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Nanotechnology: Lessig, Sherman and Drexler Speak
An anonymous reader writes "Reporting from The Foresight Institute's "Vision Weekend", Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit) discusses the future of nanotechnology and the politics behind it. Also featuring a video interview of Lessig, Sherman and nanotech pioneer Eric Drexler."
Nanotechnology -- Good or Evil?
Suicide Booth: You are now dead! Thank you for using Stop and Drop, America's favorite since 2008.
For Instance, take any sort of nanomachine that affects a human body. Nanomachines are very small and very hard to make. Our body is made of many, many cells. To kill, or change, or even repair a signifigant number of those cells, you need an obscene number of nanomachines. Without self-replicating nanos, you're going to be using alot more resources to make the nanos than it will take to achieve the same ends through other means.
Most of the current Nanotech seems to be centered around production methods of non-nano devices, sensors of different sorts, computing, and biotechnology. (Biotech being it's own can of worms and a very different matter from nanotech, indeed.)
Nothing Dead Here.
Engines of Creation is a good read about the possibilities we have with nanotech. It's also pretty cool that this was published in 1986 (several years before the internet really was available to most people) and he wrote about having online forums and large reositories of books/information like exists today. (and he even published the book online in hopes more authors would do the same.)
Karma: NaN
we have run out of energy!!!
I sure hope some one comes up with a nice high effecency solar cell.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
If you can make pretty much anything at home, using nanodevices, then information becomes the key input. But how would the auto industry feel about a Napster for Ferraris?
::buries head in sand::
Not bloody likely. All a company would have to do is design their product to require registration via a serial number for activation purposes, a la Windows XP. Granted, there are cracks aplenty for something like that, so maybe it's not such a hot idea.
Perhaps the nanoassembler would need to receive permission from the company in order to manufacture a consumer device in the first place, like an RSA key or something of that sort. Of course, once the actual assemble commands are isolated by some third-party hardware, one could just copy them and distribute them freely.
Then there's the notion of including some manner of rare precious metal in the design of the product, but that can be acquired by other means, and while expensive, the money to buy it wouldn't go to the company in the first place.
Hmm. Well, there go those ideas. To be honest, I think that nanotech, when it reaches maturity, will unavoidably throw a wrench in our economic system. When people can assemble their own goods for free, it's the designers who have the primary work cut out for them. And that could even turn into an open-source style of system, since if food, clothing, and other essentials can be assembled from only basic raw materials like soil, then the need for money would diminish considerably, and people could design new goods and products as a hobby.
Of course, one person could begin distributing a super-virus that can kill us all. Then again... umm...
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"Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of"-TMBG
The entire 'futuristic' view of nanotechnology is that nanotech will progress to the point of guided creation; e.g. input a design and they produce an item. With simple programming routines, the nanobots can be made to build more nanobots as needed. Once the processing capabilities of current processors have been utilized to allow 'fuzzy decision-making' by computers, e.g. provide an array of choices weighted against a set of inputs and allow the situation to dictate what the bot does, our ability to allow these bots to operate with less and less guidance will evolve. I cannot forsee that with the current understanding of nanotech, that this is where the world will end up. The concept promoted in Neal Stephenson's 'Diamond Age' may reflect a fairly accurate depiction; though possibly in a different manner, pure material will be supplied to the nanobots, and they will use it to construct items. I honestly can see this becoming reality within my lifetime, based on our current research progression in the fields of nanotechnology and quantum physics, the latter being necessary to develop a better understanding of the weak and strong atomic forces and how to break/establish bonds and channel the energy to good use. In this fashion, the laws of nature can be used to modify the positioning of subatomic particles which will make up the products produced.
Just some rambling thought for your consideration!
-cheezus_es_lard
I'm taking a course in nanomechanics this semester and the focus of most ongoing research is not really about nanobots or self replicating machines. In my opinion some of the most interesting outcomes of nanoscience are: -Materials with novel mechanical or electrical properties. -Cheap and small measurement instruments with more capabilities. (For exampe: A chemical or biochemical laboratory on a chip) The medical-nanobot stuff is just to get funding because people think is good to fund science if it will improve our health.
Yes, I'm sure you know much more about the laws of physics than, say, someone with a PhD in Molecular Nanotechnology from MIT.
There are reputable scientists who argue against the most agressive nanotech postulates, but even they don't claim we won't build molecular systems that can produce copies of themselves in the forseeable future. They're just arguing that it will be restricted to producing a class of molecules rather than almost any possible molecule. In other words, from the consumer's point of view, they are splitting hairs.
Not quite. While the chemical properties of any atom are determined by the outer shell of electrons, those are controlled by the number of protons in the nucleus. (You're probably thinking of the recent Programmable Matter: The New Alchemy)
The only method of bulk transmutation used today is neutron bombardment. Ex: breeding Plutonium 239 from Uranium 238, or making any of the medical isotopes.
Nuclear fusion would be nice, but that hasn't reached scientific break-even yet, let alone engineering break-even.
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
Bullshit.
The Standard Model (Big Bang) has been used to make a variety of testable predictions, which have panned out. Ditto for evolution. This is the essence of the scientific method: Observe a phenomenon. Formulate a theory to explain it. Use this theory to predict things you don't know. Check these things out to see if your theory holds up. Repeat. Real Scientists are very reluctant to say "This is the truth", rather they will say, "this theory has repeatedly demonstrated good predictive ability across many observattions".
Creation "science" predicts nothing. No matter what you observe, the theory "God did it that way. He can do anything." can never be disproven. A theory that explains any evidence is useless, and it is not science.
I'll treat creationists ideas with respect as soon as they agree that my creationist theory is as valid as theirs:
"Joe the giant turtle barfed up the universe last week. He can vomit anything."
I could invent theories like this all day, but it wouldn't be science.
I should have pointed out that I'm not including biotechnology as part of nanotechnology. Biotech is everything that nanotech is not: Self-Replicating, (for the most part) Easy to produce, and Extremly Dangerous. Don't get me wrong, I think we can achieve great things with Biotech and I think we should proceed with Biotech research as much as we have, if not much more. However, while Biotechnology and Nanotechnology are both suffieciently advanced technologies that deal with things primarily on a tiny scale, thier differences are enough for me to classify them as seperate things. It's arbitrary, but so am I. As for resources neccesary to produce nanomachines, quite alot are needed to produce them without self-replication, which was my point. This may change sometime in the future due to scientific progress (and I sincerely hope so) but that is how it stands as of now. While yes, we need to deal with the dangers of nanotechnology before they become actual issues, we must make sure to do so without hampering the advancement of nanotechnology as a whole. Many of the dangers which have been ascribed to nanotechnology should instead be ascribed to biotech, as well as some of the applications. Both require gentle care in the form of money and light restriction.
Nothing Dead Here.