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A Review of Nanotech's Future
captainsaavik writes "A Washington Post article today reviews nanotechnology - 'Nanotechnology, the hot young science of making invisibly tiny machines and materials, is stirring public anxiety and nascent opposition inspired by best-selling thrillers that have demonized the science -- and new studies suggesting that not everything in those novels is fantasy.'"
We will research, improve, innovate and ultimately implement nanotech solutions for one simple reason: we can. It's been the same right throughout human history.
The views of the objectors, no matter how well founded and how well intentioned, will not lead to r&d into nanotech (or any other new technology, including human cloning) being stopped. At best it might be delayed, but even then the money to be made by Big Business makes this unlikely IMO.
Can anybody think of any kind of new technology that has been abandoned, or even significantly delayed, through alleged (or real) risks ? I suspect new technologies are only abandoned because they are not feasible either technically or commercially (cost too much, too late to market etc) rather than for some ethical or environment consideration.
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
Nanotechnology may yet become the AI of the 21st century. As the nightmare stories about the risks of runaway tech will undoubtedly appeal to the enviro folk out there, I anticipate heavy resistance to widespread adoption of the results.
--- Bill
I can just see it now,
Some salesguy holding up an empty glass.
"No, No, they are really in there, you just can't see them."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
With so much good fiction out there why did they have to take a book that got the science unbelieveably wrong. If they wanted something closer to the mark they could have at least taken Diamond Age. Some of the predictions in that book have allready come to pass.
How about nuclear power, still being prevented from increased uptake? How about the DAT recording technology that was essentially still-born due to RIAA objections? Think a little more -- there are other examples, but those two leapt to mind.
--- Bill
...the truth of nanotech's future probably lies at neither extreme: I doubt that the disastrous runaway growth grey goo scenarios will be true, nor will they be the be-all and end-all of any kind of physical and biological technology. They'll probably have many useful applications though, possibly concentrated all in one field.
FloodMT: crapflood Movab
Michael Crichton's Prey is an excellent science fiction novel about nanotechnology and the possible problems with it. Its an awesome technology, but I would be very concerned about possible abuse or mistakes.
... and I'm a friggin atheist. :)
Man, I can't wait. Of course, the greatest innovations of the coming Diamond Age haven't even been imagined yet, if history is any guide.......
(just wish they'd hurry up)
...is not enough for a trillion trillion trillion trillion........ of nano bots.
Seriously, Wesley Crusher couldn't manage nanotech in the 24th century. What makes us think we can do so in the 21st?
I found the fortune surprisingly appropriate for this discussion: "Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do." -- R. A. Heinlein
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
First, its going to be really hard, IMO, to get these things to autoreplicate as suggested. Shit, we cant even get large robots to replicate; how will they get nano-sized ones to do so?
Personally, I only see nanotech being used in manufacturing, but eventaully branching into other things after a century or so (similiar to the way computer tech has spread).
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Come on, make one for nanotech already. It only has to be one pixel!!
that there's football on???
No?
Didn't think so...
Sad, just sad...
It's the smart gorillas we need to be worried about. I'd vent my anger towards the soon-to-be burgeoning smart gorilla industry. Everyone is going to want one and the implications are staggering compared to nanotech.
FM radio...
Edwin Howard Armstrong invented it in the 1930s and RCA and the FCC managed to squash it until the 1970s because RCA considered it a threat to its network of radio stations.
Does anyone recall the hostility encountered with GM crops in Europe and Africa? I do believe that corporations are going to have to take a good long hard look at how they are going to handle the public with regards to nanotech.
This site has a lot of good information on nanotechnology.
Among other things they address the 'grey goo' or uncontrolled replicator issue.
Basically it would require a deliberate effort to create such a thing.
The spread, while exponential, would be slow due to a nanite's size.
getting large things to replicate is a lot harder than small things.
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
Nanotech is clearly being oversold. The one area that really appears to have some future potential is in construction materials for very tiny roller coasters at gnat theme parks.
"A Review of Nanotech's Future"
Biology's doing rather well.
Great..soon I will get spam touting how little nanotech machines can provide a better and longer lasting erection? Hey, it could happen. Happy Trails, Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
I think one of the more realistic fears is not the new toys of spying and things that might creep into our personal freedoms, but rather environmental issues. And here, I don't mean the nasty chemicals needed to produce these things, but rather nanotube detritus finding it's way into our ecosystem and food sources. Certainly there is now and there has always been nano dirt in our air and finding it's way into our bodies, but these new engineered shapes may have unforeseen health issues, much like asbestos in the last 30 years.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Close to 100% of France's electrical power is nuclear, and they export power to much of western Europe.
