Responsible Nanotechnology

Tech's Dark Potential

The headline says:

Tech's dark potential troubles terror expert

And the article, in the San Jose Mercury News, reports:

Five years from now, a wave of cyber attacks cripples the Internet infrastructure and global finance. One terrorist assault targets a supercomputer hub at Moffett Field near Mountain View.

At the same time, accelerated advances in computer science and biotechnology raise the prospect of genetic enhancement that could lead to 'super kids', and computer hookups to the brain that could alter the nature of humanity.

In Richard Clarke's new thriller Breakpoint, an unusual blend of science fiction, politics and tech talk, the world is a more dangerous place. China is a prime suspect in the attacks, along with Russian mobsters, a shadowy group of hackers and some right-wing anti-technology militants.

But Clarke, who made headlines as terrorism czar in the Clinton and Bush administrations, has set out to write something much more than a fast-paced airport read.

With a plot sure to create a buzz in the tech community, he wants to generate a debate from Silicon Valley to Washington on difficult ethical and practical questions he thinks will demand attention in the next 10 years. . .

Clarke concedes it's difficult to predict when emerging technologies in genetic engineering, for example, could be widely available.

And even if U.S. regulations are adopted, rapid research will happen outside the country, he adds, just as restrictions on embryonic stem cell research prompted research elsewhere.

"We need to be aware of what's coming, because sometimes new technologies burst on the scene before we decide if we want them and what the consequences are," Clarke said during an interview. . .

James Hughes, a bioethicist and sociologist, said, "The scenarios Clarke describes are quite plausible," though genetic enhancements will require years of clinical trials with animals and face serious liability problems.

The U.S. military has conducted research in brain-computer linkages, exoskeleton body suits to enhance strength and endurance and pharmaceuticals to improve stamina. Clarke includes a five-page author's note that describes the status of technologies he refers to in the book.

Some of these developments "scare the hell out of some people," said Hughes, director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. He favors the use of new technologies to improve human capability, with some controls. . .

Read the rest.

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

The Nanotech Revolution

News is getting around about the British IDEAS Factory results, and its implications for the rapid development of molecular manufacturing:

If, in fact, full-blown nanotechnology erupts into our lives in 20 years, instead of 50, the results are likely to be as disruptive as the first century of the Industrial Revolution, but compressed into a much shorter time period. And, given that it might, it is the duty of those of us who would prefer an unimaginable future to an unthinkable one to take seriously the responsibility of handling nanotechnology carefully.

But it's also important to remember that we have a huge advantage that our ancestors lacked as they struggled with the first Industrial Revolution: we have a history of technology, and we understand that what technologies are adopted and how they are used is a matter of societal choice. We have the power to imagine, to anticipate and ultimately to steer the development of nanotechnology.

How might we go about that? The first step must be more research -- on that, nearly all the thinkers worth hearing agree.

We need to better understand the possible paths by which molecular manufacturing and other nanotech applications might develop. CRN, for example, has proposed "Thirty Essential Studies" which it believes will illuminate the way forward.

That's from a long and well-written article on nanotechnology at the WorldChanging site. I encourage you to read the whole thing, and leave your comments there as well as here.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

CRN Timeline Revisited

In a comment on our "Nanotechnology Policy Gap" blog article, Jan-Willem Bats asked:

Does this progress make your "probably by 2015" prediction shift to a "probably by 2012" prediction?

He is referring to the timeline statement on CRN's main web site that says:

Today the theories for using mechanical chemistry to directly fabricate nanoscale structures are well-developed and awaiting progress in enabling technologies. Assuming all this theory works—and no one has established a problem with it yet—exponential general-purpose molecular manufacturing appears to be inevitable. It might be become a reality by 2010, likely will by 2015, and almost certainly will by 2020.

To answer the question, no, this new IDEAS factory development does not give us reason to alter our prediction. Instead, it confirms what we have been saying all along.

Our expectations for the rapid development of exponential general-purpose molecular manufacturing are based on a careful study of the steps that will be required to make this technological breakthrough, along with an understanding of the accelerating trends in computing and other enabling technologies.

When CRN posted the statement above (in July 2004) it was considered, by many who noticed it, to be overly optimistic or even ridiculous. But in the two and a half years since then, numerous events have occurred that make our timeline look much more reasonable.

• September 2004: CRN's Chris Phoenix and Tihamer Toth-Fejel of General Dynamics were awarded a research grant from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts to study "Large-Product General-Purpose Design and Manufacturing Using Nanoscale Modules". Their results were described in an article on NASA's website a year later.

• February 2005: CRN prepared a series of white papers for a Congressionally mandated NAS/NRC study on "Molecular Self-Assembly." Chris Phoenix was an invited panelist for the NRC meeting.

• June 2005: The Foresight Nanotech Institute, in cooperation with Battelle, a global research organization, announced their initiative to develop a "Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems." That project is ongoing.

• June 2006: Robert A. Freitas Jr. and Ralph Merkle launched a website announcing a "Nanofactory Collaboration," the first project explicitly aimed at building a high-performance general-purpose nanofactory manufacturing system based on molecular manufacturing. The timeline of their project calls for initial diamond mechanosynthesis in 2010, with "nanofactories and nanorobotic products" beginning around 2020.

• December 2006: The US National Academy of Sciences released its long-awaited analysis of molecular manufacturing, in "A Matter of Size: Triennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative." CRN stated that conclusions published in the report will accelerate research toward the development of molecularly-precise manufacturing.

• January 2007: Remarkable results were achieved during a week long gathering of British scientists. The advanced projects they announced -- which have been funded and are expected to finish in three to five few years -- suggest that the era of molecular manufacturing could arrive far more swiftly than previously imagined.

Along the way, of course, an enormous number of impressive scientific and technical developments have also been announced -- too many to list here. We've written about the most important of them in our series of monthly science essays.

Our concern is that progress on the technical side is moving much faster than research into the profound societal and environmental implications of molecular manufacturing.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Big Discoveries

Not Necessarily Relevant Quote of the Week:

Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.

— Marshall McLuhan

Tag: quotes

Nanotech For Dummies

Understanding Nanotechnology is a new web site put together by Earl Boysen, one of the authors of Nanotechnology For Dummies.

Here is an excerpt from a page titled "What Is Molecular Manufacturing?"

If you're a Star Trek fan, you remember the replicator, a device that could produce anything from a space age guitar to a cup of Earl Grey tea. Your favorite character just programmed the replicator, and whatever he or she wanted appeared.

Researchers are working on developing a method called molecular manufacturing that may someday make the Star Trek replicator a reality. The gadget these folks envision is called a molecular fabricator; this device would use tiny manipulators to position atoms and molecules to build an object as complex as a desktop computer. As shown in this video, researchers believe that raw materials can be used to reproduce almost any inanimate object using this method.

By building an object atom by atom or molecule by molecule, molecular manufacturing can produce new materials with improved performance over existing materials. For example, an airplane strut must be very strong, but also lightweight. A molecular fabricator could build the strut atom by atom out of carbon, making a lightweight material that is stronger than a diamond. Remember that a diamond is merely a lattice of carbon atoms held together by bonds between the atoms. By placing carbon atoms, one after the other, in the shape of the strut, such a fabricator could create a diamond-like material that is lightweight and stronger than any metal. . .

Molecular fabricators may be available to anybody, anywhere in about twenty years or so. When fabricators are available, any item whose design has been programmed into them can be produced cheaply and in large quantities. This could significantly improve living conditions in regions that do not have easy access to manufactured goods. For example, water filters could be produced to help in regions with contaminated water supplies and solar cells could make electricity available in the remotest jungle or desert.

However, molecular manufacturing could also turn our world's economies on their heads. Many manufacturing industries may be made obsolete and society could be transformed forever. Molecular manufacturing could spawn another industrial revolution that completely changes the way we do business. At the same time, such advances could make it easy and cheap to produce powerful weapons. The ability to produce this kind of drastic change is the reason that nanotechnology is often referred to as a "disruptive" technology.

Nicely stated!

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Radically Changing Science

An article at Technology News Daily says:

Nanotechnology Will Turn Science Fiction Into Reality

Nanotechnology has long left the laboratory and its discoveries and products are all around us -- from longer lasting tennis balls, waterproof pants and drug delivery patches to quicker and more powerful computers, and faster burning rocket fuels. Last year alone, nano-business garnered $32 billion in sales of household products in the U.S.

Using nanotechnology, scientists have found ways to manufacture molecules - - some of the smallest building blocks of nature -- and put them together a few at a time. According to many experts, nanotechnology is triggering a revolution in building materials that is radically changing science and technology.

Descriptions of nanotech's beneficial possibilities for medicine, robotics, display technologies, and so on, are in the article. But it ends with:

[M]any experts caution that the more powerful technologies become, the more they can affect society, the economy, politics and even human identity. Stanford University’s Paul Saffo says that’s all the more reason to develop policies for the use of nanotechnology.

“The lessons from the atomic bomb and nuclear technology in the last fifty years are instructive. We first invented the bomb and then we had to invent a regime to try and keep people from shooting off the bomb. And we still don’t know how that story is going to end. And we are going to do that same thing with these new technologies. As a friend of mine likes to say, “Technology is making us like gods.” Well, if we have become like gods, then we better learn to be good at it,” cautions Professor Saffo.

Still, Saffo agrees with many experts who say that nanotechnology ultimately stands to produce much more benefit than harm for society.

More benefit than harm? Perhaps. But we may not get to find out unless, as Saffo says, we are smart about developing effective and responsible policies in advance.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Making Sensible Policy

Yesterday, in response to our press release on the IDEAS Factory results, a leading science blogger asked me:

What should the first steps in nanotech policy formation be? What kind of policies are needed?

Here is the answer I gave:

We can't be certain yet what kind of policies are needed, because we don't know for sure how powerful molecular manufacturing technology actually will be, nor do we know when it will be developed. If it ends up taking 50 years, like some still claim, or even 25 years, then other emerging technologies will have changed the world so much by then that MM will likely make less of an impact. On the other hand, if it arrives within the next 10-12 years, as CRN thinks is probable, then it could be transformative and disruptive.

It's imperative that we begin to get a better understanding of how quickly the technology will be developed, what the key milestones along the way will be, and who is most likely to push it forward. All of these questions remain unanswered, and in most quarters still unasked.

CRN is pushing for the adoption of our Thirty Essential Nanotechnology Studies by relevant and responsible government bodies and by other leading international organizations. Putting diligent effort into conducting those studies and either confirming or revising our preliminary conclusions would go a long way toward building the body of knowledge that is needed in order to begin making sensible policy for advanced nanotechnology.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Nanotechnology Policy Gap

Earlier today, CRN issued this statement:

British Breakthrough Highlights Nanotechnology Policy Gap

An urgent need for new nanotechnology policy is highlighted by breakthrough results from a recent British government funded project. For the first time ever, a group of high-level scientists assembled for the purpose of inventing something as close as they could get to the long-sought nanotechnology goal of building precise products atom by atom. The remarkably advanced projects those scientists produced -- which they hope to complete in three to five few years -- suggest that the era of molecular manufacturing could arrive far more swiftly than previously imagined.

"What this shows, even more strongly than before, is the critical necessity of additional work on implications and policy," said Mike Treder, Executive Director of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN). "Existing nanotechnology policies, and most proposed policies, do not address huge new areas of concern raised by tomorrow's revolutionary manufacturing potential. That gap could be calamitous."

Nanofactories will use vast arrays of tiny machines to fasten single molecules together quickly and precisely, allowing engineers, designers, and potentially anyone else to make powerful products at the touch of a button. In a single week of intense interdisciplinary work, an "IDEAS Factory on the Software Control of Matter" produced three ground-breaking research proposals that bring the nanofactory concept closer to reality. The project was sponsored by the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), a national science agency that also will fund the proposals.

"If, as expected, nanofactories can be used to build more nanofactories, then the impacts on society may be extreme," said Treder. "From remarkable advances in health care, environmental repair, and poverty reduction, to severe economic disruption, political upheaval, and the possibility of a new arms race: all these implications and more must be understood. Now it appears that our time to prepare is getting shorter."

The goals of the IDEAS Factory project were audacious: to make progress toward the vision of a "matter compiler" that could build atomically precise products under computer control. The forward-looking proposals coming from the IDEAS Factory should expand expectations as to what's possible at the nanoscale, and hold the potential to accelerate the development of nanofactory systems.

"This shows that molecular manufacturing, which has been considered a far-future result of nanotechnology, is now a fruitful topic for current scientific attention," said CRN Director of Research Chris Phoenix. "We expect that the IDEAS Factory will be a trend leader, inducing other nanoscientists to use molecular manufacturing as an inspiration and target for their work."

Participants in the IDEAS Factory designed research projects using an innovative process in which scientists from many different fields work together to bypass the conventional limitations of their fields. The three proposals they developed are expected to accomplish in just a few years what might have taken twenty with traditional approaches. Funding has already been assured by the EPSRC and experimental work will begin shortly.

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Stories of a Nanotech Future

On Saturday and Sunday, January 20 and 21, members of the CRN Global Task Force participated in a first-of-its-kind event. About a dozen people, representing four countries on three continents, and with training in a variety of disciplines, came together for a nanotechnology scenario creation project via virtual presence. They began the process of developing a series of professional-quality models of a world in which exponential general-purpose molecular manufacturing has become a reality.

The purpose of this scenario creation activity is to offer plausible, logical, understandable "stories" about near-future worlds (circa 2020) in which we might actually live, and in which we must contend with the possibly severe military, political, economic, social, medical, environmental, and ethical implications of molecular manufacturing.

What will that future look like? What can we learn from picturing it now that might help us to avoid the worst pitfalls and generate the greatest benefits?

It will take some time for the stories that we are generating to be written. The process that began last weekend will continue in February and will be repeated over the next several months until we have a broad and strong collection of scenarios that are ready to be published. We'll keep you informed about our progress.

Jamais Cascio, who did an amazing job of conducting the workshop for us, also did an amazing job of recounting the experience on his Open the Future blog. Last October, we appointed Jamais as a Global Futures Strategist for CRN. He is becoming an increasingly important and valuable member of CRN's team.

Thanks to all who participated!

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Beware 'Free Wi-Fi' Scam

Computerworld says:

The next time you're at an airport looking for a wireless hot spot, and you see one called "Free Wi-Fi" or a similar name, beware -- you may end up being victimized by the latest hot-spot scam hitting airports across the country.

You could end up being the target of a "man in the middle" attack, in which a hacker is able to steal the information you send over the Internet, including usernames and passwords. And you could also have your files and identity stolen, end up with a spyware-infested PC and have your PC turned into a spam-spewing zombie. The attack could even leave your laptop open to hackers every time you turn it on, by allowing anyone to connect to it without your knowledge.

The full article tells how the attack works and how to keep yourself safe from it.

(Hat tip KurzweilAI.net)

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog