Responsible Nanotechnology

Roadmap Conference Map

While reviewing the excellent live blog coverage that Chris Phoenix provided for us from the "Productive Nanosystems: Launching the Technology Roadmap" conference earlier this month, we realized that there is no single place where you can find a link to all his reports.

So, to correct that omission, here you go:

Productive Nanosystems Conference Kickoff
Abiotic Biomimetic Roadmap
Atomically Precise Manufacturing
Bio-Nano Approaches
Computing for Productive Nanosystems
Drexler on the Roadmap
Designing and Building Proteins
Building Protein-Based Nanomaterials
DNA Origami, Extended
Making Nanotubes Useful
Molecular Manufacturing Panel
Nanophase Materials
Studying Mechanosynthesis
Simulating Cells
Shrinking Electronics
Nano Investment in Singapore
Top-Down, All the Way Down
Squishy Molecular Motors
Mechanical Molecular Electronics
Military Application of Atomically Precise Manufacturing
Solid-State Lighting
Commercializable Nanotech Solar Cells
Productive Nanosystems Panel: Applications

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Riding With Robots

It's almost time for the next DARPA "Grand Challenge" for autonomous vehicles. (We've written about previous events here and here.) This time, they'll be tested in a simulated urban setting:

The DARPA Urban Challenge is an autonomous vehicle research and development program with the goal of developing technology that will keep warfighters off the battlefield and out of harm’s way. The Urban Challenge features autonomous ground vehicles maneuvering in a mock city environment, executing simulated military supply missions while merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections, and avoiding obstacles.

In a story previewing the event, New York Times reporter John Markoff writes:

During the first two races the robots were basically very smart crumb followers. Just before the start of the race they were given a list of G.P.S. way points and simply had to stay within the road boundaries on the outlined course.

But in the Urban Grand Challenge the cars will be given a set of missions to complete in a simulated urban setting (a military training city). They will have to figure out how to get from point A to B and then C, etc.

Better still, other robot competitors will be busily attending to their own competing missions at the same time.

Markoff took a ride in "Junior," one of this year's entrants, and compared it with "Stanley," a previous competitor:

Because it was in a parking lot, this year’s ride was in some ways less dramatic than my first tour. But in other ways it was more striking, and the pathfinding abilities of the car even had a spooky quality.

Whereas Stanley was only able to follow its route, Junior actually “thinks” about the route and can choose alternatives. It can pass other cars. It can wait for traffic and it can even make decisions that “cheat” on the rules a bit.

At one point, for example, when both lanes of our course were blocked by cars, Junior made a three-point turn and got to its destination by a secondary route.

Very cool.

UPDATE - We have a winner!

November 4, 2007 -- The slow-motion finale of the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge is at an end. After spending the night tabulating the run-times for the six robots that finished the 60-mile course yesterday, and weighing their overall speed against potential penalties for moving violations, the officials at DARPA have come up with a winner. Tartan Racing, the joint effort from Carnegie Mellon University and General Motors, beat out arch-rival Stanford University for the $2 million first prize. Stanford took second place, and Virginia Tech's Victor Tango team took third, winning $1 million and $500,000 respectively.

Because of the secretive and unabashedly subjective nature of DARPA's decision-making process, we may never know exactly why Boss won, or how close Stanford's Junior did or didn't come to beating Tartan. Citing the fact that this contest was completely unprecedented, DARPA avoided posting a list of penalties, and reserved the right to adjust the weight of those penalties after the race. But according to Tartan leader William "Red" Whittaker, they won because of planning. "Boss didn't hesitate," Whittaker said. "When it came to planning—planning at intersections, planning on straightaways, planning throughout the course—we were unbeatable." By taking turns without an extra pause to get its bearings, and knowing when the coast was clear enough to gun the engine up to 30 mph (the max speed for the course), Boss may have shaved minutes off its run-time.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Between Hype and Naysaying

"We are always between the hype and the naysayers"

That's the title of another blogger's complaint about...

...the muddled world of science/technology writing, and the general approach of the main stream press, who either hype up things to heights that are way beyond logic, or scare the living daylights out of an impressionable public.

Yep, that's the way many in the general media like to present things, as either really good or really bad. Not much room for nuance.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

What happened?

Forbes.com asks the question: What happened to the future?

Weren't things supposed to be cooler by now, smarter, safer? Raised on a steady diet of science fiction, overzealous politicians and corporate hype, Americans expected to be living in The Jetsons -- but instead find themselves stuck in a scarier version of The Waltons.

The truth is that people simply aren't very good at predicting the future. It was only two centuries ago that we began to think we could do it at all, and we're still learning. Hindsight may be 20/20, but foresight remains largely blind.

Our friend James Hughes from the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies tells us:

Forbes has a terrific special feature on the future that offers a smörgåsbord of cool things. In addition to the usual predictions and "whither the videophone" discussions, there are also interviews with futurists such as David Brin, Robert Sawyer, Stuart Stewart Brand, and Nicholas Negroponte about their mistakes and surprises (as well as an article on the value of futurists and one on why you don't want to make futurists angry).

On the fiction side, it features short stories by Cory Doctorow, Max Barry, and Warren Ellis, all dealing with the American workplace in 2027 during a financial crisis, as well as a discussion of nine great books about the future. It ends with a quiz about your ability to predict what will happen next year -- Forbes will send you your score in January 2009.

Check it out.

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Legitimate Government

Not Necessarily Relevant Quote of the Week:

To give information to the people is the most certain and legitimate engine of government.

— James Madison

Tag: quotes

Geoengineering Politics

Just days after the Nobel prize was awarded for global warming work, an alarming new study finds that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing faster than expected.

Carbon dioxide emissions were 35 percent higher in 2006 than in 1990, a much faster growth rate than anticipated, researchers led by Josep G. Canadell, of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Increased industrial use of fossil fuels coupled with a decline in the gas absorbed by the oceans and land were listed as causes of the increase.

"In addition to the growth of global population and wealth, we now know that significant contributions to the growth of atmospheric CO2 arise from the slowdown" of nature's ability to take the chemical out of the air, said Canadell, director of the Global Carbon Project at the research organization.

So, at the same time that we're pouring more greenhouse gases into the air, we learn that the atmosphere is becoming less able to recycle those gases. A bad problem just got worse.

On his Open the Future blog, CRN's Director of Impacts Analysis, Jamais Cascio, offers a glum assessment:

This is exactly the kind of news that makes one suspect that we may not have the time to re-imagine our urban systems, transform our agricultural methods, and move to a carbon-free economy. Geoengineering seems to provide a solution (of varying appeal) for just this kind of situation, focusing not on resolving the causes of global climate disruption, but on ameliorating the symptoms.

Jamais goes on to examine the political and social challenges that will makes such a solution hard to implement, even if it is determined to be both necessary and feasible.

To put it bluntly, global-scale efforts don't happen without global-scale reactions. Should we see geoengineering efforts, there certainly will be struggles over control of the program(s), conflicts over liability for problems, and -- most troublingly -- independent "rogue" geoengineering projects undertaken in defiance of established guidelines.

I encourage you to read the full article, in which Jamais analyzes issues of control, liabality, and rogue projects. (On that last point, take a look at what Greg Benford says in the final paragraph of this entry.)

Jamais concludes:

When I argue that we need to start studying geoengineering now, I don't simply mean the climate scientists and geophysicists. I mean everyone who worries about policy, embraces activism, works with NGOs and movements, or considers herself or himself a stakeholder in the well-being of the planet. If we ignore this possibility, decisions will be made without our consent, even without our knowledge. We need to understand the kinds of choices we'll face if we continue to delay action on global warming.

Geoengineering might, with the wrong moves, be catastrophic; it might, with the right knowledge and technologies, be our final hope. But it must not be a decision made by ideology, or as a military maneuver, or out of convenience.

