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Should Nanotech Be Regulated?
Memorize writes "Josh Wolfe writes an article in Forbes arguing that it is too early to regulate nanotech. Wolfe is worried that the 'green gang' (his term for environmentalists) are going to regulate nanotech out of existence before the technology even works in the lab. It seems like much of the discussion of nanotech is hype, including the potential benefits, such as immortality and the potential dangers such as grey goo. However, nanotech does hold some promise of environmental benefits such as cheap solar power. Are the risks real, and if so, is it worth the risk?" From the article: "There are rumblings that regulations are needed. They say they want to guarantee the safety of the technology and instill confidence in the general public."
I wanted to be a nanotech inspector, but I failed the eye exam.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Well, given that CNTs seem to be a perfect size to get lodged in the lungs, I wouldn't want the industry to be exposing itself to an asbestos-style situation.
What a crazy random happenstance!
From TFA:
"There needs to be a wide societal debate informing and underpinning government decisions, and this can't be confined to technical issues alone. It would be a mistake to attempt to sideline this discussion to a group of experts..."
Great thinking. Let's take the debate out of the hands of the people who know what they're talking about, and put it firmly in the hands of John Q. Public. "But I read a book about nanotechnology, and these swarms of tiny robots killed people. Won't somebody think of the children?"
I'm not saying that it's a mistake to involve society at large in a matter like this, but experts' opinions are going to be the most well-informed, and therefore the most valuable. People who know nothing about nanotechnology except for the fact that a manufactured particle can damage the environment just don't know as much about the issue as people who have been studying nanotechnology for years. The public's opinion can easily be swayed by politicians with hidden agendas, and somehow I doubt that scientific advancement will win out against mass panic and sentimentalism. What we need are some honest, unbiased reports of the pros and cons of nanotechnology: where it's headed, how it could help us, how it could harm us, and what the cost will be. Instead we'll have a mob of people going off half-cocked and writing their senators because them thar robots are goin' take over, and you cain't even see 'um. Give authority to the people who have earned it; they're the ones who will know the right thing to do with it.
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The problem with regulation of nearly anything is it only stops honest people. Usually, the people that weren't going to do anything wrong in the first place.
Now that's a death ray!
In America, everything should be regulated. What are you - some sort of godlesss pink commie?
Heh. This article is nothing but yet another libertarian call for unlimited dog-eat-dog capitalism. Then again, what else can you expect from Forbes?
Of course anything that has as monumental potential consequences as nanotech needs at least proper societal debate -- even when it's still in discovery and development stage. What are we going to do if the promises and nightmares come true? Furthermore, in the case of nanotech we would not only need government scrutiny but international governmental scrutiny and control. You don't have to be a greenie to realize that.
The fact that the people doing the debate do not understand the scientific details has nothing to do with their eligibility to participate in the debate. We already have referendums concerning whether we should build new fission plants and a perfectly valid argument against such a plant is: I don't want nuclear waste buried in my backyard for my grandchildren to take care of. You don't have to be a nuclear scientist to have something meaningful to say in a sociological/political sense. The same goes for nanotech.
So why is this guy saying that we shouldn't have public discussion (not referendums, mind you) about such a revolutionary technology as nanotech? Because it makes the profitmongering more difficult. That's why. The part of the article that I quoted above summarizes the attitude of the author perfectly: "shut up, shut up, shut up - I can make a lot of money with this, so you've better shut up about anything negative we might face when developing nanotech".
And where is that nasty Green Gang anyway? All sources I can see him quoting are respectable research organizations like the British Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering. If his beef is with scientists who're capable of thinking green in any other context than a dollar bill, he's the one who's risking the nanotech revolution.
The owls are not what they seem
Once people understand the implications and the power behind the technology and they still aren't concerned that it could have profound good and bad consequences for all life here then that's proof that it needs to be controlled. But can it be controlled? I don't think so. Let the nano-wars begin!
http://tinyurl.com/3t236
However, an earlier report has shown conclusively that just about any substance will cause brain damage in fish, provided that enough of said substance is introduced into their little brain cases.
Seriously, though...just how much fullerene was used in this study? From www.nanomedicine.com:
I really sympathize with the hippie tree-huggers....honestly, I do. My personal opinion is that all industry should eventually be moved offplanet, and the earth itself converted into one big park. But that goal's quite a ways off, and without important technologies like nanotech, we simply aren't going to make it. These Luddite environmentalists who foam at the mouth at the mention of every new technology, and attempt to instill the same irrational, knee-jerk mentality in the general populace are not helping their species, or Mother Earth. Another point in their disfavor: every prohibition simply creates another underground. There's big money to be made in nanotech, and if people can't do it legally, they'll do it illegally, and I'm betting that the people who are bold enough to disregard the regulations won't really put too much thought...not to mention funds...into safety.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I don't know, anything that is two letters short of an alcohol isn't all bad in my book.
Don't forget that either we should be suffering from another global ice age with everyone under ice, or drowning under 300 feet of water.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
- flying cars
- artificial intelligences that pass the Turing test
- cures for the common cold
- concealed laser pistols
- faster-than-light travel.
I think the need for #1, for example, should be obvious -- I'm amazed that nobody's been killed yet, considering the complete lack of traffic regulations. And re #5, according to special relativity, any faster-than-light drive also allows time travel, which has obvious potential for use by terrorists -- surprising they haven't used it yet, given the complete lack of government oversight.Find free books.
With all the promises of nanotech, regulation will only slow down development. Not a good idea.
The industry is too small to need to be regulated.
the same group that had lobbied against Monsanto's genetically engineered crops in the 1990s--has called for nothing less than a moratorium on the use of synthetic nanoparticles in the lab and in commercial products.
