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C-R-Newsletter #48 December 29, 2006 * SPECIAL YEAR-END ISSUE *
Happy Birthday
to Us!
This month marks the four-year anniversary of CRN's founding. In this special
expanded edition of the C-R-Newsletter, we'll review some of the major nano-related
events of 2006 and highlight a few of our proudest accomplishments from the
past 12 months.
January: Feature
Article on Nanofactories
February: WorldChanging
Interview
February: CRN Goes
to Switzerland
March: CRN Task Force Publishes
First 11 Essays
April: State of Global
Emergency
April: CRN Goes to New
Jersey
May: CRN Task Force Publishes
11 More Essays
June: Nanofactory
Development Project
July: Back to Switzerland
August: CRN Goes to
Tennessee
September: New Zealand
and Australia
October: Doomsday Discussion
October: CRN at the Naval
War College
October: Global Futures
Strategist
November: CRN Goes to South
America
December: National Academy
of Sciences Report
Every
month is full of activity for CRN. To follow the latest happenings on
a daily basis, be sure to check our Responsible
Nanotechnology weblog.
==========
January: Feature Article on Nanofactories
A special report titled "Nanofactories:
Glimpsing the future of process technology" was the cover article for the
January 2006 issue of CleanRooms Magazine. The lengthy article, subtitled "Making
sense of the molecular machine shop," quoted extensively from CRN Research
Director Chris Phoenix, as well as from nanotech researchers Robert A. Freitas
Jr. and Ralph Merkle. We described it on our blog as a "must read."
February: WorldChanging Interview
"Revolution in a Box" was the title of a long
interview about CRN's work posted by Jamais Cascio at the popular WorldChanging
web site. This is how the article was introduced:
Founded in December 2002, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology has a modest goal: to ensure that the planet navigates the emerging nanotech era safely. That's a lot for a couple of volunteers to shoulder, but Mike Treder and Chris Phoenix have carried their burden well, and done much to raise awareness of the potential risks and benefits of molecular manufacturing, including a major presentation at the US Environmental Protection Agency on the impacts of nanotechnology. We first linked to CRN back in October of 2003, and have long considered them a real WorldChanging ally.
February: CRN Goes to Switzerland
Twice this year, CRN Executive Director Mike Treder traveled to Zurich, Switzerland,
to participate in "Risk Governance for Nanotechnology" workshops organized
by the International Risk Governance Council.
Among the 30 attendees at the February event were representatives from the
European Commission, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD), the World Economic Forum, Environmental Defense, CBEN at Rice University,
Swiss RE, Pfizer, and the NanoBusiness Alliance.
This event was coordinated by Ortwinn Renn from the University of Stuttgart
and Mike Roco from the U.S. National Science and Technology Council, and moderated
by Tim Mealey of the Meridian Institute. CRN was pleased overall with the
direction taken and with the content of the workshop. It was refreshing to
see that some international leaders were willing to consider longer-term risks
and more serious implications than nanoparticle toxicity.
March: CRN Task Force Publishes First 11 Essays
In August 2005, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology announced
the formation of a Global Task Force convened to study the societal
implications of this rapidly emerging technology. For their first major
project, members of the CRN Task Force chose to generate
a range of independent essays identifying and defining specific concerns
about the possibilities of advanced nanotechnology. The first 11 of those
essays were published in the March 2006 issue of Nanotechnology
Perceptions, a peer-reviewed academic journal of the Collegium
Basilea in Basel, Switzerland. The essays also were posted
for reader commentary at KurzweilAI.net, and on Wise-Nano.org.
April: State of Global Emergency
CRN Executive Director Mike Treder was invited to take part in a special meeting
in Bellevue, Washington, called "Crossroads for Planet Earth" sponsored by
the Foundation For the
Future. Topics included human population, extreme and widespread poverty,
biodiversity, energy and environment, public health, world economies, and
global priorities. Nine participants, described as "experts in these fields...plus
additional voices from the USA and abroad," made presentations and were
joined in discussion by principals from the foundation.
Based on what was shared at the meeting, it is clear that we are in a state
of global emergency regarding the potential for rapid and disastrous climate
change. This may not be news for most C-R-Newsletter readers, but the statistical
evidence presented at this event was highly alarming. CRN's presentation on "Nanotechnology:
Driving Toward a Crisis" emphasized the opportunity for exponential general-purpose
molecular manufacturing to enable intervention in the rapid deterioration
of global climate stability. Of course, the same technology that will provide
many potential benefits also can be misused and
cause great harm.
April: CRN Goes to New Jersey
The New Jersey Institute of Technology invited
Chris Phoenix, CRN's Director of Research, to conduct a two-hour public seminar
on "Nanotechnology: Its Promises and Perils." The event took place on April
5 and was well attended. A video
archive of the talk is online. The following
day, Chris was able to have several informal group discussions with physics
students and professors from NJIT about both technical matters and ethical
implications of advanced nanotechnology.
May: CRN Task Force Publishes 11 More Essays
The second set of essays written by members of CRN's Global
Task Force on Implications and Policy were published in the May 2006
issue of Nanotechnology
Perceptions, and also online. These
essays covered topics from commerce to criminology, from ethics to economics,
and from our remote past to our distant future. Taken together, they begin
to illustrate the profoundly transformative impact that molecular
manufacturing will have on every aspect of human society.
June: Nanofactory Development Project
In a highly significant development, Robert A. Freitas Jr. and Ralph Merkle
launched a website announcing a "Nanofactory
Collaboration." This is the first project explicitly aimed at building
a high-performance general-purpose nanofactory manufacturing system based
on molecular manufacturing. (The Foresight/Battelle
Roadmap is focused
more on near-term technologies leading toward molecular manufacturing.)
The timeline of the project calls for initial diamond mechanosynthesis
in 2010, with "nanofactories and nanorobotic products" beginning around
2020. CRN will continue watching with great interest to see how this project
progresses, and working to steer it in responsible directions.
July: Back to Switzerland
In early July, CRN Executive Director Mike Treder returned to Zurich, Switzerland,
for another meeting sponsored by the International Risk Governance Council.
Participants reviewed a white paper [PDF]
on risk governance of nanotechnology, deliberated in breakout groups, and
listened to several distinguished speakers. Here is part of Mike's
report about the event:
During one of the breakout sessions, some people complained about an overemphasis on human enhancement issues in the white paper, especially when compared with the scant references to the risk of a nanotechnology arms race and possible warfare. I made the point that a nano-enabled arms race is almost certain to be less stable than the nuclear arms race, and therefore more likely to result in devastating war. I also proposed, on behalf of CRN, the need for an International NanoTechnology Arms Control Treaty, or INTACT.
CRN was not the only NGO (non-governmental organization) among the 100 or so conference attendees. Representatives from Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Practical Action, the Meridian Institute, the Woodrow Wilson Center, Demos, the Foresight Nanotech Institute and others were there. Although we had a wide range of concerns and points of view, there was strong consensus between NGOs on the need for a longer-range outlook and more serious consideration of the potentially transformative impacts of molecular manufacturing.
August: CRN Goes to Tennessee
CRN's Director of Research, Chris Phoenix, traveled to Oak Ridge, Tennessee,
in August to speak at a conference titled "The
Next Industrial Revolution: Nanotechnology and Manufacturing." The conference
was sponsored by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Chris's talk, "From
Nanotechnology to Molecular Manufacturing," focused on why molecular manufacturing
will be very attractive to develop and described several pathways to development.
Two other speakers, Josh Hall and Tihamer Toth-Fejel, also made molecular
manufacturing the topic of their remarks.
September: New Zealand and Australia
CRN Executive Director Mike Treder was the featured speaker in the annual
Pickering Lecture Tour organized by the Institution
of Professional Engineers New Zealand. Mike gave talks in ten New Zealand
cities over a two-week period, with overflow
audiences in many places and lots of interest in CRN's ideas about
responsible use of molecular manufacturing. He was interviewed twice on
the country's national radio network. After New Zealand, Mike spent a
week in Australia, giving talks to large audiences at three universities.
That trip prompted significant media
coverage.
October: Doomsday Discussion
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists -- famed for its Doomsday
Clock that now sits at seven minutes to midnight -- held a series of "Doomsday
Reconsidered" meetings throughout 2006 to look at future threats to civilization.
In October, CRN Director of Research Chris Phoenix took part in a program
in Washington DC sponsored by the group. Chris was invited to speak about "Threats
to Society from Nanotechnology."
October: CRN at the Naval War College
Also in October, CRN Executive Director Mike Treder met with a group of senior
officers and affiliated civilian researchers at the US Naval
War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Mike was invited to address the Strategic
Studies Group on the subject of the disruptive potential of molecular
manufacturing. The wide-ranging three-hour conversation covered not just
military applications, but other societal implications as well.
October: Global Futures Strategist
Jamais Cascio, who writes about the intersection of emerging technologies
and cultural transformation, and who specializes in the design and creation
of plausible scenarios of the future, was appointed this year as a Global
Futures Strategist for CRN. In 2003, Jamais co-founded the award-winning
weblog WorldChanging.com, covering
topics including energy and the environment, global development, open source
technologies, and catalysts for social change. His essays about technology
and society have appeared in a variety of publications, and he has worked
on a number of television, film, and game projects, including two books
for the science fiction game series Transhuman
Space.
November: CRN Goes to South America
Chris Phoenix, Director of Research for CRN, visited Sao Paulo, Brazil, to
participate in the Third
International Seminar on Nanotechnology, Society, and the Environment.
He spoke on the subject of nanotechnology and economics. Chris
went from Brazil to Caracas, Venezuela, where he
was the featured speaker at a half-day symposium on nanotechnology. Chris
talked about the implications of nanotechnology for developing countries.
His remarks were written up in detail in El Nacional, a major Venezuelan
newspaper.
December: National Academy of Sciences Report
At the end of the year, the US National Academy of Sciences released its long-awaited
analysis of molecular manufacturing, in "A Matter of Size: Triennial
Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative." Conclusions published
in the report are likely to accelerate research toward the development of
molecularly-precise manufacturing. However, without adequate understanding
and preparation, exponential atom-by-atom construction of advanced products
could have catastrophic results. Because increased funding of research leading
toward exponential construction of atomically-precise products is now a
strong possibility, CRN urgently recommends equivalent
funding and priority for research into the profound societal and environmental
implications of molecular manufacturing, including consideration of the
most aggressive potential timelines and powerful capabilities.
That concludes our year-end wrap up -- Happy New Year!
C-R-Newsletter #47 November 30, 2006
CRN
at Brazil Nanotech Seminar
CRN Speaks in Venezuela
CRN Goes Around the World
WorldChanging Book Published
IEEE Fellows Predictions
Website Upgrade Begins
Feature Essay: Preventing
Errors in Molecular Manufacturing
Every
month is full of activity for CRN. To follow the latest happenings on
a daily basis, be sure to check our Responsible
Nanotechnology weblog.
==========
CRN
at Brazil Nanotech Seminar
Chris Phoenix, Director of Research for CRN, was in Brazil earlier this month to participate in the Third International Seminar on Nanotechnology, Society, and the Environment. He spoke on the subject of nanotechnology and economics. Much of the conference focus was on the social and economic aspects of technology. Nanotechnology was seen as one of a cluster of new technologies, such as new agricultural and medical technologies, that raise social as well as technical issues. Chris made connections with attendees and speakers from several different continents.
After leaving Brazil, Chris traveled to Caracas, Venezuela, where he was the featured speaker at a half-day symposium on nanotechnology. Chris talked about the implications of nanotechnology for developing countries. His remarks were well received by an audience of about forty, and were written up in detail in El Nacional, a major Venezuelan newspaper.
We want to thank José Luis Cordeiro, from CRN's Board of Advisors, for helping to make this event possible.
Since the founding of CRN in December 2002, we have had the opportunity to address conferences and groups in twelve countries on five continents. Our work has been published extensively in Chinese, Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese (as well as English), and references to "Center for Responsible Nanotechnology" can be found on the Internet in at least 15 additional languages, including Arabic, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish, Swedish, and Turkish.
Based on one analysis of the world’s most influential languages, the next most valuable language to have our ideas published in would be French, although Arabic, German, Japanese, and Hindu/Urdu also would be very useful. Previous translation of CRN's work has been accomplished by volunteers. We thank them, and encourage volunteer translators in other languages to come forward.
Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century was published on November 1. This 608-page book includes chapters on Cities, Communities, Business, Politics, Shelter, and more. CRN wrote quite a bit of material for the book's section on nanotechnology. We’ve received our contributor’s copy and have to say we’ve seen nothing else like it since the good old days of the Whole Earth Catalog. According to the book’s editor, Alex Steffen, sales are brisk and reviews have been almost uniformly positive.
