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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.'"
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
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.
new technology that has been abandoned, or even significantly delayed, through alleged (or real) risks
Nuclear energy.
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I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Not to mention DDT which could stop millions of deaths due to malaria.
Which was killed by enviromental groups to increase their political power despite being no danger to anything but insects.
And thank God we live in a world where humans don't purposly try to kill millions of their own kind.
Oh, wait....
"A Review of Nanotech's Future"
Biology's doing rather well.
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
Nanotech if it takes off like predicted will basically change society like electricty did.
:)
Want a new car?
Dump some scrap metal in the factory, load up the car image you torrented off the internet last night, and in a few hours you have your new ferrai.
We might start getting beer that is free as in software.
and you just can't see it?
Browse at -1, because trolls are often the most creative part of
--
Power to the Peaceful
Not to mention DDT which could stop millions of deaths due to malaria.
Which was killed by enviromental groups to increase their political power despite being no danger to anything but insects.
So you watch nightline, or 20/20, or whatever show that "give me a break" shill is on.
DDT accumulates in the food chain. The beluga population is severly affected by DDT poisoning to this day even though it has been banned for a very long time.
I watched that part of the programm because I wanted to hear why he claimed that aspartame was totally safe. He didn't, he just talked about DDT after having named aspartame as one of the products that are "falsely" considered harmfull.
I am very sensitive to aspartame, if I absentmindedly accept a sugarless mint or gum from someone, I'll suffer a severe migraine wich renders me totally incapable of doing anything for hours. Safe my ass...
Give ME a break.
You can't take the sky from me...
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.
I am very sensitive to aspartame, if I absentmindedly accept a sugarless mint or gum from someone, I'll suffer a severe migraine wich renders me totally incapable of doing anything for hours. Safe my ass...
So what? If my brother eats a brazil nut, he'll keel over and die... Should we ban them? I can eat them till the cows come home and I'll just get fat(ter). Some people are allergic to some shit. Some people get sick/headaches/whatever if they eat msg, but to 99% of the population, it's just like salt with an evil name.... it simply makes your food taste a little better.
And there goes my mod points i gave to the grandfather post, too...
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Oh yes, every time someone invents a motor that violates the laws of thermodynamics, it's Big Oil that steps in to silence them!
I have yet to find a single credible source explaining how the "Water engine" is supposed to operate. Perhaps you can point me to one?
It's always put up or shut up. Talk all you want but proof is proof. So far every nutball that claimed to build an engine that runs on water or an overunity device or inertial propulsion system has denied anyone credible from examining their invention.
Big Oil my ass. Maybe it just doesn't actually work? What could you possibly do to the water to get out more energy than you put in, or use the energy more efficiently by manipulating water than using it directly? Got any credible sources? If you do please share, I'm willing to accept the concepts if they are properly represented with lucid facts and backed by real data.
=Smidge=
And because little Timmy never get bruised, his natural immune system never gets a work out.
Timmy grows up and wonders why he always gets every bug that goes around, heals very slowly and is generally unhealthy.
Here's a tip. Kids are supposed to be dirty. They are supposed to eat snails and slugs. They are supposed to fall over and cut themselves. They need to fall down the stairs occasionally.
Ever wondered why babies try to put everything in their mouth? One of the reasons is so that their immune system can grow.
???
Enron was criminal fraud, political corruption, high level double dealing, etc. They could do it as well with water as with electricity. In fact, I've heard that some of the major players have shifted their focus.
Yes, we need power. This doesn't necessarily mean nuclear power, and this doesn't necessarily mean coal power. I'm getting ready to start pricing a solar roof. (One of my neighbors has one, has been quite happy with it, and is selling power back to the grid most months.)
Now I'll grant you that in most places if you want to depend on solar you had better have a VERY well insulated house. And the front end costs are considerable. But my electric bill has climbed remarkably during the last year, with stable usage of power. So I'd like some rate insurance.
Remember: Every central point of control is a central point of weakness. Design to avoid them.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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
No, Timmy never gets any 'bugs', and heals so quickly that he doesn't even notice he's hurt half the time. He's absurdly healthy, too.
All due to intelligent nanobots that continuously scan and remove 'bugs', virii and other foreign intruders from you body and blood. They'll also repair/improve/replace your flesh from the inside. Medicine that works 24/7 to repair even the slightest bit of damage. No more bad breath, colds, skinned knees and broken bones repaired in hours instead of a week, virii consumed and discarded before infection, damaged teeth and bones reconstructed, eye's always perfect 20/20 or better, hearing perfect (no wax ever!), hair perfect, muscle mass and fat percentage in the perfect combination of an olympic athlete...you get the drift by now.
Timmy will be perfect, forever. As will the rest of us that live long enough to see it.
...not that I'm a pirate.. Hell I've never even fired a cannon. - oldwolf13
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
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.
Hoo boy, time to put the brain back online and exercise some critical thinking.
Thankfully, it starts off by rejecting the most implausible forms of the grey goo by focusing just on the biosphere. But here is an alternative example for you.
If I were to say that we should be on our guard against the creation of a voratious biological life form that can devour the entire biosphere in a mere 20 days, would anyone buy the claim?
I don't think so. And yet, for some reason we are expected to believe that nanobots as machines that devour life in order to create more nanobots are more of a threat than microrganisms as machines that devour life in order to create more microrganisms.
So, a huge number of assumptions in that article. One, we can ignore the problem of trace elements because what is not availble in the body is available in the crust. Freitas just brushes off this problem.
There are also lots of assumptions about the efficiency of replication that are left hanging.
But the biggest problem is the deus et machina which is the nanobot its self. We are talking about something can perform hundreds of different chemical reactions, on radically different substrates with a wide variation of mechanical properties. In spite of Drexler's recent admission that nano-manipulation of chemical reactions will require controlled conditions.
All organic matter, any form, everwhere in the biosphere.
This would be an evolutionary slam dunk for any thing that could achieve such a feat. Imagine the superbug that could eat humans, humus and hostas!
Again, the devil is in the details. Glucose is not collagen, is not cellulose, is not chitin, is not triglyceride. The gut is not the skin, is not topsoil, is not tree bark, is not the bloodstream.
Certainly, there is no reason, expressed in the terms of energy averaged over the entire planet, why a super-nanobot could not devour the biosphere. There is no reason why a biological life form could not as well.
Except for the fact that we are not dealing with averages. We are dealing with hundreds of microscopic environments, and more than a dozen different classes of molecules to digest.