Finally, should we consider the possibility that even such radical geoengineering approaches might not be enough to halt the juggernaut of global climate change?

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Radical Breakdowns

Yesterday, in our discussion of "China and Continuity," we determined that the continuity China is looking for is based on fast growth, a nonaligned foreign policy, and political stability.

We also reasoned that if challenges were to arise causing China to choose between those three aims, political stability likely would be valued above all else. Although they undoubtedly hope to maintain their current astounding rates of growth, they almost certainly would not choose growth over stability, nor would they give up political stability in order to preserve a nonaligned foreign policy.

Another issue raised was whether America and other countries should view China as a political threat or partner, as a military threat or partner, as an economic threat or partner, or a combination.

To answer this, let's consider China's potential future impacts on world civilization by breaking it into three areas, not precisely the same as above:

• Military
  
• Economic
  
• Environmental

I think the main thing for CRN and others to be concerned with regarding China is the potential for radical breakdowns in any of these three areas.

By radical breakdown, I mean war, revolution, severe economic collapse, catastrophic pandemic, ecological disaster, or something on that scale.

Assuming no such breakdowns occur that disrupt the regular, orderly conduct of trade and diplomacy, then whatever issues arise will be familiar ones, able to be dealt with through normal channels and procedures. That does not mean, of course, that there won't occasionally be strife, but as long as breakdowns are avoided the main concern will be competition, not confrontation.

We also need to recognize that with a country as large and powerful as China, even an internal breakdown as described above could be seriously disruptive to the rest of the world. Our concern, then, is not only that China could cause some sort of radical breakdown in world systems, but also that China could suffer some sort of radical breakdown affecting world systems.

I'd suggest that an approach watching for symptoms of such an impending breakdown, coupled with judicious contingency planning, would be preferable to trying to decide whether to treat China as a partner or as a threat, especially since China seems committed to maintaining a nonaligned foreign policy.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

China and Continuity

We spend a lot of time on this blog writing about China, and we think with good reason. It's common to hear the last 100 years referred to as "The American Century," and many observers now suggest that the next 100 years eventually will be known as "The Chinese Century."

Of course, a lot could happen to change that outcome. For one thing, China faces huge internal and external challenges on its path to global supremacy. For another, the United States is still the preeminent superpower in both economic and military terms and is likely to remain so for some time.

But in looking outward over the next several decades, it's hard to conceive a plausible scenario of world development that does not include China in some capacity. So, as we try to envision how, where, and when molecular manufacturing will emerge and what its implications will be, we must include China in our calculations of context.

In an analysis piece this week in the New York Times, Joseph Kahn writes:

To judge by the reports in China’s state-run news media, the Communist Party took a bold step toward democracy at the just completed 17th National Congress, which approved a new leadership team to run the country.

President Hu Jintao used the word democracy 61 times in his main address to the congress. The official Xinhua news agency reported that the party nominated 221 candidates to fill the 204 full seats on the Central Committee, meaning that 7.6 percent of those declared eligible did not get a seat. Xinhua called this a “competitive election.”

In reality, of course, China’s one-party system still owes more to Lenin than to Jefferson. It convenes congresses every five years to ratify leadership decisions on policy and personnel. The message is not change, but continuity.

And specifically what type of continuity are they looking for? Kahn says:

They want fast growth, a nonaligned foreign policy and political stability.

Okay, remember that, because we'll come back to it at the end.

An article by John Feffer in the November 2007 issue of The Nation describes various perspectives from which U.S. foreign policy analysts may view China. I'm paraphrasing here, but the basic question seems to be this:

Should America (and the rest of the world) view China as a political threat or partner, as a military threat or partner, as an economic threat or partner, or as some combination thereof?

I encourage reading the whole article (and while you're at it, also read this snarky-but-informed critique by a "Qing historian"). I'll offer a few quotes, and then my own slant from CRN's position.

