The Times of India, founded on November 3, 1838, is an English-language newspaper published in India with a huge circulation. Their parent company, The Times Group, also owns and operates Indiatimes, "the most popular Internet and mobile value-added services destination for the global Indian." A section of Indiatimes is called The Economic Times, and it's there that I found this interesting editorial:
Small is not always beautiful
Nanotechnology deals with the design and manufacture of extremely small electronic circuits and mechanical devices built at the molecular level of matter. Its ultimate goal is to be able to manipulate materials at even the atomic level.
As envisioned by many, this would lead to nanocomputers no bigger than bacteria and nanomachines which could be used as molecular assemblers and disassemblers to build, repair or tear down any physical or biological objects.
That's a pretty good definition, by media standards, and not an inaccurate depiction of nanotech's ultimate potential.
The editorial continues:
Thus, cars can be assembled molecule-by-molecule; garbage disassembled and reassembled into food; people operated on and healed by cell-sized robots. But technology is fraught with potential dangers which will require ethical controls. For one thing, weapons are an obvious negative use of nanotechnology; armies could develop disassemblers to attack physical structures and biological organisms at the molecular level.Similarly, if general purpose disassemblers got loose in the environment they could start disassembling all molecules they encounter. That would quickly reduce everything to basic constituents, a phenomenon known as the “Grey Goo Scenario”. And if nanomachines were to be made self-replicating, then without fail-safe controls, there would be no way to stop them from multiplying endlessly.
The above two paragraphs are a little disappointing. While it's certainly true that "weapons are an obvious negative use of nanotechnology," we think that non-replicating weapons systems will be much easier to build and deploy and thus far more dangerous, at least initially, than theorized "disassembler" weapons.
Similarly, we think the "grey goo" threat is overemphasized. As CRN has stated:
Fear of runaway nanobots, or 'grey goo', is more of a public issue than a scientific problem. . . Although biosphere-eating goo is a gripping story, current molecular manufacturing proposals contain nothing even similar to grey goo. The idea that nanotechnology manufacturing systems could run amok is based on outdated information. . . Grey goo eventually may become a concern requiring special policy. However, goo would be extremely difficult to design and build, and its replication would be inefficient. Worse and more imminent dangers may come from non-replicating nano-weaponry. Since there are numerous greater risks from molecular manufacturing that may happen almost immediately after the technology is developed, grey goo should not be a primary concern. Focusing on grey goo allows more urgent technology and security issues to remain unexplored.
And in their paper, "Safe Exponential Manufacturing", published in the August 2004 issue of the IOP journal Nanotechnology, Chris Phoenix and Eric Drexler write:
Nanotechnology-based fabrication can be thoroughly non-biological and inherently safe: such systems need have no ability to move about, use natural resources, or undergo incremental mutation. Moreover, self-replication is unnecessary: the development and use of highly productive systems of nanomachinery (nanofactories) need not involve the construction of autonomous self-replicating nanomachines. Accordingly, the construction of anything resembling a dangerous self-replicating nanomachine can and should be prohibited. Although advanced nanotechnologies could (with great difficulty and little incentive) be used to build such devices, other concerns present greater problems. Since weapon systems will be both easier to build and more likely to draw investment, the potential for dangerous systems is best considered in the context of military competition and arms control.
Back to the Indian editorial, which goes on to say:
Some of these dangers threaten the very existence of humankind. Others could produce significant disruption but not cause our extinction. Since a combination of several risks could intensify the seriousness of each; any solution must take into account its effect on other risks.
Now that sounds very much like it was written after someone looked at CRN's page on "No Simple Solutions."
Finally, the editorial concludes that nanotechnology should be used:
...to create a world of abundance where no one is lacking in basic needs and, together with this, high priority must be given to the efficient and economical distribution of the products and services created by nanotechnology.Military research must be limited to defence and security systems and not for aggression. Besides, scientists experimenting with nanotechnology must have a solid grounding in ethics, ecology and public safety.
Also, business models in the field should incorporate long-term, sustainable practices; industry leaders should be collaborative and self-regulating, but also support public education in the sciences and reasonable legislation to deal with social and moral issues associated with nanotechnology.
We can't disagree with any of that. In fact, we applaud them for emphasizing the virtues of fairness and sustainability. But we wish they'd done a little more homework on the actual threats that should concern us, and not science fictional notions.
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics blog
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