are masterpieces of design, with ingenious mechanisms that are still out of our realm of understanding in some cases, and certainly way out of our ability to design and create on our own. And yet algae is in no danger of turning the whole world into "green goo." It only survives under certain conditions. I don't think man will be able to out-design nature for the forseeable future.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Also, referencing The Diamond Age, who is to say that the protocol on making them oxidizable is to be followed. Sure, one can put up guidelines, but guarantee me that they will be followed. sure, they will when companies have to be federally regulated etc, but what about when everyone gets their own 12x8x32x nanite burner, and starts craking out stuff that doesn't adhere to the protocol. not to mention the very limiting use/application base when they need inert gasses (so much for oil spills).
Are we reading the same article? The one Bill Joy admits was inspired by the Unabomber manifesto?
As it stands today, humanity will only be around for a limited time. In the best case, we'll be around until the sun expands and swallows the Earth. More likely, a stray asteroid will finish us off first. Even if we decide to abandon technology, humanity will cease to exist one day.
So, do we want to make the most of the time we have, or not? We won't do ourselves any favors by becoming Luddites. We can only maximize human potential by the continuing to advance science and technology. That's the only chance we have for long-term survival as a species; and it will make the lives of individuals a fuck of a lot more pleasant along the way.
If you have a problem with my views, REPLY, don't moderate!
Telepathy will be possible soon with brain to computer interface, and this connected to some nanites could do EXACTLY what you are talking about.
Programming would be as simple as THINKING it, the whole art of programming would accellorate so fast that millions of programs would be written by one person in a day.
imagine if programs were created via the speed of thought and these programs could materialize via nanites.
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If you have a problem with my views, REPLY, don't moderate!
First of all, how are you going to build a self-replicating machine? The obstacles are so large as to be practically insurmountable
Yeah, men will probably walk on the Moon before we build such things!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Feynman was a mentor of mine (back when
I arrived at Caltech in 1968 on full scholarship at age 16 to study physics) and I actually co-authored a published and anthologized Science poem
with Feynman. He was the acknowledged Great Grandfather of Nanotechnology, I was one of the many grandfathers of Nanotechnology, having done my doctoral dissertation on it (I called it "molecular cybernetics" in 1975-77), before Eric Drexler (the acknowledged father of nanotechnology). I got in contact with Drexler in 1979, when I was at Boeing's Kent Space Center, through our mutual friend Ray Sperber. Drexler insisted that none of us would publish until we thrashed out the safety issues. Then he jumped the gun and published first -- a good article in the NY Academy of Sciences. I'd already gotten Omni magazine (where I'd had 2 cover stories published, including the one that coined the phrase "Cybernetic War" in May 1979)hot to write about Nanotechnology. Then I introduced Eric to Stanley Schmidt, Ph.D., editor of Analog, who gave Eric important early support in the Science Fiction Community. I wish I'd published first, but maybe Eric was right to ask for a period of silence. I did, later, publish key chapters of my Nanotech dissertation in the proceedings of international conferences, and in refereed journals, but Mrs. Drexler (C. Peterson) is more involved in assering her husband's primacy in the field than in maintaining objective historiography. Be that as it may.... Now the Schrodinger's Cat is out of the Bagh, dad!
This danger occurs with any technology. A while ago, when the most advanced weaponry was things like knieves and swords, a crazy person could only kill a few. Then came the gun, then the bomb, then chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and prospects for mass destruction got worse. No technologies can be restricted forever, and they never have been in the past.
Thus, we must be extremely careful with what we invent. We must also search for ways to defend against them in the inevitable possibility that someone will attempt abuse them. I worry that in the future everyone will need to wear suits to protect against things like this because you could have invisable nano agents attempt to hurt you or have something that looks like a fly and flies around but then injects you with something or releases something at you.
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
Anyone played the Playstation RPG Xenogears before? The game has some very interesting issues brought up on Nanomachines... and their potential for abuse.
o duct.asp?pf_id=152239&mscssid=EAVNTR7HB6V18GHFJHQA 2RMRRE4X48K2&
http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/categories/products/pr
Men believe what they want. - Caesar
That's what I think. A long time before.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
If you haven't read Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age", this is a must read for those interested in weaponizing Nanotechnology. The story show the potential benefits of nanotech but also a few sidebars on Nanotech wars (Nano Machine vs. Nano Machine).
First of all, how are you going to build a self-replicating machine? The obstacles are so large as to be practically insurmountable.
It's easy to demonstrate that it's possible and to put an upper bound on the complexity of a replicater by looking for existing examples. Bacteria are self-replicating machines capable of synthesizing a wide variety of things, and while they're quite complex, understanding them is far from being an insurmountable challenge. Ditto understanding enough to design our own similar machines from scratch.
We are borg.
Congratulations Hemos, you've escpaed the consequences of the REAL SLashdot effect:
Kudos to you.
P.S. I fully agree.
Well, isn't that what all Berkeley students historically study (albeit from a somewhat detached perspective)?
Really... the next thing they will come up with are cells! Geesh! All that DNA transcription is obviously a farse!
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
What are these 'open source' research methods this person speaks of? Where can i download a copy of these methods? Are they GPL'd?
Building something on the scale of even a human hair would require so much energy it would be insane,
Storage is the only thing which is possible, we have infinite storage via holographic storage.
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read Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age"...
the entire book is based in a world w/ nanotech & there are a few not so far fetched ideas of what could be done with nanotech as a weapon.
aka. cookie cutters, etc...
WHEN nano-tech becomes feasable it will be possible to turn it into a weapon. Thankfully this wont occur for quite a while.
If not, we will just build a bigger and bigger gun until someone be it freak accident or on purpose, pulls the trigger and destroys the world, solar system, whatever.
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They don't mention the Gray-Goo scenario (not achievable anytime soon anyway), but then again, their thesis is not that nano-weapons are uncontrollable, it is that we must have them first.