More than 700 IEEE Fellows — about half of them academic researchers, the rest working in industry — were asked to forecast trends within their area of expertise over the next 50 years. The survey was a joint study conducted earlier this year by the Institute for the Future and IEEE Spectrum. CRN’s Chris Phoenix analyzed some of the results in an article for our blog. Here is some of what he wrote:
56% of experts thought it was likely that it will be "commercially viable to manufacture nanostructured materials to exact specifications without machining." And of those, over 75% thought that this would happen within 20 years or less. Meanwhile, almost 2/3 of experts expected "robust design tools for fabrication at the nanoscale" to become available. They weren't asked directly about molecular manufacturing, but enabling technologies are certainly looking plausible. If you can do NEMS, five-nanometer commercial lithography, robust design, and built-to-order nanostructured materials, then it's not a very big step from there to NEMS-building-NEMS.
The paradigm is shifting. The nanoscale is rapidly moving from the domain of scientists to the domain of engineers -- and the engineers know it, and are looking forward to it.
CRN’s main website (the one you're on) has not changed much — in terms of its software platform and its design — since we first went online in December 2002. We have added a significant amount of content, of course, and many new features, but the site has been in need of an overall upgrade for some time. Now we’re pleased to announce that we have begun that process. We expect to have an improved navigation structure, a cleaner look, and, most important, a more stable software platform along with a more reliable server host. Great stuff ahead.
Feature Essay: Preventing
Errors in Molecular Manufacturing
Chris Phoenix, Director of Research, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
What
kind of system can perform a billion manufacturing operations without an
error?
Many people familiar with today's manufacturing technologies will assume that
such a thing is near-impossible. Today's manufacturing operations are doing
very well to get one error in a million products. To reduce the error to one
in a billion--to say nothing of one in a million billion, which Drexler talks
about in Nanosystems--seems ridiculously
difficult. None of today's technologies could do it, despite many decades
of improvement. So how can molecular manufacturing theorists reasonably expect
to develop systems with such low error rates--much less, to develop them on
a schedule measured in years rather than decades?
There are physical systems today that have error rates even lower than molecular
manufacturing systems would require. A desktop computer executes more than
a billion instructions each second, and can operate for years without a single
error. Each instruction involves tens of millions of transistors, flipping
on or off with near-perfect reliability. If each transistor operation were
an atom, the computer would process about a gram of atoms each day--and they
would all be flawlessly handled.
The existence of computers demonstrates that an engineered, real-world system,
containing millions of interacting components, can handle simple operations
in vast numbers with an insignificant error rate. The computer must continue
working flawlessly despite changes in temperature, line voltage, and electromagnetic
noise, and regardless of what program it is asked to run.
The computer can do this because it is digital. Digital values are discrete--each
signal in the computer is either on or off, never in-between. The signals
are generated by transistor circuits which have a non-linear response to input
signals; an input that is anywhere near the ideal "on" or "off" level will
produce an output that is closer to the ideal. Deviations from perfection,
rather than building up, are reduced as the signal propagates from one transistor
to another. Even without active error detection, correction, or feedback,
the non-linear behavior of transistors means that error rates can be kept
as low as desired: for the purposes of computer designers, the error rate
of any signal is effectively zero.
An error rate of zero means that the signals inside a computer are perfectly
characterized: each signal and computation is exactly predictable. This allows
a very powerful design technique to be used, called "levels of abstraction." Error-free
operations can be combined in intricate patterns and in large numbers, with
perfectly predictable results. The result of any sequence of operations can
be calculated with certainty and precision. Thousands of transistors can be
combined into number-processing circuits that do arithmetic and other calculations.
Thousands of those circuits can be combined in general-purpose processor chips
that execute simple instructions. Thousands of those instructions can be combined
into data-processing functions. And those functions can be executed thousands
or even billions of times, in any desired sequence, to perform any calculation
that humans can invent... performing billions of billions of operations with
reliably zero errors.
Modern manufacturing operations, for all their precision, are not digital.
There is no discrete line between a good and a bad part--just as it's impossible
to say exactly when someone who loses one hair at a time becomes bald. Worse,
there is no mechanism in manufacturing that naturally restores precision.
Difficult and complicated processes are required to construct a machine more
precise than the machines used to build it. To build a modern machine such
as a computer-controlled lathe requires so many different techniques--polymer
chemistry, semiconductor lithography, metallurgy and metal working, and thousands
of others--that the "real world" will inevitably create errors that must be
detected and corrected. And to top it off, machines suffer from wear--their
dimensions change as they are used.
Given the problems inherent in today's manufacturing methods and machine designs,
the idea of building a fully automated general-purpose manufacturing system
that could build a complete duplicate of itself... is ridiculous.
The ability to form covalent solids by placing individual molecules changes
all that. Fundamentally, covalent bonds are digital: two atoms are either
bonded, or they are held some distance apart by a repelling force. (Not all
bond types are fully covalent, but many useful bonds including carbon-carbon
bonds are.) If a covalent bond is stretched out of shape, it will return to
its ideal configuration all by itself, without any need for external error
detection, correction, or feedback.
If a covalent-bonding manufacturing system performs an operation with less
than one atom out of place, then the resulting product will have exactly zero
atoms out of place. Just like transistor signals in a digital computer, imperfections
fade away all by themselves. (In both cases, a bit of energy is used up in
making the imperfections disappear.) In digital systems, there is no physical
law that requires imperfections to accumulate into errors--not in digital
computer logic, and not in atomic fabrication systems.
Atomic fabrication operations, like transistor operations, can be characterized
with great reliability. Only a few transistor operations are a sufficient
toolkit with which to design a computer. A general-purpose molecular manufacturing
system may use a dozen or so different kinds of atoms, and perhaps 100 reactions
between the atoms. That is a small enough number to study each reaction in
detail, and know how it works with as much precision as necessary. Each reaction
can proceed in a predictable way each and every time it is attempted.
A sequence of completely predictable operations will itself have a completely
predictable outcome, regardless of the length of the sequence. If each one
of a sequence of a billion reactions is carried out as expected, then the
final product can be produced reliably.
Chemists who read this may be objecting that there's no such thing as a reaction
with 100% yield. Answering that objection in detail would require a separate
essay--but briefly, mechanical manipulation and control of reactants can in
many cases prevent unwanted reaction pathways as well as shifting the energetics
so far (hundreds of zJ/bond or kJ/mole) that the missed reaction rate is reduced
by many orders of magnitude.
At this point, it is necessary to consider the "real world." What factors,
in practice, will reduce the predictability of mechanically-guided molecular
reaction machinery?
One factor that doesn't have to be considered in a well-designed system of
this type is wear. Again, it would take a separate essay to discuss wear in
detail, but wear in a covalent solid requires breaking strong inter-atomic
bonds, and a well-designed system will never, in normal operation, exert enough
force on any single atom to cause its bonds to break. Likewise, machines built
with the same sequence of reliable operations will themselves be identical.
Once a machine is characterized, all of its siblings will be just as fully
understood.
Mechanical vibration from outside the system is unlikely to be a problem.
It is a problem in today's nanotech tools because the tools are far bigger
than the manipulations or measurements those tools perform--big enough to
have slow vibrational periods and high momentum. Nanoscale tools, such as
would be used in a molecular manufacturing system, would have vibrational
frequencies in the gigahertz or higher, and momentum vanishingly small compared
to restoring forces.
It is possible that vibrations generated within the system, from previous
operations of the system or of neighboring systems, could be a problem. In
computers, transistor operations can cause voltage ripples that cause headaches
for designers, and are probably analogous. But these problems are practical,
not fundamental.
Contaminant molecules should not be a problem in a well-designed system. The
ability to build covalent solids without error implies the ability to build
hermetically sealed enclosures. Feedstock molecules would have to be taken
in through the enclosures, but sorting mechanisms have been planned that should
reject any contaminants in the feedstock stream with extremely low error rates.
There are ways for a manufacturing system inside a sealed enclosure to build
another system of the same size or larger without breaking the seal. It would
take a third essay to discuss these topics in detail, but they have been considered
and none of the problems appears unlikely to be addressable in practice.
Despite everything written above, there will be some fraction of molecular
manufacturing systems that suffer from errors--if nothing else, background
levels of ionizing radiation will cause at least some bond breakage. In theory,
an imperfect machine could fabricate more imperfect machines, perpetuating
and perhaps exacerbating the error. However, in practice, this seems unlikely.
Whereas a perfect manufacturing machine could do a billion operations without
error, an imperfect machine would probably make at least one atom-placement
error fairly early in the fabrication sequence. That first error would leave
an atom out of its expected position on the surface of the workpiece. A flawed
workpiece surface would usually cause a cascade of further fabrication errors
in the same product, and long before a product could be completed, the process
would be hopelessly jammed. Thus, imperfect machines would quickly become
inert, before producing even one imperfect product.
The biggest source of unpredictability probably will be thermal noise, sometimes
referred to as Brownian motion. (Quantum uncertainty and Heisenberg uncertainty
are similar but smaller sources of unpredictability.) Thermal noise means
that the exact dimensions of a mechanical system will change unpredictably,
too rapidly to permit active compensation. In other words, the exact position
of the operating machinery cannot be known. The degree of variance depends
on the temperature of the system, as well as the stiffness of the mechanical
design. If the position varies too far, then a molecule-bonding operation
may result in one of several unpredictable outcomes. This is a practical problem,
not a fundamental limitation; in any given system, the variance is limited,
and there are a number of ways to reduce it. More research on this point is
needed, but so far, high-resolution computational chemistry experiments by
Robert Freitas seem to show that even without using some of the available
tricks, difficult molecule-placement operations can be carried out with high
reliability at liquid nitrogen temperatures and possibly at room temperature.
If positional variance can be reduced to the point where the molecule is placed
in approximately the right position, the digital nature of covalent bonding
will do the rest.
This is a key point: The mechanical unpredictability
in the system does not have to be reduced to zero, or even extremely close
to zero, in order to achieve extremely high levels of reliability in the product. As
long as each reaction trajectory leads closer to the right outcome than to
competing outcomes, the atoms will naturally be pulled into their proper configuration
each time--and by the time the next atoms are deposited, any positional error
will have dissipated into heat, leaving the physical bond structure perfectly
predictable for the next operation.
Molecular manufacturing requires an error rate that is extremely low by most
standards, but is quite permissive compared to the error rates necessary for
digital computers. Error rate is an extremely important topic, and unfortunately,
understanding of errors in mechanically guided chemistry is susceptible to
incorrect intuitions from chemistry, manufacturing, and even physics (many
physicists assume that entropy must increase without considering that the
system is not closed). It appears that the nature of covalent bonds provides
an automatic error-reducing mechanism that will make molecular manufacturing
closer in significant ways to computer logic than to today's manufacturing
or chemistry.
Three previous science essays have touched on related topics:
Who remembers analog computers? (February 2006)
Coping with Nanoscale Errors (September 2004)
The Bugbear of Entropy (May 2004)
Subsequent CRN science essays will cover topics that this essay raised but did not have space to cover in detail.
C-R-Newsletter #46 October 30, 2006
Doomsday
Discussion
CRN at the Naval War College
Global Futures Strategist
New Zealand Gets Organized
Treder Speech for Download
CRN Goes to Brazil
Books in the Works
Feature Essay: Recycling
Nano-Products
Every
month is full of activity for CRN. To follow the latest happenings on
a daily basis, be sure to check our Responsible
Nanotechnology weblog.
==========
Doomsday Discussion
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists—famed
for its Doomsday Clock that
now sits at seven minutes to midnight—is holding a series of “Doomsday
Reconsidered” meetings this year to look at future threats to civilization.
On October 12-13, CRN Director of Research Chris
Phoenix took part in a program in Washington DC sponsored by the group.
Chris was invited to speak about “Threats to Society from Nanotechnology.” The
organization’s executive director Kennette
Benedict says: “What we're doing is taking stock of the threats
that might be catastrophic to human societies.”
As well as the continuing danger of atomic weapons, new threats are being
investigated. Benedict says: "We're looking at new developments in life sciences,
in synthetic biology, for instance, and some of the emerging technologies,
nanotechnologies and how these may converge with life and developments in
biotechnologies, and at information technology and the vulnerabilities of
civilian infrastructure."
CRN at the Naval War College
On October 24, CRN Executive Director Mike Treder met
with a group of senior officers and affiliated civilian researchers at the
US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode
Island. Mike was invited to address the Strategic
Studies Group on the subject of the disruptive potential of molecular
manufacturing. The wide-ranging three-hour conversation covered not just
military applications, but other societal implications as well.
Global Futures Strategist
We are pleased to announce the appointment of Jamais
Cascio as a new Special Associate of
CRN. Jamais, who writes about the intersection of emerging technologies
and cultural transformation, and specializes in the design and creation
of plausible scenarios of the future, will serve as a Global Futures Strategist
for CRN.
In 2003, Jamais co-founded the award-winning weblog WorldChanging.com,
covering topics including energy and the environment, global development,
open source technologies, and catalysts for social change. His essays about
technology and society have appeared in a variety of publications, and he
has worked on a number of television, film, and game projects, including two
books for the science fiction game series Transhuman
Space.
New Zealand Gets Organized
As part of Mike Treder’s recent speaking tour of
New Zealand and Australia, he was interviewed for
a program on New Zealand’s national radio network. Fern Evitt, a resident
of Auckland, heard the program, was impressed, and decided to attend Mike’s
public presentation on September 14 in Auckland. That night, she introduced
herself to Mike and said she would like to support CRN’s work by creating
an organization in New Zealand for others who are interested in learning more
about the societal implications of advanced nanotechnology.
Fern Evitt has a background in international trade, marketing, and general
management, and is a member of the New Zealand Institute of Directors. We
are quite pleased to have someone of Fern’s caliber making a commitment
to help CRN on a local basis. If you live in New Zealand and would like to
get involved, please contact her at fernevitt@yahoo.com
Treder Speech for Download
A radio station in Nelson, New Zealand, recorded one of the 30-minute presentations
that Mike Treder made on his lecture tour. They have
posted (with our permission) the audio file on their website for downloading.
You may enjoy listening to it. Thanks, 'Fresh FM'!
CRN Goes to Brazil
Chris Phoenix, Director of Research for CRN, will give a talk in Brazil next
month at the Third
International Seminar on Nanotechnology, Society, and the Environment.
The event is November 6-10, and is sponsored by the University of Sao Paulo.
Chris will speak on the subject of nanotechnology and economics.
Books in the Works
Mike Treder and Chris Phoenix, the principals of
CRN, have been asked to contribute chapters for three new non-fiction books
that will cover nanotechnology and its implications. Nanoethics is
being compiled and edited by Patrick Lin; Global Catastrophic Risks by
Nick Bostrom and Milan Cirkovic; and Green Nanotech by Geoffrey Hunt.
In addition, Chris and Mike contributed to Worldchanging: A User's Guide
for the 21st Century, which is scheduled for publication on November
1. This 608-page book includes
chapters on Cities, Communities, Business, Politics, Shelter, and more.
And, yes, as we have often been asked, we are planning to write our own book.
It’s a big undertaking, but we’ll keep you informed as progress
is made.
Feature Essay: Recycling Nano-Products
Chris Phoenix, Director of Research, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
We are often asked, "How will nanofactory-built products be recycled?"
One of the advantages of molecular manufacturing is
that it will use very strong and high-performance materials. Most of them
probably will not be biodegradable. So what will save us from being buried
in nano-litter?
The first piece of good news is that nano-built products will use materials
more efficiently. Mechanical parts can be built mostly without defects, making
them a lot stronger than today's materials. Active components can be even
more compact, because scaling laws are advantageous to small machines: motors
may have a million times the power density, and computers may be a million
times as compact. So for equivalent functionality, nano-built products will
use perhaps 100-1000 times less material. In fact, some products may be so
light that they have to be ballasted with water. (This would also make carbon-based
products fireproof.)
The second good news is that carbon-based products will burn once any water
ballast is removed. Traditionally, incineration has been a dirty way to dispose
of trash; heavy metals, chlorine compounds, and other nasty stuff goes up
the smokestack and pollutes wherever the wind blows. Fortunately, one of the
first products of molecular manufacturing will be efficient molecular sorting
systems. It will be possible to remove the harmless and useful gases from
the combustion products--perhaps using them to build the next products--and
send the rest back to be re-burned.
The third good news is that fewer exotic materials and elements should be
needed. Today's products use a lot of different substances for different jobs.
Molecular manufacturing, by contrast, will be able to implement different
functions by building different molecular shapes out of a much smaller set
of materials. For example, carbon can be either an insulator or a conductor,
shapes built of carbon can be both flexible or rigid, and carbon molecules
can be transparent (diamond) or opaque (graphite).
Finally, it may be possible to build many full-size products out of modular
building blocks: microscopic nanoblocks that
might contain a billion atoms and provide flexible functionality. In theory,
rather than discarding and recycling a product, it could be pulled apart into
its constituent blocks, which could then be reassembled into a new product.
However, this may be impractical, since the nanoblocks would have to be carefully
cleaned in order to fit together precisely enough to make a reliable product.
But re-using rather than scrapping products is certainly a possibility that's
worth investigating further.
Not surprisingly, there is also some bad news. The first bad news is that
carbon is not the only possible material for molecular manufacturing. It is
probably the most flexible, but others have been proposed. For example, sapphire
(corundum, alumina) is a very strong crystal of aluminum oxide. It will not
burn, and alumina products probably will have to be scrapped into landfills
if their nanoblocks cannot be re-used. Of course, if we are still using industrial
abrasives, old nano-built products might simply be crushed and used for that
purpose.
The second bad news is that nano-built products will come in a range of sizes,
and some will be small enough that they will be easy to lose. Let me stress
that a nano-built product is not a grey goo robot,
any more than a toaster is. Tiny products may be sensors, computer nodes,
or medical devices, but they will have specialized functionality--not general-purpose
manufacturing capability. A lost product will likely be totally inert. But
enough tiny lost products could add up to an irritating dust.
The third bad news is that widespread use of personal
nanofactories will make it very easy and inexpensive to build stuff.
Although each product will use far less material than today's versions,
we may be using far more products.
Some readers may be wondering about "disassemblers" and whether they could
be used for recycling. Unfortunately, the "disassembler" described in Eric
Drexler's Engines
of Creation was a slow and energy-intensive research tool, not
an efficient way of taking apart large amounts of matter. It might be possible
to take apart old nano-products molecule by molecule, but it would probably
be less efficient than incinerating them.
Collecting products for disposal of is an interesting problem. Large products
can be handled one at a time. Small and medium-sized products might be enough
of a hassle to keep track of that people will be tempted to use them and forget
them. For example, networked sensors with one-year batteries might be scattered
around, used for two months, and then forgotten--better models would have
been developed long before the battery would wear out. In such cases, the
products might need to be collected robotically. Any product big enough to
have an RFID antenna would be able to be interrogated as to its age and when
it was last used. Ideally, it would also tell who its owner had been, so the
owner could be billed, fined, or warned as appropriate.
This essay has described what could be. Environmentally friendly cleanup and
disposal schemes will not be difficult to implement in most cases. However,
as with so much else about molecular manufacturing, the availability of good
choices does not mean that the best options necessarily will be chosen. It
is likely that profligate manufacturing and bad design will lead to some amount
of nano-litter. But the world will be very fortunate if nano-litter turns
out to be the biggest problem created by molecular
manufacturing.
C-R-Newsletter #45 September 30, 2006
CRN
Down Under
CRN at MIT, LiveBlogging
CRN in Albany
Molecular Manufacturing “Idea
Factory” Funded
New Ideas for DNA
Construction
Molecular Manufacturing
Video
Foresight Institute Awards
Feynman Prizes
Feature Essay: New Opportunities
for DNA Design
Every month is full of activity for CRN. To follow the latest happenings on a daily basis, be sure to check our Responsible Nanotechnology weblog.
==========
CRN
Down Under
CRN’s Executive Director, Mike Treder,
spent two weeks in New Zealand and one week in Australia this month, giving
numerous talks on molecular manufacturing. Mike reports that he spoke to large
audiences, and that he encountered no skepticism about whether molecular manufacturing
was possible. In the middle of his busy schedule, Mike was able to blog his
experiences here, here, here,
and here.
The trip was covered by ABC
News. The article was a good summary of CRN’s message. At the
end, they included opinions from four scientists. None of the scientists
asserted that molecular manufacturing was impossible – a nice change
from a few years ago, when it seemed every article on any kind of nanotech
had to end with some scientist giving a bogus explanation of why it couldn’t
possibly work. The scientists did say that CRN’s timeline was too
optimistic, prompting this
blog post from our Director of Research, Chris
Phoenix.
CRN at MIT, LiveBlogging
On September 27 and 28, Mike attended the Emerging Technologies Conference
at MIT, and LiveBlogged it in eight articles, covering Amazon.com, online
media, innovation, cheap
human genomes, autonomous
vehicles, U.S.
technology level, energy,
and anti-aging
research.
CRN in Albany
Defying alphabetical order, Albany came between Australia and Boston on Mike’s
itinerary. He spoke at Nanotechnology
2006, a two-day international conference September 25-26 hosted by Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute. The title of Mike’s talk was “Fourth-Generation
Nanotechnology: Disruptive Abundance.”
Molecular Manufacturing “Idea Factory” Funded
The UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
does something they call “IDEAS Factory” which involves 20-30
interdisciplinary researchers spending two days brainstorming on how to generate
cutting-edge research on an interesting topic.
An IDEAS factory has been announced to study “Software Control of Matter
at the Atomic or Molecular Scale.” The project description includes
this statement: “One route to this goal might be to take inspiration
from 3D rapid prototyping devices, and conceive of some kind of pick-and-place
mechanism operating at the atomic or molecular level, perhaps based on scanning
probe techniques.” In addition to hosting the brainstorming “sandbox,” 1.5
million GBP have been earmarked for whatever research ideas are generated
by this proposal.
For more details and technical commentary, see our
blog, Richard Jones’s Soft
Machines blog, or the project
website.
New Ideas for DNA Construction
CRN Research Director Chris Phoenix got inspired recently, thinking about
the possible molecular manufacturing implications of the new DNA design technique
that uses short, easily manufactured “staples” to stitch together
a long, easily obtained DNA strand into folds. Chris wrote several blog posts here, here,
and here,
and has made that the topic of this month’s Feature
Essay.
Molecular Manufacturing Video
The Society of Manufacturing Engineers has created a new video focused on
molecular manufacturing, as well as nanomanufacturing. The video is a series
of interviews with people working on various aspects. Although the video is
not free, SME has made a transcript available free on their
page, and Chris reviewed
it on our blog.
Foresight Institute Awards Feynman Prizes
Each year, Foresight Nanotech Institute awards Feynman Prizes for experimental
and theoretical work toward molecular manufacturing, as well as a Communication
Prize and a Distinguished Student award.
This year, the experimental and theoretical prizes were both awarded to the
same group – the team that invented the DNA stapling technique, Drs. Erik
Winfree and Paul W.K.
Rothemund of Caltech.
The Communication prize was awarded to Dr. J. Storrs (Josh) Hall. Josh was
a longtime moderator of the sci.nanotech newsgroup, and recently the author
of Nanofuture: What's Next For Nanotechnology.
The Distinguished Student award was received by Berhane
Temelso.
CRN congratulates all the prize winners for their excellent work.
Feature Essay: New Opportunities for DNA Design
Chris Phoenix, Director of Research, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
DNA is a very versatile molecule, if you know how to use it. Of course, the
genetic material for all organisms (except some viruses) is made of DNA. But
it is also useful for building shapes and structures, and it is this use that
is most interesting to a nanotechnologist.
Readers familiar with DNA complementarity should skip this paragraph. Non-technical
readers should read my earlier science essay on
DNA folding. Briefly, DNA is made of four molecules, abbreviated A, C, G,
and T, in a long string (polymer). G and C attract each other, as do A and
T. A string with the sequence AACGC will tend to attach itself to another
string with the sequence GCGTT (the strings match head-to-tail). Longer sequences
attach more permanently. Heating up a mixture of DNA makes the matched strings
vibrate apart; slowly cooling a mixture makes the strings reattach in (hopefully)
their closest-matched configuration.
Until recently, designing a shape out of DNA was a painstaking process of
planning sequences that would match in just the right way – and none
of the wrong ways. Over the years, a number of useful design patterns were
developed, including ways to attach four strands of DNA side by side for extra
stiffness; ways to make structures that would contract or twist when a third
strand was added to bridge two strands in the structure; and three-way junctions
between strands, useful for building geometric shapes. A new structure or
technique would make the news every year or so. In addition to design difficulties,
it was hard to make sufficiently long error-free strands to form useful shapes.
A few months ago, a new technique was
invented by Dr. Paul Rothemund. Instead of building all the DNA artificially
for his shapes, he realized that half of it could be derived from a high-quality
natural source with a fixed but random sequence, and the other half could
be divided into short, easily synthesized pieces – “staples” – with
sequences chosen to match whatever sequence the natural strand happens to
have at the place the staple needs to attach. Although the random strand will
tend to fold up on itself randomly to some extent, the use of large numbers
of precisely-matching staples will pull it into the desired configuration.
If a bit of extra DNA is appended to the end of a staple piece, the extra
bit will stick out from the shape. This extra DNA can be used to attach multiple
shapes together, or to grab on to a DNA-tagged molecule or particle. This
implies that DNA-shape structures can be built that include other molecules
for increased strength or stiffness, or useful features such as actuation.
Although the first shapes designed were planar, because planar shapes are
easier to scan with atomic force microscopes so as to verify what’s
been built, the stapling technique can also be used to pull the DNA strand
into a three-dimensional shape. So this implies that with a rather small design
effort (at least by the standards of a year ago), 3D structures built of DNA
can be constructed, with “Velcro” hanging off of them to attach
them to other DNA structures, and with other molecules either attached to
the surface or embedded in the interior.
The staple strands are short and easy to synthesize (and don’t need
to be purified), so the cost is quite low. According to page 81 of Rothemund’s
notes [PDF], a single staple costs about $7.00 – for 80 nmol,
or 50 quintillion molecules. Enough different staples to make a DNA shape
cost about $1,500 to synthesize. The backbone strand costs about $12.50
per trillion molecules. Now, those trillion molecules only add up to 4 micrograms.
Building a human-scale product out of that material would be far too costly.
But a computer chip with only 100 million transistors costs a lot more than
$12.50.
The goal that’s the focus of this essay is combining a lot of these
molecular “bricks” to build engineered heterogeneous structures
with huge numbers of atoms. In other words, rather than creating simple tilings
of a few bricks, stick them together in arbitrary computer-controlled patterns,
constructs in which every brick can be different and independently designed.
I was hoping that nano-manipulation robotics had advanced to the point where
the molecular shapes could be attached to large handles that would be grabbed
and positioned by a robot, making the brick go exactly where it’s wanted
relative to the growing construct, but I’m told that the state of the
art probably isn’t there yet. Just one of the many problems is that
if you can’t sense the molecule as you’re positioning it, you
don’t know if temperature shifts have caused the handle to expand or
contract. However, there may be another way to do it.
An atomic force microscope (AFM) uses a small tip. With focused ion beam (FIB)
nano-machining, the tip can be hollowed out so as to form a pocket suitable
for a brick to nestle in. By depositing DNA Velcro with different sequences
at different places in the pocket (which could probably be done by coating
the whole tip, burning away a patch with the FIB, then depositing a different
sequence), it should be possible to orient the brick relative to the tip.
(If the brick has two kinds of Velcro on each face, and the tip only has one
kind deposited, the brick will stick less strongly to the tip than to its
target position.)
Now, the tip can be used for ordinary microscopy, except that instead of having
a silicon point, it will have a corner of the DNA brick. It should still be
usable to scan the construct, hopefully with enough resolution to tell where
the tip is relative to the construct. This would solve the nano-positioning
problem.
I said above that the brick would have DNA Velcro sticking out all over. For
convenience, it may be desirable to have a lot of bricks of identical design,
floating around the construct – as long as they would not get stuck
in places they’re not wanted. This would allow the microscope tip to
pick up a brick from solution, then deposit it, then pick up another right
away, without having to move away to a separate “inkwell.” But
why don’t the bricks stick to the construct and each other, and if they
don’t, then how can the tip deposit them, and why do they stay where
they’re put?
To make the bricks attach only when and where they’re put requires three
conditions. First, the Velcro should be designed to be sticky, so that the
bricks will stay firmly in place once attached. Second, the Velcro should
be capped with other DNA strands so that the bricks will not attach by accident.
Third, the capping strands should be designed so that physically pushing the
brick against a surface will weaken the bond between Velcro and cap, allowing
the Velcro to get free and bind to the target surface. For example, if the
cap strands stick stiffly out away from the block (perhaps by being bound
to two Velcro strands at once), then mechanical pressure will weaken the connection.
Mechanical pressure, of course, can be applied by an AFM. Scan with low force,
and when the brick is in the right place, press down with the microscope.
Wait for the cap strands to float away and the Velcro to pair up, and the
brick is deposited. With multiple Velcro strands between each brick, the chance
of them all coming loose at once and allowing the brick to be re-capped can
be made miniscule, especially since the effective concentration of Velcro
strands would be far higher than the concentration of cap strands. But before
the brick was pushed into place, the chance of all the cap strands coming
loose at once also would have been miniscule. (For any physicists reading
this, thermodynamic equilibrium between bound and free bricks still applies,
but the transition rate can be made even slower than the above concentration
argument implies, since the use of mechanical force allows an extremely high
energy barrier. If the mechanical force applied is 100 pN over 5 nm, that
is 500 zJ, approximately the dissociation energy of a C-C bond.)
So, it seems that with lots of R&D (but without a whole lot of DNA design),
it might be possible to stick DNA bricks (plus attached molecules) together
in arbitrary patterns, using an AFM. But an AFM is going to be pretty slow.
It would be nice to make the work go faster by doing it in parallel. My NIAC
project suggests a way to do that.
The plan is to build an array of “towers” or “needles” out
of DNA bricks. In the tip of each one, put a brick-binding cavity. Use an
AFM to build the first one in the middle of a flat surface. Then use that
to build a second and third needle on an opposing surface. (One of the surfaces
would be attached to a nano-positioner.) Use those two towers to build a fourth,
fifth, sixth, and seventh on the first surface. The number of towers could
grow exponentially.
By the time this is working, there may be molecules available that can act
as fast, independently addressable, nanoscale actuators. Build a mechanism
into each tower that lets it extend or retract – just a nanometer or
so. Now, when the towers are used to build something, the user can select
which bricks to place and which ones to hold back. This means that different
towers, all attached to the same surface and moved by the same nano-positioner,
can be doing different things. Now, instead of an exponential number of identical
designs, it has become possible to build an exponential number of different
designs, or to work on many areas of a large heterogeneous design in parallel.
A cubic micron is not large by human standards, but it is bigger than most
bacteria. There would be about 35,000 DNA bricks in a cubic micron. If a brick
could be placed every fifteen seconds, then it would take a week to build
a cubic micron out of bricks. This seems a little fast for a single AFM that
has to bind bricks from solution, find a position, and then push the brick
into place, even if all steps were fully automated – but it might be
doable with a parallel array (either an array of DNA needles, or a multi-tip
AFM). If every brick were different, it would cost about $50 million for the
staples, but of course not every brick will be different. For 1,000 different
bricks, it would cost only about $1.5 million.
We will want the system to deposit any of a number of brick types in any location.
How to select one of numerous types? The simplest way is to make all bricks
bind to the same tip, then flush them through one type at a time. This is
slow and wasteful. Better to include several tips in one machine, and then
flush through a mixture of bricks that will each bind to only one tip. The
best answer, once really high-function bricks are available and you’re
using DNA-built tips instead of hollowed-out AFM tips, is to make the tips
reconfigurable by using fast internal actuators to present various combinations
of DNA strands for binding of various differently-tagged bricks.
I started by suggesting that a scanning probe microscope be used to build
the first construct. Self-assembly also could be used to build small constructs,
if you can generate enough distinct blocks. But you may not have to build
hundreds of different bricks to make them join in arbitrary patterns. Instead,
build identical bricks, and cap the Velcro strands with a second-level “Velcro
staple.” Start with a generic brick coated with Velcro – optionally,
put a different Velcro sequence on each side. Stir that together with strands
that are complementary to the Velcro at one end and contain a recognition
pattern on the other end. Now, with one generic brick and six custom-made
Velcro staples, you have a brick with a completely unique recognition pattern
on each side. Do that for a number of bricks, and you can make them bind together
any way you want. One possible problem with this is that DNA binding operations
usually need to be “annealed” – heated to a temperature
where the DNA falls apart, then cooled slowly. This implies that the Velcro-staple
approach would need three different temperature ranges: one to form the shapes,
one to attach the staples, and one to let the shapes join together.
The Velcro-staple idea might even be tested today, using only the basic DNA-shape
technology, with one low-cost shape and a few dozen very-low-cost staples.
Plus, of course, whatever analysis tools you’ll need to convince you
that you’re making what you think you’re making.
There is a major issue involved here that I have not yet touched on. Although
the DNA staple technique makes a high percentage of good shapes, it also makes
a lot of broken or incomplete shapes. How can the usable shapes be sorted
from the broken shapes? Incomplete shapes may be sorted out by chromatography.
Broken shapes might possibly be rejected by adding a fluorescence pair and
using a cell sorter to reject shapes that did not fluoresce properly. Another
possibility, if using a scanning probe microscope (as opposed to the “blind” multi-needle
approach) is to detect the overall shape of the brick by deconvolving it against
a known surface feature, and if an unwanted shape is found, heat the tip to
make it dissociate.
This is just a sketch of some preliminary ideas. But it does go to show that
the new DNA staple technology makes things seem plausible that would not have
been thinkable before it was developed.
C-R-Newsletter #44 August 28, 2006
Mike
Treder on the BBC
CRN Goes to Tennessee
Existential
Risks of Nanotechnology
Nanomedicine Web
Site
Sander Olson Interviews
CRN Goes Down Under
CRN Goes to Albany
Feature Essay: Military
Implications of Molecular Manufacturing
Every month is full of activity for CRN. To follow the latest happenings on a daily basis, be sure to check our Responsible Nanotechnology weblog.
==========
Mike Treder on the BBC
Nanotechnology
was the subject of the August 14, 2006, edition of BBC Radio’s Business
Daily, a program that “focuses on issues and trends, providing
context, reportage, debate, opinion, and in-depth interviews.” CRN
Executive Director Mike Treder was a featured
guest on the show, offering an overview of the benefits and risks
of advanced nanotechnology. The program was heard not only in the UK
and in Europe, but also in the US on National Public Radio.
CRN Goes to Tennessee
Last week, CRN’s Director of Research, Chris Phoenix, traveled to Oak Ridge, Tennessee (USA) to speak at a conference titled “The Next Industrial Revolution: Nanotechnology and Manufacturing.” The conference was sponsored by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.
Chris's talk was titled, "From Nanotechnology to Molecular Manufacturing," explaining to a mostly-technical audience why molecular manufacturing will be very attractive to develop, and touching on several pathways to development. The audience appeared receptive. Two other speakers, Josh Hall and Tihamer Toth-Fejel, made molecular manufacturing the focus of their remarks. Other speakers referred to it in passing. Some were supportive and some were skeptical of the technical utility of MM, but the skeptical ones spoke carefully and moderately about their doubts.
The
conference also included one talk on nanoparticle health risks by Charlene
Bayer, Principal Research Scientist at Georgia Tech Research Institute.
Most of her presentation consisted of explaining how much we don't know
yet — and by implication, how many risks might be waiting for us.
She discussed pathways for nanoparticles to enter the body and be transported
inside it. Although the talk was short on actual evidence for toxicity,
she showed one very impressive slide, showing the difference in immune
system response to 21 nm vs. 250 nm TiO2 nanoparticles. Not only was the
response an order of magnitude greater, but also it lasted for many months.
Existential Risks of Nanotechnology
“Brain Parade” is an interesting online series at the Meme Therapy blog, in which a question is posed to several guest commentators. Recently, this issue was discussed:
Putting aside grey goo style scenarios for a moment, do you think there are other existential risks/safety concerns that we should be worrying about with respect to nanotechnology?
Answers
were posted from David Berube of the University of South Carolina, Patrick
Lin of the Nanoethics Group, Dietram Scheufele of the University of Wisconsin,
and CRN’s Mike Treder. Opinions varied significantly, demonstrating
a lack of consensus about what worries we should be most focused on.
Nanomedicine Web Site
The
word ‘nanomedicine,’ originally applied only to the application
of molecular manufacturing (MM) to medicine, has come to mean any application
of nanotechnology to medicine, such as cancer-fighting molecules that
include nanoparticles. These are not molecular manufacturing, since they
are not built by programmable nanomachines, but they are nanotechnology
in the broader sense. A new nanomedicine
web site has begun to bridge the gap between these two meanings.
Although it reports on today's news and today's labs, the “Nanomedicine
and Nanobiology Research” site has a flavor of MM about it as
well. It has some links to tutorials written by MM researchers, and
the graphics include images of medical robots and buckytube-based gear
simulations. This illustrates the growing merger between nanoscale technologies
and molecular manufacturing. Historically, the split between molecular
manufacturing and nanoscale technologies has always been more about
politics and projected implications (some of which fueled politics)
than about technical issues. Now it seems that at least some technical
nanotech portals, and even researchers,
are starting to include MM-based ideas.
Sander
Olson is one of the original developers of the NanoApex and NanoMagazine web
sites. Over the years, Sander has conducted numerous interviews with notable
figures working in or commenting on the field of nanotechnology. Since
the acquisition of his sites in 2005 by the International Small Technology
Network, many of Sander's interviews have not been available on the web.
To correct this, CRN has published a number of them on
our site. Recently added are interviews with Britt Gillette, Christine
Peterson, Damien Broderick, and several others. More will be posted
in the weeks to come.
The Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand (IPENZ) has invited CRN Executive Director Mike Treder to go on a speaking tour of 11 cities over two weeks, from September 2-14, 2006. The full itinerary has just been posted on their web site, along with this introduction:
Nanotechnology is the engineering of tiny machines - the projected ability to build things from the bottom up inside nanofactories, using techniques and tools being developed today to make complete, highly advanced products. Shortly after this envisioned molecular machinery is created, it will result in a manufacturing revolution, probably causing severe disruption. It also has serious economic, social, environmental, and military implications.
After New Zealand, Mike will travel to Australia for a series of meetings and speaking events organized by universities in Melbourne, Sydney, and Canberra, and made possible by Nanotechnology Victoria.
CRN Goes to Albany
Immediately
after returning from Australia and New Zealand, CRN’s Mike Treder
will go to Albany, New York, to speak at Nanotechnology 2006, a two-day international
conference September 25-26 hosted by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
The title of Mike’s talk is “Fourth-Generation Nanotechnology:
Disruptive Abundance.”
Feature
Essay: Military Implications of Molecular Manufacturing
Chris
Phoenix, Director of Research, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
(Originally published in the July 2006 issue of NanoNews-Now -- reprinted by permission)
This essay will survey the technology of molecular manufacturing, the basic capabilities of its products, some possible weapon systems, some tactical and strategic considerations, and some possible effects of molecular manufacturing on the broader context of societies and nations. However, all of this discussion must take place in the context of the underlying fact that the effects and outcome of molecular manufacturing will be almost inconceivable, and certainly not susceptible to shallow or linear analysis.
Take a minute and try to imagine a modern battlefield without electricity. No radar or radios; no satellites; no computers; no night vision, or even flashlights; no airplanes, and few ground vehicles of any kind. Imagination is not sufficient to generate this picture—it simply doesn't make sense to talk of a modern military without electricity.
Molecular manufacturing will have a similarly profound effect on near-future military affairs.
Electricity is a general-purpose energy technology, useful for applications from motors to data processing. A few inventions, ramified and combined—the storage battery, transistor, electromagnet, and a few others—are powerful enough to be necessary components of almost all modern military equipment and activities.
If it is impossible to conceive of a modern military without electricity—a technology that exists, and the use of which we can study—it will be even less feasible to try to imagine a military with molecular manufacturing.
Molecular manufacturing will be the world's first general-purpose manufacturing technology. Its products will be many times more plentiful, more intricate, and higher performance than any existing product. They will be built faster and less expensively, speeding research and development. They will cover a far greater range of size, energy, and distance than today's weapons systems. As increasingly powerful weapons make the battlefield untenable for human soldiers, computers vastly more powerful and compact than today's will enable far higher degrees of automation and remote operation. Kilogram-scale manufacturing systems, building directly from the latest blueprints in minutes, will utterly transform supply, logistics, and deployment.
Radium and X-rays were discovered within months of each other. Within a few years, X-rays had inspired stories about military uses of “death rays.” Decades later, Madame Curie gave speeches on the wonderful anti-cancer properties of radium. It would have been difficult or impossible to predict that a few decades after that, X-rays would be a ubiquitous medical technology, and nuclear radiation would be the basis of the world's most horrific weapons. While reading the rest of this article, keep in mind that the implications of various molecular manufacturing products and capabilities will be at least as unpredictable and counterintuitive.
Technical Basis of Molecular Manufacturing
At its foundation, molecular manufacturing works by doing a few precise fabrication operations, very rapidly, at the molecular level, under computer control. It can thus be viewed as a combination of mechanical engineering and chemistry, with some additional help from rapid prototyping, automated assembly, and related fields of research.
Atoms and inter-atomic bonds are completely precise: every atom of a type is identical to every other, and there are only a few types. Barring an identifiable error in fabrication, two molecules manufactured according to the same blueprint will be identical in structure and shape (with transient variations of predictable scale due to thermal noise and other known physical effects). This consistency will allow fully automated fabrication. Computer controlled addition of molecular fragments, creating a few well-characterized bond types in a multitude of selected locations, will enable a vast range of components to be built with extremely high reliability. Building with reliable components, higher levels of structure can retain the same predictability and engineerability.
A fundamental “scaling law” of physics is that small systems operate faster than large systems. Moving at moderate speed over tiny distances, a nanoscale fabrication system could perform many millions of operations per second, creating products of its own mass and complexity in hours or even minutes. Along with faster operation comes higher power density, again proportional to the shrinkage: nanoscale machines might be a million times more compact than today's technology. Computers would shrink even more profoundly, and non-electronic technologies already analyzed could dissipate enough less power to make the shrinkage feasible. Although individual nanoscale machines would have small capacity, massive arrays could work together; it appears that gram-scale computer and motor systems, and ton-scale manufacturing systems, preserving nanoscale performance levels, can be built without running afoul of scaling laws or other architectural constraints including cooling. Thus, products will be buildable in a wide range of sizes.
A complete list of advantages and capabilities of molecularly manufactured products, much less an analysis of the physical basis of the advantages, would be beyond the scope of this paper. But several additional advantages should be noted. Precisely fabricated covalent materials will be much stronger than materials formed by today's imprecise manufacturing processes. Precise, well-designed, covalently structured bearings should suffer neither from wear nor from static friction (stiction). Carbon can be an excellent conductor, an excellent insulator, or a semiconductor, allowing a wide range of electrical and electronic devices to be built in-place by a molecular manufacturing system.
Development of Molecular Manufacturing
Although its capabilities will be far-reaching, the development of molecular manufacturing may require a surprisingly small effort. A finite, and possibly small, number of deposition reactions may suffice to build molecular structures with programmable shape—and therefore, diverse and engineerable function. High-level architectures for integrated kilogram-scale arrays of nanoscale manufacturing systems have already been worked out in some detail. Current-day tools are already able to remove and deposit atoms from selected locations in covalent solids. Engineering of protein and other biopolymers is another pathway to molecularly precise fabrication of engineered nanosystem components. Analysis tools, both physical and theoretical, are developing rapidly.
As a general rule, nanoscale research and development capabilities are advancing in proportion to Moore's Law—even faster in some cases. Conceptual barriers to developing molecular manufacturing systems are also falling rapidly. It seems likely that within a few years, a program to develop a nanofactory will be launched; some observers believe that one or more covert programs may already have been launched. It also seems likely that, within a few years of the first success, the cost of developing an independent capability will have dropped to the point where relatively small groups can tackle the project. Without stringent and widespread restrictions on technology, it most likely will not be possible to prevent the development of multiple molecular manufacturing systems with diverse owners.
Products of Molecular Manufacturing
All exploratory engineering in the field to date has pointed to the same set of conclusions about molecular manufacturing-built products:
1. Manufacturing systems can build more manufacturing systems.
2. Small products can be extremely compact.
3. Human-scale products can be extremely inexpensive and lightweight.
4. Large products can be astonishingly powerful.
If a self-contained manufacturing system can be its own product, then manufacturing systems can be inexpensive—even non-scarce. Product cost can approach the cost of the feedstock and energy required to make it (plus licensing and regulatory overhead). Although molecular manufacturing systems will be extremely portable, most products will not include one—it will be more efficient to manufacture at a dedicated facility with installed feedstock, energy, and cooling supplies.
The feature size of nanosystems will probably be about 1 nanometer (nm), implying a million features in a bacteria-sized object, a billion features per cubic micron, or a trillion features in the volume of a ten-micron human cell. A million features is enough to implement a simple CPU, along with sensors, actuators, power supply, and supporting structure. Thus, the smallest robots may be bacteria-sized, with all the scaling law advantages that implies, and a medical system (or weapon system based thereon) could be able to interact with cells and even sub-cellular structures on an equal footing. (See Nanomedicine Vol. I: Basic Capabilities for further exploration.)
As a general rule of thumb, human-scale products may be expected to be 100-1000 times lighter than today's versions. Covalent carbon-based materials such as buckytubes should be at least 100 times stronger than steel, and materials could be used more efficiently with more elegant construction techniques. Active components will shrink even more. (Of course, inconveniently light products could be ballasted with water.)
Large nanofactories could build very large products, from spacecraft to particle accelerators. Large products, like smaller ones, could benefit from stronger materials and from active systems that are quite compact. Nanofactories should scale to at least ton-per-hour production rates for integrated products, though this might require massive cooling capacity depending on the sophistication of the nanofactory design.
Possible Weapons Systems
The smallest systems may not be actual weapons, but computer platforms for sensing and surveillance. Such platforms could be micron-scale. The power requirement of a 1-MIPS computer might be on the order of 10-100 pW; at that rate, a cubic micron of fuel might last for 100-1000 seconds. The computer itself would occupy approximately one cubic micron.
Very small devices could deliver fatal quantities of toxins to unprotected humans.
Even the smallest ballistic projectiles (bullets) could contain supercomputers, sensors, and avionics sufficient to guide them to targets with great accuracy. Flying devices could be quite small. It should be noted that small devices could benefit from a process of automated design tuning; milligram-scale devices could be built by the millions, with slight variations in each design, and the best designs used as the basis for the next “generation” of improvements; this could enable, for example, UAV's in the laminar regime to be developed without a full understanding of the relevant physics. The possibility of rapid design is far more general than this, and will be discussed below.
The line between bullets, missiles, aircraft, and spacecraft would blur. With lightweight motors and inexpensive manufacturing, a vehicle could contain a number of different disposable propulsion systems for different flight regimes. A “briefcase to orbit” system appears feasible, though such a small device might have to fly slowly to conserve fuel until it reached the upper atmosphere. It might be feasible to use 1 kg of airframe (largely discarded) and 20 kg of fuel (not counting oxidizer) to place 1 kg into orbit; some of the fuel would be used to gather and liquify oxygen in the upper atmosphere for the rocket portion of its flight. (Engineering studies have not yet been done for such a device, and it might require somewhat more fuel than stated here.)
Advanced construction could produce novel energy-absorbing materials involving high-friction mechanical slippage under high stress via micro- or nano-scale mechanical components. In effect, every molecule would be a shock absorber, and the material could probably absorb mechanical energy until it was destroyed by heat.
New kinds of weapons might be developed more quickly with rapid inexpensive fabrication. Many classes of device will be buildable monolithically. For example, a new type of aircraft or even spacecraft might be tested an order of magnitude more rapidly and inexpensively, reducing the cost of failure and allowing further acceleration in schedule and more aggressive experimentation. Although materials and molecular structures would not encompass today's full range of manufactured substances, they could encompass many of the properties of those substances, especially mechanical and electrical properties. This may enable construction of weapons such as battlefield lasers, rail guns, and even more exotic technologies.
Passive armor certainly could not stop attacks from a rapid series of impacts by precisely targeted projectiles. However, armor could get a lot smarter, detecting incoming attacks and rapidly shifting to interpose material at the right point. There may be a continuum from self-reconfiguring armor, to armor that detaches parts of itself to hurl in the path of incoming attacks, to armor that consists of a detached cloud of semi-independent counterweapons.
A new class of weapon for wide-area destruction is kinetic impact from space. Small impactors would be slowed by the atmosphere, but medium-to-large asteroids, redirected onto a collision course, could destroy many square miles. The attack would be detectable far in advance, but asteroid deflection and destruction technology is not sufficiently advanced at this time to say whether a defender with comparable space capacity could avoid being struck, especially if the asteroid was defended by the attacker. Another class of space impactor is lightweight solar sails accelerated to a respectable fraction of light speed by passage near the sun. These could require massive amounts of inert shielding to stop; it is not clear whether or not the atmosphere would perform this function adequately.
A hypothetical device often associated with molecular manufacturing is a small, uncontrolled, exponentially self-replicating system. However, a self-replicating system would not make a very good weapon. In popular conception, such a system could be built to use a wide range of feedstocks, deriving energy from oxidizing part of the material (or from ambient light), and converting the rest into duplicate systems. In practice, such flexibility would be quite difficult to achieve; however, a system using a few readily available chemicals and bypassing the rest might be able to replicate itself—though even the simplest such system would be extremely difficult to design. Although unrestrained replication of inorganic systems poses a theoretical risk of widespread biosphere destruction through competition for resources—the so-called “grey goo” threat—it seems unlikely that anyone would bother to develop grey goo as a weapon, even a doomsday deterrent. It would be more difficult to guide than a biological weapon. It would be slower than a device designed simply to disrupt the physical structure of its target. And it would be susceptible to detection and cleanup by the defenders.
Tactics
A detailed analysis of attack and defense is impossible at this point. It is not known whether sensor systems will be able to effectively detect and repel an encroachment by small, stealthy robotic systems; it should be noted that the smallest such systems might be smaller than a wavelength of visible light, making detection at a distance problematic. It is unknown whether armor will be able to stop the variety of penetrating objects and forces that could be directed at it. Semi-automated R&D may or may not produce new designs so quickly that the side with the better software will have an overwhelming advantage. The energy cost of construction has only been roughly estimated, and is uncertain within at least two orders of magnitude; active systems, including airframes for nano-built weapons, will probably be cost-effective in any case, but passive or static systems including armor may or may not be worth deploying.
Some things appear relatively certain. Unprotected humans, whether civilian or soldier, will be utterly vulnerable to nano-built weapons. In a scenario of interpenetrating forces, where a widespread physical perimeter cannot be established, humans on both sides can be killed at will unless protected at great expense and inconvenience. Even relatively primitive weapons such as hummingbird-sized flying guns with human target recognition and poisoned bullets could make an area unsurvivable without countermeasures; the weight of each gun platform would be well under one gram. Given the potential for both remote and semi-autonomous operation of advanced robotics and weapons, a force with a developed molecular manufacturing capability should have no need to field soldiers; this implies that battlefield death rates will be low to zero for such forces.
A concern commonly raised in discussions of nanotech weapons is the creation of new diseases. Molecular manufacturing seems likely to reduce the danger of this. Diseases act slowly and spread slowly. A sufficiently capable bio-sensor and diagnostic infrastructure should allow a very effective and responsive quarantine to be implemented. Rapid testing of newly manufactured treatment methods, perhaps combined with metabolism-slowing techniques to allow additional R&D time, could minimize disease even in infected persons
Despite the amazing power and flexibility of molecular manufactured devices, a lesson from World War I should not be forgotten: Dirt makes a surprisingly effective shield. It is possible that a worthwhile defensive tactic would be to embed an item to be protected deeply in earth or water. Without active defenses, which would also be hampered by the embedding material, this would be at best a delaying tactic.
Information is likely to be a key determiner of military success. If, as seems likely, unexpected offense with unexpected weapons can overwhelm defense, then rapid detection and analysis of an attacker's weapons will be very important. Information-gathering systems are likely to survive more by stealth than by force, leading to a “spy vs. spy” game. To the extent that this involves destruction of opposing spy-bots, it is similar to the problem of defending against small-scale weapons. Note that except for the very smallest systems, the high functional density of molecularly constructed devices will frequently allow both weapon and sensor technology to be piggybacked on platforms primarily intended for other purposes.
It seems likely that, with the possible exception of a few small, fiercely defended volumes, a robotic battleground would consist of interpenetrated forces rather than defensive lines (or defensive walls). This implies that any non-active matter could be destroyed with little difficulty unless shielded heavily enough to outlast the battle.
Strategy
As implied above, a major strategy is to avoid putting soldiers on the battlefield via the use of autonomous or remotely operated weapons. Unfortunately, this implies that an enemy wanting to damage human resources will have to attack either civilian populations or people in leadership positions. To further darken the picture, civilian populations will be almost impossible to protect from a determined attack without maintaining a near-hermetic seal around their physical location. Since the resource cost of such a shield increases as the shield grows (and the vulnerability and unreliability probably also increase), this implies that civilians under threat will face severe physical restrictions from their own defenders.
A substantial variety of attack mechanisms will be available, including kinetic impact, cutting, sonic shock and pressure, plasma, electromagnetic beam, electromagnetic jamming and EMP, heat, toxic or destructive chemicals, and perhaps more exotic technologies such as particle beam and relativistic projectile. A variety of defensive techniques will be available, including camouflage, small size, physical avoidance of attack, interposing of sacrificial mass, jamming or hacking of enemy sensors and computers, and preemptive strike. Many of these offensive and defensive techniques will be available to devices across a wide range of sizes. As explored above, development of new weapon systems may be quite rapid, especially if automated or semi-automated design is employed.
In addition to the variety of physical modes of attack and defense, the cyber sphere will become an increasingly important and complex battleground, as weapon systems increasingly depend on networking and computer control. It remains to be seen whether a major electronic security breach might destroy one side's military capacity, but with increasing system complexity, such an occurrence cannot be ruled out.
Depending on what is being defended, it may or may not be possible to prepare an efficient defense for all possible modes of attack. If defense is not possible, then the available choices would seem to be either preemptive strike or avoidance of conflict. Defense of civilians, as stated above, is likely to be difficult to impossible. Conflict may be avoided by deterrence only in certain cases—where the opponent has a comparable amount to lose. In asymmetric situations, where opponents may have very different resources and may value them very differently, deterrence may not work at all. Conflict may also be avoided by reducing the sources of tension
Broader Context
Military activity does not take place in isolation. It is frequently motivated by non-military politics, though warlords can fight simply to improve their military position. Molecular manufacturing will be able to revolutionize economic infrastructures, creating material abundance and security that may reduce the desire for war—if it is distributed wisely.
It appears that an all-out war between molecular manufacturing powers would be highly destructive of humans and of natural resources; the objects of protection would be destroyed long before the war-fighting ability of the enemy. In contrast, a war between molecular manufacturing and a conventionally armed power would probably be rapid and decisive. The same is true against a nuclear power that was prevented from using its nuclear weapons, either by politics or by anti-missile technologies. Even if nuclear weapons were used, the decentralization allowed by self-contained exponentially manufacturing nanofactories would allow survival, continued prosecution of the war, and rapid post-war rebuilding.
The line between policing and military action is increasingly blurred. Civilians are becoming very effective at attacking soldiers. Meanwhile, soldiers are increasingly expected to treat civilians under occupation as citizens (albeit second-class citizens) rather than enemy. At least in the US, paramilitary organizations (both governmental and commercial) are being deployed in internal civilian settings, such as the use of SWAT teams in some crime situations, and Blackwater in post-Katrina New Orleans.
Many molecular manufactured weapon systems will be useable for policing. Several factors will make the systems desirable for police activity: a wide range of weapon effects and intensities to choose from; less risk to police as telepresence is employed; maintaining parity with increasingly armed criminals; and increased deterrence due to increased information-gathering and surveillance. This means that even without military conflict, a variety of military-type systems will be not only developed, but also deployed and used.
It is tempting to think that the absence of nuclear war after six decades of nuclear weapons implies that we know how to handle insanely destructive weapons. However, a number of factors will make molecular manufacturing arms races less stable than the nuclear arms race—and it should be remembered that on several different occasions, a single fortuitous person or event has prevented a nuclear attack. Nuclear weapons are hard to design, hard to build, require easily monitored testing, do indiscriminate and lasting damage, do not rapidly become obsolete, have almost no peaceful use, and are universally abhorred. Molecular manufactured weapons will be easy to build, will in many cases allow easily concealable testing, will be relatively easy to control and deactivate, and would become obsolete very rapidly; almost every design is dual-use, and peaceful and non-lethal (police) use will be common. Nuclear weapons are easier to stockpile than to use; molecular manufactured weapons will be the opposite.
Interpenetrating arrays of multi-scale complex weapons cannot be stable for long. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, a perceived attack will be answered by an actual attack. Whether this mushrooms out of control into a full-scale conflict will depend on the programming of the weapon systems. As long as it is only inanimate hardware at stake, probing attacks and small-scale accidental attacks may be tolerated.
Given the amount of damage that a hostile power armed with molecular manufacturing products could do to the civilian sector, it seems likely that hostile actors will be tolerated only as a last resort, and even apparently non-hostile but untrustworthy actors will be highly undesirable. As mentioned above, an asymmetry in values may prevent deterrence from working. An asymmetry in force, such as between a molecular manufacturing and a pre-MM power, may tempt a preemptive strike to prevent molecular manufacturing proliferation. Likewise, a substantial but decreasing lead in military capability may lead to a preemptive strike. It is unclear whether in general a well-planned surprise attack would lead to rapid and/or inexpensive victory; this may not become clear until offensive and defensive systems are actually developed.
One stable situation appears to be that in which a single power deploys sufficient sensors and weapons to prevent any other power from developing molecular manufacturing. This would probably require substantial oppression of civilians and crippling of industrial and scientific capacity. The government in power would have near-absolute control, being threatened only by internal factors; near-absolute power, combined with an ongoing need for oppression, would likely lead to disastrous corruption.
Widespread recognition of the dangers of arms race, preemptive strike, and war might inspire widespread desire to avoid such an outcome. This would require an unprecedented degree of trust and accountability, worldwide. Current government paradigms are probably not compatible with allowing foreign powers such intimate access to their secrets; however, in the absence of this degree of openness, spying and hostile inspections will only raise tension and reduce trust. One possible solution is for governments to allow their own citizens to observe them, and then allow the information gained by such distributed and non-combative (and thus presumably more trustworthy) observation to be made available to foreign powers.
Conclusion
Molecular manufacturing will introduce a wide diversity of new weapon systems and modes of warfighting. In the absence of actual systems to test, it is difficult if not impossible to know key facts about offensive and defensive capability, and how the balance between offense and defense may change over time. Incentives for devastating war are unknown, but potentially large—the current geopolitical context may favor a strategy of preemptive strike.
Full information about molecular manufacturing's capabilities will probably be lacking until a nanofactory is developed. At that point, once an exponential manufacturing capacity exists that can make virtually unlimited quantities of high-performance products, sudden development of unfamiliar and powerful weapon systems appears likely. It is impossible, from today's knowledge, to predict what a molecular manufacturing-enabled war will be like—but it is possible to predict that it would be most destructive to our most precious resources.
Given these facts and observations, an immediate and urgent search for alternatives to arms races and armed conflict is imperative.
C-R-Newsletter #43 July 30, 2006
Nanofactory
Development Project
Mike Roco on Molecular Nanosystems
Risk Governance Report
Printable Robots and
UAV's
Anticipating Vicious Cycles
Friends Say "Size Matters"
CRN Goes Down Under
New Zealand is Listening
CRN Goes to Tennessee
Feature Essay: Inapplicable
Intuitions
Every month is full of activity for CRN. To follow the latest happenings on
a daily basis, be sure to check our Responsible
Nanotechnology weblog.
=========
Nanofactory Development Project
Robert
A. Freitas Jr. and Ralph Merkle have launched a website announcing a Nanofactory
Collaboration. This is very significant. It's the first project
explicitly aimed at building a high-performance general-purpose nanofactory
manufacturing system based on molecular manufacturing. (The Foresight/Battelle
Roadmap is an important theoretical investigation, but doesn't
include development work.) The timeline of the project (bottom of
this page) calls for initial diamond mechanosynthesis in 2010, with "nanofactories
and nanorobotic products" beginning around 2020. CRN will be watching
with great interest to see how this project progresses, and working
to steer it in responsible directions.
Mike Roco on Molecular Nanosystems
Mihail (Mike) Roco is senior adviser for nanotechnology to the US National Science Foundation, and he's also been the driving force behind the US National Nanotechnology Initiative. In a recent article for Scientific American titled "Nanotechnology's Future", he wrote:
After 2015-2020, the field will expand to include molecular nanosystems -- heterogeneous networks in which molecules and supramolecular structures serve as distinct devices. The proteins inside cells work together this way, but whereas biological systems are water-based and markedly temperature-sensitive, these molecular nanosystems will be able to operate in a far wider range of environments and should be much faster. Computers and robots could be reduced to extraordinarily small sizes. Medical applications might be as ambitious as new types of genetic therapies and antiaging treatments. New interfaces linking people directly to electronics could change telecommunications.
This
sounds a lot like molecular manufacturing,
with non-biological systems operating in a eutactic environment and capable
of greatly improved throughput. Note that components similar to those "extraordinarily
small" computers and robots that Mike foresees not only will provide smaller,
faster, better medical applications and communications interfaces, but
also will form the internal structure of a nanofactory.
In early July, CRN executive director Mike Treder traveled to Zurich, Switzerland, for a nanotech conference [PDF] sponsored by the International Risk Governance Council. Participants reviewed a white paper [PDF] on risk governance of nanotechnology, deliberated in breakout groups, and listened to several distinguished speakers. Here is part of Mike’s report about the event:
During one of the breakout sessions, some people complained about an overemphasis on human enhancement issues in the white paper, especially when compared with the scant references to the risk of a nanotechnology arms race and possible warfare. I made the point that a nano-enabled arms race is almost certain to be less stable than the nuclear arms race, and therefore more likely to result in devastating war. I also proposed, on behalf of CRN, the need for an International NanoTechnology Arms Control Treaty, or INTACT.
CRN
was not the only NGO (non-governmental organization) among the 100 or
so conference attendees. Representatives from Greenpeace, Friends of the
Earth, Practical Action, the Meridian Institute, the Woodrow Wilson Center,
Demos, the Foresight Nanotech Institute and others were there. Although
we had a wide range of concerns and points of view, there was strong consensus
between NGOs on the need for a longer-range outlook and more serious consideration
of the potentially transformative impacts of molecular manufacturing.
Three apparently unrelated reports point the way toward an alarming trend in low-cost, mass-produced, miniaturized, ubiquitous robotic weaponry.
The first is an innocent story about advances in inkjet technology that could produce robot origami complete with printed electronic circuits (including transistors, diodes and resistors). The second is a description of Lockheed-Martin's new "Polecat" UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), designed as a technology demonstrator, which consists largely of parts printed in a 3-D printer; they call it "a plane you can print." The third story is from the Middle East battle zone, where an Israeli warship was hit by what was reported to be a cheap UAV outfitted with explosives, operated remotely by Hezbollah.
The
logical progression of today’s existing desktop manufacturing technologies
is to culminate in a personal nanofactory,
a portable general-purpose manufacturing device that can turn out almost
any product — including another version of itself — quickly
and cheaply. It seems clear to us that this development is not far in
the future, and that the implications it raises must be addressed with
careful deliberation, and with a sense of urgency.
The July 2006 issue of Australian R& D Review contains an opinion piece by CRN’s Mike Treder called "Anticipating Vicious Cycles." It says, in part:
By its very nature, molecular manufacturing machinery could be portable and easy to duplicate, which means this capability might quickly slip from the control of responsible parties into the hands of tyrants or terrorists. Thus, nanotechnology represents not only wonderful benefits, but also grave risks.
Imagine a technology so great that everyone wants it, but potentially so dangerous that maybe no one should be allowed to have it. Now we have the makings of a vicious cycle, including: 1) threat perception, 2) unwise restrictions, 3) illicit trafficking, 4) increased threat perception, 5) more unwise restrictions, etc.
