Responsible Nanotechnology

Unwise Use of Nanoparticles?

Last week, while reading about rapid prototyping, I stumbled across a page that appears to show carbon nanoparticles being sprayed into the air without any protective equipment being used (the part is held in bare hands, and a lot of spray is going past the part).

I wrote to them and asked for the MSDS (material safety data sheet) on the particles. They have not answered yet. So I searched and found the company that makes the product they are using. Then I searched for "nano" on their website, and found this .doc file which said: "5] How safe is nano carbon fibers and nano-carbon tubes? They are safe in our compounds but dangerous by themselves if inhaled."

The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology mainly concerns itself with molecular manufacturing, since that will be the most powerful application of nanotechnology in the long run. But when I see something that looks potentially irresponsible in other areas of nanotech, I try to follow up on it as well.

Any industrial chemical needs appropriate precautions, especially if it is being sprayed as an aerosol. Given how new carbon nanotubes are, it is probably a good idea to err on the side of caution - and it seems incautious not to at least use gloves and a good respirator.

I'll be sending a pointer to this blog post to both companies, and I'll update it if I get any information from them.

Update 9-28: Someone from the rapid prototyping company contacted me, pointed me at the MSDS for the product (which does not list the nanoparticles, only the solvents), and promised to look into this more deeply to make sure they're recommending a safe product.

Chris Phoenix

CRN Welcomes Herman Salgado Onboard

CRN is pleased to bring Herman Salgado on board as our Global Outreach Strategist. One of his first projects will be to complete the launch of our re-designed website.

Herman Salgado, Jr. is a management professional with over 15 years of work experience and a proven track record of success in areas such as project management, marketing, sales, QA, security and training. He has assisted organizations in the US and overseas in creating, analyzing and redefining business processes, systems and policies which have yielded great increases for organizations in their bottom lines, personnel development, production streamlining, personnel commitment, fundraising, public awareness, cost-cutting, and many other aspects due to his unorthodox management and marketing tactics and highly analytical processes. He has also used his years of web and graphic design experience to assist companies in creating or redefining their image to the public via websites, company logos, signboards and other printed material.

Chris Phoenix

Bio Risk Update

As I learn more about the bio risk I've been studying, I'm settling in for a long-term effort. There's one experiment nearing completion that initially looked extremely risky, but I've come to think it's probably within the bounds of acceptable risk. It seems that already-existing organisms are enough like the organism being created, so that there will (probably) be parasites waiting for it if it's accidentally released.

However, I remain unconvinced that the broader class of experiments is safe, in the sense of unlikely to create harm. And if harm does happen, I remain unconvinced that the worst-case plausible scenario is at all acceptable.

So I'll keep learning about the various issues involved - ecology, population dynamics, molecular biology, invasive species, bacteriology - and I'll keep talking with the relevant researchers about what I learn. Meanwhile, I'll be re-directing some of my focus back to CRN.

Chris Phoenix

What I've Been Up To: Risk Analysis

Sorry I haven't been posting here more regularly. The biotech issue I've been working on has really claimed all my attention. I've been learning a lot about bacteria...

So far, conversations have mostly gone like this: I say to an expert, "What ____ is doing seems potentially very dangerous, because ___ could happen, or at least no one has shown me a reason it can't, and I've talked to several experts already."

I get one of three replies:
1) "I don't think that's worth worrying about, and I'm not inclined to look further."
2) "I don't think it will happen, because of _____." Then I look up _____ and find that it's factually incorrect.
3) "It seems like this is worth looking into further. You should talk to more experts."

Is it just me, or should I be getting more worried as I get more and more responses of type 2 and 3?

So far, I haven't managed to get any experts in the field to say "Yes, this is really worrisome, and I'll use my reputation to try to get the researchers to back off." Of course, this is a very hard thing for any scientist to say. There's a chasm to be crossed between "This might be a problem" and "This might be a problem I should act on, even if it means criticizing eminent fellow scientists." And the magnitude of the potential problem does not seem to make it easier to cross that chasm.

This has some similarities with molecular manufacturing, and some differences. One major difference is that molecular manufacturing is still in the future, while the potentially dangerous bio research is going on today.

A major similarity is that there appears to be a potential for self-replicating systems to be immensely powerful - more powerful than most specialists' intuitions - but that potential is only visible to generalists and systems thinkers. The experts don't easily see it, don't want to see it, and usually either dismiss it or treat it as someone else's theoretical problem.

For the past week or so, I've been in communication with the researcher who's actually doing the work I (and several other experts in various related fields) think is dangerous. As long as he's talking, I'm avoiding taking action that could start a grassroots movement against his work. Such a movement could be very powerful in the short run - and would probably create a lot more heat than light, causing future research along the same lines to be obscured and harder to regulate.

If any of you have experience with a case where a scientist was successfully convinced that their research was riskier than they thought - risky enough to substantially modify their plan and delay their work - then please let me know how that was accomplished. If no one has heard of such a thing happening... then what does that say about how the scientific community handles newly discovered risk?

(Yes, I know about Asilomar. That was one event, decades ago. How common are such things?)

Chris Phoenix

Why I've Been Busy

You may have noticed that I haven't posted in a few days. I've been busy working on another potentially dangerous technology.

I've recently become aware of an instance of biotech research that appears to potentially be extremely dangerous. The researchers acknowledge some of the danger, but may be too confident in their safety measures.

I've been working for the past week or two to pull together a group of scientists and risk experts, to build an opinion on the risk and whether it's appropriate to ask for the work to be postponed. This has been taking a substantial amount of my time. But we may have only months to affect the course of this research, while we probably have several years until molecular manufacturing arrives.

At this point, it seems likely that "going through channels" will get better results than applying grassroots pressure. And it's still possible that the risk is less than I think, in which case it would be unfortunate to raise alarm toward a group doing valuable and relatively safe scientific work.

That's why I'm not being specific about what the research is: it's too early for mass action or publicity (and it may never be needed). If all goes well, and the level of scientific alarm either grows to be self-sustaining or shrinks due to a finding of low risk, I'll be able to re-focus on CRN in a few weeks.

Meanwhile, I'll keep posting here every few days. My next post will probably be on RepRap - just in the last few days, it's achieved an exciting new capability. Watch this space...

Chris Phoenix

Don't Forget CRN's Thirty Studies

A couple of days ago, Todd Andersen suggested that we create a list of tech questions related to developing molecular manufacturing.

We already have a list of questions. The first sixteen of our Thirty Studies - especially #3 through #12 - relate to the development of molecular manufacturing capabilities by various pathways. The studies were published several years ago, but are still quite relevant.

New technical questions keep arriving - Todd contributed four, and others come in through our web feedback form - and I plan to answer them on this blog.

Chris Phoenix

Modeling the future

Tom Craver has an interesting idea: a Wiki model of the future.

Such models have equations and parameters, and (for example) simulate what will happen to the economy in a year or two. The Club of Rome built such a model, and their model has been very influential.

So, is it possible to build an open-source model? One in which anyone can contribute a bit of insight or knowledge, and the system processes all the bits until it comes out with a useful set of projections about the future?

CRN has engaged in online collaborative projects before, including our groundbreaking scenario project. And a model of the future would certainly be useful to us.

Of course, it wouldn't be just one model. A useful system would run lots of projections using different variants of the model, and then aggregate the projections, looking for patterns in the relation between assumptions and outcomes. This would take a lot of computer power, and could be done on an @home type platform.

The information input into the scenario process would benefit from semi-automated Delphi-like feedback. Different versions of a piece of data would be rated according to how they matched opinions from other users, as well as what effect they had on the model.

Does anyone here know enough about mathematical modeling of the future to say whether this idea might be worth implementing?

Chris Phoenix

Yes, I'm Back From Sabbatical

As of Monday, Mike Treder moved to IEET, and I'm back in the saddle at CRN. I plan to do several tech posts per week, interspersed with more newsy or talksy posts (of which this is one).

Future plans for CRN include a new look and feel for the website. And I'm working to set up something approximating online tech-focused panel discussions with other notables of molecular manufacturing. And the newsletter will start coming out regularly again, with science essays.

You readers who have stuck with CRN this long - it is, in a very real sense, your organization. I want to thank you for your continued attention. And if there are things you want to see in CRN, now's a very good time to suggest them.

Chris Phoenix

6th Birthday for CRN

We've just passed the sixth anniversary of CRN's founding, back in late December 2002. Since then, we've come a long way and accomplished a great deal, although we still have far to go in getting enough people motivated to take the right kind of action.

The good news is that after six years, the work of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology has had at least some impact in raising awareness of the transformative and disruptive potential of molecular manufacturing, and we seem to have quieted nearly all of the outright skeptics.

However, that's only the first level of our three step mission:

1. Raise awareness of the benefits, the dangers, and the possibilities for responsible use of advanced nanotechnology.
2. Expedite a thorough examination of the environmental, humanitarian, economic, military, political, social, medical, and ethical implications of molecular manufacturing.
3. Assist in the creation and implementation of wise, comprehensive, and balanced plans for responsible worldwide use of this transformative technology.

More news coming soon about our plans to move forward in 2009...

Mike Treder

Light Blogging Ahead

I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with a short stopover in Cairo, Egypt. It's not clear how much online access I'll have during the next week, or how much time I'll have for blogging. But I'll try to give updates when I can and perhaps also post some photos.

Meantime, I'd like to address a comment posted yesterday by Dan S, in which he said: 

Should CRN be renamed as “Center for Responsible Climate Policy”? I noted that MNT-related post are heavily outnumbered by climate-change related posts. Over past few years CRN focus clearly shifted from advanced nano to climate and ecology problems. This trend is extremely disappointing since there are a lot of organizations concerned with climate change issues and only one “Center for Responsible Nanotechnology”…

I can understand why you'd feel that way, Dan, and you're not the only one. We've heard from others who expressed similar complaints or concerns. 

Perhaps it will help if I explain some of our internal thinking and discussions over the last several months and years.

When CRN was founded in December 2002, our intent was: a) to assist in establishing the technical feasibility of exponential general-purpose molecular manufacturing; b) to mount a convincing argument that it would be a disruptive, transformative technology; and c) to raise awareness of the potential imminence of its arrival -- it could be soon, and it might appear rather suddenly.

In the "CRN at Five Years Old" status report that we published in January, we related that it appears we have been mostly successful in achieving the first two points above: a) feasibility and b) disruption. We're proud of what we have accomplished there. 

But where we've been less successful is in garnering agreement about the imminence of the technology's likely arrival, and the consequent urgency for preparation. We think, however, that this may not be so much a failure on our part as a recognition that technical work toward achieving molecular manufacturing is not progressing as fast as we were originally concerned that it might. And since the purpose of CRN is not prediction, but preparation, we're quite happy to say that the initial part of our work is done, and the time for hitting hard on the imminence/urgency message is not yet here. This doesn't mean that we won't continue writing and talking about the technology and its implications, because we will.

However, as we sit back and look at this big picture, we can also see how vital it is to understand that technological change does not occur in a vacuum, nor is it immune to the social, political, and economic conditions within which it develops. That's why we think it's so important to project the impacts of evolving changes in societies, cultures, other emerging technologies, and major environmental trends. 

If, for example, global warming continues at its present alarming rate and causes greater and greater ecological catastrophes, eventually throwing the world economy totally out of whack -- well, that's something that could affect how soon and how safely molecular manufacturing is developed and deployed. Or, if China's unprecedented growth rate shifts the balance of power either economically or militarily too quickly and makes the geopolitical situation dangerously unstable, that's something that could have a big impact on where, when, and how nanofactory technology comes into being. This, by the way, is a good explanation for why we went to such trouble to prepare eight future scenarios about the potential development of advanced nanotechnology.

So, we don't think that paying attention to these issues is beyond the scope of our mission. In fact, we believe that if we ignored such preeminent factors, we'd not be doing justice to the purposes for which we were founded. 

Mike Treder