Japan is big on nukes, also.
Actually, just about every industrialized country other than the USA sees the risks as much less of a barrier to development than they are here... blame the idiot wing of the environmental lobby and the pathetic PR efforts of utilities here for shutting down nuclear in the US, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths from coal-fired power plant emissions over the last several decades.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
and you just can't see it?
Browse at -1, because trolls are often the most creative part of
As a proud property owner, you would be entitled to vote in my brave new world.
--
Power to the Peaceful
Actually the hard part is making the first one.
Having that one build a second one is easy.
but the underlying idea, namely pure-digital recording of sound, has survived just fine, even with RIAA's objections.
There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
One of the things that I appreciated about this article was how it only spent a small bit on the grey goo hypothesis. The folks who propose any kind of a goo should step back from the science fiction, and read some biochemestry and microbial ecology. Energy is probably the primary limited resource for replication and there just is not that much out there available to nano-scale machines or organisms.
The medical concerns should be taken seriously however. The Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology has a nice page that promises to be a clearinghouse for information on these issues.
so this publicity is probably a good thing, even though they never tell the truth.
I can still remember the days when these books hit the shelves:
"Evil steam-monster", around 1803, told a horrifying tale about a big steel monster that spewed steam, ran over everyone and made everyone cough very heavily.
"Lightning horror!", around 1877, very good thriller about artificially created light that made zombies of everyone so they couldn't stop working for the whole 24 hours.
"Tube of death", around 1926, which was mostly about a tube that transmitted moving light-beams and brainwashed everyone with stories about fictious people through their everyday lifes.
See, nothing to worry about...
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Nope, its the other way around...
Size does matter, even if the girls speak on the contrary...
I like the cut of your jib. I want to code invisible assassin machines and send them to India!!
ender-iii
A salient quote from a nanodot.org article on this subject:
--
Power to the Peaceful
All of us on /. like to cheerlead the coming wave of nanotech, but it's looking more all the time that while we may be on the cusp of a new industrial revolution, like the first IR, it will bring horrors to match its benefits. Probably the most significant point made by the article is that while this tech could be very beneficial, due to our lack of understanding of surface chemistry of most living organisms, some of the byproducts could be toxic to levels previously unknown to exist.
Significant is this bit from the article:
On average the reactions [to nanotube inhalation] were worse than those in mice given equal amounts of quartz particles, which toxicologists use as their "serious damage" standard.
And this is from one dose, and they further state that even without continued exposure, the existing particles continued to produce damage, presumably beyond what a single exposure to quartz dust might produce.
I fear that we'll rush headlong into this without thorough research, and do significant damage to ourselves and the rest of the world. Yah, that sounds all "tree huggy," but when they talk about accidentally killing all soil microorganisms over a large area, frankly, that kind of scares me.
I'm starting to tilt towards a rant, so I'll keep this short, but given our recent history (asbestos, PCBs, tetraethyl lead), we're probably going to find ourselves chasing waste streams yet again, only much worse this time around.
I'm not even going to try to refute anything on junkscience.com. The guy just picks whatever studies seem to back up his agenda, and. Like when he claimed that abestos insulation would have prevented the fall of the WTC towers. And when somebody points out the flaws in his claims (abestos is not that superior to other kinds of insulation), he just insists that he never said what you think he said. That makes any link to his site a non-argument. And plenty of reputable scientists do consider DDT a health hazard. Hey, by the time it was banned, it was reaching toxic levels in human milk.
Invisible machines are just that, invisible. The machines can be machines to kill. If they are not detected, they can accomplish their goal.
We already have a plague of programmers gone bad who devise spamming techniques to get paid.
I can already see Darl blaming OSS community after discovering a bunch on nano-killers looking after him
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----
djzooky.com
I Like Cheese.
The fears about nanotech existed far earlier than 2000. I don't know the origin of the term "grey goo" but I know it existed in the early '90s, as it is referenced by Ben Bova in his Moonbase series of novels, which deal with issues surrounding nanotech (unfortunately, from a purely scientific viewpoint, it seems..)
Is there any field of study of "biological nanotechnology" ? I have always found a big relationship in the way many biological features work with nanotechnology, but in a more comlicated and refines way
For example a seed, could be considered as a nanotechnology machine which develops an extraordinary system (tree) by arranging the molecules in it sourrounding.
__
Sig: Marine Stock Photos
It is looking very very small, microscopic even!