So before we even know even a fraction of the possible benifits and dangers, they wan't an outright ban on anything that would let us find out what the good or bad is? Banning it from commercial products means it doesn't get used in anything, banning it from the lab means we won't ever find out more on it until the moratorium is lifted. Which probably wouldn't happen until we found out more about it. Catch-22.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Read Prey by Michael Crichton. I've heard it said that the science in the story is not real, but it was one of the most frightening scifi stories that I've read.
smp
There is no such thing as "nanotech". Nanotech was an unfulfilled pipe dream about "molecular assemblers" and the like. Of course, Wolfe is just trying to make money off the name as well; he is trying to present this as a brand new industry that is at risk of being stifled.
Because nanotech was such an abysmal failure, in order for people to save face and sell old research as new, the term has now been applied to traditional areas of material science and molecular biology. Whether those areas need to be regulated and how needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis.
For example, releasing new materials into the environment, in particular dusts and coatings that can turn into dust, should be subject to stricter regulations--whether "nanoengineered" or just chemical, that sort of thing is a health risk.
Molecular biology generally has regulations in place already; applying the moniker "nanotech" to molecular biology should not let companies or researchers evade those regulations.
More generally, however, I don't subscribe to the notion that a new industry (even if "nanotech" were a new industry rather than just good old chemistry and material science) should not be stifled; if it's potentially dangerous, of course, its growth should be stifled until we know how to mitigate the dangers.
He should learn some history, the Green Gang was the predecessor to the KMT, or Nationalist Chinese and was largely run by "Big Eared Tu" in the manner of organized crime with Chiang Kai-shek as his puppet.
Today's Nanotech is probably tomorrows equivilent to nuclear weapons. Who's to say who can and can't have it? The mighty leader of the free world?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
http://sundown.greyledge.net/pages/images/Smoky_Th e_Nanobot.jpg
As the technology matures, it will become easier and easier to do virtually anything with nanotech. So, eventually, it will be abused. (Which I assume is what people are worried about.)
The question we SHOULD be asking is how can we develop nanotechnology in such a way as to make sure we can stop dangerous/malicious applications. Because they WILL happen. There are just too many people on this planet for any kind of control to succeed in general on such matters. I suspect in the end nanotechnology will become another kind of virus, and it will take something like nanoengineered biological defenses to stop them, which will have to be continually upgraded.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
CNTs and buckyballs are just forms of soot. You can find them in any fireplace. So whatever regulations are on soot emissions to the atmosphere, they should be applied to CNTs as well.
Wolfe is worried that ...[environmentalists]... are going to regulate nanotech out of existence
It all depends on who will be making money off of it. If their are profits to be taken, public safety will have to take a back seat. If it threatens a current business' profits, "public safety" will be the rallying cry.
And, of course, the radical fundamentalists will somehow work "God's Law" into the whole debate.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
In Russia, the Nanotechs regulate you!
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
The major issue with nanotech in the next few decades won't be a grey goo problem or any other sci-fi apocalypse. The biggest problem will be the toxic garbage mentioned in the article. Self replicating nanobots are still in the distant (20+ years) future but the problem with nanoparticles exists now. Some of the artifical dust being created by the nanotech manufacturing processes is small enough to pass through the various safeguards that organisms have evolved to protect against the environment. Very few things in nature are self contained objects on a nanometer scale so organisms never had a chance to evolve protection against the things we are creating. There is a valid risk of a problem similar to asbestos related cancers and DDT if nanotech becomes widespread before the proper safeguards are in place. I fully support nanotech and do believe the grey goo fears are overstated, but toxic dust is something that people should figure out how to deal with before it becomes dangerous.
--
Want a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox. (you only need 4 referrals)
Wired article as proof
I'm sick of these thinly veiled propaganda pieces that take selective examples of private success and government failure to back up their market fundamentalist ideas.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
What will be funny is when the "Grey Goo" ecophagy theory plays itsself out and the people at Google figure out a way to search the nanobots blanketing the earth and patent it. And yes, it will be called "Grey Goo-gle".
Turk: Let's play Steak. J.D.: What? Turk: Steak. The 1st person to finish their steak is the winner of Steak. -Scrubs
Take carbon nanotubes. Companies allowed to treat it, according to OSHA standards, as graphite. Technically, yes, it is pure carbon. But there are some exotic, and potentially carcinogenic, reactions that nanotubes can create in the human body. Particularly when inhaled.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
...including the potential benefits, such as immortality...
Immortality is NOT a benefit, not to yourself, and not to the world population.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
We absolutely have to regulate how nanotechnology is used. Think what would happen if spyware and malware authors got ahold of a few nanobots!
Dont crush nano before it has a chance to create safegards against itself.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Nanomaterials are weird. Gold metal and even sub-hair thin wires are fairly inert; but nanodivide it, and it becomes highly reactive and much more toxic than lead. And we're putting nanocrystal zinc oxide into sunscreens these days. I'll use it anyway-- with my skin and family history, melanoma is the bigger risk. But nanomaterials exposure is already happening.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I wonder what organ earth resides in.
Outright banning or heavily restricting a particular field of research is the fastest way to create a technological divide and be swept away by the pace of advancement, and at the rate it's going that means the country in discussion will be left in the dust in a handful of years.
You can't question the ethical nature of a technology itself and restrict it appropriately and also have progress. Would nuclear technology have advanced if they were worrying about the very long term consequences? You might argue that nuclear facilities haven't helped us all that much, and have done quite a bit of damage, but we also couldn't be taking steps toward fusion without learning from our mistakes with fission.
Essentially, the countries that take the risks and have the courage to step into unknown territory are going to see the biggest returns the fastest, since ultimately nanotech offers to return more resources than those expended getting to it. Meanwhile, anyone who pussyfoots around is going to find themself quickly losing military, economic, and technological prowess.
The Immortality Institute
Hmm, that's the first thing that's ever gone wrong...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
There is a common misconception about nanotechnology that even /. editors are not immune to. I suppose this has to do with the fact that nanotechnology has morphed over the years into a discpline that has very little to do with "nanofabrication" and nanomachines, areas in which research has slowed substantially since the early 90s.
