Responsible Nanotechnology

C-R-Newsletter #43

The latest edition of the C-R-Newsletter has been posted on our main website.

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:

Nanofactory Development Project
Mike Roco on Molecular Nanosystems
Risk Governance Report
Printable Robots and UAV's
Anticipating Vicious Cycles
Friends Say "Size Matters"
CRN Goes Down Under
New Zealand is Listening
CRN Goes to Tennessee
Feature Essay: Inapplicable Intuitions

Read the whole newsletter here — and sign up for a free subscription here.

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology future

Intelligent Life

Not Necessarily Relevant Quote of the Week:

The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.

— Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes

Tag: quotes

Nano in Your Coffee?

Not really. Or, at least, not yet anyway.

That headline is just a reference to the poster (left) for a series of "Nano Cafés" -- public discussions about the integration of nanotechnology into our society -- being held in Madison, Wisconsin.

From a story at WorldChanging.com:

Nano Cafés are one way to democratize nanotechnology in order to escape the rancor around nuclear power and genetic engineering. But unlike these technologies that opened to public discussion after their course was set, the public has a chance to steer nanotech in its earliest stages. Early discussions will be essential to accelerate the delivery of the most vital applications and duck the worst risks of a technology that may become as influential to the 21st century as automobiles were to the 20th.

Although these particular discussions do not seem to be focused on advanced generation nanotech (molecular manufacturing), they are a useful example of how to involve citizens in decision-making about pervasive technologies.

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Fantastic Visions

David Kirkpatrick, senior editor of Fortune magazine says:

In a short piece I wrote as part of a broader look at the future last September, I speculated that in the future we would feel that everything in life had become like an open-book test. "Any kind of information is available anytime you want it," I wrote. "Simply speak a question, or even think it. You will always be connected wirelessly to the network, and an answer will return from a vast, collectively-produced data matrix. Google queries will seem quaint."

At the time, I thought I was being a little wild, but less than a year later such talk is almost routine in the futurist camp. Chris Taylor at Business 2.0 this week published "Surfing the Web with Nothing but Brainwaves." Taylor explains that already quadriplegics can play videogames, control robotic arms, and turn a TV on and off, using only their minds. They are connected to a computer with an implant that reads electrical patterns in the brain.

Kirkpatrick wrote the above to introduce an article by Peter Schwartz and Rita Koselka in the current issue of Fortune on quantum computing, which begins:

She awakes early on the morning of April 10, 2030, in the capable hands of her suburban Chicago apartment. All night, microscopic sensors in her bedside tables have monitored her breathing, heart rate, and brain activity.

The tiny blood sample she gave her bathroom sink last night has been analyzed for free radicals and precancerous cells; the appropriate preventative drugs will be delivered to her hotel in Atlanta this evening. It's an expensive service, but as a gene therapist, Sharon Oja knows it's worth it.

She steps into the shower. The tiles inside detect her presence and start displaying the day's top headlines. The manned mission to Mars is going to launch ahead of schedule. U.S. military drones have destroyed another terrorist training camp using smart dust. A top Manhattan banker has been found guilty of fraud and sentenced to 10 years of low tech.

And today is the 20th anniversary of the very first quantum computer.

Sharon laughs. It is her 24th birthday, and she has little idea what the world was like before the qubits - the smallest pieces of quantum information - took over.

It's a fascinating and amusing piece. You should read the whole thing.

But you know what? It's too conservative. Heck, the authors even admit it.

Science fiction, right? Sure - just like satellites, moon shots, and the original microprocessor once were. To scientists on the quantum computing frontier, this scenario is conservative.

"The age of computing has not even begun," says Stan Williams, a research scientist at Hewlett-Packard. "What we have today are tiny toys not much better than an abacus. The challenge is to approach the fundamental laws of physics as closely as we can."

And now I'll make my prediction.

Today we're beginning to see maintream media coverage of "futuristic" ideas like quantum computing; not many years ago, we started seeing stories about "science fiction made real" through genetic engineering and biotechnology. Next on the horizon will be general awareness of the seemingly fantastic implications of nanofactory technology. That kind of high-profile coverage may still be two or three years away, but it's coming soon.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Nanofactory Development Project Gets Underway

Robert Freitas and Ralph Merkle have launched a website announcing a Nanofactory Collaboration.

This is a big deal. It's the first project explicitly aimed at building a high-performance general-purpose nanofactory manufacturing system based on molecular manufacturing. (The Foresight/Battelle Roadmap is an important theoretical investigation, but doesn't include development work.)

While acknowledging a lot of challenges, the project appears to see a well-defined pathway from today to a nanofactory. (The roadmap is still "under construction.")

Most of the current work is theoretical, but Philip Moriarty is listed as working on "Experimental investigation of possible tools and mechanisms for diamond mechanosynthesis."

The timeline of the project (bottom of this page) calls for inital diamond mechanosynthesis in 2010, with "nanofactories and nanorobotic products" beginning around 2020. Although this looks reasonable for this particular effort and approach, other efforts may be faster. Let's not forget that the human genome project took a lot less time than people initially expected, and most of the work was done in the last few years.

CRN will be watching with great interest to see how this project progresses, and working to steer it in responsible directions.

Chris Phoenix

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Prototyping Future Weapons

Today we're going to turn this space over briefly to Jamais Cascio, who makes some very important insights in this article from his Open the Future blog:

An unrelated pair of reports about unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) -- also referred to as "drones" -- should be looked at together. On July 14, an Israeli warship was hit by what was reported to be a cheap UAV outfitted with explosives, operated remotely by Hezbollah. Although subsequent reports attributed the blast to a conventional anti-ship missile, military analysts note that Hezbollah has been testing UAVs for just this sort of attack. Around the same time, New Scientist reported that Lockheed-Martin's new "Polecat" UAV, designed as a technology demonstrator, consists largely of parts printed in a 3-D printer.

The technique is widely used in industry to make prototype parts - to see if, for instance, they are the right shape and thickness for the job in hand. Now the strength of parts printed this way has improved so much that they can be used as working components.

About 90 per cent of Polecat is made of composite materials with much of that material made by rapid prototyping.

"The entire Polecat airframe was constructed using low-cost rapid prototyping materials and methods," says Frank Mauro, director of UAV systems at the Skunk Works.

You can see where I'm going with this. As the costs of 3D printing technology continues to plummet, and the capabilities of fabber systems continue to improve, we're heading into a world in which 4th Generation Warfare groups don't have to rely on shipments of weapons such as attack UAVs, but can simply print up a batch themselves. [CRN] has written some important essays on the question of the intersection of molecular manufacturing and military capacity. What the combination of stories about possible Hezbollah UAVs and Lockheed-Martin 3D-printed UAVs is that we won't have to wait until the advent of nanofactories to see what this problem looks like -- or to start thinking about ways it can be handled.

Well said, Jamais.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Molecular Nanosystems

Here's Mike Roco, senior adviser for nanotechnology to the US National Science Foundation, on "Nanotechnology's Future":

Today nanotechnology is still in a formative phase -- not unlike the condition of computer science in the 1960s or biotechnology in the 1980s... Over the next couple of decades, nanotech will evolve through four overlapping stages of industrial prototyping and early commercialization...

Below is a graphic that illustrates those four stages, or generations:

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Notice how Roco describes the significant differences that will emerge during the fourth generation:

After 2015-2020, the field will expand to include molecular nanosystems -- heterogeneous networks in which molecules and supramolecular structures serve as distinct devices. The proteins inside cells work together this way, but whereas biological systems are water-based and markedly temperature-sensitive, these molecular nanosystems will be able to operate in a far wider range of environments and should be much faster. Computers and robots could be reduced to extraordinarily small sizes. Medical applications might be as ambitious as new types of genetic therapies and antiaging treatments. New interfaces linking people directly to electronics could change telecommunications.

I want to emphasize what he's saying here: "whereas biological systems are water-based and markedly temperature-sensitive," by contrast, fourth-generation molecular nanosystems "will be able to operate in a far wider range of environments and should be much faster."

This sounds a lot like molecular manufacturing, with non-biological systems (perhaps composed of diamandoid) operating in a eutactic environment and capable of greatly improved throughput.

And guess what -- those "extraordinarily small" computers and robots that Roco foresees not only will provide smaller, faster, better medical applications and communications interfaces, but also will form the internal structure of a nanofactory.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

More Questions Than Answers

When I'm speaking to groups around the world about the future of nanotechnology, I often will say that CRN has more questions than answers. This means that the issues are highly complex, and that we are still early in the process of understanding all of the factors involved, and still, regrettably, far from the point of having workable and responsible solutions.

One method for thinking about possible solutions is to compare advanced generation nanotech -- molecular manufacturing -- with existing technologies that are dual-use; that is, that can be used for peaceful purposes and to provide civilian benefits, but that also can be used for projecting power through military applications.

An obvious candidate for comparison is nuclear energy. Recently, this very issue was discussed in an editorial on SciDevNet:

A combination of factors appears to be pushing the risk-benefit balance back into nuclear's favour as an energy option for developing countries. . .

Several factors now favour nuclear energy, in both the developed and the developing world. One is that whatever their attraction, renewable energy sources, such as biogas or even solar, are unlikely to meet the energy demands of the world's rapidly growing urban population. . .

None of this is reason for complacency about the dangers of nuclear energy. Many questions remain over how to secure its benefits while reducing its risks to a socially acceptable level.

Perhaps most importantly, the international community must ensure that nuclear material is not diverted towards military ends.

Aye, there's the rub.

Should someone else make these decisions about nuclear power on behalf of developing countries? Or is it something they should be allowed to decide for themselves?

Is it fair or reasonable for the world's most powerful nations to say to one developing country, 'No, you may not', and to a different developing country, 'Yes, you may'?

Is it fair or reasonable for a parent to say to one child, 'No, you may not', and to another child, 'Yes, you may'?

Is there any other choice?

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

A Millionth of One Percent

Not Necessarily Relevant Quote of the Week:

We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.

— Thomas Edison

Editorial Comment: Since Edison's time, we have learned an amazing amount. Of course, one of the things we don't know is how much there is to know, so it's impossible to be accurate about this -- but I think it's safe to say that we now know at least one-tenth of one percent about everything.

Mike Treder

Tag: quotes

The Future of Warfare

An insightful and frightening article from the Ottawa Citizen tells us:

Since Mideast fighting erupted a week ago, Hezbollah missiles have smashed into an Israeli warship in the Mediterranean and rained down on Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, causing death and seemingly well-targeted destruction.

In a fight with the far mightier Israeli military, the Lebanese guerrilla group has surprised many with its resilience -- and the range of its rockets.

Military might is no longer the exclusive province of nations. Extra-national groups now can mount significant fights against conventional armies.

Experts say Hezbollah is a formidable fighting force, growing ever more sophisticated and in recent years augmenting its missile arsenal with innovative technology including submersibles and unmanned drone aircraft.

The boost to Hezbollah's military capabilities raises questions about whether other militant organizations -- from Chechnya to Iraq -- are also getting their hands on increasingly cutting-edge weaponry, as the barriers to the spread of technology come down.

This unsettling development is sometimes called the "democratization of violence." Rapidly improving communications technologies have the unfortunate effect of allowing far more destructive power to fall into the hands of smaller groups than ever before.

Access to military secrets through the Internet and rapid advances in nanotechnology and computer-guided missiles may be leading to a certain levelling of the military playing field -- creating unprecedented opportunity for groups like Hezbollah and Hamas to inflict damage on wealthier and better-equipped adversaries.

Helped by the ease of e-mail, it also has passed logistical and strategic information to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, sparking fears in Israel that Hamas could move beyond the inaccurate, homemade Qassam rockets it regularly lobs into Israel.

Hezbollah also reportedly has been experimenting with pilotless drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, to survey northern Israel.

And amid fears that Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb, many experts are also concerned that terrorist organizations may acquire the ability to build a rudimentary "dirty bomb" -- with nuclear, chemical, or biological capabilities -- that could extract a massive death toll.

One of CRN's greatest concerns is that molecular manufacturing, in the form of personal nanofactories, could vastly expand this growing potential for asymmetric destructive capability. It seems clear to us that existing modes of settling disputes can only lead to huge losses of human life and grave suffering for countless numbers.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog