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The latest edition of the C-R-Newsletter has been posted on our main website.
CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
Second Collection of CRN Task Force Essays Published
CTF Essays Overview
Honoring Jane Jacobs
Live-blogging the Singularity Summit
Feature Science Essay: Types of Nanotechnology
Read the whole newsletter here — and sign up for a free subscription here.
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology future
Chris Phoenix, CRN's Director of Research, was caught on camera recently addressing an audience of students and faculty at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. You can watch his presentation on "Nanotechnology: Its Promises and Perils" by clicking here.
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog
Online now at KurzweilAI.net, and available for discussion through their MindX forum:
Corporate Cornucopia: Examining the Special Implications of Commercial MNT Development
By Michael VassarMolecular nanotech is the largest commercial opportunity of all time. But it may also create severe roadblocks and risks, including terrorism, unstable arms races, competitive pricing, restrictive patents, import opposition, economic disruption, and out-of-control AI.
Molecular Manufacturing and the Developing World: Looking to Nanotechnology for Answers
By Don MaclurcanWhat is the purpose of molecular manufacturing, who will create and own it, and what are the risks and impacts on the world? A social scientist believes these questions could best be addressed in an international nanotechnology conference and grassroots events.
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog
The story at PhysOrg.com: "Thousands of barges could save Europe from deep freeze."
There is some evidence that "the ocean currents that bring warm water to the oceans off northern Europe may be weakening," apparently published in the journal Climatic Change recently. And there's a theory that if these currents shut down, which they might due to climate change in the Arctic, then Europe will get a lot colder. Seems the currents are driven by near-freezing water sinking down 'way up north, and this depends on a rather sensitive set of conditions.
So a researcher who studies these currents, Peter Flynn (the Poole Chair in Management for Engineers at the University of Alberta), evaluated seven possible interventions to keep these currents flowing. He and his grad student found one that could be "far more cost effective than the others." Send 8,000 barges up north in the fall to spray seawater in the air and make ice. A lot of ice -- seven meters thick. Then, in the spring, spray on even more water to melt the ice and create the cold salty water that's needed to keep the current flowing.
The cost of this relatively inexpensive project? $50 billion. That's about $500 apiece for 100 million Europeans who would be affected by the current shutting down. Put that way, it almost seems reasonable.
However, $50 billion is probably at least an order of magnitude more than the cost of developing molecular manufacturing (MM) and then using that to solve the problem. MM, for those just joining us, is expected to achieve exponential manufacturing (automated factories building more factories, quickly, on demand), as well as extremely high-performance products. Those 8,000 barges would be much easier to build with even a basic molecular manufacturing technology. And there might be better solutions, such as fleets of millions of small solar-energy-gathering airplanes to shade the ocean and help ice form, while feeding power grids and reducing fossil fuel use.
As long as we're planning extreme engineering solutions to planet-scale problems, it's worth thinking just a bit outside the box.
Chris Phoenix
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog
Microsoft has released a report about science from today to 2020. The report focuses on the effects of computers on science. It's an interesting read; among other things, it claims that concepts from computer science will start to inform and underlie science in the same way that calculus and statistics do.
A major consequence of integrating computers with science will be improved ways of dealing with complexity. This will lead to major advances in biology, such as models of a cell and of the brain.
A couple of quotes I found amusing:
An explanation of how brains work will look much like an explanation of how any other system works. Its elements will be: (i) how the system is organised; (ii) what processes go on inside it; and (iii) how these processes interact to cause the behaviour of the system. . .A revolution is taking place in the scientific method. “Hypothesize, design and run experiment, analyze results” is being replaced by “hypothesize, look up answer in data base.”
There is very little in the report about nanotechnology, and almost nothing about molecular manufacturing. This underscores the point that these are technologies, not sciences. Nanoscale technologies are typically developed with an eye toward early commercial payoff; whatever scientific research is required takes place within that goal. Molecular manufacturing is driven by an engineering goal: to build small machines (including systems for mechanosynthesis) out of high-performance covalent solids. Although there is some complexity involved in spots, such as working out the best mechanosynthesis techniques, molecular manufacturing is basically an approach of simplicity, more comparable to traditional digital computers than to the molecular computers that this report hypothesizes.
In reading through the report, I didn't get a sense of competition between molecular manufacturing and the projected sciences -- any more than there is competition between a microscope manufacturer and a cellular biologist. As the comparison implies, MM will probably be a very useful tool in support of many of the scientific breakthroughs projected therein.
It was also interesting to see that the new sciences were not projected, at least in this report, to be general-purpose technologies. Computers will become a general aid to science in several ways, but the new sciences will have to be applied to one problem at a time.
I was expecting to find something to agree with or argue with in this report. Instead, I found that it was simply talking about a different level of endeavor. I got some objections to my science essay about "Science vs. Engineering vs. Theoretical Applied Nanotechnology"; some people said that science and engineering are a lot closer than I made them sound. They use many of the same tools, and much of the day-to-day work overlaps; scientists frequently practice engineering, and engineers sometimes engage in science. But if it wasn't already clear, reading this report makes it obvious that molecular manufacturing is not cutting-edge science. It is cutting-edge engineering based on decades-old science.
Chris Phoenix
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog
Could strong AI arrive sooner than many of us expect? Maybe we'd better listen to these guys:
A search engine that knows exactly what you are looking for, that can understand the question you are asking even better than you do, and find exactly the right information for you, instantly -- that was the future predicted by Google yesterday.Speaking at a conference for Google's European partners, entitled Zeitgeist '06, on the outskirts of London last night Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and co-founder Larry Page gave an insight into perhaps the most ambitious project the Californian business is undertaking -- artificial intelligence (AI).
"The ultimate search engine would understand everything in the world. It would understand everything that you asked it and give you back the exact right thing instantly," Mr Page told an audience of the digerati representing firms from Warner Music and AOL to BSkyB and the BBC. "You could ask 'what should I ask Larry?' and it would tell you."
Speaking after what was labeled an end of day 'fireside chat', Mr Page said one thing that he had learned since Google launched eight years ago was that technology can change faster than expected, and that AI could be a reality within a few years.
That's exactly the prediction of nanotech researcher and CRN Task Force member J. Storrs Hall in his essay, "Is AI Near a Takeoff Point?" (I wonder if the Google guys have been reading the CTF essays...)
And on the subject of dividing the web, which we brought up yesterday:
Mr Schmidt also attacked suggestions from some major US cable companies that providers of capacity-hungry internet services -- such as video and TV -- should be charged to run their services over the web. This presents a challenge to what is generally seen as the internet's neutrality, that everyone should be able to get on to it."We believe this violates one of the founding principles that built the internet today and it could stifle the next wave of innovation," he said.
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog
Online now at KurzweilAI.net, and available for discussion through their MindX forum:
Molecular Manufacturing and the Need for Crime Science
By Deborah OsborneMolecular manufacturing increases the potential for high-tech crimes; it can also be used to prevent them, says a crime analyst and book author.
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog
Link: BBC NEWS | Technology | Web inventor warns of 'dark' net
The web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it into different services, web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said. Recent attempts in the US to try to charge for different levels of online access web were not "part of the internet model," he said in Edinburgh. He warned that if the US decided to go ahead with a two-tier internet, the network would enter "a dark period".
"What's very important from my point of view is that there is one web," he said. "Anyone that tries to chop it into two will find that their piece looks very boring."
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog
One of the implications of molecular manufacturing is major advances in avionics. Materials 100 times as strong, motors and computers a million times lighter, and seamless, automated, rapid construction, will enable rapid R&D of highly advanced aerospace systems. Advanced aerospace systems could be used for easier space access (including rapid testing of advanced propulsion concepts), delivery of sensor platforms or weapons, personal transportation, and a number of other beneficial and scary applications. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will become far more capable.
We can get a sneak preview of some of the concerns in a recent article at PhysOrg.com: "Flying robot attack 'unstoppable': experts" which describes some of the technologies that are already available, some of the ways they are being used, and some fears about the ways they might be used in the future. "The technology for remote-controlled light aircraft is now highly advanced, widely available -- and, experts say, virtually unstoppable." Small planes don't show up on radar. They can carry hundreds of pounds of payload. They can be guided by GPS. They have already been used by paramilitary and terrorist groups. The concern is that they could deliver explosives to a target with near-pinpoint accuracy.
The article doesn't mention it, but UAV technology is becoming available to hobbyists, and not only for sinister purposes. A group at MIT is building the "Freedom Flies family of UAV's" which can carry fifteen pounds of "video, gps units, pamphlets, water, food and other payloads." It is intended to cost a few thousand dollars, and to be open source (plans freely available). They admit they are still crashing quite often, but that will presumably change soon.
It remains to be seen whether private UAV development will be viewed with as much suspicion as, say, hobbyists blowing up junk for their own amusement (they tend to get called "militias" and prosecuted). There is certainly a contrast, even a tension, between the two websites linked above. A major positive use of UAVs might be to increase accountability by photo-documenting abuses that governments and corporations would prefer to keep hidden. However, from the point of view of those being watched, this is indistinguishable from spying. The article on terrorist uses did not talk about this, but it may turn out to be the biggest issue raised by UAVs.
UAVs are one tiny sub-category of one implication of molecular manufacturing. Even pre-MM technology is cause for concern, and capabilities are already coming online and becoming widely available to individuls and small groups. General-purpose molecular manufacturing will enable hundreds of equally significant advances--many of which no one has thought of yet.
Today's development of UAVs will give the world a chance to get used to at least one kind of robot that can go almost anywhere (that's not too small) and carry out actions remotely. This is probably a good thing. But it also means that software for UAVs will be pretty well understood by the time MM arrives.
The world is going to be a very interesting place.
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog
Online now at KurzweilAI.net, and available for discussion through their MindX forum:
Are We Enlightened Guardians, Or Are We Apes Designing Humans?
By Douglas MulhallThanks in part to molecular manufacturing, accelerated developments in AI and brain reverse-engineering could lead to the emergence of superintelligence in just 18 years. Are we ready for the implications -- like possible annihilation of Homo sapiens? And will we seem to superintelligence what our ape-like ancestors seem to us: primitive?
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog
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