Rather, most academic research is now geared towards the production of highly controlled materials at the nano-scale. Nanoparticulate metals and oxides have tons of applications but almost none of them are nano machines. Rather, this work has become advanced form of materials chemistry and physics, designing regular surface features or particles. For this reason, nano-materials are not going to be much more dangerous than normal materials in the big picture. Nano-disperse carbon, which is sometimes called *smoke* or soot, is probably just as toxic as bucky-balls.
An interesting issue is: why have researches have abandoned nano-machines? I think it has to do with the fact that we already know how to build them. There's technology that has a great track record and can do almost anything you'd like at the nano and sub nano scale. They're called *enzymes* and recent enzyme engineering advances have made many nano-related tasks kind of superfluous. Also there are viruses and bacteria(maybe) that range into the nano-scale as well. So I think it boils down to a "why bother" issue with nano machines.
Of course I *might* be biased given my chosen area of research. I'm a chem. Prof investigating enzyme and bacteria engineering. Nah, I'm not biased.....
Gimme a break folks and do your science.
...
By now we should have had multiple nuclear wars
The worst case scenario was "nuclear winter" which implied one game only.
would have extreme shortages of food
Developing Countries
# 815 million people are undernourished
# 1.2 billion people live on less than $1/day
# 153 million children under age 5 are underweight
* 11 million children under age 5 die every year, over half of hunger-related causes
# 1 in 6 people is hungry
# 1 in 4 people lacks safe drinking water
would be all dying from pollution
Europe's children dying from pollution
would no thave enough oxygen to breathe
Decreased oxygen content in the atmosphere--an ecological disaster imperceptibly sneaking up?
Gimme a break folks and do your science.
Well.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Incidentally, I will hopefully post a review of this excellent book soonish, if nobody beats me to it.
Um what? Particulate pollution? Thats what they want you to think. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulate
Thats about the biggest kind of nano-structures they would make; thats the _starting point_ of nano-technology. THe aim, is to make it way smaller.
wikipedia:
"particulate matter smaller than about 10 micrometers, referred to as PM10, can settle in the lungs and cause health problems"
Thats the problem. Nanotubes, nanofabric, nanocomputers, nanomachines, all of them would want to become smaller and better and the industries are trying to convince government/public that their particles are big, so they can classify them as an entirely different type of hazard (which is currently the case in the US) while at the same time trying to convince their buyers their particles are small (and advanced). It just doesnt make sense.
THey need better regulation that specifically deals with nanoparticles less than 20nm or even 30nm (safety factor).
Time travel is so dangerous it makes H-bombs seem like perfectly safe gifts for children and imbeciles. With a bomb, what's the worst that can happen? A few million people die. With time travel, we can wipe out the entire universe.
Oh, and flying cars are covered under the FAA rules, as I recall.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I imagine that sometime in the (near?) future, athletes using steroids will have been considered the cavemen of artifical performance enhancing measures.
Imagine nano-tech that will be able to act as red-blood cells, fueling muscles with oxygen in order to perform better. Or, on a a more basic level, able to replenish the body with nutrients in order to keep an athlete's biochemistry in check so they can perform at an inhuman level.
Granted, this sort of scenario is down a distant road; however, with labs already asking questions about GENE doping, it's not completely proposterous to start addressing these specific situations in order stop the abuses before they start.
Respect It.
The only evidence he offers is that people were worrying that buckyballs might cause cancer, and the NSF is funding toxicity studies. And the British are also interested in studying nanoparticle toxicity. So what?
But he also offers this, from the same source from which he gets his scary "wide societal debate" quote:So a small Canadian corporate watchdog group with an unsuccessful record of opposing biotech holds an extreme position on nanotechnology. Oooh, I'm scared!
This link found in the article is rather telling:With your subscription for the special introductory price of only $195 (a 67% discount off the cover price), you will receive 12 monthly hard-copy issues of the author's Nanotech Report delivered right to your door. No doubt each issue will be filled with screeching about nonexistent political threats to nanotechnology from powerful Canadians.
As soon as anything comes out, any development is made, someone wants to regulate it, or at least someone declares that it needs to be regulated. With a slight bit of foresight, one would not complain until there's something to complain about. Most of the times, things work out for the better...sometimes, things don't, and big deals are made. Nanotech needs a LOT of development and a lot of "space to work with," and limitations right now when there are essentially no problems is a bad idea. Any environmental issue right now with its development is just a drop in the bucket, and in a few years, we will probably have a "safer" solution, and a processor that is so fast that the desktop user won't even have to upgrade for eight years...
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In a borg cubus nanotech regulates you!
See pictures of tits
Seriously, this guy is holding up Monsanto and GMO's as the "victims" of regulation he is afraid that nanotech will also suffer.
My feelings about this are pretty simple, admittedly, but based on the situation with GMO's, it seems that there is a lot of money to be made in creating and patenting and selling GMO's, and not a heck of a lot of money to be made finding out if they could pose a problem for us some time down the road. Sure, there's some funding that will be available for that kind of research, but it's minimal when you compare it to the other side of the equation.
When we're talking about this magnitude of profit incentive, as a worker bee I WANT the regulation, because there will be no natural roadblocks to misuse and irresponsibility.
The reason the green "gangs" are so adamant on these issues is that once you let it out, it's too late--the harm has already been done.
Many scientists' primary experience with ethics is a course in college and administrative personnel who require them to fill out a lot of forms. It's left to others, in this case the Government, to try and look at the big picture.
As someone who has a great interest in science, I also get pretty pissed off when critics of regulation start throwing around the "Luddite" accusation. We need a term for scientists who have no real concern for the possible consequences of their research; or more specifically, a term for the financiers of said research.
So buckyballs may be bad for you? Not exactly a big surprise--there are buckyballs in soot, after all, and breathing soot is not beneficial.
