Responsible Nanotechnology

The Age of Nanotechnology

Another new book on nanotechnology has been published that includes a chapter we contributed. The book is The Age of Nanotechnology, edited by Nirmala Rao Khadpekar. It was published in India, but contains chapters written by both Indian researchers and by others from around the world. Our chapter is titled "Bridges to Safety, and Bridges to Progress" -- an updated version of this paper which you can download from our website.

Other recent books that contain contributions from CRN include Worldchanging: A Users Guide for the 21st Century, edited by Alex Steffen, and Nanoethics, edited by Fritz Allhoff, Patrick Lin, James Moor, and John Weckert.

     

We also have a chapter in the upcoming Global Catastrophic Risks, edited by Nick Bostrom and Milan Cirkovic.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics blog

Presidential Commission

Note: These scenarios are not predictions, and do not represent outcomes desired by the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. CRN intends the scenarios to provide a springboard for discussion of molecular manufacturing policies and societal responses. While each scenario can be understood individually, the real value of the process comes from the comparison of multiple scenarios. A strategic response that appears robust in one scenario may be dangerous in another; an organization, community, or polity using these scenarios to consider how to handle the emergence of molecular manufacturing should strive for responses that are viable across multiple scenarios. Finally, the numbering of the scenarios has nothing to do with importance or priority -- it's a simple reflection of the order in which they were completed.

Scenario #4: Presidential Commission

Presidential Commission on Molecular Manufacturing
Analysis: Origins of the Present Crisis

Executive Summary
August 14, 2019

The present struggle over dominance in the arena of nanomanufacturing technologies does not derive from a single cause.

The Commission found that the widely-held view (encouraged by administration leaks) that the crisis arose due to misbehavior on the part of non-governmental research groups (both corporate and academic) does not in fact explain the origins of the present situation; neither does the analysis, more prevalent in academic circles, that the nanotechnology strategies of the current generation of Russian leadership triggered the crisis. The position held by the opposition party, that the crisis derives from a series of policy missteps on the part of the current and previous administrations, is equally insufficient.

Alone, each of these explanations is incomplete. Together, however, they form the skeleton of a useful analysis of our current dilemma, and in doing so, suggest useful directions for how to resolve the crisis.

A Star Trek Replicator

Back to a recurring theme here: What is molecular manufacturing?

From the excellent "Understanding Nano" site, we get this explanation:

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.

Researchers believe that molecular manufacturing also has the potential to revolutionize medicine. For example, sensors that are smaller than blood cells could be produced inexpensively. When released into a patient's blood stream in large numbers, these sensors could provide very accurate diagnoses. Nanorobots could be built using molecular manufacturing to perform surgical procedures in a more precise way. By working at the cellular level, such nanorobots could prevent much of the damage caused by the comparatively clumsy scalpel.

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.

There's a lot more on that page, too, including a description of "who's working on molecular manufacturing." Check it out.

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics blog

Smart Cars, Finally

A New York Times piece by John Tierney tells us:

In the Future, Smart People Will Let Cars Take Control

“Within five years, it’s totally feasible to build an autonomous car that will work reliably in several limited domains,” says Sebastian Thrun, a computer scientist at Stanford. . .

In five years he expects a car that could take over simple chores like breezing along an expressway, inching along in stop-and-go traffic, or parking in the lot at a mall or airport after dropping off the driver. In 20 years, Dr. Thrun figures half of new cars sold will offer drivers the option of turning over these chores to a computer, but he acknowledges that’s just an educated guess. . .

But cars, unlike humans, will keep getting smarter. They will learn from their mistakes. They will not get distracted by cellphone calls. They will not drive drunk. Smart cars will never be infallible, but they don’t have to be. They just have to be better than the drivers who now cause more than 90 percent of traffic accidents and kill a million of their fellow humans per year. Smart cars might make their debut in special lanes where each car has to enter through a checkpoint (at highway speeds) to make sure its systems are working properly. Drivers would be enticed with another promise of smart cars: no traffic jams.

When a freeway filled with human drivers is operating at full capacity, Dr. Thrun notes, the cars actually occupy less than 10 percent of the road’s surface area. The rest is empty space between cars. Smart cars could be grouped more closely together, doubling or tripling the road’s capacity, as engineers have demonstrated by running a platoon of driverless Buicks, spaced just 15 feet apart, at 65 m.p.h. down Interstate 15 near San Diego.

Imagine no traffic jams. I wonder if you can?

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics blog

"50 years is a long time"

In a published interview with the New York Times, Internet security guru Bruce Schneier gives a compelling response to this question:

Q: In 50 years, what do you believe will be the most incredible, fantastic, mind-blowing advance in computers/technology at that time?

A: Fifty years is a long time. In 1957, fifty years ago, there were fewer than 2,000 computers total, and they were essentially used to crunch numbers. They were huge, expensive, and unreliable; sometimes, they caught on fire.

There was no word processing, no spreadsheets, no e-mail, and no Internet. Programs were written on punch cards or paper tape, and memory was measured in thousands of digits. IBM sold a disk drive that could hold almost 4.5 megabytes, but it was five-and-a-half feet tall by five feet deep and would just barely fit through a standard door. . .

Moore’s Law predicts that in fifty years, computers will be a billion times more powerful than they are today. I don’t think anyone has any idea of the fantastic emergent properties you get from a billion-times increase in computing power.

Yep. Not to mention the thoroughly transformative impacts of exponential general-purpose molecular manufacturing.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics blog

IEEE Calls For MM Funding

Tech Talk is a blog that offers "insights into tomorrow's technology from the editors of IEEE Spectrum," a monthly magazine published by the IEEE, described as "the world's largest professional technology association."

Through its global membership, IEEE is a leading authority on areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics among others.

So it's definitely worth paying attention when such a large and respected organization publicly takes a stand calling for funding of research related to molecular manufacturing (MM), also known as molecular nanotechnology.

A recent article on the Tech Talk blog states:

Proposed funding for further research into the potential of molecular nanotechnology is overdue and hopefully will lead to some productive research in this field.

This is in response to our publication of eight nanotechnology scenarios, about which their blog says:

Four recent announcements have reignited some proponents of molecular nanotechnology, most notably the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN), to examine scenarios of what will happen to the world when desktop nanofactories are available in 15 years, which is “arguably optimistic”, according to CRN.

The four recent developments are:

• The release by US National Research Council last year calling for more funding or experimental research in molecular manufacturing
  
• A request for proposals last July by DARPA for developing tip-based nanofabrication
  
• The UK Government in October providing grants into developing nanomachines that can build materials molecule by molecule
  
• The release last week of the Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems

It's interesting -- and gratifying -- that the IEEE chose to highlight the identical list of developments we provided in our press release about the scenarios.

After reviewing a few specific strengths and weaknesses of the above-mentioned Roadmap, the Tech Talk blog article concludes with:

Hopefully, the combination of announced funding and a research agenda will remove much of the speculation and acrimony that seems to have surrounded molecular nanotechnology and just bring it to where it should have been all along: a field of scientific endeavor.

We couldn't agree more.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics blog

Negative Drivers

Note: These scenarios are not predictions, and do not represent outcomes desired by the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. CRN intends the scenarios to provide a springboard for discussion of molecular manufacturing policies and societal responses. While each scenario can be understood individually, the real value of the process comes from the comparison of multiple scenarios. A strategic response that appears robust in one scenario may be dangerous in another; an organization, community, or polity using these scenarios to consider how to handle the emergence of molecular manufacturing should strive for responses that are viable across multiple scenarios. Finally, the numbering of the scenarios has nothing to do with importance or priority -- it's a simple reflection of the order in which they were completed.

Scenario #3: Negative Drivers

A story of death and redemption in three acts...

Things fall apart; the center does not hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
2008-2011

What a difference a year can make. In early '09, when the new president took office, all of the news was about just how tolerant and forward-looking the American public had become. Oh, the media kept sniping, and the losing ticket found lucrative homes in think tanks, but there was a real sense, back then, that we'd really turned a corner, and that the future was looking bright. Some of us even dared to have some hope for the future.

Not the scientists, though. Environmental doomsayers were getting all of the press, but they were hardly the worst Cassandras out there. The World Health Organization had been fearing mutations in the H5N1 flu virus that would allow non-avian vectors since 2006, when scientists have discovered a mutation that could make it more readily transmissible. Little did we know that, before the president had issued her first state of the union address, we were already lost—and the WHO had missed the real threat. Everyone called it the Rot.

Nanobots in the News

I don't have time to write much today, but I want to point out an interesting trend toward acceptability of talking about "nanorobots" for use in surgery and drug delivery. For example, this story from PhysOrg.com that says:

From eliminating the side effects of chemotherapy to treating Alzheimer’s disease, the potential medical applications of nanorobots are vast and ambitious. In the past decade, researchers have made many improvements on the different systems required for developing practical nanorobots, such as sensors, energy supply, and data transmission.

The concept is picked up and explained in this article by Roland Piquepaille at ZDNet:

The idea of using nanorobots to deliver drugs and fight diseases such as cancers is not new. But there are still lots of issues to solve before nanorobots can diagnose our diseases and treat them. Now, an international team of researchers has designed a software and hardware platform of a nanorobot to be used in medical applications. The researchers think their nanorobots could become available around 2015.

(Hat tips to Nanotechnology Now and Nanodot)

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics blog

Clinging Custodians

Not Necessarily Relevant Quote of the Week:

We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock. The significance of our lives and our fragile realm derives from our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning.

— Carl Sagan

Tag: quotes

Manufacturing With Atoms

Operating on the theory that you can never have too many useful explanations of a complex subject, here is a very good answer to the question: What is molecular manufacturing?

Molecular manufacturing is an anticipated future technology based on Feynman’s vision of factories using nanomachines to build complex products, including additional nanomachines. It promises to bring great improvements in the cost and performance of manufactured goods, while making possible a range of products impossible today.

Every manufacturing method is a method for arranging atoms. Most methods arrange atoms crudely; even the finest commercial microchips are grossly irregular at the atomic scale. Many of today’s nanotechnologies face the same limit. Chemistry and biology, however, make molecules defined by particular arrangements of atoms — always the same numbers, kinds, and bonds. Chemists do this using clever tricks that don’t scale up well to building large, complex structures. Biology, however, uses a more powerful method: cells contain molecular machines that read digital genetic data to guide the assembly of large molecules (proteins) that serve as parts of molecular machines. Molecular manufacturing will likewise use stored data to guide construction by molecular machines, greatly extending abilities in nanotechnology.

The basic idea is simple: where chemists mix molecules in solution, allowing them to wander and bump together at random, nanomachines will instead position molecules, placing them in specific locations in a carefully chosen sequence. Letting molecules bump at random leads to unwanted reactions — a problem that grows worse as products get larger. By holding and positioning molecules, nanomachines will control how the molecules react, building up complex structures with atomically precise control.

That's from e-drexler.com.

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics blog