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Don't Stymie Nanotech
Anonymous Coward writes "A new paper released by the Pacific Research Institute says that nanotechnology holds benefits for society if not blocked by misguided regulation or outright bans. Already, some prominent individuals (like Bill Joy) have questioned the rationale of continuing nanotech research - PRI's paper explains that nanotech has more benefits than drawbacks, and that bans and heavy regulation are not in society's best interests"
1) Only if in responsible hands.
2) Only if the infamous 'grey goo' problem doesn't become reality. Then we're ALL fucked.
It's like nuclear bombs. We're stepping into unknown territory here, and there is lots of potential for evil. Hell, at first, they weren't even sure if an a-bomb detonation would IGNITE THE ATMOSPHERE, killing us all. Luckily, it didn't-- we dodged a bullet. We may not be so lucky next time.
On the other hand, if you ban it, then (not to be trite or anything, but...) "only criminals will have nanotech." So the terrorists will have nanotech, and the Mafia, but not the legitimate scientists.
Really, it's a lose-lose situation any time you open such a Pandora's box. Either way, you have to worry.
On the bright side, a lot of good can come out of new developments like this too.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Perhaps he's just upset because they didn't call it Janotechnology.
The oft-mentioned "grey goo" scenario is fundamentally flawed, because at the base level, this is how all organisms work: we feed and feed as much as our environs let us, and then breed and multiply to fill out our population to as far as our ecosystem supports. Without natural selection, climate changes, predators, or other natural population barriers, any organism (including humans) would become its own "grey goo". The fact that none of God's pantheon of creatures have managed to completely subvert nature and consume the planet should show anyone fearful of nanotech that it's absurd to think a human-created microdevice could do the same.
that paper that was released to make sure it's not actually made up of nanobots that want to turn the Earth to goo?
Why would anyone block nano-tech research, to me it holds a promise for the future. If we ever get it fine enough, we can mess with basic atoms, which leads to endless possibilites. Also the medical aplications are amazing, little bots swimming around in my arteries scraping off gunk, zapping cancerous cells and foreign bits and such. The only negative use that immediately comes to mind is some sorta micro assasin thing, like in that crappy movie a while ago, Balistic X vs 7 or whatever.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
The main reason I agree with the report, is that the alternative (such as Bill Joys) would be a totaltarian police state with omni-surveillance everywhere to prevent rouge nanotech development.
And since that would be virtually impossible, this would mean that only outlaws would develop nanotech, and rather than stop it we get mostly malign nanotechnologies. The better alternative is to keep it entirely Open Source, which ensures quality control, transparency, accountability, and safety.
Planet P - Liberation With Technology.
www.enthea.org
Most of these bans etc. would probably happen in the US sooner than anywhere else, where there seems to be an abundance of religious fundamentalists that more often than not misunderstand new scientific innovations, such as cloning. You have no idea how many Christians I know that believe cloning is wrong because their interpretation of cloning is comparable to that of what a photocopier does (think Multiplicity).
Of course, not all religious folks are this way, but I presume a large percentage of them are. Furthermore, there are other groups that play an equal role in the problem, such as the human rights activists who are so against stem cell research.
I need nanotechnology to measure the size of my PENIS!
post this in humor, i'm sure it would get front page
To get something that would benifit most of mankind advanced, you have to either restict it by legislation or make it illigal, have it made unpopular by famous twits or get it covered by the DMCA. Well, you could always turn it over to open source toooo, but wheres the politiking in that?
Sig
Not that anyone really pays much attention to science in America, but as long as the information about what is going on in Nano-tech is out there I am 100% behind the research. Really the only reason to keep it secret is if you are doing weapons research, and do we really need any more ways to kill each other, I mean nukes already do a damn good job. Science will always go on, leagal or not, because it has to, it is part of human nature, but it's not worth it if it does not benifit mankind.
Most all technologies hold great potential to do good. The reason they're banned is because of paranoid religious zealots. "Its playing god," "It's dangerous," "It'll be misused," wah wah wah.
We should be embracing the future and figuring out how to use new technologies to our advantage. Not avoiding the inevitable (i.e., human cloning, gene therapy, nanotech, biotech, etc). New technologies will come and be used whether we like it or not. Cloning will occur whether we ban it or not. The only question is if we're going to be left in the dark -- in a relative middle ages -- because of our own irrational fear and paranoia.
Some jelly bottles now say "free of genetically modified organisms". That's nice, considering genetically modified organisms aren't necessarily any worse or better than natural ones -- just different. Also, nice to know there might be millions of natural deadly bacteria in it. Sort of like the "all natural" bullshit -- shit is natural, but I wouldn't want to eat it.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Scifi has explored the idea of nanites quite a bit. On Red Dwarf they shrunk Red Dwarf (a 10 million ton flying garbage can with no brakes) down to microscopic size and later returned it to it's original state, and saved Lister's body (well sort of).
Don't forget the STTNG ep where Wesley made binary nanites that got into the ships computer and acted like ants in a sandhill. Who could forget the look on Jean Luc's face when the bridge PA started playing John Phillip Sousa at maximum volume.
On a more serious note, nanites have the potential for both great benefit and great harm. Imagine injecting nanites into your blood stream, they could actively destroy all pathogens. Disease could be eliminated. Or someone could release a horrible self reproducing nanite plauge that attacks human cells. Honestly both of these ideas are pretty far off at this point.
This is a deja vu back to when nuclear technology first hit the scene. I don't think nuclear energy really has any upsides, nanites on the other hand could be extraordinarily beneficial to society.
Look up Operation Plowshare, it was the government's stupid plan to use small nuclear explosions to dig canals.
And the government is already researching uses for nano tech. Remember that link a while back to the article on "smart coatings" for military vehicles? Nanite paint that can remove rust and repair damage.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
PRI is a fairly libertarian group. Their position papers whould be read with an eye towards their agenda; I'd be curious what might be influencing their analysis. These think tanks should have to pick names that say something about themselves -- if something salls itself the "Justice League" or "PeaceLoveHarmony Council" it tells you nothing about their actually being a front for the veal industry. Truth in advertising?
... and hasn't been quite the same since leaving. We haven't spoken for several years. :(
Disclosure: My half-sister worked for them
"I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary. You'll see, it'll happen to you."
-- Grandpa Simpson
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Proliferation to the point of ubiquity of cheap, reliable (read: self-replicating & autonomous) nanotech will have a dramatic effect on life on Earth the likes of which we haven't seen since early protists began excreting oxygen. It is impossible to fully realize the ramifications such a change would have, and it is certainly foolish to try to brand it as good or bad.
I would recomend Neil Stephonson's book Diamond Age. It is a fictionalized story about a world with nanotechnology. The ideas and social concepts it presents are very relevent to todays discusion. Perticularly the fact that Nanotech could very easly be used to create weapons and defensive shields to small to see. The idea of abstinance (for lack of a better word) from nanotech is also presented. One should take into consideration the implications that Nanotechnology, like many other industrial processes is done without human hands. This doesn't mean that it is bad though.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Nanotechnology is great in the right hands. On one end: We could create tiny robots that enter our bodies that fix tissues, heal wounds, fight disese. On other end: we have terrorists who could do same thing with robots except these bots would harm people. They would be so tiny that they could be dispursed through the air and into our bloodstreams. This is a scary reality. But we must remember that it can happen. I dont think we should ban nano, but instead watch it closely enough so it doesnt fall into te wrong hands.
Bill Joy's now (in)famous article about the terrors of unabated research into nanotech and its siblings is one of the most profound post-WWII articles written, and ranks up there with such brilliant works as Ursula Franklin's Massey Lecture series, "The Real World of Technology." [1],[2]
Unfortunately, Bill made the same mistake as Ursula. Technology cannot and will not be contained. If we all agreed to a worldwide ban on unabated nanotech research, human cloning, or whatever the topic of the day is, there would be someone willing to fund a mad scientist based on a privately owned island[3]. Unfortunately, mad scientists have a bad habit of eventually succeeding.
Curiously, Ray Kurzweil took exactly the anti-cautionary approach in his equally (in)famous article, which actually spawned Bill Joy's. Who is right? Should we proceed enthusiastically to greater and more fantastic worlds than we can imagine, or restrain ourselves from destroying humanity?
The bottom line is that it doesn't matter what we _try_ to do, because someone out there will push forward. We will have nanotech in the most futuristic sense, and we will have human clones, indistinguishable from the originals. When, where, how, and who are irrelevant. It will happen. Be it fugitive criminal scientists working for money and fame, or noble researchers working for the betterment of the race, it will happen. The only thing we can do at this point is ACCEPT, EXPECT, and PLAN. The alternative is to REACT which just doesn't work well.[4]
The very saddest part of this is that it means we should be putting forth the brightest and most creative minds as legislators and policy makers. Seems like an ignoble fate for them.
If this makes no sense to you, then maybe I should quit posting to slashdot after returning from a single malt tasting.
[1]Whew! Don't know when I've had so many capital letters in one sentence!
[2]And I'm not just saying that because he created the One True Text Editor.
[3]It's surprising in this day just how many privately owned islands there are. Just go and check!
[4]I realise this sounds like a stupid slogan on an inspirational poster. Maybe I should write for those guys, despise them as I do.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
You don't read all that much about nanotech in the mainstream press these days, of course, but it's possible that could change. Michael Crichton-- he of Jurassic Park, Timeline, etc.-- is just about to release a new book on the subject, called Prey. And I seem to recall reading something about the movie rights already being sold.
You know a science is entering the mainstream press when Crichton writes a thriller about it. In other words, you can look forward to several dozen articles in about a year's time on Slate with headlines such as "Nanotech - Is It for Real?"
In his very first book, Engines of Creation, available online, Eric Drexler laid out the possible consequences of attempts to suppress nanotech research. See chapter 12 especially.
He describes an ambitious program which will allow nanotech to be developed safely, via active shields to protect the environment and sealed assembler labs to allow safe experimentation.
Of course Drexler was far, far ahead of his time, but his analysis should be a starting point for any consideration of the prospects for nanotech development.
How much you have to pay the PRI or any other lobbying bullshit group to produce a paper cautioning the government against regulating your industry. Do you think that for $100K I could obtain from them the proof that pr0n pics should be given away for free to third graders ?
I'm a molecular biologist myself, so as a rule I'm all for nanotechnology. However, the fact that the libertarian nutjob who wrote the PRI article support unfettered research makes me think regulation must be needed. He thinks the constitution guarantees the right to overthrow the government through armed struggle.
So, okay, he (Prof. Reynolds) makes a strong case against prohibition (of course, as a ccientist, I'm easy to persuade that R&D should never be banned outright.) Military secrecy is something I dislike, again, because secrecy is not good for science. Neither of these proposals are being floated in reasonable circles anyway, so this is something of a straw man proposal.
So, why does he oppose even modest regulation? From the paper, as it is academic in nature, it can be difficult to tell what policy he advocates, but I'm pretty sure he favores the lassez-faire option. He makes some arguments about deregulation generally which I regard as pretty vaccuous. Requiring companies to use the best available technology encourages other companies to research it and then force the first company to buy.
Anyway, to answer your question - the reason we'd want to regulate nanotechnology is because it might be dangerous. The thousands and thousands of completely harmless applications of nanotechnology - basically just material science - don't need any special regulation. It is only when the nanotechnology begins to resemble a living organism that the need for regulation comes into play. The fear, and it is remote but still legitimate, is that someone would make tiny robots that would breed out of control and become a social problem.
He points to biotechnology (which is basically unregulated, except in so far as it is also medical) as a big success. It has been - SO FAR. As yet, we have had no environmental catastrophes resultant from biotech, and the medical errors have been fairly small in scope, and would have been prevented if existing laws/procedures had been followed.
However - that doesn't mean that what we're doing is safe. It means, either, that what we've been doing is safe OR that we've been lucky. Personally, I think biotech is "pretty safe," but that agro-biotech (Monsanto, in particular) has too much free reign.
In any case, until we have a better idea of what nanotechnology will actually be like, it is premature to discuss regulation to make sure it is safe. Banning nanotechnology outright would be impossible for the reasons he has mentioned. Banning specifically self replicating nanotechnology, though I think it inadvisable, WOULD be feasable. Regulating self-replicating nanotechnology is probably desirable.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Look at those cute ones at the hive mouth. Just standing there flapping their wings for fun.
If there was a "catalyst" that could be made to fill the graygoo scenario it would have been made already. Worst case Ebola or less as Laws Physics still in effect for next few epochs.
Refining/building useful stuff might work out but think MudDomes, as in years, not minutes. New NanoTech 2.1 Faster than slimemold!
So why even bother with anything other than good old crimes. So he used NANOTECH produced Arsenic It's still murder war crime whatever...
and "so on" down the list of FUD.
The nanobots harvest materials from around them to make more nanobots and then gather even more materials to make a ruler long enough...
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
There are a few simple ways around the "grey goo" problem:
1) Put a cap on how many copies of itself a bot can make.
2) Add some sort of mechanism to the bots to only allow duplication when there are less than some number of bots in the surrounding area.
3) Only allow bots to reproduce when told to do so by Humans.
4) provide som sort of "master kill signal" (i.e. a specific radio frequency) that will cause all bots reciving it to cease functioning.
5) Any of several other ideas I didn't just think of in the past 2 min.
And how do we know the goo would be grey, anyway?
I know lots of things. Most of them are wrong.
I know noone in this forum wants a more effective weapon, but there are people who do, and nuclear weapons, while very powerful, are not ideal. Even the neutron bomb, which only kills living things, is sub-optimal.
The perfect weapon would only kill people who oppose the weilder. Nanotecho could implement that objective better than anything else I'm aware of. All weapons up to this point have been indiscriminate in who they kill. Land mines from 50 years ago take out the great-grandchildren of the people who laid the mines. Chemical and biological weapons blow around the planet. Nukes leave radiation and colateral damage.
If our understanding of nanotech is reasonable, it could selectively kill only the intended victims.
There is a bright side, however. Nanotech may also allow for the victims to be incapactiated, rather than killed. They could form the ultimate defensive system. Defendors of a realm could sick nano-nets on attackers to trap them and hold them down so that the defender can have a rational discussion about the situation with them.
Of course, no governement in history has ever had peaceful expansion as a goal, and defenders have never had nor been expected to have mercy for their oppressors... But I like to keep an optimistic outlook.
Fun stuff.
The problem with advancement in science is that it can render past advancements obsolete. That is, if a nation suddenly discovers a weapon that can a) destroy nuclear weapons as the US launches them and b) vaporize any point on the earth in a second, the big bad nuclear weapons stop being such a big bad deal. If the US, or any other contry, was silly enough to not be working on something in secret, then they're asking for trouble. It would all work out okay if everyone was completely open with their research, but at the point where one country is being secretive, then there's the chance that the one nation will suddenly have the whole world by the balls by once scientific advancement. If everyone has secrets, then deterence plays a bigger role, and nobody wants to play their trump card because nobody knows what the best trump card is! A pretty scary scenario, but deterence has worked for the past several decades and I find it more appealing than the alternative. Of course all goes to hell in a hand basket with terrorist who are willing to die and take the whole world down with them. As long as terrorists don't want their homelands to be blown to bits, that scenario is a little far off. But if people are wacked out enough to want to blow up the whole world, then we're all in trouble. Then again, there is the scenario of the lion, backed into a corner, soon to be slaughtered; despite knowing its fate, it will lash out one last time - back a country into a corner, and even if the people who run the country don't want to use their trump card, they may turn to that in their darkest hour, with nothing to lose.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
" Nanotech doesn't play by the same rules as currently extant terrestrial biology. "
And what ARE the rules? Think about that very carefully. Finite biological beings in a finite world, were resources have to be shared, and existence is paramount. If you think of biology as another form of nanotech, you'll see that any nanotech that comes into existence will have to deal with some of the same problems. Form follows function, and function is dictated by the laws of the universe in all their complexity. We may find that nanotech doesn't do away with, but moves everything solutions, and problems up to bigger proportions. While the net solution stays in place.
This paper is good news for my WORLD DOMINATION plan to enslave the human race as borg drones! Yay for nanotech!
Repeal the DMCA!
Nanites already exist to do what they say... E. coli bacteria (the stuff that grows in your intestines and makes vitamin K for you, among other things. also a major reason why eating sh*t is bad for you :P. there are flesh eating kinds, but they're kinda rare and generally get persecuted since their hosts dont like them eating flesh) when they're happy will double every 30 minutes. Given 72 hours they'll happily chew up the entire earth... or not. Why? Well the earth really isn't very easy to break down... all that iron and not enough carbon.
Nanobots face a similar problem. Even *assuming* they could (a) distinguish between a silicon and an iron and (b) use them appropriately, they're still gonna need energy. Lots and Lots of energy. Let's see... you've got 6e24 kg of earth, that's ~1e46 atoms (give or take). If you're gonna check atomic composition spectroscopically, that's about an eV (1e-19 J) per atom. So you'll need a grand total of (drumroll...) 1e37 J! A megaton of TNT apparently is 4e15 J (check Google if you dont believe me), so you'll need... oh... 2.5e21 megatons of TNT. 2 and a half billion trillion megatons of TNT, just to know what you have in front of you, if you're gonna make the earth into a giant wad of grey goo. And that's not even counting breaking all those bonds so you can rearrange atoms (rocks aren't exactly known for being easy to break down). Where's all that energy gonna come from? The sun only delivers ~1e3 W/m^2, or about 1e17 J/s over the whole earth. It'll take... oh... 1e20 s to deliver what you'll need. A century is only about pi billion seconds, so I'm not exactly worried about being turned into grey goo.
Oh yeah, I forgot. We're in the Star Trek cartoon universe. We'll outfit them with matter transmogrifiers to make trilithium, then use a (nano!) warp core to get the energy. Uh huh. Let me go start WWIII now so Zephraim Cochran (you listening?) can invent warp drive...
And do this how? Nanites aren't big enough for any type of counting/computing device to be embedded. Think of them as enzymes. They won't have eyes, they won't have ears, they won't be able to touch, smell, or taste. They're just chemicals designed to accomplish a task, and they do it.
Interesting corallary: Mad cow disease works the exact same way the 'grey goo' problem works. A protein in the brain turns other naturally occuring proteins into itself. Eventually, there are so many of these proteins in the way of everything, the brain ceases to function.
Step 6, Profit!
The only way I can think of to prevent grey goo is by never allowing a nanite to reproduce either itself, or another nanite that produces itself. Unfortunetally, humans tend to be pretty stupid, and eventually someone in the future may very well screw up. That's the real problem- intelligent, rational folks may make all the right decisions and put in all the right safeguards blah blah blah, but eventually, some dumbass will take a few shortcuts and unleash something he hadn't intended.
I'm not blind, I can see the potential benefits to nanotech, but my main problem with nanotech, is that there is absolutely no potential defense against nanotech at this time. This is a technology whose application is limited only to the skills of the engineer. Missiles can be shot down. Bio-agents are difficult to implement because they are parts per bill/hojillion if used in water or air respectively. But nanotech gives assymetrical warfare an enormous boon. While only wealthy nations can currently implement this for any kind of task at all, this state of affairs will certainly not last.
I hope that the Technological powers of the world will move slowly with nanotech, so that by the time it is a fully functional technology, it's properties are well understood. The grey goo scenario, while disasterous, is the least of my worries. The greatest is that military applications for nanotech will fall into the hands of a country which would use it's inherent ability for covert military actions. Simply put, this technology offers enormous effect, as it is extrordinarily flexible in it's applications.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
:->
sweede
What would a self-replicating nano-machine do if it went out of control?
That scenario is only possible with "free-roaming" nanites. These are the most complex type, and the ones with the most restrictive parameters.
1) They need energy. Their fuel will only last so long. If they use solar energy (some super-chlorophyl), they have to face the next problem:
2) They need appropriate building materials. Most nanites are designed to build a certain thing. This is part of their physical design, and not just some program. Unless that certain thing is simple (carbon fiber) they'll need more than air and dirt to build with. But what if they're programmed to build more nanites and those nanites need only air to build with:
3) They are their own competition. At this stage they're an artificial life form. Bacteria don't overrun the planet because bacteria compete with bacteria. Why go through all the hassle of separating out your needed trace element from the environment, when you can just disassemble that nanite over there? And if these guys might actually be edible to bacteria...
In summary, a free-roaming nanite designed to reproduce indefinitely using any randomly available material is just too complex, with too little economic value, and has too many naturally occuring constraints, to be a worry. It makes cool science fiction, but then again, so did little green men living on Mars.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Every time a new technology is in a early development stage, someone comes starts quoting from revelations. Will nano-machines trigger the end of exsistance? No, just think a little bit - life on earth is based on an inumerable abundance of nanomachines. They are called cells - last I checked there hasn't been a large cellular mass, short of the human mass, taking over the world.
There should be a reasonable amount of caution with every new technology pursued, but, for goodness sake, don't take a fiction writer's account for fact, even though it may make a good movie.
Nanotech is a great technology with vast applications possible. I will not start to fear self replicating nanomachines until macromachines are able to replicate autonomously. A there is a great deal of complexity involved for a being to create a copy of oneself. That program is stored in DNA in living organisms - for machines, it is stored at the factory. We have not yet been able to figure out how to design and program a machine to iterate itself.
Even if we were able to create such a machine, it would need the materials to do so, time to do it, a place to be safe and a way to compete with other machines. Hmmm, it sounds like if such a thing were to take over the world - it would have to be alive. If life is possible on a sub-cellular scale, it probably already exsists.
Nanomachines will be able to perform simple tasks - thats it. Don't look for them to apporach the complexity of a living organism - by the time that happens we will be looking for the next new technology to end exsistence.
Thats enough of this, I am going to go watch the matrix, terminator, planet of the apes, the time machine and a lot of other movies on technological distopias. Now that would make a good discussion topic, eh?
"What would a self-replicating nano-machine do if it went out of control?"
You assume that there wouldn't be others around to eliminate it.
"It would eventually destroy the planet, as well as possibly the solar system and even the universe."
Two words: Fermi's Paradox.
I have one acronym for you people saying that nanobots are unstoppable:
EMP
Nanobots short out like everything else electronic. Frankly this would be one of the easiest devices to destroy.
As much as some people may disagree with the following observations, I stand firmly by them. Let me start by stressing that I am not attempting to suppress anyone's opinions, nor do I intend to demean nanotechnology personally for its beliefs or worldviews. But I do suspect that I must prescribe a course of action. Nanotechnology is not only immoral, but amoral. In theory, nanotechnology's contrivances are featherbrained but reflective of the localized normative attitudes among sadistic rotters of various stripes. But in reality, someone once said to me, "Nanotechnology's hypocrisy has reached a new low." This phrase struck me so forcefully that I have often used it since.
Let's be realistic: I am convinced that there will be a strong effort on nanotechnology's part to seek temporary tactical alliances with dim-witted antagonists of various stripes in order to organize a whispering campaign against me by next weekend. This effort will be disguised, of course. It will be cloaked in deceit, as such efforts always are. That's why I'm informing you that nanotechnology's convictions have caused widespread social alienation, and from this alienation a thousand social pathologies have sprung. I like to think I'm a reasonable person, but you just can't reason with improvident yobbos. It's been tried. They don't understand, they can't understand, they don't want to understand, and they will die without understanding why all we want is for them not to impugn the patriotism of nanotechnology's opponents. So, sorry for being so long-winded in this letter, but my personal safety depends upon your starting to fight scurrility and slander, just as your personal safety depends upon my doing the same.
---
Brought to you by Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator.
j. scott olsson
>bans and heavy regulation are not in society's best interests
Don't you just love easy slogans like this.
Slashdot approved one:
1. don't ban/over regulate cool technology
Slashdot apprved ones:
2. do ban/over regulate big business
3. do over regulate/overtax citizens to feed the large welfare state
Hmmm...seems like you would want to be consistant and apply 'don't ban/over regulate' to everything.
Think about that when you hand over 1/3 rd of your income off of the top + another 1/4th afterwards to support all of the taxpayer funded overspending by federal, state and local government.
It's "overspending" not a "deficit" or "shortfall".
Nanotechnology is the only way for the future. Every time someone comes out with a faster, smaller, larger[capacity-wise] anything, somebody proclaims that this leap means that Moore's law is going to break in 2 years. That is Never going to happen, and here's why:
Nanotechnology is going to redefine what we think of as a computer. People think that 128-bit encryption isnt strong enough? You havent seen "not strong enough" yet. Once nanotechnology is in full force, how long do you think any encryption is going to stand up once we have the ability to make millions of specialized computers in a matter of weeks/days/hours/minutes? Moore's law wont ever break because nanotechnology is going to change the Gigahertz race into a thing where engineers find ways of getting proccessors to work together better. Nanotechnology is going to build things smaller, build them faster, give us data about things even smaller, thus allowing us to keep going smaller/faster/cheaper forever.
Smaller may not always be true, Faster may not always, technically, be true, but once "Nanotechnology" is more than a buzzword you're going to have more proccessors in your computer than you have proccesses, and Moore's law isnt going to die until the engineers just decide not to go any further-> even if they start manipulating quantum states or some shit like that, some asshole is just going to use nanotechnology to make analog computers.
The only problem is that once consumer electronics can display graphics at resolutions which are twice as good as the human eye can theoretically distinguish, and can render those graphics in real time giving each of those vexels the full priority of their own terrahertz proccessor, eventually someone's going to notice that there is absolutely nothing gained from better hardware (at least as far as the general consumers are concerned)
Of course, all of us here who try and make money programming or designing hardware are going to be out of a job (not to mention dead by several decades), since the sloppy, shitty, buggy code all written by machines, will go unnoticed by all, since it'll all be proccessed too fast to be noticed when the system hangs before another proccess finds out about the error and corrects it.
Once the technology exists to create a computer for each possible combination in a 128-bit key, how long do you think your encryption is really going to hold up? Long enough for six million more computers to be built?
Then God will kill us all, just like he did the last time we built real computers.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
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a working penis enlargement technology, and I see no reason why it shouldn't, then any politician (even female) would definitely support it!!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Samson's shit is blessed, got the whole town on lockdown
Showers himself with joints
Worried about about uncontrolled catalyzing our local pool of entropy? If you order now, 19.95 will give you a week's supply of anti-catylist 2000, which will allow you to save the world from any chain reaction mankind can bring to fruition!
Burning atmospheres, grey goo proliferation, strange quark infestation? Not to worry! Uncap anti-catylist 2000, and all things will return to the islands of stability we've all learned to know and love!
Honestly, the depth of this subject goes far beyond the light hearted treatment given above. I'll fast forward to the end of any ensuing debate and say we've much more to fear from the dark hearts of men than we need fear from technology alone.
I think all of us who saw Innerspace know that no good can come of this nanotechnology fad.
From the people who attempted to ban the crossbow (too deadly!), tried to keep us in the Dark Ages (Plato and Aristotle were heathens!), questioned the lightning rod (it's God's justice!), and managed to put a block on cloning (evil!), comes..
The Nanotech Ban!
Think it won't happen? Give it a few months. The fundies will twist the Bible yet again to show how nanotech is the work of God or Satan, and that we have no moral right to dare attempt it.
*sigh* Assholes like these are the ones who will doom our race to being eliminated by a rogue asteroid.
I happen to be doing research on a nanotech company for an accounting class I'm taking. My background is in unix administration. From their statements and other press releases, they figure that they can fit 900 MILLION of their average sized particles on the head of a pin. This company is capable of producing 1 million POUNDS of nanoparticles a YEAR and they brag about this HUGE volume production capability. The state of the art in nanomachinery is that they have created the simplest of machines called MEMS powered by certain waves of light. and they break quickly. As far as the goo scenario, I can conclude that it'll be a looooong time before we create little robots capable of replication. and that at the scale we're talking about the 'goo' would take a loooong time to spread giving the scientists in charge plenty of time to counteract it's effects. As far as keeping it out of irresponsible hands, this is not something you can cook up in your garage. You need sophisticated million dollar equipment just to see the particles. The only ones who can currently compete in this space is governments and corporations. Furthermore, it is regulated by various laws like the GMP(good manufacturing process) which probably isn't all that restrictive, but I mean, come on folks, nanotech is in it's infancy. It needs all the help it can get. Science fiction scenarios of buildings and bridges of the stuff are far, far, far in the future.
The fact that none of God's pantheon of creatures have managed to completely subvert nature and consume the planet... ...except US.
Which makes us the gray goo. Hm!
This technology is much closer to fruition than nanotech. In fact, it is practically around the corner.
If electricity is produced by electrons is morality produced by morons?
1) Put a cap on how many copies of itself a bot can make.
This does nothing to prevent a "gray goo" problem. All it takes is one "mutation"-- an error in manufacturing-- to remove this cap. In biological organisms, this is called "cancer," and it's something of a problem.
2) Add some sort of mechanism to the bots to only allow duplication when there are less than some number of bots in the surrounding area.
So rather than a hard limit on reproductions, you have an environmental feedback mechanism. Again, one mutation disables this feature, or worse, inverts it. Now the assembler only reproduces when the concentration in the local environment is greater than a given value.
3) Only allow bots to reproduce when told to do so by Humans.
Great idea. At this point, they're not self-assembling any more. This is, in fact, the only solution to the problem.
Of course, if the assemblers are able to self-assemble, it's quite likely that they will be caused to self-assemble by some external factor sooner or later. So the only safe way to apply this solution is to make the assemblers physically incapable of assembling themselves.
4) provide som sort of "master kill signal" (i.e. a specific radio frequency) that will cause all bots reciving it to cease functioning.
Just as it only takes one mutation-- or manufacturing error-- to disable a reproductive limit, so too does it take only one error to disable this idea. Too dangerous.
5) Any of several other ideas I didn't just think of in the past 2 min.
I hope the ones you think of in the next 2 minutes are somewhat better that these ones. For inspiration, look at living organisms, and observe all the things that can go wrong with them. Don't suggest anything that leads to one of those states.
And how do we know the goo would be grey, anyway?
The idea of a "gray goo" is favored by people who don't realize that nanotechnology is an old, old idea. There's already goo all over the place, but it isn't gray. It's green.
I write in my journal
I would hope that the neutron bomb only *killed* *living* things. ;)
... mmm... Can't wait for the Israelis to develop mitochondrial warfare which kills only Arabs from certain bloodlines.. That's the good part about having a democratic tech-friendly state: you can gather the skills for ultimate weapons..
Put yourself in their shoes... they had just broken free from England by force. They firmly believed that English rule was tyranical and took up arms to break free. In this light, it is easy to see how the founding fathers would be weary of government. The second ammendment is not in the Constitution so that every yahoo redneck and crack dealer has the right to shoot tin cans. The second ammendment is a final check-and-balance when all others fail, granting the right of the people to bear arms such that should the need arise, a militia could be formed.... not to fend off the Indians or English mind you.. but the government.
Of course there isn't a "right" to overthrow the government,... they just wanted to make sure it was possible.
Of course, some will say that this is only my interpretation...but don't take my word for it! Lets do a google search and see what thye founding father had to say...
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
turn to god!
I truly believe that nanotech will bring us way better stuff in the future. I read an article about ABB a while ago (I tried to find the article again... but failed) about their efforts in this area. They're doing R&D on lowering the resistance in conductors. They believed they would have products ready in five to ten years. I searched the ABB website to see if they had a press release or something, and this is the only article in English I found. It's an interesting article since it mention other potential (besides their line of business) technological breakthroughs by using nanotech.
Go
The exisiting nanotech, biotechnology, will force the world to deal with the perils of cheap, superdangerous weapons (and well-intentioned but misguided tools) well before built-from-scratch nanotech is advanced enough to matter. The world will not be able to afford letting people (including companies and governments!) keep activities of this kind secret much longer.
This will take some adjustment, especially for the USA since it is accustomed to depending on individual, commercial, and governmental ability to act in secrecy as the basis of freedom. (We are about the only holdout on international-inspection treaties on germs and chemical weapons, and we highly value my-home-is-my-castle and no-one-can-see-my-messages privacy.)
Solving this problem will not necessarily require a totalitarian regime, but that is what will happen if people who value freedom refuse to deal with it. We should push for a combination of openness (so everyone can watch for dangers), vigilance (because serious failures will damage both people and freedom), tolerance (so that openness still leaves people free to act unless they are clearly out of line), and widely-distributed prosperity (so that the zealots little base for support). And we should be tolerant of each other as we try to sort out how to balance these sometimes-conflicting goals.
But biotechnology (and later other nanotechnology) are going to be as much part of the solution (especially for health and prosperity) as part of the problem. It's not like everyone is in such great shape to start with.
'nuf said. This post is accurate.
Wired 8.04: Why the future doesn't need us.
Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species.
By Bill Joy
From the moment I became involved in the creation of new technologies, their ethical dimensions have concerned me, but it was only in the autumn of 1998 that I became anxiously aware of how great are the dangers facing us in the 21st century. I can date...http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html
From the report (page "...to dramatize only slightly, they are comparable to producting a 747 or ocean liner from the mechanical equivalent of a single fertilized egg." Huh? What they are trying to get at here? To me, the analogy suggests two wrong-headed ideas: first that nanotech involves a biological element, which it doesn't, or second, that the amount of matter in an egg can be transformed into something the size of a 747. I mean, I guess you could use the molecules of an egg to make an airplane, but you'd have to start with one hell of an omelette!
I agree with your two points, but I don't think corporations on their own are "responsible hands."
US Corporations have such a great history of doing what is in the publics best interest. The recent corn crop story on Slashdot is a perfect example.
I don't agree with the "Paint it Black" military approach either. I don't trust the military any more than corporations anyways. I think it is beneficial to research into nanotechnology, but I do think restrictions should be made on companies doing the research. History has shown that those researching potentially dangerous areas do not act responsibly.
I believe I am somewhere in between Bill Joy and Ray Kurtzweil, although I am probably farther to the Bill Joy side. In "Why the future doesn't need us" Joy writes:
"Accustomed to living with almost routine scientific breakthroughs, we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-centry technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology - pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self-replicate. A bomb is blown up only once - but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control."
I do not see how creating very strong restrictions on self-replication would really harm research. They can still design the bots and research how they perform. One could even provide a limited supply source. I don't think that it asks too much of these companies to create only the necessary number of nanobots.
For those unfamiliar with the gray-goo discussed here, another quote from Bill Joy's article:
"Among the cognoscenti of nanotechnology, this threat has become known as the 'gray goo problem.' Though masses of uncontrolled replicators need not be gray or gooey, the term 'gray goo' emphasizes that replicators able to obliterate life might be less inspiring than a single species of crabgrass. They might be superior in an evolutionary sense, but this need not make them valueable.
The gray goo threat makes one thing perfectly clear: We cannot afford certain kinds of accidents with replicating assemblers.
Gray goo would surely be a depressing ending to our human adventure on Earth, far worse than mere fire or ice, and one that could stem from a simple laboratory accident. Ooops."
Some people seem to think that the article encouraged the laissez-faire approach. I got the impression that the author encouraged an approach similar to the biotech industry. Personally, I wouldn't mind a little stronger than that.
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
This isn't a new phenomenon. We have been quite capable of mutual assured destruction on a global scale for some time.
The problem is that if you dismiss a field of
The problem is that if you dismiss a field because it has potential to do harm, then you are no longer pushing forward. Almost all important scientific discoveries came with upgrades to our killing potential. I'll bet the guy that invented the wheel used it to squash some neanderthal flat.
But would the world be a better place without semicunductors and jet engines and relativity, and all the other stuff you have to dig through pandora's box to find?
We should keep going. And if we do blow ourselves up like rednecks with dynamite, we at least did it trying to push our horizons...
As for grey goo... can't they make nano-machines that degrade after n generations, or that shatter at some resonant frequency?
There has to be a way to build in an engineered flaw. Let microsoft design the OS or something. Blue screen 'em all.
its really stupid to think that nanotech is so bad and dangerous while allowing geneaology.. Its much MUCH safter to use nanobots to fix yer bones than genetically altering your body.. besides im sure that eventually u can use nanotech to achieve this as well so its a open & shut case of lameass doublestandards by rich lamers that want THEIR tech to win and have ppl not even look at the alternatives!
A Dialog on Dangers, by K. Eric Drexle
If you know anything about bacteria, the idea of us designing machines that can outcompete bacteria at the bacterial scale is ridiculous.
If you don't know anything about bacteria, and imagine bacteria sized self assembling little armored tanks with superior memory and AI to bacteria, that can somehow extract energy from their environment faster and more efficiently than bacteria (maybe with little nuclear engines?) the idea makes alot of sense.
And the divide is rather hard to cross unless you've had at least a college level micro-bio course or done equivalent research. (though I would disagree with the 'green' part, the 'grey goo' is already here, and it is inside us, but it more white to transluscent than green:-).
I mean think about it, where are the self assemblers going to get their energy and raw materials from?
If they are made of metal, it's going to take a bunch of energy and/or time for one to make another, being "nano" doesn't get you a free pass from 2lot.
If they are made of flesh, then they are not going to be very tough, not any tougher than rats or starlings anyway.
So you have can fast replicators that aren't very tough or you can have slow replicators that are more tough. Either way, it's pretty hard to get something bad enough to cause human beings serious trouble.
I mean we have tank making factories that are pretty much automated now, if we made tanks that could make other tanks in the field, they would still need tons of steel, plastics, energy, etc. delivered to them, and (lacking things like cranes, assembly lines, forms, etc) probably would be a whole lot less efficient than making a tank in a factory anyway.
I'm not saying that the technology should be unregulated, but I am saying that the 'end is near' prophecies like Joy's are not born out by the facts & probably do more harm than good in the search for responsible and reasonable controls.
Nanotech doesn't play by the same rules as currently extant terrestrial biology.
They would probably do better if they did, after all terrestrial biology does a very good job of extracting the available energy & raw materials and turning it into new terrestrial biology.
Nanites could, in theory, do just that, by using raw materials in the air and the earth to reproduce.
Huh? What "theory" is going to free them from the need for an energy source? Are they powered by minature nuclear reactors then?
It all depends on (A) how they are programmed,
Ahh, then they will have nano-scale Pentium 8s with AI 2020 pre-installed on nano-scale terrabyte hard drives?
I mean if they are "going to be programmed" they need processors to run the programs, memory to hold the programs, and a power source and cooling system for the above. Even given quantum computing, it seems pretty unlikey you are going to pack all that into a little bit of goo that can also defend itself against a predatory nematode.
The fear, .. that someone would make tiny robots that would breed out of control and become a social problem.
The Trouble with Aibos...
Wots in the Turbo Lift? Aiieeee!
The whole idea of trying to stop the river of science seems naive. Even if we could, SPECTRE etc would continue development in secret.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
I'll just go and patent Nanotechnology, and then when the grey goo spawns continents, i'll demand control of it and rule the planet.
MUAHAHAHA
"If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated." - Voltaire
It already happened millions of years ago.
Darwin's menagerie of creatures actually did consume much of the planet, leaving behind waste products such as coal, chalk, and the biggie: oxygen in the air.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Once nanotechnology is in full force, how long do you think any encryption is going to stand up once we have the ability to make millions of specialized computers in a matter of weeks/days/hours/minutes?
Um. Encrypting something is easier than decrypting something by force. Therefore, no matter how much processing power is availiable to the world at large, encryption will still hold (discounting quantum computers or a solution to the NP complete set of problems).
Once the technology exists to create a computer for each possible combination in a 128-bit key, how long do you think your encryption is really going to hold up? Long enough for six million more computers to be built?
A 128 bit key has 3.4e38 possibilities. That's a lot of computers. Now, 6.022e23 hydrogen atoms make up one gram of mass (1 mole). Therefore there are at most 6.022e26 atoms in a kilogram. The Earth weights 5.972e24 kg. Therefore there is at most 3.6e51 atoms that make up the Earth.
Therefore perhaps the poster could explain to me how you could have the technology to "create a computer for each possible combination"? It might work for a 128-bit key, in theory. But a 256-bit key has 1.15e77 possibilities, which outnumbers the number of atoms in the Earth by billions to one. Even solving 128-bit encryption by having a computer per combination would require a minimum of weight of 565 million tonnes.
This reminds me of the story of the grains of rice and the chessboard, where one grain was put on the first square, two grains on the second, four on the third, and so forth. It quickly gets out of control, and you find that there isn't enough rice in the world to complete the sequence.
I don't want to think of the poster as an idiot, but he does seem like he's trying quite hard to be.
Many old people I meet get paranoid of newer technology. The reason is twofold.
1. Dimensia, like Alzeimers is setting in. Causes paranoia
2. Because of 1, they are unable to keep up the pace with technology and have no idea what it can do. For instance, there is no artificial intelligence out there. We haven't even build the intelligence of a cricket into a computer yet.
It sad to see these people losing their minds this way. In the past, the brain used to outlive the body. Now it's the other way around. You've got perfectly healthy people all over the place talking some weird paranoid s$%&t.
Give me a break over this "nanology". You have no idea how far away this is from reality.
If it does go wrong, or is abused, chances are the only solution will be better nanotech than is threatening us. Are you sure you'd rather it wasn't looked into?
Drownedrat
p.s. still laughing at the idea of the US government honouring a treaty. Should keep me smiling all day that one....
Bill Joy only summarized what others had said about the implications of nanotechnology . I suggest checking out the books/articles by Ted Kazinski(sp?): his Manifesto, Ray Kurzweil: The Age of Spiritual Machines, and Hans Moravec: Robot: From Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. I just feel that these guys deserve the credit more than Joy. Check it out.
This is my first post after many years of reading... Hi : )
Moderation: +1 pwnage
When people are worried about nanotech, they are worried about self-replicating nanotech. The cell shows that it is possible to make a self-replicating device with limited intelligence at that length scale. The fact that we are now building other things at that length scale isn't really the issue here. Until we figure out how to make something self-replicate and can fabricate it, we don't have to worry. The first things that self-replicate probably won't self-replicate in a natural environment because they need some resource not available in nature. These would still be useful for manufacturing, you would just need something analgous to a growth medium. The problem comes in when these things start evolving at the interface between the medium and the outside environment. There might be ways of designing evolution-resistant assemblers, but a terrorist might deliberately evolve them to survive in nature.
Once these things get into nature, it's anyone's guess what would happen. Since bacteria haven't evolved to compete with this form of life, it could seriously disrupt bacteria in the biosphere. Without the proper balance of bacteria and other microorganisms in the soil, the massive disruption moves up the food chain and we have big problems.
Stymie what? What has it DONE? I have heard less tangible products called "vaporware". Lots of talk, very little walk here. (...Yawn...)
I generally refrain from responding to scientific threads, because it's usually just frustrating, but I'll make an exception here.
For those of you who suddenly became nanotechnology experts after you heard about it on a web page or by reading Drexler's "Nanotechnology for Imbeciles" or whatever, here's something you can do to help yourself sleep better at night and not worry about gray goo:
Go to your local college library, and pick up the last 6 months of Nature, Science, and Physical Review. Count the number of articles pertaining to universal assemblers (or anything remotely similar). Compare that to the number of articles on little green men.
Then take a look at REAL nanotech research, being done by scientists who aren't just using the "nano" prefix to get grant money. There aren't any universal assemblers. We're learning how to grow tiny crystals. We're trying to make things out of nanotubes, but right now doing so is like assembling your legos using a bulldozer. My group is trying to rigorously probe the electronic structure of multiwalled carbon nanotubes. And let me tell you, it's a bitch.
Drexler's assertion that a nanotech revolution will come overnight is something he cooked up to keep middle school geeks buying his Foresight Update newsletters and fancying themselves aficionados. Universal assemblers are a deus ex machina that he cooked up to support this. Engineering will not become suddenly wildly different- most nano devices will probably be prepared by chemical engineers, just like materials we use now.
As for Drexler's reputability... I used to write for my university newspaper, and at one point I interviewed a recipient of the Foresight Institute's "Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology." The professor was more embarrassed than excited about it.
So anyway, we're not particularly close to anything scary in nanotechnology, and the nanotech work being done isn't mind-blowingly different from any other kind of research. Gray goo is bullshit. There's little reason to regulate or worry about or even think about this technology differently than other methods of engineering.
But don't take my word for it, or anyone's word on slashdot, for that matter. Slashdot is, of course, filled with nanotech experts who've been assembling nanocomputers since they were in diapers. or so they'd have you believe. go find a reputable journal.
It might choke Artie, but it ain't gonna choke Stymie.
-- Stymie
Pardon my observation.... but of all the retarded posts I've read on slashdot, I think this one takes the cake.
You might think you can trust anything you read on the internet, but I suggest you go find something written by someone with a clue. If you're not sure if someone has a clue... well... your link proclaims Drexler a "nanopioneer." Whoever wrote it doesn't have a clue. If you want to be informed, go read a peer-reviewed journal. If not, I suggest you stick with Foresight Update and comic books.
Ahead of his time? You've got to be kidding me. If you think Drexler is ahead of his time, it's probably because you've only read Engines of Creation. Which wasn't a very good book, if memory serves.
Drexler stirs up media hype about nanotech. That's it. There's nothing brilliant about what he does. Reputable scientists worked on steps toward nanotech before he came along, and continue to now. The only change he's made to the scientific community is flooded the field with scientists and engineers who use his media hype to get funding for poorly conducted research.
Don't get me wronng, Foresight Update and Engines of Creation were a lot of fun... when I was in middle school. If you want to understand nanotech, go read some real science.
I work in a lab where there is some degree of what I suppose would be called nanotech is performed - and I am continually confused by this "debate" over nanotech. So what exactly is the scale where the "evil things" happen? When I make a device that has features smaller than a micron, do the "evil nanotech" gnomes come out and start infusing it with evil spells?
If people want to debate specific techniques, that's fine, but the huge variety of techniques unfortunately clustered as "nanotech" share only one common thread: they have small, well-controlled features. Is small inherently evil? Should we fear dwarves and chihuahuas? I mean, this is honestly ridiculous. Many of these evil "nanotech" research pursuits are nothing more than attempting to make stronger materials and more efficient solar cells, for example. No one would fear this if you didn't call it nanotech.
On the other hand, if you ban it, then (not to be trite or anything, but...) "only criminals will have nanotech."
Would that be the criminals with multi-billion dollar research AND development laboratories? Right. This is exactly the view shared by the non-tech world, and it shows a lack of understanding of what nanotech IS (no offense). I can't just go to the garage, make some nanotech, and kill someone with it.
People outside (and many in) the scientific community simply have no real idea of what nanotech is. For a few years there, the best way to get a research grant approved was to make sure that the word nanotech was somewhere in there. That was just as dumb as saying "ban nanotech." Banning specific techniques perhaps makes sense, but again, why ban something because it's small? Don't throw out the solar cell with the self-sharpening bullet.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
(if only we discard the moral implications)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I happen to be extreamly fascinated with this type of technology. One of the best descriptions of a time when nanotech is beneficial to everyone (who can afford it) appears in the series of sci-fi novels by Peter F. Hamilton. If you are intersted the series begins with The Reality Dysfunction Part 1: Emergence. Check it out! Its one of my favorite series.
Glenn Reynold's (Instapundit) exerpt can be found here
I do not have a problem with nanotech; however, the majority of you fall 'way short' on coding... in other words, (imo = teach grad school cs) the majority of programmers, today, suck ...and this is where the problem is.
I was a lurking core member of the nanotech development group and have the paperwork to back it up.
Nanotech could be a resolution for a lot of problems (repair bad cells, remove pollution, build buildings, etc.), but... make a mistake in the programming and you may have a 'doom machine' on your hands.
When using PAST history as a guide... there is another problem... the military.
For example, atomic power. It could have been used as a safe energy source... and how I know this is because of an ARPA group I worked with during the '70s who designed a theoretical safe plutonium battery (3' x 3' cube) that would power one's home for 500 years... at a minimal, very low, cost.
Once again, in theory, a signature (dna code) nanobot could be developed as a weapon, and if a coding error would be in this.... poof! How do I know this... during the later '60s, I helped repair some code for a major satellite, becuse the original programmers forgot about sunspots!
I mean, what on earth has he truly contributed to the world?
Misguided vision of a language called "Java" which then grew into something it was absolutely not intended for
Spreading stupifyingly misinformed paranoia over artificial intelligence and the end of the world - at a point when AI is nowhere NEAR that level and we are infact no step further from when AI was first conceptually envisioned.
Founding a company whose desperate clenching to Java leaves it to flounder undifferentiated in the marketplace with second-rate servers, resulting in a plummeting stockprice.
I mean, WHY?
The paper doesn't actually call for a laissez-faire regime. In fact, the opening quote is from Leon Fuerth's speech (he was Al Gore's national security adviser) at the Foresight Institute last year, pointing out that people who wanted a laissez-faire regime for nanotech were living in a fantasy world. The paper actually suggests the experience with recombinant DNA as a model. This would be apparent had the poster spent some time reading the paper. Or even this excerpt.
As for overthrowing the government, well, that's actually the most common view of what the Second Amendment is about among professors of constitutional law who have written on the subject -- including people like Larry Tribe of Harvard, no libertarian. Though I don't really see what that has to do with nanotechnology.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Any increase in technology is empowering. Empowerment does not bring with it a greater wisdom and ability to use that newly found power to benefit all humanity. Technology will simply increase the power of those who yield it to do what they want.
:)
It is true that nanotechnology can do trememndous things to benefit us. I think it's a very good likelihood that some of these benefits will come about. At the same time, in a society driven by a lust for material wealth, power, etc, I'm going to bet that something bad will also come of it. Furthermore, with a large portion of this planet's people disenfranchised and impoverished, there's a likelihood that a few angry members of that increasing population will take the power of nanotechnolgy and do something dangerous with it.
I have no question that we will move forward on nanotechnology, hell, we already are. People always go into these things looking at the miraculous benefits, and high on their new god-like powers. Then they move a little further into the future, and realize, once again, that the god business is a difficult one, and have to deal with the total havoc they've unleashed in their blind egotism.
Will banning nanotechology work? No, and it doesn't matter, because it's not going to happen. A lot of people have serious ethical concerns about how stem cell research is done, and that's going forward in a myriad ways anyhow. With nanotech, nobody's going to make a moral stand against it until something goes horrifically wrong, and by then it may very well be too late. So, we're going to keep moving forward, we are going to screw it up, and eventually, we'll make some technology who's side effect will be our own annihilation.
In the meantime, go out and enjoy the life that you have while you've got it. Fortunately that advice works regardless of any technologically conceived apocolypse
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Mmm, Hitchiker's... The world really *is* a giant computer! (Or will be, once the nanobots consume us all...)
Get me a danish!!
In fact, there's a lot of liberal activity on the internet -- of varying degrees of extremity -- but it's mostly on news sites, independent news organizations (like indymedia), community discussion sites (slashdot, k5), and personal weblogs. Why? It's enough to convince me that conservative just like to run their mouths without providing any evidence to support it, or discussion to debate it. They thrive in that environment. That should be enough to make y'all wonder..
You lose it with this hyperbolic statement:
In short, you are the ideal food for nanotech.
"Nanotech" is all very small technology, things don't become "self assembling" just by being small.
In many proposals, assemblers are made largely of carbon in the form of solid crystals.
Next you've paint a hollywood sci-fi picture of little diamond monsters, but avoid the essential questions of energy source & heat dissapation (tiny diamond fans for their tiny diamond pentiums?). How much energy does it take to make these little diamond plates, and what method are the little jewells using to extract that energy? You mention "many proposals", but can't provide a link to one?
Only nanotech has teeth made of diamond crystals, it can be ultimately voracious, and our immune systems won't be able to touch it.
Ooo, I'm scared now. You go from "some proposals involve diamond crystals" to voracious knids with diamond teeth, again, typical hollywood sci-fi with a basic failure to understand physics: your little diamond monsters will cook in their own waste heat before they can move and reproduce fast enough to devour a housefly, much less a human being.
You are tasty and tender, and don't forget it.
Actually, I'm neither, and when someone uses hyperbolic FUD in an argument rather than logic backed up with facts, it's pretty clear to me that their argument is nothing but an attempt to stoke fear, uncertainty, and despair.
The idea makes, in fact, no sense at all
Which was the point I was trying to make, thanks! (I thought "little nuclear reactors" would make it pretty clear I was pointing out the "gray goo" idea ignores the basic problems of energy source and heat dissapation).
But you're right, with folks seriously going off about the dangers of molecule sized diamond tanks, they might not notice the sarcasm tags around the nano-nukes:-)
Oh, okay. I completely and totally misinterpreted your comment. It sounded like you were advocating the idea of little molecule-sized nuclear-powered tanks. Sorry for coming down on you. ;-)
I write in my journal
What is instapundit, if not a "personal weblog"? So he's a conservative, and many of the people he links to are as well - they also link to many liberal sites, if only to critique them. I've heard this "echo chamber" argument before, and it just doesn't wash - it seems more like an excuse held on to by people who are afraid (or unable) to defend their beliefs in an open forum
Nanotech and biotech are merging fields. Nature has spent 2 billion years building efficient self-assembling machines and information processing systems. It would be insane for us nanotech people to ignore that.
We need to modify the systems we find in nature to optimize for rational design, operation under different chemical environments, and heirarchical assembly, but we will at least take inspiration, if not entire processes, from biological machinery.
None of you have a clue...
The sooner nanotech fries the human race, the better...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Maybe to you. To the rest of us his sarcasm was so obvious as to be a bit OTT, but apparently even that is not enough for the sarcasm impaired. Geez. Humor 101 is being taught next semester.
Might be impossible now. see http://nano.uni-muenster.de/ccmuenster/produkt_sch ueler_sxm.html
Nanotechnology.
true I have concerns over nanobots being
turned loose inside me by the ingestion of
genetically altered foods.
I also feel that we can also invent alot of good
products that can help mankind.
I hope we can continue on the road of exploration
of this new science and not treat it like
Witchcraft from people of Salem.
we need to give it a chance, NanoTechnology
is just begginning and really needs more time.
One of the first things I considered on 11-Sep-01 following the terrorist attacks on the U.S. was a retrovirus engineered using information from the human genome project to specifically target three of the twenty-two varieties of mitochondrial DNA known to exist in modern homo sapiens.
A nano-technological solution would be even more effectively discriminatory, but it's by no means necessary, to be able to engineer a plague that attacks only certain populations. With the nanotechnological approach, you don't risk your own populations descended from the same matralineal stock.
In fact, we do this all the time, with bioengineered insecticides, such as those we use on Gypsy Moths. The Gypsy Moth is not extinct only because we haven't gone out of our way to blanket the planet with the stuff, and because it's better economically for the supplier if there are still Gypsy Moths; otherwise it would destroy their market.
Target three sets of mitochndrial DNA, which are matrilineally inherited, and you have committed genocide.
People claim that retribution against terroists attacks will only result the children of those you take revenge against later taking revenge against you and your own children.
I respectfully submit that this is not necessarily true.
And yes, I agree: it's an apalling thought. But I'm not the first person to think it, nor will I be the last.
You provide a "Genetically modified foods" analogy. That analogy is flawed:
``Some jelly bottles now say "free of genetically modified organisms". That's nice, considering genetically modified organisms aren't necessarily any worse or better than natural ones -- just different.''
Obviously, you have no food allergies.
For someone with food allergies, it's hard enough to avoid dangerous proteins merely by reading product labels: manufacturers often change formulations based on market prices for various ingredients, and occasionally "forget" to change the labelling until they run out of their stock of (now) inaccurate labels.
Consider how much worse this situation is, when people are introducing foreign proteins into foods which are "known safe" from foods which are the cause of someone's allergies.
I guess it would be convenient if these people would just die, right?
Contact any professional allergist; ask them about things like soy allergies and corn allergies, and whether or not the number of patients with these allergies have increase, decreased, or stayed the same, over the past 10 years.
-- Terry
The flaw with your idea-- which is a terrifying one on its face-- is that our enemies are not all ethically related. Killing off an entire branch of the tree would be drastic, but it wouldn't wipe out the black hats. It would also have the nasty side-effect of killing a goodly fraction of the white hats as well.
If only we could tell the good guys from the bad guys so easily.
I write in my journal
It *IS* a selling point.
To a person with food allergies, "natural" and "free of genetically modified organisms" means "free of unexpected allergens, other than those normally found in ingredients listed on the label".
I know people who have ended up in the hospital over some of the proteins expressed in genetically modified soy beans (~1/3 of all soy grown in the U.S. has been modified).
Lack of such labelling means "take your chances, and keep the Benadryl, Prednisone, and Epi-Pen handy, because otherwise, you might die from eating this".
When they start doing allergy testing by protein, and start food-labelling by protein, and start enforcing a manufacture switch of label when an ingredient switch occurs (and none of that "sugar and/or corn syrup" or "corn and/or peanut oil" bullshit), I guess it will be OK to have genetically modified foods all over the place.
Until then, though, it really sucks to have genetically modified foods containing proteins not found in their unmodified counterparts, masquerading as safe for people with food allergies to consume, when they are, in fact, not safe.
The labelling and allergy testing infrastructure just isn't there to support widespread modification of foods, yet. Until it is, it's like playing Russian Roulette with your customer's lives.
-- Terry
Regulatin nanotech falls into the same problem of regulating drougs, whith an advanced knowlege about it, it will be (at least is what people intend) possible to make nanobots whith cheap and easy do make assemblers. Governments can prohibit selling theese assemblers, but it is not very effective.
Rethinking email
if someone hadn't done nanotech work before us, we wouldn't be here and there wouldn't be any life on this planet, now our nanotech will take over evolve and it will make up a god and pray to it also when it evolves to that point.
;)
Now isn't a that fine paradox?