For the most part, nanotechnology is just a novel approach to doing chemistry--creating molecular assemblies of atoms. It makes possible some novel chemistry, and there will probably be some novel hazards, but there's nothing to indicate that there is some kind of "generic" hazard as is the case with radioactivity, where many different isotopes emit only a handful of energetic particles. So it makes no sense to try to create generic regulations for nanotechnology.
So we're going to have to investigate the risks of nanosubstances just the way we investigate the risks of biological substances (which are just "evolved organic nanotechnology," anyway) and new chemical compounds--case by case. A company that wants to discharge some nanotechnological waste should be subject to exactly the same scrutiny as a company that wants to discharge a new chemical. Eventually, we'll probably begin to figure out whether particular classes of nanosubstances have particular hazards, like asbestos or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. But targeting nanotechnology per se for some sort of heightened scrutiny is just obstructionist fear of new technology.
Ok, everyone keep it quiet that molecular biologists are doing way too much nanotech already. Enzymes are molecular machines that can build things at nano scales. When the nanotech regulators come around remember to call it biology. Storm
So many ecosystems are either misunderstood, barely understood, or already deceased. Adding nanotech to the mix without knowing the parts of the equation that are affected-- because we're ignorant of much of the environment-- is asking for disaster. Regulatory oversight is incredibly important, before some genie gets out of the bottle that destroys us. We have no methods to fight a nanotech problem, should one emerge. We're defenceless. Is that a good posture for starting an industry?
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
If we could make a nanobot small enough, and make enough of them, then their movement would look like fluid flow.
Imagine companies competing on the viscosity of their nanobot lines.
Imagine billions of nanobots programmed to stay very close to a human's skin, but not to touch it. They could be waterproof and/or airtight from the outside, but allow various things to escape from the inside.
Oh well. Somebody has probably already written a whole series of sci-fi novels about it.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
If a very large bit of nanotechnology was to fall on somebody, they could be very badly injured.
But when I peruse web sites of companies claiming to sell nanotech what I actually find are companies selling small amounts of powder that has been ground up really small. For example a medical application of nanotech is really small bits of ground up magnet with antibodies attached giving a nice way to detect antigens through a magnetic field. Or another application comes from the fact that really small particles have a high surface area to volume ratio making good reagents and catalysts for chemical processes. So nanotech is really just finely ground stuff. (It sounds a lot less sexy when you actually say the truth free of jargon.) And that, IMHO, is far more dangerous than imaginary robots because it can get in your lungs and lodge in other parts of your body. But this doesn't necessarily need specific regulation, we can just use existing regulation for particulate pollution more finely grained (no pun intended) to limit how much nanoparticle sized stuff may be released into the air.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
It should be micromanaged.
rewriting history since 2109
So how do new products get evaluated?
You would think that after all the lesson learned, and the work put in to get asbestos and PCBs off the market, there would be a mechanism in place to keep it from happening again.
I can recommend two websites that have useful, factual information on safety and regulation issues for nanotech (molecular manufacturing): Foresight Institute click here and Center for Responsible Nanotechnology click here
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no, i think your irony key is turned off - must be a nanobot operating inside your keyboard ... or is it the neuron firing your finger ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The real issue is the question of the possibility that nano bots could be built that replicated infinitely consuming a wide range of materials as they went. It would only take a single nano bot in the entire world to do this, so regulation isn't going to help, unless it can be guaranteed 100% effective, not 99.999999999999%, this theoretical nano bot would of course have to be programmed not to eat other similar nano bots and they would also need to get into a good formation (a sphere?) or they would face food shortages as they tried to fan out. If they could travel that would also help - maybe through wind or water or by being purposefully spread around the world. They would also need to be either fast or left unattended until they got a good population, otherwise they could just be collected up in a suitable container and ejected into space (preferably towards the sun) before they ate through it. But this whole thing could be translated to any sized robot - insect or animal sized bots could start eating things to reproduce continuously too, its just that nano bots sound scarier because you won't see them until your body is disintegrating.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Of COURSE nanotech should be regulated. Everything should be regulated. Big government all the way. After all, who better to tell us what to do than those who know what's best for us, right?
[litany of negative stats on nutrition]
Some other stats:
* Since late 50's, the price of food has fallen by two thirds.
* Since '60, average calories per day in the *developing* world has risen by 40 odd percent.
* Proportion of starving people has fallen in all continents since the 70's. Varies per region and the worst is Subsaharan Africa where it's only fallen 7-ish percent.
* Proportion of undernourished children in the developing world has fallen from 40 to 30% in the last 15 years and is expected to fall further.
And this all when:
* Population has doubled since 1960.
So it's unacceptable, but getting better, contrary to what some might have you believe.
Of course we could all go 'organic' and starve billions if we wanted to.
free goo.
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
grey goo like the stuff that you get when an oil cooler starts leaking on a diesel engine?
let's try to avoid that crap, thanks. I've dealt with it enough times.
Karma: Negative (Mostly affected by dorm trolling)
Extreme food shortages exists toady in many parts of the world. (although obviously not your parents basement). People are starving to death every day.
Maybe so, but not because of environmental damage.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Small things become airborne, or they become parts of aquifers, or find other ways to spread to places unintended. Look at what happens when a tiny amount of perc pollutes an aquifer-- it spreads in just weeks. Trichloroethane, MEK, all of these spread quickly and wreck ecosystems. The potentials are huge-- especially for countries that will look the other way to regulation and even common sense to have what they believe to be an economic gain.
The possibilities are plainly gruesome. Without basic metrics in place, it's all rife for abuse-- with the usual motivators.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
"...experts' opinions are going to be the most well-informed, and therefore the most valuable."
"Experts" are also generally going to be biased towards wanting to play with the new toys they thought up. They are also generally going to being paid by companies who seek to make a profit out of their investments because they've invested so darn much they don't want to lose the money. This is why the "public" needs to be involved.
I'd rather a mob of people go off half-cocked and hold back a bit of progress for a little while than a mob of corporations go off half-cocked and thrust something onto an unprepared world dangerously fast.
The public's opinion can easily be swayed by corporations with hidden agendas, and somehow I doubt that human advancement will win out against massive profits and sensationalism.
"Earned" authority? I earned mine, too. I'm a citizen. If there really is nothing dangerous, we'll be educated in the long run and the benefits will win out over the fears.
And regulating nanotechnology helps this? What's with the $1/day, I know it is a conveninently scary number to keep repeating, but it doesn't have any meaning.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
Most of "Nanotechnology" is just hyped up stuff that used to be called "Chemistry" or "Molecular Biology".
In 2003 the UK Science and Technology Committee took evidence from Molecular Biologists and Chemists on the Question of if there was a need to regulate Nanotechnology.
The transcript is available here.
UK Laptops
The grey goo problem isn't a possibility until someone can come up with a a power source for said goo. The obvious solution to this problem is to imitate biological metabolism and find a process for converting chemical energy into electricity that can be used on a microscopic scale. We only need to be concerned once we have self-replicating nanomachines that can directly consume organic material.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Of course you can guarantee the safety of everything. Just put a sign on it: "1 Year Safety Guarantee. Safe or Money Back!"
...
Now, in the worst case, you'll lose a lot of money. But that's a different problem
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Fortunately the debate is already underway. I'm sure many of us recall Bill Joy's piece in Wired a few years back:
y _pr.html "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us"
http://wired-vig.wired.com//wired/archive/8.04/jo
In short, Joy, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, suggests that as technological systems grow increasingly complex humanity will loose its ability to control the systems it depends on.
Sci-fi authors' take on this is either grey-goo or terminator -- apocalyptic visions.
Reality will probably be much less exciting, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned.
Wolfe's opinion is a sterling example of how nanotech -- and not nanotech itself but even the idea of nanotech has potential to strip away human control.
He says that we should abandon our traditions of public discourse because public discourse will get in the way of economic and scientific "progress."
But isn't thought and discussion, even if it is sometimes hyperbolic or overly concerned, an essentially human activity that we should preserve, even if the cost involves moving slowly with technological advances?
Additionally, shouldn't we scrutinize the end results of this kind of progress? As with stem cell and other biotech research, nanotech promises to be hugely expensive, concentrate intelectual capital in the hands of a few major players, and in return give us more viable human beings with more stuff to consume.
No thank you.
So we should allow potentially dangerous substance to be used in products and let people buy them unknowingly?
Yes. Yes, we should.
It's too late for anyone to even think about putting a stranglehold on nanotech. I humbly submit three must-have technology arenas that depend on it: aircraft, auto, and chip design. manufacturers.
Current military jet propulsion is just about at it's limit. The engines could burn hotter, but that would mean melting the turbine blades, which I believe are a titanium alloy. The only way to currently combat this is to coat the blades in a ceramic, but getting the ceramic to stick to the alloy is problematic. Nanotechnology allows researchers to test the coating and how different additives such as boron can help. If the engine can burn hotter, than the aircraft can go quite a bit faster.
Fuel cells are arguably the way the automotive industry will derive power for vehicles 25 to 50 years from now. A huge part of the problem with fuel cells is the total inefficiency of the product. This is not due to a design flaw however, just a manufacturing one. Looking at the metallic-ceramic interface at the micron and nanometer lengthscales reveals that the two substances barely touch...a large source of the inefficiency.
Finally, if you want photonic or plasmonic computer chips, you're going to have to rely on nanotechnology. Current research being conducted is using carbon nanotube interconnects in the circuit. These allow electrons (or photons) to move throughout the system with little to no loss of the data carrier (the *on).
There are other must-have applications that may seem to have a negative environmental impact, but actually help it. Corrosion resistant materials for instance. Ask yourself how the Yucca Mountain containment facility will keep from developing even the tiniest hole due to corrosion, over 10,000 years?
Just food for thought. If you are insterested in separating the science from the fiction, check out the research being done at OSU's Material Science Engineering School[osu.edu]
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
What do any of these have to do with new technologies? I guess the nuclear weapons one would qualify, but the continued existence of the human race has more to do with levelheaded diplomacy than an overaggeration of their destructive potential. All the rest of them pretty much relate to the earth's booming population in one way or another. Even the negative population growth promoting wackos would probably prefer to see that stemmed through less procreation rather than eliminating life preserving technologies.
> roll does not mean "I disagree".
Nope, but this means troll:
> "shut up, shut up, shut up - I can make a lot of money with this, so you've better shut up about anything negative we might face when developing nanotech".
Next point, "Europes Children are Dying from Pollution".. Did you actually read this before posting?
It clearly states that the major cause of death is accident related, IE Auto accidents and falls. Hardly "Pollution".
Not commenting that motor vehicles in densely populated regions may be perceived indeed as an instance of a pollution of sorts (no, I am not a car hater, I drive a vintage DB 180D and an authentic MINI - not a BMW), I might add that YES, I read the article, and, NO, I did not pick a single sentence.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
I'd like to pick a bone with this labelling people with environmental concerns as some kind of wierdo hippy gang.
We live on a planet that is vital for our existence, yet we (as a species) seem to take every opportunity to destroy it or damage it, because each individual small piece of damage doesn't seem much on it's own. It seems that only once it's too late and we've poisoned the whole place will we think about changing our ways.
Quite frankly, if you aren't really, really concerned about protecting the environment that gives you and those you love the chance to live, then you don't deserve a life here at all.
When making money comes ahead of protecting our home, that's when you know we are fucked. But then, only a complete asshole would put profits ahead of planet anyway.
I'm not going to comment on the nanotechnology issue as I'm still undecided, but trying to label people who care about the environment as a minority freak group is just bullshit.
Everybody needs to care about the environment we live in, because if we don't, there will come a point where the environment we live in will be damaged beyond repair, and we will no longer be able to live in it.
Unlike nanotechnology, this isn't fiction. It's already happening, and will continue to get worse unless we act right now to improve our ways. No amount of technology can save us from the terminal stupidity of our species, and making fun of people for looking out for our home is about as low as you can go.
Organic free-range music... yum!
There's a lot of room between over and under-regulation. If the "green gang" really had that much power then we would have no computer industry, no energy generation, no biotech, etc. etc. etc. On the other hand if they didn't have any say at all then we'd be looking at an uninhabitable planet... from space. Companies will do what they need to to strengthen their bottom line, even at the expense of the greater good. As for the risks, there is a likelihood that computers connected to the internet could become a self-aware consciousness that would see humans as a threat and destroy all of humanity then enslave every single world in this galaxy. Even though that hasn't happened people use computers to hack, commit crimes and steal other people's identities. Yet, we churn out computers by the millions. Every technology has it's drawbacks. And for every technology the dire sounding worst case scenario is always going to be some far fetched doomsday prediction that has a snowball's chance in hell of actually happening. I don't think people understand how advanced nanomachines would have to be to be able to produce grey goo. Nanomachines that can replicate and energize themselves from the environment have existed long before we came around. Artificial ones will continue to be the holy grail of nanotechnology long after it has become a part of everyday life. It's one thing to be able to manufacture nanomachines. It's another thing to have nanomachine's self assemble in a controlled environment with a carefully defined mix of precursors. It's a completely separate thing to have nanomachines that can gather these resources from the wild, refine them and build copies of themselves. Yes, people will abuse nanotech. There have always people that have abused any technology from blacksmithing to chemistry to computers. These people will probably use nanotech for illegal self-enhancement or more underhanded activities but you don't punish the technology, you punish the criminal.
That's where the stupidity in the proposed falls. Nanotech is a bunch of very disparate materials that have been lumped together 1) by people who don't understand them, and 2) researchers trying to make their work sound more interesting than it might actually be.
Nanotech is pretty much nothing and everything. This is just baseless fear of the unknown. We've been doing nanotech for years, it's called pharmaceuticals. Just like any other material, safety needs to be determined on a case-by-case basis.
I have more faith in research facilities in terms of hazard safety than i have in fabrication facilities... so, yes the government should help research safety practises. In the meantime, they should be (or remain) over-protective. No nano-products should be planned/manufactured until the safety regulation is in place, and the research is finished.
Quoth, TFA: "...leave nanotech development alone... allow individual regulatory agencies to weigh in on specific products..."
Some people are just ignorant assholes. That works for safe/predictable products with known chemical elements, like, i dont know, PLASTICS. Oh, and some products flourish without regulation too... like THE INTERNET. But Nanotech is a whole new ballgame!!!
Haven't people learned from the regulations of the past? If you regulate a thing, only the people who would do harm with it will have it.
We've been breathing buckyballs, nanotubes, an other nanoscopic carbon structures since the domestication of fire. It's called "soot", and is where buckyballs were first discovered.
Harmfull stuff, too. Humans have evolved to be MUCH less damaged by such things as a result of long use of fire in enclosed places. (To the point that some dioxins amount to deadly poisons for EVERY animal but people, for whom they're just a medium-grade carcinogen/teratogen at exposure levels high enough to overwhelm the detoxification enzymes.)
Granted industrial production of nanoscopic materials means more exposure to a wider variety of stuff. But biochemical/nanomechanical warfare has been in progress since the advent of single-celled life. Most nanotechnological hazards are likely to be a matter of degree, not something totally new - even if particluar materials ARE totally new.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
People seem to think that nanotech is magic.
It really isn't, it obeys the same laws as the rest of the universe. A big law being THERMODYNAMICS.
One aspect of the peky little law is that the tighter you try and control something the more energy it takes.
Nanotech is based on controling the EXACT 3 demensional placement of atoms....about as highly controled as you can get.
Nanotech is going to requier HUGE amounts of energy....
No translate that to the real world...a Nanite is kept in a container specially designed to supply the energy for it to function.
It gets out and discovers that there is not enough free energy around to build additional nanites faster than they are destroyed by nature.
Nanites will be very usefull for very specific reactions but the assembilers will be almost useless outside of a controled environment.
To establish my credibility: IAAPP (I am a physics professor). I'm an active researcher in nanoscale electronics, and I teach a two-course sequence on nanoscale physics and engineering.
Josh Wolfe is emblematic of what is wrong with media perception of science today. He has no undergraduate or graduate training in any physical science at all. His background is in business, and he works for a VC firm. He has no scientific credibility.
He is, however, articulate, bright, and very slick. That is why this guy, with less training than the undergrad working in my lab, is able to get national attention from the media (be it Forbes, or CNN, or MSNBC, all of which have deferred to him as an "authority on nanotechnology").
He has every right to speak his mind, and when it comes to investing in high technology companies, I think he knows his stuff. However, there is no way this guy should be viewed as an appropriate authority to whom policy makers should pay attention.
(By the way, I actually agree with his position on this issue. I simply take issue with the idea that he is viewed by the media as worthy of a bully pulpit on this.)
Maybe, but I'd rather have the mob rule where everybody has a single vote than that nonsense.
The owls are not what they seem
Why are we discussing this in this forum where only a few are well informed on the subject? Nanotech will be regulated to some extent and there are active knowledgeable groups like the Center for Responsible Nanotech and the Foresight Institutte that are able to say what is likely to be needed with credibility.
Lots of basic materials science is regulated. It is overseen and done in secure facilities. If the nano hypers say it cures old age, require drug company oversight. Apply appropriate means based upon the claims being made. You inhale billions of tiny particles all the time. So if you are really afraid, STOP BREATHING!
This article mentions a few ancedotal accounts and scary potentialities. Hardly enough to get worked up about yet or cast blame on the enviornmentalists. If we want to castigate the enviornmental movement there are plenty of other places to start, for instance their refusal to prioritize issues which makes it very difficult to achieve victories on global warming (for instance here in the bay area the enviornmentalists want to tear down a dam to rescue the scenic landscape before offering another renewable energy replacement for the hydroelectric power). I think there are plenty of instances happening right now where enviornmentalists are putting emotion before reason to the ultimate detriment of the enviornment and we should worry about these far before this tenous concern about regulating nanotech.
However, I think the article is right to challenge the reflexive call for social discussion and debate about these issues. This isn't restricted just to nanotech but to virtually all scientific and even complex policy questions. It appears that somewhere along the line the fact that the voters have the right to vote on whatever opinion they have was confused with the idea that its okay for the voters to have whatever opinion they want and that it is somehow discussion amoungst the general populance which should decide issues of public policy.
Quite simply the average voter just doesn't have the training or expertise to understand these issues. Thus it is NOT societal debate which should decide the question but scientific debate. Just as it is a bad idea to let public discussion drive the debate about how much arscenic we should have in our water rather than scientific experimentation (the public will probably come up with the unrealistic standard of 0).
Of course at the end of the day the public needs to decide which experts to trust but it should be emphasized that this is the role the general voter should aspire towards. The voter should not aspire to making up their own mind based on emotions and intuitions they have about nanotech (or GMOs or whatever) but based on the degree of trust and credibility they have in the various experts.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Scanning for biological virii... clean.
Scanning for nanotech virii... WARNING!
MMORPG_p0wn3d virus detected.
p0wn3d nanotech agents embed themselves between the nerve endings of the first three fingers of each hand, thus slowing reflex response time by up to 0.25 seconds. Created by a frsutrated MMORPG player who always lost in every duel, this virus allowed him to win occasionally.
Why would we need regulation?
...for the same reason you don't fear the bacterial equivalent. Fuel energy is scarce, as are vital resources, so the search for food takes up approximately 100% of a small organism's time and effort.
For nano to be useful it will either have to be in a food-rich environment (eg: inside the human body) or else plug into the power socket in the wall. Grey goo (were such a thing invented) would munch through the power cord, and just stop.
Hitachi's new nano-battery looks like it'll do more to clean up the environment more than any amount of well meaning legislation. I did the math and unless I'm horribly mistaken it could wipe out our dependence on gasoline, saving the average american about $2,000 pre-tax dollars a year.
Wrote about it on my old blog here.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
The point is not whether we regulate nanotech out of existance, but we should be cautious. CFC's, asbesdos, thalidomide, smoking. We are not perfect and we do not know what effect, if any, nano particles in the atmosphere have. Until a clearer picture of our understanding arises we should be cautious, we're usually wrong at some point maybe this time we can try and stop the worst happening before it does.
Nanotech may be the answer, but until we know it won't wipe the human race off the earth let's not rush in like a bull in a china shop.
enjoy
-------
Protect the enviroment, it created you.
As a bonus, here are some of the results from some others' research on nanotech:
* When rats inhale carbon nanotubes, the tubes bypass the blood-brain barrier and cover the brain. The resultant rats had black brains!
* Titania dioxide, a common ingredient in paint, sun screen and tooth paste, is very toxic to cells and rats.
* Silica dioxide, also a common ingredient in paint and food, is not toxic.
* Fullerenes (aka, bucky balls) are deadly to fish (verified by Richard Smalley from Rice University --- he created bucky balls)
Note that all of these materials exhibit very different properties from the bulk. You won't get sick from most of these products if you use the same concentrations of material, but simply change the size of the particles.
Our work will be published early next week on http://www.nanotoxicology.ufl.edu/.
We've been eating cyanide for ages, in plants, as well. But there's a huge difference between that *one* plant component and all of the others that you consume. If you *purified and isolated* the cyanide, it is a potent poison.
The exact same thing holds true for CNTs.
What a crazy random happenstance!
> So we should allow potentially dangerous substance to be used in products and let people buy them unknowingly?
That's why people call environmentalists "whackos," because they see everything as "If it's not my way, it must be the complete opposite."
Who the fuck said "unknowingly?" What if I WANT nanotechnology in my products, and know it. Is it then safe?
Oh, concerning YellowStone, Native Americans in the Arizona area experienced several inches of Volcanic ash in early AD. This dramatically increased the fertility of the soil - and their crops once they discovered that leaving the ash layer in place and planting seed underneath was the best practice. The ash layer kept the ground warm and compensated for the cooling from the "nuclear" winter - sort of a super mulch. It might be worth making some contingincy plans for a YellowStone eruption, including compiling the experiences of survivors of similar events in the past.
Hydrofluric acid (HF). THe really high molar like 6, 12 and above if there is any is really nasty. If you spill it on your self you have to use this paste that is i think Calcium hydroxide Ca(OH)2 but any base with enought should work. ANd the teacher told a stroy from when she was a hazmat and i scarded the crap out of us. We had do use 6mol HF and it was scary cutting it from 12. But the point it HF will burn straight to the bone. H2SO4 won't un less its a massive amount. Also anything with benzene is nasty im scard to go to part of the chem locker when i lab assist.
The whole discussion is totally irrelevant. U.S. law is just a local ordinance. Even if we could define it and agree on what to regulate, we'd merely be ensuring that progress in the regulated areas takes place elsewhere in the world. On the other hand, we already did this with stem cell research. Why not nanotech too? ;-(
Have you considered the possibility that two interlaced sub-universes could be created, flickering with every time quanta?
:)
First you exist, then you don't. then you do. I've thought long and hard about this, and either nobody has ever created a time machine(because if you created a time machine and intentionally went back in time to change something, you'd have no reason to go back in time to change that because it's already been changed, so you wouldn't, so it would, so either the universe breaks somehow, or an additional split universe begins to interlace.
Naturally, anyone with greater knowlege of glactic or non-classical physics should feel free to prove me wrong. God knows I don't know everything.
It's been a long time.
Can be, although I will say that "systems" anything is the new somteimes-meaningless catch-all terms that's being used to impress. Kind of like nano is, though that's losing its coolness factor. I guess if you combine "nano" and "systems," then it's like some uber-buzzword that's guaranteed to get your grant approved.
Nanotech is chemistry. Why shouldn't chemistry be regulated? Of course, it shouldn't be regulated wrong, but that's another word for "no regulation". Unless Wolfe can somehow indemnify us with his vital organs for when he's surprised to find that a chemical company has damaged us with a nanotech screwup, he's just another greedy opportunist.
--
make install -not war
Now that we know that some nanoparticles ARE dangerous, we've already crossed the line of "when did you know it was dangerous." Absent regulation, the companies of today who create, or even do research, in nanoparticles without taking extreme precautions are just setting themselves up for a gazillion-dollar class-action lawsuit 15 years from now when researchers and others start dying.
A better approach would be to identify "known risky" vs "suspect risky" vs "studied and no known risk" vs "unknown risk." Anything not known to be safe should be clearly labeled as such and employees who have to handle the stuff should be compensated accordingly, including the option to purchase lifetime health insurance at a non-high-risk premium, with the difference paid for by the employer or industry.
Governmental regulation has one nice side effect: Since it puts people "on notice" of known risk, it theoretically provides a safe harbor against "unadvertised risk" lawsuits. Yes I know about the tobacco settlements and bazillion-dollar jury awards a few years back, but if I were on a jury, nobody who started smoking after the Surgeon General's Warning came out would get a penny unless the tobacco companies lied or withheld information from the public, and then it would be limited to cost of the lie or withheld information.
The bottom line:
Regulation should come in the form of:
1) publicize risks
2) publicize the fact that some risks are unknown or little-understood
3) take reasonable, non-bankrupting precautions to protect everyone who has to touch non-clean or unknown-risk chemicals
4) provide affordable health care options to those who have to work in the face of uncertain risks
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanide
Cyanide is created by many plants, fungi, and algae.
Horrible, yet still far superior to the other attempts.
Full Disclosure: I'm a Senior Associate with the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing http://imm.org/.
n es.html
I have to say that this article seriously misses the mark.
Recombinant DNA research self-regulation has been in place for 30 years now, and it has worked very well to prevent "Andromeda Strain" style accidents. The most recent full overhaul was in 1994:
http://www4.od.nih.gov/oba/rac/guidelines/guideli
There are people who are holding debates about similar regulation for molecular nanotechnology already: The National Nanotechnology Initiative http://www.nano.gov/, The Foresight Institute http://foresight.org/, The International Council on Nanotechnology http://icon.rice.edu/, and many others, including the IMM. The intent of these organizations is to establish guidelines for developement of nanotechnology, and to explore applications.
Here is the first set of guidelines which have been established:
http://imm.org/guidelines/current.html
I fully expect that this will be updated, as the technologies involved become more capable.
A good analysis of the actual societal implications is available from NNI here:
http://www.nano.gov/html/facts/society.html
Don't blow things out of proportion until they are actually implemented; the amount of regulation of any technology has historically always been as much or even much more than was necessary at the time.
-- Terry
If they're talking about the US, I'm more concerned about what the regulators would do than what the technicians would do.
The "live off the land" option is already impossible for just about everyone. The day the first cavemen used their ability to make fire to move into less crowded caves that were otherwise too cold in the winter we were dependent on technology. The bridge has dun ben burnt.
Humanity has solved all of its problems throughout our history by moving technology forward, never backwards. I don't see how excluding a primitive lifestyle is a genuine concern.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You're right... 3rd world doesn't apply. Technicaly the term is "Highly Indebeted Poor Countries" (since they're not -=all=- in the Southern Hemisphere).
High-ly In-debt-ed Poor... wait... that's like 47 syllables!
Fuck it... 3rd world....
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
I'd like to know why I'm often forced to login again if I visit the *.slashdot.org sections. It is quite annoying.
# 815 million people are undernourished
* 11 million children under age 5 die every year, over half of hunger-related causes
# 1 in 6 people is hungry
# 1 in 4 people lacks safe drinking water
Are the solutions to these problems social, technological or political?
Heh... You want cheap solar power? I don't know why nobody thought of this one yet... Power made from water boiled by the sun. That's right... Build a big reservoir that contains clean water. The reservoir would be covered by a sort of greenhouse. That would make it quite hot inside when the sun is shining on it. But it gets better: The glass would be made to focus the light of the sun into this greenhouse, and into the water, thereby heating the water to boiling just by virtue of the sun shining on it. The water would boil, the steam would turn turbines, and electricity would be generated.
yes.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is twice as dangerous since John Edwards has returned to private practice.
--"Sorry for the inconvience." Gods Last Words to his Creation
DNA, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
You don't live in a bubble.
That would lead to interesting science fiction about "temporal demultiplexers" and "temporal multiplexers" ... jaunt between timelines at will.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
> So if you want to paint your house with lead paint, you should be able to?
Yes. However, if doing so puts children at risk, I'm not sure it would be a good idea, and you'd still have to take responsibility for that.
> Should you then be allowed to sell that house?
As long as the new owners know that it's lead-based, sure.
As for the office, that is different, because there are already employee safety laws.
To not regulate nano is like letting cancer cells run amok. The power of all technologies are so immenselly powerful that it would be foolish to not regulate them. In nature all organisms are regulated - your immune system regulates the cells of your body. Anarchists - cancer cells are quickly killed or they take over. The internet is a system that came to be without regulation, and look at the problems that are evolving with security. Does anyone really think that regulating the inevitable miniaturization of technology will really slow anything down? China, Japan, Europe, Singapore, etc are all working on Miniaturizing. Even if we regulate will that make any diference for China? Perhaps not, but I think the rule should be the following that we can champion. You should be able to stop or dissasemble anything you build. That means no persistant nano molecules, and no grey goo either. Technology is like a runaway freight train, accelerating downhill. Nobody can stop it but a driver would be nice, and a brakeman.