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Diamond Age Approaching?
CosmicDreams writes "The CRN (Center for Responsible Nanotechnology) reports that nanofactories (like the ones that were installed in every home in Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age) will arrive "almost certainly within 20 years". In short they claim that molecular nanotechnology manufacturing will solve many of the world's problems, catalyze a technologic revolution, and start the greatest arms race we've ever seen. They conclude the risks are so great that we should discuss how to deal with this technology so that we don't kill each other when it arrives."
One of the great promises of nanotech are mini-attack bots which can eliminate cancer cells, viruses, germs, etc etc. What, though, will happen when someone comes up with a way to attack cells based on the DNA within? Racial cleansing, removal of unworthies from the pool. It may not happen but it very well could if they don't come up with global policies and laws. (even then...)
Yeah, that's likely far in the future but 50 years ago a desktop computer was impossible.
Trolling is a art,
In other news, Center Dedicated To Promoting Specific Technology reports that Technology, which is just around the corner, will revolutionize the economy, end world hunger, provide limitless energy, and make your teeth whiter while you sleep.
All in about 20 years, by which you will well have forgotten this press release.
Nothing to see here, move along.
While the nano-replicators Stephenson envisions in Diamond Age are pretty cool the two things not well discussed were the source of raw materials (glossed over) and the power source (not discussed at all). We've still got a long way to go before these things can be worked out.
-The whole world is going to hell and I'm driving the bus...
"Secrecy is the Beginning of Tyranny" "No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law" -Robert Heinlein
The promise of nano-manufacturing puts into perspective a lot of the issues we face with copyright of information today. Will the motor companies become the next RIAA when it is possible to make a perfect copy of any car? What will Coca-Cola say when I can nano-replicate coke from water and hydrocarbons?
I can almost imagine a future a where we could have unlimited resources, but the necessary machines are forced by law to be user hostile monsters extorting fees from the user anytime something they make comes close to a perpetually copyrighted object.
Or will people finally realize that when the means of production are endless, human means of invention drive themselves?
This will never happen period.
Why?
Because of the tremendous shift in social power such a device would create. If you think the MPAA and RIAA are bad, imagine the stance of the entire corporate world to these devices being in the hands of consumers.
Not to mention the fear this ability would create within government circles.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
we should discuss how to deal with this technology so that we don't kill each other when it arrives.
Are they implying that we don't kill each other now with current technologies? Or are they saying that the technology alone will turn average homo sapiens into blood thirsty murderers?
Where's all the dicussion about how this technology could reduce current stress?
Our economy, and wealth, is currently based on a system of scarcity. When you can take raw molecules and arbitraily combine them into useful/necessary/life saving objects then scarcity dissipates. Many, if not most, of today's conflicts revolve around scarcity or perceived scarcity.
I say bring it on. The consequences will sort themselves out as they always have upon previous technology.
Think about how many in the previous world viewed modern health care as cheating darwinism/survival of the fittest and that the resulting overpopulation of lesser fitted humans would be catastrophic. Can you say now whether they were right or wrong? Can you believe they would have made the correct choice if they could have caused researchers to halt experiments on such common materials as antibiotics?
-Adam
DeBeers had a method for finding manafactured diamonds... it worked on the sub-atomic level, at that scale its indistingushable from a natrually formed on to the naked eye
A tad OT, but I'll respond anyway...
"So what?"
I have no interest whatsoever in supporting the DeBeers cartel. I care about results, not "Some oppressed African child died to get this small rock to me". If vapor deposition of carbon can make a diamond cheaper than child labor, good. Screw DeBeers.
Of course, it really amuses me that people buy diamonds at all (for non-industrial purposes). "I love you, here, have a small clear chunk of rock. Without destroying it, you can't really tell it apart from anyof a hundred other kinds of small clear rock, but this paper says it costs more". You want to make her happy, spend "two months' salary" as a downpayment on a parcel of land, and give her a pebble from that set into a ring. More meaningful, more useful, and you can't lose it down the sink.
The equating of "very expensive rock" with "love" has always stumped me. I'd have to rate it as one of the greatest PR scams ever pulled... Better even than the classic frontier snake-oil salesmen. At least some of their products worked, if purely by accident (ie, cinchona bark extract, aka quinine, for malaria).
There are two problems with consumer manufacturing (nano or not):
...and the designs for the fab itself is NOT very likely to be on that list.
1) creating and selling the fabricators is not a business model. Once you get a few seeded out there, people will just make copies of the fabs themselves, and sell them to others, until the market is so saturated that people just give them away.
2) Regardless of whether today's police state has faded, the potential of the common people to make their own weapons, be they blades, guns, explosives, or other chemical dangers will be too much for government to tolerate.
The solution that I think will likely be deployed is a "Trusted Manufacturing" or "Trusted Fabrication" architecture much like we already see today with "Trusted Computing" and Digital Rights Management systems.
You will not be able to own a fab - you'll rent it, like your cable box, or your music CDs (*cough*) today. Tampering with someone else's property is obviously illegal (not that it will stop everyone - see below). Furthermore, the fabs will only be permitted to produce goods whose designs are whitelisted - ie, digitally signed - as "approved" by either the manufacturer, some industry consortium, or some government agency whose job it will be to thoroughly review designs to insure they are "safe" from abuses 1) or 2) above.
Unlike current TC designs like the TCPA, there will be no "taking ownership", where consumers will be able to choose whom to trust or not trust about what signed software/products to run/produce. That decision will be pre-decided when you get the fab, and you won't be permitted to change it "for public safety".
Not that the law will stop everyone. Someone will find holes in the system, and they will break it. One of the first things they will do will be to make an unrestricted fab, which will make the rest. They'll spread, underground, to anyone willing to take whatever risks are inherent in having one. Considering that the perceived dangers of possessing an unrestricted desktop fab are MUCH higher than the perceived dangers of having an unrestricted media player, I think it's likely that the legal consequences of being discovered with one will be harsher, potentially branding perpetrators as "terrorists" despite having intentions equivalent to wanting to play your own DVDs on your own Linux box in a world full of copyright piracy.
As usal, coporate/governemnt restrictions on consumer products won't be uncircumventable, but they will keep circumvention out of public life. On balance, I think such a state of affairs to help to make the transition more manageable - both for the good things, and the bad.