When it comes to staying ahead in high tech, trust our open society to produce the best results first. If we should ever make big progress, then we need to take steps to keep the technology from falling into the wrong hands. Till then, this is a bunch of useless hysteria, not so subtly trying to get more funds allocated for nano-research, which as they have defined it, is rather broad and vague. Also troubling is the implication, if it is small, maybe it needs oversight and control, again to keep it out of the hands of the bad guys
Don't get me wrong, I'm no Ludite. Nano will be very important in the long run, but there are hundreds of more immediate high tech worries to take care of first. My prediction, machine-intelligence, and machine-human hybridizing will be more immediate impact and concern than weaponizable nano technology , and these technologies are still 30-50 years away themselves.
Given the slow progress of true nano technology, that is producing true Drexler like molecular components and assemblers, the nano marketing people have decided any coating or feature dimension if measured in nano meters, defines nano technology, and thus can claim big breakthroughs are happening today. If you can't produce the results, redefine what success is.
Letter To Iran
"I think that's a 'when', not an 'if', as that happens with almost everything."
-Hemos 11/02/01
-------
We have been warned. Quickly, stockpile all anti-MS material. Backup as many previous Slashdot discussions as you can. Buy a gun^H^H^H stun gun. Move to Montana^H^H^H^H^H^H^H a non-MS territory. Quickly friends, time is running out!
If we dont build weapons
the technology to build weapons wont exsist, thus someone will have to spend huge amounts of money and start from scratch.
If you never built the gun
people wouldnt have even thought about atomic bombs, they'd still be figuring out where to go next from spears and knives and arrows.
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Nanobots have already infested much of upstate New York, in fact their in my brain. I can hear them eating me alive. Gaa! The pain!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
chew on this:
"December 17, 1903 - The Wright Flyer lifts into the air at 10:35 am. The flight lasted only 12 seconds and covered a distance of just 121 feet (37 m). It is the first powered, manned, heavier-than-air, controlled flight.
July 16-24, 1967 - Apollo 11: First human lunar landing. At 4:18 p.m. EST on July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin landed on the lunar surface while command module pilot Michael Collins orbited overhead. "That's one small step for man - one giant leap for mankind." - American Institute of Areonautics and Astronautics history of flight timeline.
64 years.
in 64 years, we advanced more in the science of flight, and in our ablility to remove ourselves from the restraints of gravity than we have in the rest of prior human history combined.
the point is that, givin a short amount of time, a technolgy can advance beyond the logical dreams of the poineers. if we move at that pace, with nanotech, we'll have the ideal bot in fifty years.
what then, is the whole point.
I must say, I believe that you misunderstand what is meant in this case by self-replicating nanobots. First of all, they wouldn't be machines as you and I know them; no, they will function much in the same way living cells do. Cells are actually nanobots. They are composed of molecules, and move, replicate, accoumulate energy, etc by changing the shapes of, constructing, and taking apart molecules. The first nanobots will most likely resemble something very similar to that of a molecular protein. As nanotechnology advances, we will be able to create nanobots that closer resenbly a cell in its entirity, and hence, be able to reproduce.
I'm sure everyone here has seen the StarTrek NG eposide where those tiny creatures got lose on the Enterprise, almost totally messed up the computer, and Data started having those bizarre dreams in which Sigmen Fruad(?sp?) kept saying 'Kill Zhem... Kill Zhem all...' (Strong German Accent).
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
And now let me tell you how the Sept. 11 bombing impacts on my area of research.
Don't forget to be afraid, and give me lots of money for more research so you can feel safe.
Maybe it is time for a new Slashdot category: Sept. 11?
p.s. why does my sarcasm seem to go over everyone's head?
Kif , I have made it with a woman! Inform the men
usually "fall into the wrong hands" translates into - already in the wrong hands, but there it will stay. generally anything the american government gets there hands on, ends up being used ultimately for power and control - the atomic bomb, encryption technology (echelon) etc. etc. - call me paranoid, just don't call me a liar.
which country first manufactured anthrax as a biological weapon?
answer: USA
Um.
Those jets? The ones that crashed into the buildings? Hi-tech, wouldn't you say?
Geez.
The real danger occurs when something that is taken for granted, something that is very low-tech and forms a basic part of society, is used for ill means.
Look again: it's not the boxcutters that did the damage; it was the jets. Or more specifically, a lack of adequate security and understanding about the magnitude of damage said jets were capable of doing in the wrong hands.
Exactly the same point applies to nanotech.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
It looks like everyone has already brought up the point that the danger in putting a "self-destruct" mechanism in a nanite. With millions or billions of nanites, even if the odds of one of them surviving that self-destruction are one in a million, those odds are too high. And if that nanite is designed to construct other nanites (or, worst case, copies of itself) then you have a problem on your hands.
If nanotechnology ever reaches the total control of matter, self-replicating machine, Diamond Age "Seed" level (I don't have enough information to argue either way, but it seems to me that it'd be easier to create macroscopic Von Neumann machines than microscopic ones, and we haven't even done that yet) we're going to need more protection than a self destruct mechanism.
What I'd like to see, in a world swarming with potential nanotech viruses, is an analogous nanotech immune system to take care of them, nanites which can be set to recognize and rip apart other nanites which meet certain parameters. Got a rogue oil-spill cleaning nanite ripping up asphalt in San Francisco? Get the standby security nanites in Oakland to kill it.
There was an interview with a somewhat apocalyptic tech giant (a veep at Sun? I forget) who believed that the ever increasing technological power available to humanity (nanotech, biotech, and AI being three examples I remember) would cause the world to be ripped apart by terrorism in the coming century. He likened it to an airplane in which every passenger had a "Crash" button in front of their seat, and only one psycho was necessary to bring everyone down with him.
I don't think it will be that way. With nanotechnology specifically, if our available defenses are kept up to the level that our potential offenses would require, then having a small set of nanites go rogue wouldn't be a concern; they would be overwhelmed by their surroundings. Going back to that analogy, if everybody had a "Crash" button in front of their airplane seat, but the plane was guaranteed to survive unless 50% of the passengers voted to crash, that would be the safest flight in history.
I'm not denying that it may eventually (in the far, far, far, far future) be possible to build machines on the complexity scale of living cells. What I am denying is the absurd premise that we will somehow be able to create unstoppable self-replicating machines to turn the world into gray goo. Cells aren't even close to being able to do that. We aren't even close to being able to make cells.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Not to ruin the first few seasons, but all that was needed to destroy an entire dimension was one robotic arm, which had the ability to construct itself, and extremely limited intelligence. Eventually, by sheer mass, they were able to assimilate stars, then everything.
Heh - perhaps dark matter is nanobots, just waiting for us to make the wrong move.
:^)
Ryan Fenton
The nanotech attack has already happened. It isn't a matter of when - it is a matter of history!
Culturing, preparing and releasing Anthrax was a nanotech attack!
Future nanotech is more likely to be successful starting with biological systems than with bottom-up silicon engineering, and as such is just a logical extension of biological engineering.
The only good weather is bad weather.
You didn't even read the comment, did you. Go back and read it. Specifically, the last paragraph.
Wishing that the hypothetical airplane has a "crash button critical mass" of 50% is comforting but not completely realistic. Remember the Japanese cult a few years ago that released Saran gas in the subways. Its easy to forget that their ultimate goal was to end all life on earth [not just the lives of those who were different from them]. It was part of their "religion" so don't expect that we could understand it. With the right technology you only need one such cult.
The terrorists we're facing right now only want to destroy us. The Japanese cult wanted to kill everyone. They're both terrorists but there's a significant difference. Once we get a "lets-commit-suicide-for-everyone" cult with nanoweapons then all bets are off. Any technology as powerful as this one can and eventually will be turned against us just as every one before it.
Secrecy and other safeguards may not be 100% effective, but they have the potential to fare better than wishful thinking. Since I don't see any guidelines or safeguards in the near future I hope I'm wrong.
I heard the comment about energy and the storage, Storage like the Holographic, or maybe even protien arangement. About the way to make the bots with little energy. They could replicate themselves, yes but for the initial one you could use a huge device and cool everything down to the magical temp of absolute zero, at the temperature you can rip this and add that to any molecule. It seems like this will be the greatest thing to be invented, basically a nano machine is a cell, just smaller. My only real problem is what was shown in a game called Deus Ex Machina. Other than that, bring on the nanotech minions!
I was just reading The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurweil, and I ended with a brief discussion on nanotechnology and terrorism. He brings up points that are very important to consider. Nanotechnology can be one where it is self-controlling. It can self-replicate, but embedded within that a means of destroy the negative components. I do not have the book handy, but it is a good read and Kurzweil explains it so simply, my mom could understand it.
100% Insightful
Them: You should be afraid of nanotechnology getting into the wrong hands!
You: Well, ok...Why? Whats there to be afraid of? Isn't the whole idea circumvented by...
Them: Nanotechnology. Be afraid.
You: Huh? That doesn't answer my question.
Them: You should be afraid of nanotechnology.
You: Err...What?? You're just repeating yourself!! You haven't given me a reason why I...
Them: Yes. Nanotechnology--It could get into the wrong hands. Osama Bin Laden's hands!
You: How on earth is nanotechnology a threat to anyone? What, you think someones going to introduce some sort of synthetic nano-machine virus into the water supply? Come on.
Them: You need to be afraid of nanotechnology falling into the wrong hands. And the water supply
You: FINE. OK. Jeezus, lets say for the sake of the argument that some "evil organization" learns how to develop nanotechnology. Fine. What good is it going to do them? What are they going to build that would be such a terrible threat to anyone? Why not simply use standard, boring old chemistry tricks to kill people? Hasn't it ever occured to you that the idea of "death by nanotechnology" is about as sensical as "And now, Batman, I will spend millions of dollars to construct a machine that lower you very slowly into a pool of imported Burmese pirahna!!"
Them: You should be afraid of nanotechnology falling into the wrong hands.
You: Hasn't it occured to you that a single drop of benzene is enough to kill a room full of people? All Benzene is, is just a ring of 8 carbon atoms. It doesn't require a knowledge of nanotechnology to make a whole bucket of....
Them: You should be afraid of Osama Bin Laden, and nanotechnology. And benzene. And mail. And muslims. And cryptography. And steganography. And bridges. And...
You: {click}
Bowie J. Poag
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553380966/ ref=bxgy_sr_text_a/107-7865889-4434140
The afore-mentioned Diamond age is really an interesting look into nanotechnology and its consequences. Neil Stephenson paints a picture of a future where nanobots are just... there. They're another part of everyday life. His ideas are interesting, if not always plausible, and it's a damn good book besides. Read!
If you were to give a present-day person a time machine, he'd be totally wowed by all the possibilities that opened up before him. He would probably take over the world pretty freaking quickly.
If you were to give everyone on the planet a time machine, all at the same time, nobody would be able to take over the world.
The same can be said about computers, nanotech, giant robot spiders of doom, any technology that has a single source or a single user can give its wielder great power. Give it to everyone and they'll be able to handle the grey or red goo problems on their own time.
Nanotech will start out like the atom bomb, automobile, cotton gin or the microwave oven. First only an elite few will have this great labour-saving device, but after a while, everyone will.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
Yes, actually, I did. I was picking. I also disagree with the writer of the comment: nature, as we see it, was not necessarily "designed." If God/a god is behind it, then it could have been, but otherwise, nature is simply a collection of random forces, and surely we can do better than that.
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
The commonly cited "gray goo" scenario is a sort of nanotech worst case: nanites that can convert almost any naturally occurring matter (including biomatter) into more identical nanites. Robert Freitas has done some analysis concluding that gray goo would either work very slowly, or throw off a huge amount of heat which could be detected by a thermal monitoring system of geosynchronous satellites. Drexler has observed that making a gray goo nanite is likely to be an enormous engineering challenge.
These kinds of topics pop up on sci.nanotech with some frequency. Here are some discussions: November 1996, March 1997, September/October 1997. My own thinking is that we want to ensure that the development of defensive measures outpaces the development of offensive weapons. A step in the right direction would be for the good guys to maintain a development/design/simulation effort that clearly outpaces anything the bad guys can do. (This obviously sidesteps the issue of who gets to define "good guys" and "bad guys", and whether the good guys become corruptible given a commanding technological lead.)
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
I'm getting really tired of all of you talking about nanotech like it's already here. "They are too dangerous because they could get out of control"; "What about nanobots that can generate exact copies of real objects, what then about copyright law?"; blah blah blah...
Nanobots are science fiction. We are probably only slightly closer to nanobots than teleportation, and it's definitely further away than flying cars. Oh shit, hold on... I gotta cut this post short - My holo-phone is ringing. Damn, what do you guys think about the ramifications of someone being able to see how fat my ass is on the phone?
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Is that the gas they use to make Saran Wrap? (I believe it's Serin gas ;-)
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
There is a fallacy out there, and many are subscribing to it -
Open Source is DANGEROUS
The thinking goes this way -
If things are open sourced, EVERYONE, including
the BAD GUYS, can get it.
And BAD GUYS can use the open sourced stuffs to
do BAD THINGS.
So, to a lot of people -
If open-source is BAD, then
close-source must be GOOD.
Well...
Is close-source GOOD?
The topic about nanotech, about people thinking that secrecy - ala close-sourcing - can cut down on the "dangerous" aspect. At least, they argue, the BAD GUYS won't be able to get those technology.
The question here we should ask is -
IS THAT SO ?
All of us live in the REAL WORLD, and we gotta recognize the REALITY as it is -
As long as you got MONEY,
you can get ANYTHING = almost anything -
you want .
And we all know there are LOTS of BAD GUYS with LOTS OF MONEY - Osama Bin Laden got BILLIONS to spend, for example, - and no matter if the nanotech is open-sourced or close-sourced, if Bin Laden and all his Muslim fanatics want to do BAD THINGS with nanotech, you'd bet that they will GET the technology somehow.
The only thing that sadden me is that so many people in this world are acting like Ostrich - their preferred act is to bury their head in the sand, rather than use the gray matter in the head to THINK.
Close-sourcing is NOT, and will NEVER be, the answer to security.
If we are concern about BAD GUYS, we should TACKLE the BAD GUYS.
If Osama Bin Laden and all his Muslim fanatic assholes are the problem, then we should EXTERMINATE THEM, instead of close-sourcing EVERYTHING.
Sigh !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Yesterday, California Gov. Davis said bridges on the entire West Coast were going to blow up. The week before that, Anthrax was everywhere making already testy US Postal Employees, with the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, a little more edgy in mass wearing disguises. I am not even going to start with jumbo jets plowing into buildings 3/4 miles south of my apartment a month ago.
Now, thanks to Slashdot, I am freaking out about things I can't see without an electron microscope (yea like I got those laying around like cue-cats) crawling around my body screwing up my DNA! With the way the technology industry is dominated and my luck, I could end up ingesting a Microsoft Nanabot NT for the Intestines and end up with the Blue Skin of Death.
Can't we have more fun stories about people that cover their cases in PETA approved faux fur, obviously photoshopped, fake Apple combination PDA/MP3/GPS prototypes or someone running a beowulf cluster of Aibos powered by the disco beat of the Bee Gees. I got enough forwarded e-mail in my mailbox to freak me out for quite a while. On a positive note, at least no malls blew up on Halloween like that woman from Mississippi/Oregon/Florida/Arizona with the Saudi/Iranian/Iraqi/Palestinians/Egyptian/Sudanese boyfriend (that left abruptly) told her sister/mother/hair stylist/local sheriff would happen.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
If all the science was open, then everyone could have an understanding of all the risks and work together to prevent anything terrible happening.
First of all, science already is open. While individual implementations of a technology may be proprietary, the basic research underpinning it all is public (browse the journals section of a university's library some time).
Secondly, you are assuming that people a) are able to keep up with and understand all facets of science, b) are willing to do so, and c) are able to tell that someone's growing anthrax in their basement in time to do something about it.
a) can't even be done by scientists. This is why experts exist. Even within a fairly bounded discipline there are far too many papers and references for one person to keep up with - so people specialize in a niche that interests them and keep current with directly related topics.
Joe Average would have a much harder time of it.
b) Given that keeping up with even a niche in science in enough detail to truly understand it is pretty much a full-time job, and that most people already have full-time jobs and don't read scientific papers for leisure, I doubt that most people would be willing to keep abreast of all of science.
c) There are a wide range of diabolical terrorist plots that look surprisingly innocent right until the end. Concealment is easy. Detection is hard.
So, the populace at large will have a hard time policing itself. You could delegate the problem to a team of experts... which gives you something that looks a lot like the existing police force plus the various special agencies. In other words, we're already implementing what's probably the most pragmatic approximation to this ideal.
It is unrealistic to prevent information to be hidden in our modern would, instead we need to control how it can be used and by who.
The problem is that in most cases such control is also not feasible to implement in practice.
That leaves us with deterrents as a disincentive, and damage control plans for the inevitable few who are not deterred. Clever and nasty terrorist attacks will continue to happen, with a wide variety of technologies (basic and advanced). The best that IMO can be done is to attempt to minimize them and deal effectively with them when they do occur. Others, of course, will have widely varying opinions.
Any technology as powerful as this one can and eventually will be turned against us just as every one before it.
I agree. In fact, I'm starting to think it's inevitable. Maybe this is one of the reasons SETI hasn't found anything yet. Maybe it's some kind of cosmic law that every species destroys itself.
Stop thinking of nanotechnological (whadda word!) devices as tiny little robots with a claw hand and tank treads - that's Star Trek crap!
Nanotech robots will have more in common with bacteria, or maybe viruses than they do with the welding robots on the Ford assembly line.
Power, you ask? Ever hear of glucose, fructose and a bunch of other sugars. It's what most ever living thing uses for feul. Makes good feul too. chemically reacts but not in a destructive way.
Self-assembly? Why not trick something else into assembling replacements for you? modify the DNA of an animal T-cell, and it'll start producing whatever you want (granted this is some pretty "star trek crap" too, but it's looking more and more feasible as geneticists learn more about DNA/RNA).
control? sensors? data storage? DNA does that. DNA does that better than all the electronic data storage we have now. May not be super fast, but it's more reliable than a hard drive. DNA is a better chemical sensor than we could ever design on purpose. Control? DNA is both storage and a processor...
second problem: how small do you think "nanotech" is? virus sized? white bloodcell sized? even if the little critters were the size of a grain of sand - say the size of a flea - they could still cause horrendous damage to an animal.
Algae != "green goo" you say... Why go so far as the "green goo" version of armageddon? think more like "Red Tide" - y'know, algae turn the water red, kills tons of fish and stuff...
No - nanotech that you should be worried about is not the little robots on tractor treads that Wesley Crusher (sorry wil, if you're reading this... Not your fault, bad writing.) unleashed on the Enterprise. Nanotech will have more in common with a programmable, targetable disease. Imaging that nasty "flesh eating" bacteria, but one that you can turn on and off. Let it spread a month while acting benign, then send out second nanite to turn on the first, and the target population turns to goop in minutes.
Isn't benzene a ring of _six_ carbon atoms?
Every technology advance is seen as dangerous. When the machine gun was invented around WWI, it was seen as a horrible weapon of mass destruction which would make future wars impossible. What was next? Chemical warfare, nuclear weapons, biological weapons, genetically modified organisms, W2K bug, AIDS, Microsoft dominance.
Humanity has a consistent track record of successfully dealing with dangers. Journalists have a consistent track record of looking for the next big scare.
Yes, nanotech will cause some deaths. At the same time nanotech will serve humanity. Or the humanity will become indistinguishable, become one with nanotech.
I'm stealing everyone's jewels that I can... Maybe the crown jewels... have the lil bugs crawl in undetected, cut holes in glass, and then crawl out with the goods.
Bleh maybe I need to realize my dream of training a pet squirrel to steal from a vending machine.
God spoke to me
The article states that "There's no question that if Osama bin Laden had access to nanoweapons that he'd use them."
That's quite a statement my friend. Let's be dreadfully honest here. What is terrorism? Terrorism is violence. Violence against a group of people who are unlike us. What defines "us"? Ladies and Gentlemen, we were infected at a very early age. With a dreadful virus, a virus of the mind. From here on I will refer to a virus of the mind as a meme.
We have all been infected with a very specific meme. The meme of race. The meme of Nationalism. The memes of "We" and "Them".
We are all alike. Even the most beautiful and glamorous of us is forced to take a large foul-smelling crap from time to time.
When you are born, your parents induct you into a society. They tell you the story of your Forefathers, your culture, your heritage. You are given a sense of pride in your genetic lineage. Don't panic. You have been infected. From then on, everyone around you is different. The "We" and the "Them". You can't be part of them, you're part of "Us", part of "our" "we".
When confronted with one of "Them", you meet an alien for the first time. Where your own eyes are round, the alien's eyes are slanted. Where your skin is black, his is white. Where your hair is lusturous and black, hers is fine and white, or red, or green. See what just happened? You fell into the trap... You have denied your shared traits, your shared behaviours. You saw the differences between you, and fell into the trap of racism.
Racism is a negative idea, Not because of the violence and hatred it breeds, but because it is wrapped up in the meme of race. The Twin memes of "We" and "Them". How am I different from any Muslim? How am I different from any Jew? How am I different from any Catholic? We all eat to survive. We all take big smelly shits. We Pick our noses and stare at our boogers. We Fart and blame it on the Dog. We all become aroused. Which incidentally brings me to the first cure for Racism.
We all need to fuck each other.
You heard me, say it yourself. You'll feel much better.
"We all need to fuck one another."
If the words taste funny in your mouth, it's cause you haven't acquired a taste yet. Try it again...
You may be asking me now, "But Kauai_Geek, we're gonna be having a whole lot of fun with this, but how will it cure racism?" The answer? By eliminating the Visual differences, it is impossible to differentiate yourself from your neighbor. He looks just like you. He has your cocoa skin, your exotic eyes, your tall lanky frame, even your acne. He. Looks. Just. Like. Me. He is me... How can I hate myself? How can I hate my brother? How can I do naught but love my sister? My Aunt? My cousin? My Father? My Mother?
It's okay if you still have that foul taste in your mouth. This is a difficult, and sometimes distasteful idea to stomach. How could you ever fuck a Nigger? A Chink? A Jap? A Wop? A Filthy Fucking Jew? You may not taste the sweet nectar of lust when you contemplate the differences of another. For you I have another cure.
You are going to have to kill everyone. Well I shouldn't say that. You won't have to kill Everyone . Just those who aren't part of your "We". Gives you a funny feeling in your stomach? Wrap all of that silly queasyness in a bundle and throw it over your shoulder. You're not a Murderer. You're ending Racism! And what a glorious gift your god has given you. That's right Your God. Don't let yourself down after everyone who looks different than you is dead. You and your similar brothers have much more work to do! You've got to kill everyone one who isn't a Catholic! Who isn't a Baptist! Who isn't a Muslim! Heck, even those who aren't Buddhists! You've got a whole bunch of Jews to kill. Go on, don't be hesitant. Your God said to love all your brothers. How can you love with the unsafety of difference between you and your brothers? Go on, keep killing.
Good work. You've killed everyone who does not share your melanin levels. Good work. Now take a good long look around. Hey.... Waitaminute John's eyes are blue. Mine are brown. Fuck, there's still a little bit of racism left to be purged... Smoke that blue eyed fuck! And his Daughter! That bitch with the Red HAIR!!! Slaughter that BiTch! Fucking murder hate kill enemy destroy slaughter maim, bite kick kill punch!
Thank goodness, there's no racism left. Funny, weren't there more people around here? Hmmm this is interesting. You seem to be All. By. Your. Self.
Well at least there's no more of those racist fucks left.
As for me? I'd rather get laid in a bed of cloth than a bed of dirt. Which do you choose?
Surfing is religion
you are silly
I Hack You! - Ninja Fish
my bad. it's 6, not 8. Highly toxic nonetheless.
Bowie J. Poag
People arent really diffrent, Races arent real, its just a matter of cultures.
Cultures are real, as far as races go, people of diffrent races get along if they have the same culture.
Bin Laden hates american culture, not races, not people in gerneral but what they represent.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Try
Or
Or
What do you think? Is there any technology that is so inherently dangerous that it's in our best interest to closely guard it? To make it secret?
Me, I don't think so. But I welcome opposing viewpoints.
Cheers
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
Sounds right politically motivated to me.
Nano has the potential of becoming the hardware equivalent of open source. I'm sure the battles will be huge and dirty, but they may not really be about sincere religious zealots as much as the super rich of the western world attempting to conserve the status quo at all costs.
Imagine if in say 2007 10GhE fiber networks become convenient places to plug in peripherals like nano printers that use carbon nanotubes to build up complex structures layer by layer. You know, printing out consumer goods molecule by molecule with a bitstream in the billions per second. It could take days to finish a print of even a small high tech exterior wear medical device, but people who used 1200baud modems on BBS to download porn GIFs in the eighties can imagine a bunch of geeks waiting days for silly toys.
The people who can't imaging a world in which super complex manufacturing of say car parts or home electronics or even power generation equipment is moved into the home environment are the vested financial interests of the developed world.
There's your terrorist threat. Hey, they say Bin Laden is a billionaire. Who do you think his friends are? A bunch of peasants living in mud huts? Terrorists indeed. Black Flag had their finget right on it.
Let's have a war, jack up the DOW Jones!
it doesn't mean that they're not out to get you. Double negatives aside, maybe the mindless paranoia is justified at a deeper level.
l
Defenders of a new technology are usually blind to its dangers. It doesn't help that the opposition (lacking specific information at the time) acts as mindless as you parody.
Keep in mind: in the late 1800s, people wrote nightmare pollution scenarios for coal power. They were laughed at by the educated. It took about 100 years to get to the point they feared. I've read books written in early 1960s claiming that nuclear power will always be 100% safe. If you actualy read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, you migh catch yourself looking at certain sections and saying "what's the big deal" and then shuddering. The list goes on.
Potential Nightmares:
(I'm sure the bad guys have been thinking about these)
-Targeted assasinations: Biological warfare is one thing, but imagine the ability to have ubiquitious "smart dust" everywhere and once in a while commanding it to snip important connections in your enemys nervous system. Worse yet, you can give your enemy the psychological disorder of your choice.
-Custom plagues: By the same token, you can have Ebola-like flesh-eating plagues that can now be safely deployed because of their targetability.
-If you get enough nanomachines to swarm, you can use them to instantly pulverize things/people.
-Spydust: enough said.
-Slime mold style robots: you can have an evenly distributed (and thus undetectable) layer of nanomachines come together (Voltron style) out of nowhere and form the killer robot of your choice. Far fetched, but truly the stuff of nightmares. (Look up slime molds for a biological analogy).
-The upper bound in how fast nanomachines can replicate is not necessarily the same as that for existing algae/bacteria. Remember that if these are small enough to be 'artificial life-forms' introducing them into the environment would be like introducing a completely alien life form. Such life forms can devastate an environment before they limit their own growth. The "gray goo" problem is real, even if remote.
-Energy might not be a problem:
http://www.gastrobots.com/
For that matter, I have not seen obstacle mentioned here that's fundamental.
-Long term consequences failure by _someone_ to follow any of the development guidelines outlined in:
http://www.foresight.org/guidelines/current.htm
Please keep in mind that self-replication is a lot easier at the microscopic level. Bacteria are simpler than mammals, yet manage to replicate/mutate just fine.
I, for one, pray that we never get this far or run into the same types of 'technical problems' that have kept us from achieving true (or even good) AI. With complete molecular-level control, I can imagine a lot more horrendous stuff that I'd rather not even write down. I'm not trolling here. Far-fetched does NOT mean impossible or unlikely. And even though what I outlined above may not be useful to terrorists as we know them today, they will be useful to _someone_.
I hope to look at what I wrote here in 25 years and laugh at my ignorance.
Nanobots can be fought with Nanobots. Diseases can be fought with better medical treatment and detection.
Do you seriously think the Anthrax thing would have killed anyone if automatic infection identifiers were as common as thermometers?
How can you say it would be better to not have the "automatic infection identifiers" do decrease the chance of bio-terrorists making something. Note: These are very much linked since the cost of the identifier is directly related to the cost of development.
BTW> I should start taking bets of wether our gov. is developing a virus to only kill strongly religious people (might be possible).
You know...
if you are going to correct someone's spelling, you should be damned sure you have the correct spelling yourself. Otherwise you look like a bigger fool than the peron who made the original mistake.
It's SARIN gas. Look it up.
I totally agree with you on the pool of pirahnas analogy. Why would someone research nanotech just to plague us with tiny machines? It's non-sensical. If they really want to destroy us, they'll use the simplest means that they can employ.
The "wrong hands":
1) Programmers. Imagine a 200 story building that looks fine
from the outside, but go down to the basement and you see that one
corner is wobbling on a pile of bricks. There's a sign attached
saying
FIXME: we need something better before building anything over two stories.
If anything I think the worry is arse-about-face. It's the technologically advanced countries that are going to perfect nano weapons first. So if we are scared, the people of Middle Eastern countries should be terrified. Imagine a nano virus 10 times more powerful than Anthrax, geneticly keyed to only kill those of Pashtoon blood, or in order to get Bin Laden, those of Yemeni blood! It would be like using a smart nuclear bomb that would only hurt your enemies.
Imagine what could happen if weapons like this or the technology to produce them, got into the hands of western white supremacy groups, or christian fundamentalists!
What a nightmare for the human race!
I felt encouraged by its optimism when I first read Engines of Creation during a stopover at Rangiroa Atoll and saw Drexler at a conference not long after, but his Foresight Institute quickly developed into a vehicle for self promotion with no interest in anything that might bring the original claims into question. And the "gray goo" scare is a key part of their story.
One key question they don't want to even think about is that the whole idea of reproduction makes very little sense. It happened in living cells because there was no other way forward, but given an engineering capability nobody in their right mind would bother trying for reproduction when it is far easier to build a machine which builds other different machines to a few levels of recursion, with production at each level readily constrained by inputs. To achieve the really high levels of production that nanotech will no doubt need for some of its envisaged applications, you might even want to go beyond n**3 processes, but there is no way it will ever go to reproduction and thus turn exponential.
That doesn't mean that there won't be some evil little nanomachines. Just that they are going to be a lot harder to deploy than Drexler and co. want us to believe. If they haven't got some fear to motivate people, who is gonna pay for Foresight's future?
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
is about all this stuff. Well written, and very scary. http://www.wetmachine.com
Nanotechnology is barely a science yet, and
already these guys are coming out of the woodwork!
All applications for this technology so far are mostly speculation,
but these people have already deemed it a potential threat!
And the most relavent question remains unanswered:
Why would a terrorist leader choose to use nanotech over,
for instance germ warfare, which by comparison is
far simpler, cheaper and more effective.??
"Pretending the bad guys will not see a security hole is ultimately self-defeating," Merkle says. but then again, they must know better. :)
Do not confuse duty with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different.Duty is a debt you owe to yourself.
I think a better question is when will nanotechnology fall into the "right hands"?
Consider the fact that all of the technologies discussed in the article with any sort of near-term feasibility fall more appropriately under the far more venerable rubric of "materials science" than "nanotechnology".
If we are worried about the "microscopic terrors" of Drexler's "machine phase" matter, I think we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. Knowledgable critics question not only when but if we will ever be able to develop such technology (c.f. "Of Chemistry, Love and Nanobots", Richard Smalley, SciAm 9/01).
After all, we have more than our hands full keeping 50+ year old weapons (nuclear, chemical, biological) out of the hands of terrorists. I think it is a little premature to be worrying about weapons that may be decades away from development by even the world's most tecnologically advanced nations - if ever.
Wright Flyer, or any airplane working on aerodynamic properties of wing really doesn't have about anything in common with rockets, why don't you start when chinese invented black powder, at the first hot air balloon. Or Leonardo da Vinci "helicopter" plans? Or first kite?
There really is no simple point in history to place an exact start to research of aviation.
The best way i could see to make sure that a wide scale deployment of Nanotech does not fall into the wrong hands would be a sort of Nanotech Police bot. It would have to check on nearby nanobots and make sure they follow certain laws as to what they can and can't do, as well as make sure that the nanobots are from a source that is allowed to make use of them. Of course, this requires that nanotechnology reaches the point where it can have a widespread deployment without having someone dangerous getting ahold or developing them first.
today's macrotech.
Now it's well more than half of my friend's worst-case estimate later. We have nothing approaching any of those things. What we have is exactly one thing, C 60, also called buckminsterfullerene. It's a very interesting thing, but it's a material, not a machine. Its co-inventor, Dr. Richard E. Smalley, explained in the Sept. 2001 Scientific American that the Drexler assembler is and always will be impossible, because molecules are not tinkertoys that you can put together an atom at a time.
In his 1999 Senate statement, Dr. Smalley said this about potential natural security ramifications of nanotechnology research:
As you can see, it promises some incremental advances, but no basic revolutions -- certainly nothing on the level of the atomic bomb. Stronger armor, lighter planes, faster computers, smaller missiles, absolutely. But hordes of nanobattlebots? Get real.
The Drexler revolution has fallen flat on its face. We do not yet have even a semi-autonomous microbot, much less any kind of nanobot. Even at the microscale it turns out the laws of mechanics are too different from the mesoscale to allow for something as standard as a gear, and the nanoscale is much more different than that. We do not have anything vaguely resembling an assembler, and chemists say that the assembler will always be impossible.
Yet for some reason people are still concerned with these fantasies. It's just bad science fiction, like warp drives and human-animal hybrids. It's not important. We will have nanotechnology but it will be far more modest and less dangerous than the whacked-out speculations of fake futurists. Start dealing with the technology issues we really do face, like cloning, nuclear proliferation, and social monitoring. They're important. Drexler and his cult are not.
Tim
The first use for nano technology will set the tone for the type of technology it is. Sure, but things change. We have laser technology but i dont see people using laser guns which burn through bullet proof vests. That's because armour piercing bullets are still better and cheaper. isnt that the point of all technologies? To extend and improve the quality of life? Technology is used for whatever people decide to use it for, and sometimes the technology does something which nobody intended it to do. Shit happens. If you have Nano cell repair and Nano technology in hospitals, Nano structures, then making a nano virus or weapon is going to be hard as hell, Actually, the tech to develop bioweapons is almost identical to the tech used to develop medicines; the two fields feed on each others development. The fact of the matter is, though, its alot easier to destroy something than to create/repair it, given the same level of technology. Which came first, nuclear power or the atom bomb?
SUCK
8======D
onto
my
PENIS!
really..do you know of a machine that dosent need ..it's useless. ..problem is .Second it's nice to have a small machine but the problem remains .. how do you guide it ..make it intelligent ? .. the .. but physics put a limit on everything. Have a good night's rest.
a source of power ? It's nice to have a tiny device
but if you have no source of power
You can make it as riny as you want
energy is not something that comes out of the blue.
So really have no fear of these tiny lil machines
microscopic in size infiltrating your nervous system
just yet.Though small the need for a source of
power and a way to convert it is making the lil
machines we see in microphotographs quite
useles. Yes we can make small but there is
a phisical limit
The hurdles to make a nano are tremendous.
it's nice to make devices very small, but if you cant make em behave or power them
reality is they are just lab curiosities.
Imagine a remote control for thses machines...what do you use for control ? electronics..
see how much space is busy on your desktop to have a reasonably dumb machine ?
Have no fear of the future.Nano's like they have been depicted in SF are nothing but SF.
Small is beautiful
Remember that the US has been the only country that used nuclear weapons in wartime.
I think this is the case of shoeing the horse before its broken. The best way to deal with nanite security is to not develop nanites that have military applications, and to limit how the devices can be used and deployed. That is something for the scientific community to develop and the espionage community to protect.
The biggest problem with terrorists like Saddam and Bin Laden and Arafat isn't their technological savvy, but their creativity with conventional means. Worrying about what they could do with just another micro-bioagent is a little less then relevant in the face of what they can do with smallpox, airliners, and gunpowder.
Yes, but I think you're missing an important point:
You should be afraid of nanotechnology. It might fall into the wrong hands!
And the water supply.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
why are we marching hand in hand?
why are the ocean levels rising up?
It's a brand new record
For 1990
They Might Be Giants' brand new album
Flood
Think about it, if a nanite that could construct more of itself went rogue and began making more rogue nanites like itself, it would overwhelm the area before humans could even draw five measured breaths. Unless, that is, it is built so that it cannot replicate more often than every x time period - and what if that measure "breaks"?
The only protection would seem to be to have security nanite completely saturated in the surroundings (ie., the entire world), and then what if a security nanite breaks or goes Rogue? Which nanites watch others, and which watch the watchers? There needs to be a more concrete answer to this before we go releasing nanites into the wild.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
It's a shame; I'd love to see one--but it's time to get used to the idea that it's just not gonna happen.
spork
Your argument amounts to: if evolution wanted us to fly it would have given us wings, therefore it is unfeasible to create a flying machine.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Uh, no...
Female Prison Rape in NY
Cells were "designed" by evolution to grow and reproduce. A species of cell that reproduced over the whole world and survived under any conditions would have been amazingly successful by the standards of evolution. It would have ruined the Earth in the process, but there's nothing preventing that. Simply because no cells ever evolved that could accomplish this feat is proof enough to me that it can't be done.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Really, I think nanotech and genetic engineering will evolve into the same science.
Umm, the human body builds hair quite effectively.
Without using insane amounts of energy.
I find it a bit naive to not exploit nanotechnology for defense purposes. Just look at all them Borg in the Delta quadrent. To quote Dr. Strangelove, we need to avoid a mine shaft gap.
ah, but some of us aren't afraid of looking like fools.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
You know, having worked on nanotech for roughly 10 years now (from the perspective of a fullerene chemist), I have to really say I'm amazed at how much more people think of science-fiction rather than actual science when talking about it. I personally don't see how a lawyer can be an "expert" on nanotechnology (don't know too many physics or chemistry people go to the "dark side", but it isn't many). This article reads to me much more like its a publicity stunt made by a publicist hired by a lawyer to drum up buisness.
> You: Hasn't it occured to you that a single
> drop of benzene is enough to kill a room full
> of people? All Benzene is, is just a ring of 8
> carbon atoms.
Benzene is C6H6. It's no more toxic than aceton or asbestos. One drop of benzene cannot kill a roomful of people. You can wash your hands in benzene, swallow a small amount of it (certainly a few drops) and suffer no immediate health problems. Benzene MAY cause cancer in some people. Just like asbestos.
If there was a simply way to destroy humanity, don't you think somebody might have tried it yet?!
Yeah.
People are not trying to wipe out humanity; they are trying to wipe out people from other tribes.
Yes, people have been trying to do that, and have sometimes succeeded at it too, for a very long time, and they have done it with some very simple methods. These tribes have not needed nanotech to commit genocide.
What is important is the speed of progress, not the total time required to develop something. We obviously started our biomed/genetic research hundreds of thousands years ago, when we picked the first vegetable and tasted it. However, it would be worthwhile to consider how much time will it take for us to build the first human-size organism completely from scratch. 64 years starting from the decoding of human genome would be a good guess.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
The book was Assemblers of Infinity by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason. They write Luddite paranoid fantasies--they also wrote Ill Wind, about a bacterium that ate petroleum products. Both books are very short on science and realism, despite the hype on the book jackets. About the third time I read "He knew that the nanobots could escape any time they wanted to" I lost my last shred of respect for the book. And the ET nanobots merging with the Terran nanobots was pure fantasy.
Having studied nanotech for over a decade, I can assure you that you won't learn anything useful about nanotech by reading Assemblers of Infinity, and there is lots of subtle disinformation.
Chris
Go back to chemistry 101. Benzene was commonly available as an over-the-counter product ("cleaning fluid") only 20 years ago. No way could a drop do harm to one person, much less "a room full of people".