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I'm torn, is this a troll or a ad, or maybe it's a bit of both.
I'd imagine you don't replicate the `whole' nano-robot directly, but replicate some starting state, from which that robot can `grow' itself by using it's own resources.
Think about game of life - you setup some initial pattern, that then grows into something complicated. So all that `bigger' pattern would have to do is replicate the relatively simple starting state of itself, and let nature take its course to build the whole robot.
(ie: life doesn't `replicate', we pretty much build a single `egg', that then divides and grows into a complex life form pretty much on it's own - [excluding food]).
Ah, so in your world vertebrates originated first, eventually branching out into other animals, plants, and eventually single-celled organisms?
What if the question is "Want a new son?"
Read A New Kind of Science.
Although that work barely mentions nanotechnology, it shows that the key to making such 'fantasy' assemblers will be encoding the entire behavior in a relatively simple set of rules and a particular initial condition. Once a basic molecular assembly structure is in place, the rest is just a 'simple matter of programming.'
Plus, of course, the expectation in SF is both that the writer gets all current science right, and that extrapolations are (as much as possible) plausible. MC doesn't have to care about that, and it shows (warning: spoilers for Prey): he isn't writing for a science fiction audience.
Back in 1999 the Foresight Institute released the first version of the Foresight Guidelines on Molecular Nanotechnology. MC's "nano" researchers followed none of the major principles of molecular nanotechnology safety. Had they done so, the novel wouldn't exist.
That the WaPo article itself didn't mention the Foresight Institute is a mistake: it makes it seem like scientists haven't been thinking about this, when in fact they've been thinking about and writing about these issues for years.
Indiscriminately spraying tons of DDT over every domestic crop in the world is a Bad Idea - DDT is a pretty nasty substance to have in the food chain in massive quantities; I'm sure I don't need to review the effects. But, if it were used correctly, the way its inventor intended, it would be the Magic Bullet against malaria, without wreaking massive environmental havoc. (Source: New Yorker article about two years ago, reference it yourself. Interesting tangent - the New Yorker was the mag that serialized Silent Spring, exposing millions to the book and launching the environmental movement.)
Basically, DDT gets lighttly sprayed on the walls and ceilings of sleeping quarters in malarial areas of the world. The mosquitos feed, then immedately land on the wall to sleep it off, where the trace residue of DDT kills them. IIRC, three bimonthly sprayings throughout the tropics would eliminate malaria while posing negligible environmental risk. But we thought since a little was good, a lot must be better - and we ruined it for everybody.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
As a side note, those guidelines, almost word for word, ended up in the US Congresses' recent bill on Molecular manufacturing / nanontechnology studies.
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DAT lays down two tracks on a normal-sized cassete, using a walkman-sized player. ADAT (Alesis DAT) lays down twenty-four tracks on a videocassete (or hard drive), and uses a rather large rack-mount machine. Both types are 16-bit, 48kHz.
DAT is used on a limited scale for sneakernetting final mixes around, but the two tracks are a severe limitation for 'real' recording - an ADAT master stores each mic on a different track, so you can record and mix/postprod/etc at your leisure, as well as rerecord only certain instruments. I don't know that ADAT was ever meant to be a home technology though - it's an ideal studio solution, but way too cumbersome and expensive for Joe Average.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
We've barely begun to break the horizon of humanities potential in the universe.
I think it's very ignorant of people to demonize in-animate objects. It's a way to blame something and not deal with the real problems.
Why don't they have a 5 day waiting period on boards with nails through them?
que Simpsons
*DrugCheese rants*
it would be no different than the dozens of other DoD projects that no longer have a use to employ the scientists of those fields.
I think you sevearly underestimate the majority of the human race. There are always outcasts and dysfunctional people that have their morals upside down...but the majority can and always have delt with such people accordingly.
Funny you mention that you point out we should look at tech in the same way as Moore's Law. Most of the advances he pointed out are caused by computers. We map genes faster because the process is highly automated. We search star systems for planets faster because the analysis of data can be automated and done faster. Fiber back-bones go faster because we can put faster chips on either side. We can machine tinier parts because photo-lithography is improving (again Moore's Law).
And of course, don't forget the exponentially increasing e-commerce. So... I'm guessing that article was written pre-2001.
The thing with the exponential runaway technology thesis is that it involves taking "technology" (which I think any reasonable person would agree could include a LOT of stuff), and breaking it down to a single number.
Here...sorry, it's WorldNet Daily - but they also mention the New Yorker article, "The Mosquito Killer", and talk about the inventor's plans for eliminating malaria.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Here ya go [pdf] - I *highly* recommend this for anybody at all interested in the environmental movement, or the true nature of DDT...it's a real eyeopener.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Then came "Prey." And in Dan Brown's No. 1 best-selling novel, "Angels & Demons," the Catholic Church denounces nanoscience as evil. (It has not, although Britain's Prince Charles has expressed alarm about the science.)
Eh, I doubt that the Britisch crown prince has much ado with the catholic church. Now that prince Charles has expressed alarm, I am sure all scientists will take another woried look at their safety procedures.
But you can't really exclude food... because that's the building block that is used to upgrade/replace/recreate other "life" units.
For a robot to reproduce, it would need the means to move around, collect resources from the environment, refine and shape those resources into parts that can be used. On the macro scale, we use high temperatures to break ores apart, but at small scales we could just sort through the crystals for the right materials. We organics do it by gathering sugar sources, digesting it into its components, chemically tag the stuff we want to keep with enzymes, and we build more cells by reorganizing the bits. Once that processing system exists within a nanomachine, somewhere around there we'd have to stop thinking of them as machines, and more like metalic organisms...
You can't take the sky from me...
I can too, if your ratings don't improve
Funny guy...
Speaking of wich, I just bought the DVDs, had to go to 3 different stores before I found it. The first 2 were sold out and waiting for their next shipment.
Fox execs are retards.
You can't take the sky from me...
To paraphrase Vico:
Humanity's inventions are always one step beyond our understanding of them.
Systems are complex. Simple inputs like a new invention can screw things up royally, well before we're aware of their implications. Judging from history, we should make it an axiom.
Or, at least, start running technology through the precautionary principle.
Damn those pesky terrorists
microscopic interlocking nodes with a distributed brain
you mean a Beowulf nanocluster?!?!?!?!?
They need an energy source. Presumably people working on them would prefer to not make lipid, sugar, and protein-fueled nanobot swarms to tunnel through all living flesh on the planet.
They wouldn't be that hard to stop. It'd be impossible to make something that small with enough shielding to resist an EM pulse.
Also, no matter how fast they can make a new one, if they can only move 1 cm/ minute, they'll never spread any further than a few kilometers in a day.
So by the time what was happening was realized, the problem areas could be hit with an EMP weapon. Of course, if they started it in downtown Washington, that could be a problem. Still, it'd be less effective than putting a small nuke in the area.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Review the future?? Could we get some lotto numbers while we're at it?
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
President Bush to Liberate Alaska!
The article sounds a bit alarmist. Nanotech is an extremely broad and interdisciplinary field. Most of it poses no more threat to health and the environment than any other technology. The main danger I see is a lack of government regulations to ensure workplace safety when working with nanotubes.
I've worked as a graduate student at a major nanotech research institute in the United States. Until recently, students were routinely exposed to SWCNT's and SWCNT derivatives without being informed of the suspected dangers to respiratory health. Researchers still carry out nanotube related work with no real guidelines for workplace safety. I've "scooped" nanotubes out of containers in the open air when weighing them for solution preparation, etc. There are no procedures for the proper handling of nanotube spills.
If SWCNT's really are as dangerous as some studies suggest, there should be an immediate halt to research until proper Federal guidelines are established.
The reason it's much, much easier to get robots that were built molecule by molecule to replicate is that they have handy lego-like building blocks available: atoms and molecules. Large robots must find the ore, smelt the ore, mold the molten metal, machine it, etc etc. Nanobots only need a catalyst to induce environmental carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and a few trace elements into their building blocks. Chemists do it all the time.
The hard part is designing and building a molecular level system capable of being programmed and capable of building a duplicate out of the building blocks. As someone else said, once that's done, making another one (or a billion) is trivial.
So you've basically accepted that we're not in control of our own destiny, huh?
If the mighty and sanctified Invisible Hand of the Market dictates that a potentially deadly technology gets developed . . . that's it, huh?
If there's money to be made in something, we may as well just let it happen, right?
Or maybe you think the development of nanotech is part of the path to some trancendental, inevitable technosocial Singularity that cannot, must not be denied.
This kind of absolutist, ideological take on things leads to bad, shortsided policies.
Jaron Lanier deals with a similar sort of ideology in his One Half a Manifesto.
Stefan
After having read the article, Yep I RTFA.
Good article overall. Points out that the extent of nanotechnology is likely to be less than some hope and fear.
The gray goo ideal is hampered by design, energy and speed/movement constraints which means that it's only going to be a problem if we haven't the technology to combat isolated outbreaks.