On the matter of weaknesses that may qualify China's rise to power, Feffer notes:

Foreign policy analysts speak of various crunches that China will face. There's the demographic one, when China suddenly becomes a senior citizen society virtually overnight because of its one-child policy. There is the economic one, when rapid growth begins to sputter and an angry middle class joins hands with the disenfranchised to close down the party. There's the environmental one, when the poisons of industrial development choke the country to death...

Washington should pay less attention to the strength of China, some knowledgeable courtiers are whispering, and more to the great country's weakness. In this telling of the story, China is an elaborate pyramid scam, its prosperity resting on a foundation of sand. Only by continuing to generate unprecedented levels of growth -- 11 percent in 2006 -- can China continue to fool its domestic supporters and foreign investors into playing the game.

Inside China, troubling stories appear every day. There is rampant corruption. Some grow impossibly rich while many remain impatiently poor. Tens of thousands of protests break out in the cities and the countryside every year. The AIDS and SARS scandals, the harrowing coal mine disasters, the ruthless suppression of dissidents -- eloquently described by Chinese activists themselves in the new collection Challenging China, edited by Human Rights in China staffers Sharon Hom and Stacy Mosher -- all have the potential of sapping the confidence of the population in the leadership's capacity to govern.

What about the growing military might of China?

The issue of greatest controversy is China's increased military spending. Beijing argues that it is spending around $36 billion a year; some US estimates run double or even triple that amount. However you slice it, China wants a world-class army to match its world-class economy. But with its air and sea power still limited, China has an anemic ability to project force over distance. A mere twenty long-range nuclear missiles serve as a very slender deterrent force. And while the bean counters scrutinize China's arms purchases, the annual US military budget has sailed past $500 billion (not including the Iraq and Afghanistan supplemental spending). To match the United States, China would have to play Soviet-style catch-up, and it knows the endpoint of that strategy.

Finally, Feffer concludes:

Predicting what will happen with China is a fool's errand. China is the exception that proves so many rules wrong. It is a Communist system that has managed a transition to "capitalism with Chinese characteristics." It has fostered market growth without much political reform. And it has pulled huge swaths of its population out of poverty and illiteracy faster than all the well-paid development professionals in the West. Yet as Gifford [an NPR reporter] argues, "For every fact that is true about China, the opposite is almost always true as well, somewhere in the country." The data set is so large that it defies generalizations.

We said earlier that China's leadership wants "fast growth, a nonaligned foreign policy and political stability." But let's assume for a moment that all three are not possible to maintain at the same time...if challenges arise that require China to choose between them, which aims will take priority?

I assume political stability would be valued above all else. Keeping the regime in power is the one essential goal; therefore, sacrificing some amount of growth or even making concessions in foreign policy alignment would be considered before risking significant political instability.

Tomorrow we'll continue this discussion by looking at "Radical Breakdowns."

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Rampant Democratization

Back in the long-ago 1980s and 1990s, it was common to hear all about the rapid expansion of democratic movements around the planet. The tale was largely true, of course, and today more people live under systems of representative government than at any other time in the history of the world.

But in addition to the spread of political democracy, might we be witnessing an equally significant democratization of capital, of knowledge, and of regulation?

Capital - In his best-selling book, Thomas Friedman argues that The World is Flat, suggesting that a "convergence of technology and events have allowed India, China, and many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations and giving them a huge new stake in the success of globalization."

It wouldn't be very original for me to deconstruct Friedman's thesis [PDF] of support for laissez faire capitalism, as others have already done so well. I will say, however, that his pronouncement seems premature; though it appears the world is getting a bit flatter, and perhaps someday the world will be pretty much flat, we've still got a long way to go.

That said, we can't ignore the remarkably robust economic growth occurring in parts of the world that were mostly left behind for the last two centuries. More countries, more companies, and more people are getting access to capital than ever before. And we should note that this is not simply a zero-sum redistribution of wealth, but a result of overall growth in the size of the world economy.

Knowledge - This is a combination of access to education and access to the Internet. As whole countries are lifted out of poverty and as a large middle class is created, we find vastly more people around the world gaining access to knowledge. College educations are at their highest level ever, both in real numbers and as a percentage of the whole. China, for one, is turning out engineering and science PhD's in numbers never seen anywhere before. Broadband Internet penetration is higher in many developing nations than in established countries like the U.S., and peripheral access to global knowledge streams via mobile phone technology is growing at an exponential pace in the former "Third World."

What does this knowledge boom mean for future forecasters? Will an expanding, globally-aware, educated middle class be prepared to wield its newfound strength in the promotion of more equality and opportunity for all? We can hope so, but until the results are seen it's hard to be certain.

Regulation - So far, we've reviewed two significant developments that supporters of economic globalization likely would celebrate. But from the perspective of a "responsible civilization" that not only allows equal opportunity but also provides equal justice and supports fairness for all, is there need for some kind of global regulatory apparatus?

This is the question that often sends critics of CRN's work into a frenzy, since we have proposed a "tentative outline for the international administration" of molecular manufacturing. But, they cry, isn't that tantamount to world government? Maybe it is, and maybe it will prove to be necessary, given the twin risks of collapsing interdependence and access to systems for producing devastating weapons of mass destruction.

However, there could be a third way. Just as we've looked for a middle ground between the poles of relinquishment and resignation, perhaps we can find a form of effective regulation that is not "top-down" but that also is not essentially non-existent.

Consider a form of people-powered regulation as demonstrated at Wikipedia. Could it be that the growth and democratization of capital and the increase and democratization of knowledge will combine to enable the emergence of democratized global regulation that really works? Imagine a peer-based, values-driven system of rules, penalties, and incentives; it may not be likely, with all the inertia of big governments and big corporations going against it, but it's also not out of the question.

Violence - Of course, the wild card in all of this is a fourth trend we've often pointed to before: the democratization of violence. As wealth and knowledge increase, they combine to allow greater access to means of extreme violence. Aggressive projection of power is more available to more people than ever before.

Can this trend be contained, perhaps by a concerted imposition of people-powered regulation, or will it be so insidious and damaging that traditional top-down enforcement -- which historically is fraught with potential for abuse -- appears to be the only workable solution? Or, as an optimist might maintain, will the trends we've noted above toward political freedom, economic growth, educational attainment, and improved standards of living serve to blunt the desire for violence such that it eventually dwindles to insignificance?

You may say I'm a dreamer, and on most days I'd agree. But today for some reason I've got a glimmer of hope and optimism. What's your outlook?

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

The Future is Here Now

While perusing the news reader at KurzweilAI.net today, I came across these three articles:

1. The future is here right now, if you can read the signs

   "I use Google as a metaphor for an emerging intelligence," says European author and futurist Ray Hammond.

   "Every single day that I use Google, and I use it constantly, I notice that it's getting a little bit more capable at understanding what I mean when I don't say precisely what I mean.

   "Now, if brainpower in the computer is doubling every 12 months and Google is gathering every single minute of every day the intentions of all the humans in the planet, imagine where that might lead in 10 years."

2. Hand-held supercomputers 'on the way'

   European researchers forecast hand-held supercomputers, using nanowires. They've developed a computer program to help regulate their properties. . .

   Dr Zaiser said: "This will help to make small devices much more powerful in the future.

   "Holding a supercomputer in the palm of your hand will one day be possible - and we are going to make sure all the wires are in the right place."

3. Micro-robot that can clear arteries

   A microscopic robot small enough to travel through blood vessels has been built by scientists at Chonnam National University in Korea.

   The robot walks like a crab on six legs and has been designed to clear blocked arteries. By attaching grafted heart muscle to the legs, the scientists found the legs would bend as the muscle cells contracted. The cells get their energy from sugar in the patient's blood.

Taken individually, each of these three stories seems interesting but not really suggestive of a trend. But put them together and it sure sounds like we are living in the future. Especially when you consider that this is just a sampling from an average news day, and not part of a hyped "special report."

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog