Giant Public Nanofactories

In the context of yesterday's entry on making use of omnipresent virtual transparency to monitor the legitimate use of molecular manufacturing, Nato Welch suggests an interesting proposal...

Circumventing the technical protection measures on nanofactories would require a certain level of privacy. While efforts have been described to make the operation of nanofactories a published event through the use of Internet connections, the most obvious step to make a nanofactory's operation public record is to actually require that the fabs themselves be installed in public spaces, and monitored with video and audio surveillance in the same way stores are today.

Safeguards against removing the machines from the surveillance zone would be straightforward, given super-strong materials. Circumventing the surveillance mechanisms could be made difficult with redundant surveillance (multiple, cheap cameras throughout the zone), making a sophisticated information attack necessary to substitute "spoofed" video feeds, as well (simply disabling the surveillance is easily detectable).

The idea is to turn nanofactories into BUILDINGS, so as to make stealing one for study a trivially detectable and absurd endeavor.

Since fabs would be as easy to replace as they would be to repair, there is no need to maintain or repair a failing fab. Thus, there would be no need to service it. This would eliminate the possibility of an attacker posing as an authorized fab technician.

When production becomes a public act rather than a private one, it becomes accountable.

Nanofactories the size of buildings...technically, it's quite feasible, and the consequent simplification of security issues is attractive. The factories could be widely distributed, to be no further, perhaps, than one hour's travel (or even closer) for 90% of the human race. However, this approach still requires the existence of a global authority overseeing the creation of every new nanofactory as well as approval of all available product designs.

It's an idea that should be thoroughly debated and studied.

Mike Treder

Comments

[cdnprodigy]

Sure, the above works. But it is the human element which has not been accounted for. What criterion should be used to select "approved technicians"? Will they have to be monitored in their private lives; if not, how to prevent proliferation from them? How to deal with people independantly figuring out MM? With MM technology, the physical security of authorized fab-plants should be trivially easy.

[jim moore]

I have a better idea. Air Ship Nano-Factories. You have a few million very large floating nano-fabricators, they are solar powered and get their carbon from carbon dioxide in the air. You are sitting (any where in the world) interacting with the wireless web, you finish with your design ( or find the design you want), then send in your order to the nearest factory. It makes your object and drops it (via a smart parachute or UAV) into your hands.

I think that Air Ship Nano-Factories could preserve most of the connivence of home base nano-factories with out a need for in-house monitoring.

I would like the infrastructure of the future to be wireless, pipeless, and roadless. Widely distributed/ conveniently accessible nano-factories need to a part of that.

[Tom Craver]

Sounds a bit like my proposal to centralize just the atomically precise nanoblock-making factories, but far less convenient for users.

It reminds me of an old SF story about an inventor in Soviet Russia, mentioning another inventor whose great idea was a highly efficient mass production can-opener, located in easy walking distance...

I presume the idea is that it would also have only a fixed repertoire of designs - else one could simply load a wolf-in-sheep-skin design into the system and walk off with it. Sounds like a socialist's 5-year-plan dream - tight control for the "citizens", but of course you can trust the government - they're just there to help...