We can't put the genie back in the bottle, someone is going to study this technology and use it for unfriendly ends. The only question is will we have the knowledge and skills necessary to counter that.
I believe that restrictive regulation would make it more likely that we wouldn't have the resources to fight such threats. I also believe that there is a limited period of vulnerability until all citizens have defenses as part of their normal biotechnological compliment. The less restriction on research in the bio/nano technology arena the faster I believe we can get through this threatening period.
As an aside on "Prey", I've noticed over the years that Mr. Crichton has made it a point to use his status and writing talents against Bio and Nano technologies. I understand that he has every right to do so, but I also believe I've a right to point out such.
*chuckle* it's going to be a VERY interesting couple of decades...
*now* back to my regularly scheduled Thorazine dose...
Ward
. Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
I think Nano will get a big opposition in the U.S. but R&D will continue; then the next big war will be fought with nanomachines, and the planet will truly become hell on earth...
Parallel:
There's increasing evidence that medical drugs used by humans and livestock are finding their way into the environment.
Sewage systems are pumping excess birth control hormones and other goodies into rivers and coastal waters.
Just yesterday, I read about vultures dying off because they're eating cattle carcasses containing pain-killers. Like ibuprofen, the stuff is mildly toxic. Doesn't hurt the cattle, but the scavengers are being killed wholesale.
Stefan
Prey is really more a story about a guy coping with a crazed wife. The nano part is silly. I've been following nanotech for about 20 years, didn't think the ideas in Prey were either daring or plausible.
Does anyone have the Bill Joy article mentioned in the story, or a link to it?
boom boom boom
And, as any fool knows, there isn't any possible environmental harm in the rampant killing of insects! If God didn't want us stomping bugs, why did He make them so funny looking? Really, the only life forms humans need are cows, corn, wheat, potatoes, and marijuana.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
Yes, nano-tech is unstoppable and inevitable, but that says nothing for how it'll happen.
l
As we speak, millions starve because people are afraid of genetically modified rice & corn. Protectionist farmers and extremist environmentalists are afraid of the risks (none proven to date).
People die from malaria because DDT isn't used to kill mosquitoes. Rational: it might (very unlikely) kill some animals. Response: let the people die instead!
We must not let bad PR hurt the nano-tech industry like genetic engineering has become anathema! Here is an interesting article on this topic:
http://techcentralstation.com/012804A.htm
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Firstly because it's a prisoner's dilemma, and corporations are always interested in short term gain (Enron, anyone?). It only takes one corporation to "cash in" on nano-tech's value to the average Joe while the others are all nervously holding back, eyeing the other potential distributors for a sign that they're going forward so they can jump in anytime. Sooner or later, one corporation will realize it's inevitable and go for the short term gain.
Secondly, some CEO's and Boards of Directors actually manage to attain their positions while remaining relatively human, and might turn their back, however briefly, on their lifelong pursuit of material gain to do something good at their own expense.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
Are there ANY technogies that the eco-nut types actually like?
No Nanotech. RTFM
No Fission Breeder reactors. Plutonium is bad.
No Hydropower. Kills fish. Raises water temperature
No Oil/Coal/Natural Gas. Global warming.
No Wind Turbines. Ugly and noisy.
No Solar. Ugly
No Orbiting Microwave relay. Way Way too expensive.
No Corn based diesel/Ethennol(sic). Frankenfoods.
No Plasics. Toxic landfill.
No Lumber/Paper products. Kills trees.
The word of the day boys and girls is...
Luddite n.
1)Any of a group of British workers who between 1811 and 1816 rioted and destroyed laborsaving textile machinery in the belief that such machinery would diminish employment.
2)One who opposes technical or technological change.
The mistakes of a clever man are equal to the mistakes of a thousand fools.
Wow, this is the longest I've seen a GNAA post stay on the page without getting modded down.
What are you talking about? I thought everybody knew that DDT is dangerous and why. (But I'm a biology major, so I guess my views are a bit skewed.)
DDT (and similar chemicals) is dangerous because it is not filtered out or broken down by animals upon ingestion or contact. So, basically, it accumulates in their bodies over time. What's real bad, though, is that they accumulate in the areas of the body that are most likely consumed by predators and the like (muscles and so on). But it gets worse, because this accumulation effect ends up making the DDT in tertiary predators (predators of other predators) thousands of times more concentrated than what is found in the environment or in consumers lower in the food chain.
So take, for instance, a hawk. It has all of the DDT that all it gets through contact with the environment PLUS all of the DDT in the mice it eats. These mice, in turn, get DDT from both the environment and all of the bugs THEY eat. So, if you think of it that way, imagine how many insects it takes to sustain just ONE hawk. Now imagine each insect has even a tiny amount of DDT. It doesn't take much of a mental leap to infer the inevitable poisoning of the hawk from this point of view.
Now, I'm no environmentalist--not by a long shot, but DDT is bad stuff. It's something we should all be concerned about because we are, by definition, tertiary predators. You think this effect is limited to simply hawks and "dumb animals"? Why do you think cancer rates have skyrocketed over the past century almost completely paralleling the use of chemicals in our agriculture and livestock? Only now are we beginning to understand just how bad fertilizers, pesticides, and preservatives are for us.
-Grym
We barely survived the invention of nukes
"Barely survived" means a few thousand people holed up in military bunkers are the last people left on earth, with nuclear winter starting to snow overhead.
As it was we used a few, built a lot more, and we're all doing quite fine. I would say "We survived the creation of nukes by an incredibly comfortable margin".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wonder what they might clock to? 100ghz? More?
I want 2D games back.
The possibility of nanobots influencing human behaviour, and the getting tacked by a clump of nanobots, and the whole "I'm melting" stuff when they got sprayed with the antibacterial sprinklers was just ridiculous. Especially the latter point; I mean suppose you're being assaulted, and say you shine radiation at that person's Gonads rendering him sterile (and...heck, let's take out his immune system and liver at the same time). Does he whither and twitch on the ground screaming "noooooooo!"? No, he mugs you as normal, and doesn't notice until a couple months later when hormone deficiencies set in. Even my science-illiterate mother was commenting on how unrealistic it was.
Though, I'll openly admit that I was duped by the first half of the book when they were dealing with the "wild" nanobots. My mind still shelves it under the "improbable" section along with most of Crichton's fiction.
The question, of course, is whether we should value beluga more than the millions of humans who die from malaria.
Although Freitas' paper is oriented towards showing ways to detect and fight gray goo, a careful reading shows that it answers most of the superficial objections to the concept. There is plenty of energy to create diamondoid (rock-like) nanobots starting with energy-rich organic matter. Specialized gray goos could eat things like auto tires or road asphalt and bring commerce to a halt. It might even be possible to create a solar powered replicator that could work in air, extracting carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen from common gasses. A single microscopic seed could turn the atmosphere opaque within days.
In short, there are enormous dangers from gray goo, and the only thing that can save us is that it will probably be quite difficult to design, so safer forms of nanotech can be well established before goo becomes a real threat. At that point Drexler and Freitas hope that we will have a nanotech immune system for the biosphere, "blue goo" (named for the color of police uniforms) which will be omnipresent and constantly monitoring for the signature of gray goo outbreaks, ready to attack with overwhelming force.
Sure, it's all sci-fi now, but it's going to be a reality eventually. If the Drexlerian vision of nanotech comes to fruition, it brings great dangers along with great rewards. We'll look back on the world of today as a sleepy, safe, comfortable time when nothing much happened.
Hei.. if Americans were afraid of Killer bees before, they should have the rights to be afraid of nanotechnology as well.
Carpe Diem: Seize The Day!
I wonder if Ray Kurzweil's predictions) about nanotech will be correct. He claims that nanotech will peak in the late 2020's and that we will see it solve a lot of the worlds problems including poverty during this century.
Thats very true. It's big businesses that drive the government to support whatever causes they do, in the end. It takes the businesses to see the opportunities the technology provides - and let's be honest, any business that hasn't by now has had its head in the sand - and then, as you say, the objectors don't stand a chance, in effect. I for one can't wait to see what this does for us. pb_boi
Nanotech's been done years ago.
Steve Gibson invented nanotech as a teenager.
Now he's working on quarks. Something he calls 'desktop publishing', whatever that means.
A real genius.
Yes, there is a huge backlash against GM crops in Europe and Africa (and other places too). It's NOT, however, due to the technology itself, but rather it's a backlash against the companies concerned making the modded seeds sterile, thus forcing farmers into subsistence and reliance on a single source of seeds forever (the ultimate genetic customer lock-in), or worse yet, having those seeds spread to normal crops, rendering THEM sterile. That's why countries refused shipments of American excess grain unless they were milled down - they didn't want their citizens planting the sterile seeds and condemning themselves to a barren wasteland when those seeds don't germinate.
Visceral Psyche Films
I'd classify it as a troll. It's clearly designed to push the buttons of the stereotypical slashbot, assuming such a creature really exists. And the same fucking message is being posted about every day. I imagine someone had a lot of fun crafting the message, though...
but we dont need to use electron tunnelling microscopes to fix a Buick.
It isnt that small things start first: its that simple things start first. And a single celled organism is far simpler than an intelligent, multi-celled organism.
When you build things to run reliably, you need to be simple. Simple means less things which can go wrong. Complexity can do more, but more can go wrong, and its harder to fix if it does.
But, you can put in redundancies or self-diagnostics, but the irony is that you have just made it more complex; you need to first make sure you can trust the system which is giving you the diagnostic info, then you can accept its data.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
The technology itself is quite neutral. It is human beings who will decide to what extent it is used for good or ill. The positive possibilities inherent in nanotechnology are wondrouus indeed - healing all bodily diseases and injuries nearly instantaneously, reversing the degradation of the environment, relatively limitiless energy, ubiquitous highly parallel computation everywhere, replicator technology, manufactured goods of all kinds orders of magnitude more accurate, miniturized and cheap to produce. With full MNT there is no reason we cannot feed, clothe, shelter, educate and maximize the potential of every single human being on earth and more easily leave earth for space. It is a technology more potentially disruptive by far than computerization. It could well end physical scarcity on earth.
Of course the technology can also be used for many negative things. Of course there are also dangers. But the human race would be asleep and given so much by fear that its very survival is doubtful if it did not pursue a technology of such promise. With payoffs like these in the wings there is no way, short of the mass destruction of much of our civilization, that the technology will not be developed somewhere.
Foresight Institute has been studying the promises and pitfalls of nanotechnology for much longer than it has been on the radar screen of more than a handful of people. They have designed many useful guidelines for nanotechnological R & D. We need to exercise due caution but we cannot and must not rob ourselves and our children by letting our fear keep us from a truly wondrous future.
I've always been a peaceful boy/man, never fighting, never wanting to harm anyone. I am quite selfish and I value my life very much, because I intend on living forever. Still, if this insanity does not end soon, I may be compelled to tie a headband, take an AK-47 and a few frag grenades and start wrecking havoc. I can't stand that stupidity anymore and my experience tells me that stupid people are reluctant to learn anything. Public education is not a solution - the only solution is to place all opposers of nanotech, GM food, cloning and other emerging technologers to the wall.
:) Like someone who does forced abortions to pro-lifers and cages animal right activists to carry out cruel experiments on them. :)
On a more serious note, does anyone know about a pro-science terrorist group with a PayPal account? Something like those guys, who kill abortion doctors and free lab animals, but opposite.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
White goo gets you impeached!
Would that make it a preview?
page 1: The beginning of nanotechnology and resistance to it.
page 2: nanotubes can cause deadly lung disease
page 3: nanoparticle can kill ground microbes, making the soil infertile
page 4: nanotechnology may be risky and production is uncontrolled right now
page 5: few precautions are being taken, and there is more fear than knowledge.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
The second derivative of Displacement is Acceleration. The third is Jerk. We are at the threshold of a sigificant Jerk in technology, ecological impact, disruption of human culture/behavior/belief systems. The three seminal technologies of this century (Robitics/AI, Genetic/Genomic/Proteomic Engineering, Nanotechnoly) will make the three of the last century (Chemical, Nuclear, Biological) look like Child's play.
We have demonstrated a truly pitiful ability to prevent the misuse of technology, including the intentional slaughter of our fellow human beings using weapons of mass destruction, and the wholesale contamination of our environment with known toxic chemistry. The potential for disaster resulting from careless release of nanomaterials into the environment is mind boggling. Remember, all life on the planet is based on procaryotic and eucaryotic life, the fundamental nature of which is the nanotechnology of carbon based fatty acids and sugars. Our bilogy has no defense against structures of this size, and the impact on our biology, on all biology, is potentially devastating. Block or drastically alter any one of the thousands of critical chemical processes or pathways in the dance of life, and you may well end life as we know it on this planet.
These materials have a reactive surface area billions or trillions of time larger than the materials we have any familiarity with, and their reactive properties exceed that of the materials we are familiar with by many orders of magnitude. This means that even a small amount of material... just a few pounds... can have a devastating impact. This doesn't even begin to describe the potential impact of materials that have the power to self replicate.
I remember last year watching the haze in the sky caused by dust from China carried over the Pacific ocean, blowing into the California sky. I can't even imagine the size of the catastrophe we would endure if some poorly managed, largely unregulated factory in Hunan, released 5 tons of particulate matter, that could and would enter the atmosphere, and find it's way into the lungs, blood streams, then every other tissue, of every person on the planet in just a few short weeks. The mind boggles.
It is clear that the benefits of this technology are as far reaching as the imagination. An end to hunger. An end to want. Material plentitude for the entire race. An end to death and desease. The ability to alter and design our very being...
On the flip side, we are talking about the power to globally uncreate ourselves in a single foolish act, an act which could be effectively performed by a single deranged lunatic. That kind of risk makes it essential, that we begin designing safe guards, and solutions, in lock step with these new emerging technologies.
These technologies demand a level of care and sanity, unlike any endeavor we human beings have ever been engaged in before. A "Morton Thiokol" like cost cutting decision, resulting in a "Space Shuttle like" disaster would, in this circumstance, lead to a tragedy that could well impact all our children. This isn't President Bush arguing for the need to put low level nuclear waste in our landfills (insane a proposal as that might be.) This is some dumb yutz as yet unknown, whom for, business, political, or religous reasons decides to take a shortcut, or save a buck, or accept the PAC money from a company who's bribe will let said company get away with an obscene lack of consideration to the world and it's inhabitants. That's a mess you may not be able to wash off with soap and hot water. Pretty good, isn't even close to good enough, and we're currently nowhere close to pretty good... not when IBM is in the midst of class action lawsuits for directly exposing hundreds or thousands of it's employees to known viscious carcinogens because the cost of robots at the time was too great. We have a lousy track record. We make stupid trade-offs... expediancy, greed, power, political efficacy, impatience vs. human cost, death and disease, environ
Ofcourse this is all made-up...
The point I was trying to make was that these thoughts probably existed back then. Feelings of doubt with the introduction of certain new technologies.
Nowadays, we see these fears (or whatever fears those people had back then) are not so far from the truth and we learned to live with those fears, or ignored them:
Pollution by industrialization/smog problems, 24 hour economy because we are not forced to sleep when it is dark (and there are no more candles to burn up..), television that shows stupid shows to which the majority of the people watch to relieve their daily lifes...
Just like the examples given, nano-technology has it's drawbacks, which in the future will probably be accepted as negative consequences of a technology that brings good things too, whatever those consequences may be.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Every time Jimmy (Neutron) uses his nano-bots mayhem always follows! =)
Gee, this reminds me of the "toner wars" from Neil Stephenson's Diamond Age. Airborne nanomachines would occasionally do combat using little tiny lasers. The corpses of dead nanobots would coat exposed surfaces with a fine black powder--like someone poured out a toner cartridge all over everything.
Cities would be surrounded by a net of slightly larger flying devices that attempted to screen out unwanted nanobots.
~Idarubicin
God, what an idiot you are. The evidence of DDT'S toxicity is overwhelming.
If the regulatory and social climate is too hostile to nanotech in the West...
It will just become the next big outsource opportunity for China and India. No nanotech job or business opportunities for us in the U.S.
Obligatory Cowboy Bebop refer...
oh, never mind.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
In my HappyMeal, I just found a nanotech augmentation canister with a two tiny legs icon on top cap. Should I install it as a "Run Silent" or "Speed Enhancement" augmentation?
There you are, staring at me again.
Toner Wars, and maybe that movie with Tom Seleck, Runnaways.
I don't need people in lab coats to do a double blind experiment.
The lab coats aren't important, but the other people are. What you described is not a "double blind" test in any meaningful sense of the word. For that you'd need:
- A statistically significant number of people to test on
- Someone to prepare the test materials in such a way that the only difference is what is being tested such that
- one set has the substance being tested
- the other set does not
...but there is no way to tell which is which.
- some way to provide the materials to the testers and receive their reports such that no information about the identity of the sets could be transmitted.
The situation you described has none of these properties. For example, it sounds as if you only look for the cause of the migranes when you actually have them. Thus you might consume aspertame many times with no ill effects and never realize it. Or there might be some unsuspected problem with some preservative that is often (but not only) used in products containing aspertame. Or...but you get the idea.The sort of report you give provides sufficent reason to investigate with a double blind study, but is not in and of iteslf a double blind study, no mater how often it happens.
-- MarkusQ
You have a point, but I think it would be (slightly) easier to build a tiny machine that can grab and assemble random atoms in a liquid solution - it would just have to wait until the right thing hit the right receptor, like most single cells. A large machine, on the other hand, would require a decent AI to even assemble pre-made parts randomly scattered about a room. Now imagine it trying to find and extract ore as the first step...