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.'"

Comments

Unstoppable

[IanBevan]

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.

Re:Unstoppable

[RetroGeek]

new technology that has been abandoned, or even significantly delayed, through alleged (or real) risks

Nuclear energy.

Re:Unstoppable

[fenix down]

God, I can't wait for that crazy motherfucker to go away.

Most of what he says there is reasonably accurate, but he also does a good job of leaving out most of the actual problems DDT has. He does a nicely comprehensive job documenting the predictably hysterical behavior of pop-scientists and the inefficacy of committees in doing anything useful, but jumping from there to advocating unbanning DDT is kinda insane.

DDT is poison. This is the whole point. It's also fat-soluable. One of the many things that Junky doesn't talk about is DDT's effect of bats. Bats were hit pretty damn hard by DDT, because bats migrate, and when bats migrate, they first load up on fat, which is full of DDT, so when they start burning their fat in migration season, the DDT level in their blood suddenly goes through the roof and they all die and end up all over your back yard.

Same thing happens to people. Like most fat-soluable chemicals, DDT is cumulative. In an environment saturated with DDT, like the US in 1970, you take in more than you pass. The .0026mg/kg body weight Junky mentions as a safe dose just means that it takes about 5 years of eating fish, vegetables, etc. for you to build up enough DDT in your fat to give you the effects of a good stroke. The trick to avoiding that is to never lose weight.

Based on just the numbers Junky has, you take a 250lb farmer who's been ingesting 17, 18mg/day of DDT on the farm, have him work hard for 25 years, have a heart attack when he hits 50, decide to try and come down to 180, succeed, and then suddenly he drops dead because he's been flooding his system with backed-up DDT at 400mg/day as he burns off the fat.

Regardless, the millions of lives are being saved anyway. We push DDT all over the 3rd world, it's not like Ghana's banned the stuff. The sad thing is we give them the same old shit that mosquitos have been selected to avoid and tolerate since facism was still cool instead of the vastly more effective, safer, and more stable products we've come up with in the intervening 1-1/4 centuries.

still a dream

[wmeyer]

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.

The ultimate vaporware...

[mobiux]

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."

New Slashdot Icon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, make one for nanotech already. It only has to be one pixel!!

Nanotech

[ikkonoishi]

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.

Re:Nanotech

[DAldredge]

And thank God we live in a world where humans don't purposly try to kill millions of their own kind.

Oh, wait....

Nuclear power was only delayed in the US.

[Behrooz]

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.

Bad news is still news...

[thrill12]

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...

Gov't Downplaying Nanotech like Nuclear

[Saeger]

Some of the best evidence for the feasibility of advanced nanotech is that the government has recently started up a disinformation campaign as a smokescreen to accelerate their own research. They did the same thing back in the 40's when developing nuclear weapons: publicly poopooing it on the one hand to discourage others, while actively developing it on the other.

A salient quote from a nanodot.org article on this subject:

After the seminar, I happen to bump into Drexler and have a rare opportunity to speak with him alone. I bring up the possibility that there could be a secret military project to develop nanoassemblers, and the current government position in the nanotech debate is a disinformation program.

Following the briefest of pauses, Drexler looks me in the eye and replies in the same high, clear voice I'd heard him use during the panel discussion, "Those things are hard to know about." He still has his game face on.

--

ideas for nanotechnology

[z00ky]

a replacement for viagra,
a replacement for sex toys
a breath-a-lyzer in your thumb! just suck your thumb and you'll find out how drunk you are!
Slashdot Pager, your thumb vibrates when there's a new slashdot post so you can race to be the first person to post on that article
a replacement for SCO
and last but not least, my personal favorite...
replacement for microsoft