Because
the impacts of molecular manufacturing could occur quickly and with little
warning, obtaining a thorough understanding of these issues is essential
and urgent. Nanotechnology should be developed, as rapidly as it can be
done safely and responsibly. The benefits are simply too great to pass
up. But we must not allow efforts to prepare for the impacts of nanotech
to lag behind advances on the technical side. If we do, the results could
be viciously calamitous.
"Size Does Matter" is the heading on a special issue [PDF] Friends of the Earth (Australia) magazine devoted to nanotechnology. Much of the issue is devoted to concerns about early generation nanotechnologies, but they also address longer-term worries associated with molecular manufacturing:
Certainly our current model of representative democracy can not be upheld in a society where most people have nothing to do and are resentful of the elite which can entertain itself with work. Concurrent with the rise of molecular manufacture then would be the need for ubiquitous surveillance powered and facilitated by nano machines. . . Apart from the obvious impact of molecular manufacturing on democratic society and employment levels, its creation also invites the risks of escalating global terrorism and fuelling an unstable omnicidal arms race.
We're
pleased to see these weighty problems being highlighted, and we're especially
grateful that the authors of the above article mentioned the recent series
of essays produced by the CRN Global Task Force on Implications
and Policy. Near the end of the magazine, however, Friends of the Earth
calls for a halt to all commercial development of nanotechnology. CRN
disagrees with the value of a moratorium on commercial research
and development. But we applaud Friends of the Earth for bringing
attention to the many important ethical, social, political, and humanitarian
issues of nanotechnology -- especially molecular
manufacturing.
The
Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand (IPENZ) has invited
Mike Treder to go on a speaking
tour of 11 cities over two weeks, from September 2-14, 2006. Just
added to the itinerary is an assembly of 600 high school students being
bused in to Christchurch on September 6 from all around the area. After
New Zealand, Mike will travel to Australia for a series of meetings
and speaking events organized by universities in Melbourne, Sydney,
and Canberra, and made possible by Nanotechnology
Victoria.
Listener is
the leading news magazine in New Zealand. Their July 22 cover story about
the coming "Techno Revolution" features several prominent quotes from
CRN executive director Mike Treder. You can view a scanned copy of the
magazine article here [PDF].
Chris
Phoenix, CRN’s Director of Research, will be a featured speaker
at a conference on “The Next
Industrial Revolution: Nanotechnology and Manufacturing” to be held
August 23-24 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (USA). Chris will talk about “Molecular
Nanotechnology and Productive Nanosystems: Beyond Nanomanufacturing.” J.
Storrs Hall, author of Nanofuture: What's Next for Nanotechnology,
and a member of CRN’s Global Task Force on Implications
and Policy, will be the keynote speaker. The conference is sponsored
by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.
Feature
Essay: Inapplicable Intuitions
Chris Phoenix, Director of Research, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
Experts in a field develop intuitions about the way things work. For example, a biochemist will develop intuitions about the complexity of interactions between biomolecules. When faced with a new idea, a scientist will first evaluate it in light of existing intuitions.
Interest in molecular manufacturing is rapidly growing, and many scientists may be encountering the ideas for the first time. Because molecular manufacturing cuts across a number of fields -- physics, chemistry, mechanical engineering, software, and more -- and because it uses a rather novel approach to building stuff, almost any scientist will find something in the proposal that violates one or more intuitions. It is worth examining some of these intuitions. Notice that each intuition is true, although in a limited context, and molecular manufacturing avoids that context.
In addition to personally developed intuitions, scientists new to molecular manufacturing may run across objections formerly raised by others in different fields. In general, these objections were the result of similarly misplaced intuitions. The intent here is not to re-fight old battles, but simply to explain what the battles were about.
Here in a nutshell is the molecular manufacturing plan: Build a system that does a billion chemical reactions, one after the other, on the same molecule, with very high reliability, to make perfect molecular products. The system does chemical reactions by holding molecules and moving them into place through a vacuum, to transfer atoms to the product, adding a few atoms at a time to build molecular shapes. Use that system to build nanoscale machine components, and assemble the components into nanoscale machines. Control a bunch of these machines to build more machine components, one deposition at a time; then combine those machine components into large products. This will need huge numbers of machines, arrayed in a factory. Use an initial small factory to make another bigger factory, repeating enough times to grow to kilogram scale. Use the resulting big factory to make products from downloaded blueprints.
As we will see, nearly every phrase in this description may evoke skepticism from someone; however, all of these objections, and many others, have been addressed. The technical foundation for the modern approach to molecular manufacturing was laid with the 1992 publication of Nanosystems. After so many years, any objection that comes readily to mind has probably been thought of before. We encourage those who are just encountering the ideas of MM to work through the initial skepticism and misunderstanding that comes from unfamiliarity, recognizing that a large number of scientists have been unable to identify any showstoppers. Although the theory has not yet reached the point of being proved by the existence of a nanofactory, it has reached the point where a conversation that assumes most of it is correct will be more productive than a conversation that assumes it's fatally flawed.
The following is an imagined conversation between an MM researcher (MMer) and a room full of scientists who are new to the ideas.
MMer: OK, we're going to build a system that does a billion chemical reactions, one after the other, on the same molecule, with very high reliability.
Chemist: Wait a minute. 99% is an excellent yield, but 99% times 99% times 99%... a billion times is a big fat ZERO. You would reliably get zero molecules of desired product.
MMer: A chemist is used to reactions between molecules that bump into each other randomly. In molecular manufacturing, the molecules would be held in place, and only allowed to react at chosen locations. Yield could be many "nines" better than 99%.
MMer: So we take a system that does chemical reactions by holding molecules and moving them into place through a vacuum...
Chemist: Wait. You're going to hold the molecules in a vacuum and make them react as you want? Chemistry's more complex than that; you need more control, and you may even need water to help out with really complex reactions.
MMer: Yes, chemistry is complex when you have lots of potentially reactive molecules bumping around. But if the motion of the molecules is constrained, then the set of potential reaction products is also constrained. Also, there are new kinds of freedom that traditional chemistry doesn't have, including freedom to select from nearly identical reaction sites, and freedom to keep very reactive molecules from touching anything until you're ready. And by the way, even enzymes evolved for water don't necessarily need water -- this has been known since the mid-80's.
MMer: So we move the molecules into place to transfer atoms...
Chemist: Atoms are more reactive than that.
MMer: MM wouldn't be grabbing individual unbound atoms -- it would transfer molecular fragments from a "tool" molecule to a "workpiece" molecule, in reactions that work according to standard chemistry laws.
MMer: We add a few atoms at a time to build molecular shapes...
Biochemist: Proteins make molecular shapes, and they are very, very hard to design.
MMer: Natural proteins are indeed hard to understand. They have to fold into shape under the influence of a large number of weak forces. But even with proteins, desired shapes have been engineered. DNA, another biomolecule, is a lot easier to design shapes with. And MM plans to build three-dimensional shapes directly, not build long stringy molecules that have to fold up to make shapes.
MMer: Then we're going to use that system to build nanoscale machine components...
Micro-mechanical system researcher: Wait a minute! We've tried building machine components, and friction kills them. The smaller you make them, the worse it gets.
MMer: The micromachines were built with a fabrication technique that left the surfaces rough. Friction and wear between rough surfaces are in fact worse as machines get smaller. But if the surfaces are atomically precise and smooth, and the atoms are spaced differently on the two surfaces, they can have extremely low friction and wear. This has been verified experimentally with nested carbon nanotubes and with graphite sheets; it's called "superlubricity."
MMer: Assemble the components into nanoscale machines...
Molecular biologist: Why not use machines inspired by nature? Biology does a great job and has lots of designs we could adapt.
MMer: This isn't an argument against the feasibility of MM. If biology-based designs work even better than mechanical designs and are more convenient to develop, then MM could use them. The main advantage of biology is that a technical toolkit to work with biomolecules has already been developed. However, there are several fundamental reasons why biomachines, as good as they are, aren't nearly as good as what MM expects to build. (For example, any machine immersed in water must move slowly to avoid excessive drag.) And mechanical designs will almost certainly be easier to understand and engineer than biological designs.
MMer: So we take a bunch of these machines and control them...
Nanotechnologist: How can you hope to control them? It's very, very hard to get information to the nanoscale.
MMer: MM intends to build nanoscale data-processing systems as well as machines. And MM also proposes to build large and multi-scale systems that can get info to the nanoscale without requiring external nanoscale equipment to do so.
MMer: We control the machines to build more machine components, one deposition at a time...
Skeptic: That'll take forever to build anything!
MMer: It would indeed take almost forever for a large scanning probe microscope to build its own mass of product. But as the size of the tool decreases, the time required to build its own mass shrinks as the fourth power of the size. Shrink by 10X, decrease the time by 10,000X. By the time you get down to a 100-nanometer scanning probe microscope, the scaling laws of volume and operation frequency suggest it should be able to build its own mass in about 100 seconds.
MMer: Then we'll combine those machine components into large products...
Skeptic: You plan to build large products with nanoscale systems? It'll take billions of years!
MMer: MM won't be using just a few nanoscale systems; it'll be using huge numbers of them, working together under the control of nanocomputers. Each workstation will build one tiny sub-part.
MMer: So we take huge numbers of machines, arrayed in a factory...
Self-assembly expert: Whoa, how do you plan to put together this factory? Self-assembly isn't nearly there yet.
MMer: Use a factory, with robotic component-handling etc., to make a factory. Use a small factory to make a bigger factory. (The first tiny sub-micron factory would be made painstakingly in the lab.)
MMer: So we take this factory and make another bigger factory...
Skeptic: Wait, how can you have a dumb machine making something more complex than itself? Only life can do things like that.
MMer: The complexity of the manufacturing system is the physical system plus the software that drives it. The physical manufacturing system need not be more physically complex than the thing it makes, as long as the software makes up the difference. And the software can be as complex as human brains can design.
MMer: We take this big factory and make a product...
Mechanical engineer: How are you going to design a product with zillions of parts?
MMer: The product will not have zillions of different parts. It will have to be engineered in a hierarchical approach, with well-characterized re-usable structures at all levels. Software engineers design computer programs along these lines; the technique is called "levels of abstraction."
MMer: Download a blueprint to the factory to make a product...
Programmer: The factory would need amazingly advanced software to run zillions of operations to build zillions of parts.
MMer: Just as the product would contain zillions of parts, but only relatively few distinct parts, so the nanofactory would contain relatively few different types of machines to be controlled. The blueprint file format could be designed to be divided into hierarchical patterns and sub-patterns. Distributing the file fragments to the correct processors, and processing the instructions to drive the workstations, would be straightforward operations.
And so on. As you can see, each objection brought by intuition from within a specific field has an answer that comes from the interdisciplinary approach of molecular manufacturing theory. We are not, of course, asking anyone to take it on faith that molecular manufacturing will work as planned. We are only asking newcomers to the ideas to refrain from snap judgments that it can't work for some apparently obvious reason.
C-R-Newsletter #42 June 30, 2006
Students
to Explore Molecular Machines
First-Stage Molecular
Manufacturing
A Primer for the Real Diamond
Age
Preparing for Nanotechnology
Problems That Lie Ahead
Global NGOs and Nanotech
Risk
WorldChanging Book Coming
Soon
CRN Goes Back to Switzerland
Feature Science Essay: History
of the Nanofactory Concept
Every month is full of activity for CRN. To follow the latest happenings on
a daily basis, be sure to check our Responsible
Nanotechnology weblog.
=========
Students
to Explore Molecular Machines
This summer, a group of California’s brightest high school kids will
be using powerful, new molecular modeling
software to learn about actual atom-by-atom construction of new devices.
Students who report for the Nanotechnology and Robotics class at the California
State Summer School for Mathematics and Science (COSMOS) on July 9 at UC Santa
Cruz will begin testing NanoEngineer-1, the first computer aided design (CAD)
program for the nanotech age. Built by Nanorex
Inc. and scheduled for release this fall, NanoEngineer-1’s 3-D,
interactive environment and molecular physics engine will enable the students
to invent and test new kinds of molecular machines and devices, designed
atom by atom exactly to their specifications. (Full disclosure: CRN’s
Chris Phoenix is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Nanorex.)
First-Stage Molecular Manufacturing
Last year Chris Phoenix, CRN’s Director of Research, published a
paper identifying three basic milestones for molecular manufacturing.
The first stage, computer-controlled fabrication of precise molecular structures,
is now being demonstrated by professor Nadrian Seeman and his team at New
York University. According to a
story at MSNBC:
Seeman and colleagues have put DNA robots to work by incorporating them into a self-assembling array. The composite device grabs various molecular chains, or "polymers," from a solution and fuses them together. By controlling the position of the nano-bots, the researchers can specify the arrangement of the finished polymer.
A Primer for the Real Diamond Age
CRN was
asked by the popular WorldChanging site
to provide their readers with a short
introduction to nanotechnology, and so we did. Here is an excerpt from “A
Primer for the Real Diamond Age” written by Chris Phoenix:
Nanotechnology will change the world—slowly at first, then very rapidly. Slow change will come from nanoscale technologies already under development, which will give us better computers, medicine, sensors, and materials. Rapid, transformative, disruptive change will come from molecular manufacturing. . .
The implications of molecular manufacturing are staggering. Automated programmable factories that can build more factories on demand imply near-zero cost of manufacture, accompanied by sharp drops in the value of both labor and capital. Precise nanoscale machines will be thousands or millions of times more powerful than today's products. The ability to rapidly design and build almost unlimited quantities of futuristic weapons will disrupt geopolitics and global security. Planet-scale engineering could save or destroy the Earth's environment. Global sensor networks could become tools of freedom or oppression.
Preparing for Nanotechnology
Preparing
for Nanotechnology, maintained by Nanotechnology Now, is an
online "guide to efforts intended to help ease the transition to a nanotech-enabled
world." More than 100 links have been gathered and categorized, making it
the most comprehensive collection we know of. Some entries are focused on
near-term applications of nanoscale materials science, while others focus
on advanced nanotechnologies such as molecular manufacturing. Also included
are links to Papers, Events, Quotes, Books, and News. It's a great resource!
On June 12, CRN Executive Director Mike Treder posted a short essay on the Responsible Nanotechnology blog titled “Problems That Lie Ahead.” The article was picked up by several other popular blogs and generated extensive discussion on the web. Here is how it opens:
We are approaching a period of perilous geopolitical instability:
When weapons of mass destruction will be more varied, more deadly, more available, cheaper to obtain, and easier to hide;
When the strength (and the ambitions) of regional powers will increase rapidly while the stabilizing might of the U.S. could be in decline;
When new technologies such as genetic engineering, robotics, nanotechnology, and possibly artificial intelligence could enable radical shifts in the balance of power;
When global climatic conditions -- including increased frequency and severity of killer storms, droughts, infrastructure damage, crop failures, and even whole ecosystem collapses -- will contribute to growing tensions.
The
global situation is becoming a vortex, a maelstrom in which multiple risk
factors will swirl and combine to create sudden new crises for which we
may not have time to prepare. The act of reaching into the vortex to grab
hold of and deal with one problem could send others spinning in new, ever
more dangerous directions.
A
new survey on Nanotechnology Governance:
The Role of NGOs [PDF] was released this month by the International
Risk Governance Council. The survey, conducted between September and
November 2005, was originally sent to 25 potential participants. Nine
NGOs responded, including CRN, Demos, Environmental Defense, ETC Group
(Canada), Foresight Nanotech Institute, Forum for the Future, Greenpeace
(UK), the National Resources Defense Council, and Sciencecorps (US).
CRN was
quoted in the report with comments on economic, social, and environmental
issues.
WorldChanging Book Coming Soon
A new book called WorldChanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century is scheduled for publication on November 1, 2006. CRN contributed quite a bit of material for the book's section on nanotechnology. As the date for publication draws closer, we'll provide more details, but here is what they're saying so far:
If you've been a long-time, regular WorldChanging reader, some of what we cover in the book will be at least familiar ground, but much of it is brand-new material, and all of it is presented with a depth of focus that we have rarely had the time and resources to accomplish on this site. We think you'll find it a compelling, useful guide to some of the most interesting new and emerging tools, models and ideas for changing the world.
In February, CRN Executive Director Mike Treder was one of 30 invited participants at a workshop in Zurich organized by the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) concerning a "Conceptual Risk Governance Framework for Nanotechnology." Based on the results of that workshop, the IRGC has developed initial risk governance recommendations which will be presented, discussed and enhanced at an international conference [PDF] to be held July 6-7, again in Zurich. Mike will attend and participate in the conference on behalf of CRN. IRGC's final recommendations for appropriate risk governance strategies will be published shortly after the conference.
Feature Science Essay: History of the Nanofactory
Concept
Chris Phoenix, Director of Research, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
When CRN talks about molecular manufacturing,
we usually focus on one particular implementation: a nanofactory.
A nanofactory is basically a box with a whole lot of molecular manufacturing
machines inside; feedstock and energy go in, and products come out. But why
do we focus on nanofactories? Where did the idea come from? I'll tackle the
second question first.
Richard Feynman is often credited as a founder of nanotechnology, though the
word would not exist until decades after his now famous talk, “There's
Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” in 1959. In that talk, Feynman
proposed that machines could build smaller machines until the smallest of
them was working with atomic precision, and indeed “maneuvering things
atom by atom.” Materials could be built under direct control: “Put
the atoms down where the chemist says, and so you make the substance.” Along
the way to this goal, he said, “I want to build a billion tiny factories,
models of each other, which are manufacturing simultaneously...” However,
these factories would have been on the border between microtech and nanotech,
with individual machines larger than 100 nanometers. Atom manipulation would
come “ultimately---in the great future.”
In the 1980's, Eric Drexler introduced most of the ideas of molecular manufacturing
(then called simply “nanotechnology”). However, instead of using
machines to make smaller machines, Drexler's plan started directly with molecules
engineered to have mechanical functionality. Build a number of intricate molecules,
he said, join them together into a programmable robotic system, and that system
could be used to perform more molecule-building and joining operations.
Both Feynman and Drexler recognized that small machines can't do much individually.
Feynman planned to have his manufacturing process make multiple copies of
each tiny machine in parallel, growing the number exponentially with each
stage of shrinkage. Drexler, starting from nanoscale machines, planned to
design his machine so that it could build a complete duplicate. The first
machine would build two, then they would build four, then eight, and so on.
This is actually an easier problem in many ways than designing a factory to
build smaller machines than those in the factory.
Drexler was working from a biological model, in which cells build more cells.
Rather than designing a factory, Drexler pictured vast numbers of self-contained,
independent robotic fabrication systems. The systems, “assemblers,” were
intended to cooperate to build large products. In his 1986 book Engines
of Creation, Drexler described a vat of assemblers, floating in
fluid, building a rocket engine.
By 1992, when he published Nanosystems, Drexler's
plans had evolved somewhat. Instead of vast quantities of free-floating assemblers,
each with its own manufacturing system, control system, power system, shell,
and chemical input system, he planned to fasten down vast numbers of manufacturing
devices into a framework. Instead of cooperating to attach molecules to an
external product, each manufacturing workstation would build a tiny fragment
of the product. These fragments would then be combined into larger and larger
components, using a system much like a tree of assembly lines feeding larger
assembly lines.
Drexler's nanofactory proposal in Nanosystems was to be refined several times.
In Drexler's proposal, the assembly lines occupied a three-dimensional branching
structure. This structure is more complex than
it looks, because some of the smaller lines must be bent aside in order
to avoid the larger ones. In Merkle's
1997 refinement, the assembly lines occupied a simpler stacked configuration.
The price of this is constraining the allowable dimensions of sub-parts.
Essentially, Merkle's system works best if the product is easily divisible
into cubes and sub-cubes.
In my 2003 paper “Design
of a Primitive Nanofactory”, I continued to use a convergent assembly
approach, accepting the limitations of dividing a product into sub-cubes.
Another limitation that should be noted with convergent assembly is that
the product must be small enough to fit in the assembly line: significantly
smaller than the factory. The paper includes an entire chapter on product
design, much of which is guided by the problems inherent in building diverse
products out of small dense rigid multi-scale cubes. Basically, the plan
was to build the product folded up, and then unfold it after completion
and removal from the nanofactory. My design, as well as Drexler's and Merkle's,
required large internal factory volumes for handling the product in various
stages of completion.
A few months after my Primitive Nanofactory paper was published, John Burch
and Eric Drexler unveiled their newest nanofactory concept. Instead of many
levels of converging assembly lines, the Burch/Drexler factory design deposits
tiny blocks directly onto a planar surface of a product under construction.
Although this requires many thousands of deposition operations at each position
to build each centimeter of product, the process is not actually slow, because
the smaller the blocks are, the faster each one can be placed. (Although the
physical layout of my nanofactory is now obsolete, most of the calculations
in my paper are still useful.)
Instead of requiring the product to be divisible into sub-cubes at numerous
size scales, the Burch/Drexler architecture requires only that the product
be made of aggregated tiny components—which would be necessary in any
case for anything constructed by molecular manufacturing workstations. Instead
of requiring a large internal volume for product handling, the factory only
needs enough internal volume to handle the tiny components; the growing product
can be attached to an external surface of the factory.
Focus on the Factory
So, that is how the nanofactory concept has evolved. Why does CRN use it as
the basis for talking about molecular manufacturing? The answer is that a
nanofactory will be a general-purpose manufacturing technology. Although it
could not build every product that could possibly be built by molecular manufacturing,
it will be able to build a very wide range of very powerful products. At the
same time, a personal nanofactory would be perhaps the most user-friendly
way to package molecular manufacturing. Technologies that are user-friendly,
assuming they are adequate, tend to be used more widely than more powerful
but less convenient alternatives. Although there may come a time when computer-aided
design processes run into the limits of the nanofactory approach, it seems
unlikely that humans using current design techniques would be able even to
fully map, let alone explore, the range of possible designs.
A nanofactory is easy to conceptualize. At the highest level, it's a computer-controlled
box that makes stuff, sort of like a 3D inkjet printer. Add in a couple of
key facts, and its importance becomes clear:
- It can make more nanofactories.Its products will be extremely powerful.
- Rapid programmable manufacture implies rapid prototyping and rapid design.
It is difficult to see
how “diamondoid mechanosynthesis of multi-scale nanosystem-based products” can
revolutionize the world. It is much easier to imagine a nanofactory being
flown in to a disaster area, used to produce more nanofactories and feedstock
factories, and then all of them producing water filters, tents, and whatever
else is needed, in any quantity desired—within just a few days.
Nanotechnology today is largely the province of the laboratory, where most
people cannot participate. But a personal nanofactory could be made easy enough
for untrained people to use, even to the point of making new product designs.
This advantage comes with a cost: the simpler the design software, the more
limited the range of products. But molecularly constructed products will be
so intricate and high-performance that a certain amount of tradeoff will be
quite acceptable for most applications. If a design has an array of a thousand
tiny motors where one hundred would suffice, that probably would not even
be noticeable.
A final advantage of conceptualizing the means of production as a human-scale
box is that it helps to separate the production system from the product. In
the pre-nanofactory days of molecular manufacturing discussion, when tiny
assemblers were the presumed manufacturing system, a lot of people came to
assume that every product would include assemblers—and thus be prone
to a variety of risks, such as making more of itself without limit. The nanofactory
concept makes it much clearer that products of molecular manufacturing will
not have any spooky self-replicating attributes, and the manufacturing apparatus
itself—the nanofactory—may be about as dangerous as a printer.
C-R-Newsletter #41 May 30, 2006
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
Every month is full of activity for CRN. To follow the latest happenings on
a daily basis, be sure to check our Responsible
Nanotechnology weblog.
=========
Second
Collection of CRN Task Force Essays Published
We are pleased to announce that all 22 essays written by members of our Global
Task Force on Implications and Policy have now been published. The essays
cover topics from commerce to criminology, from ethics to economics, and
from our remote past to our distant future. Together, they illustrate the
profound transformation that molecular manufacturing will have on every
aspect of human society.
The essays were published in two issues of Nanotechnology
Perceptions, and also are available online for free. They are posted
at the CRN-hosted Wise-Nano.org and
also at KurzweilAI.net.
The first set of essays was published in March and described in C-R-Newsletter
#39. As you will see below, this second set is just as interesting
and diverse — which goes to show, there's a lot more to be written.
CRN will continue to explore these vital issues.
- Nanoethics and Technological Revolutions: A Précis - by Nick BostromFrom The Enlightenment to N-Lightenment - by Michael BuergerWhat Price Freedom? - by Robert A. Freitas Jr.The (Needed) New Economics of Abundance - by Steve BurgessEconomic Impact of the Personal Nanofactory - by Robert A. Freitas Jr.Corporate Cornucopia - by Michael VassarMolecular Manufacturing and the Developing World: Looking to Nanotechnology For Answers - by Don MaclurcanConsidering Military Implications of Nanofactory-level Nanotechnology - by Brian WangMolecular Manufacturing and the Need for Crime Science - by Deborah OsborneSafer Molecular Manufacturing Through Nanoblocks - by Tom Craver
- Are We Enlightened Guardians, Or Are We Apes Designing Humans? - by Douglas Mulhall
1. Nanoethics and Technological Revolutions: A Précis - by Nick Bostrom
Humanity has lived through several technological revolutions, and we would do well to compare molecular manufacturing to them and learn what we can from the comparison—which may not be as much as we'd like.
Nick Bostrom writes: But if we believe that nanotechnology will eventually amount to a technological revolution, and if we are going to attempt nanoethics, then we might do well to consider some of the earlier technological revolutions that humanity has undergone. .... If such a comparison were made, we might for example become more modest about our ability to predict or anticipate the long-term consequences of what we were about to do.
2. From The Enlightenment to N-Lightenment - by Michael E. Buerger
Nanotechnology will be transformative, but its effects will be bound by existing patterns: power and control, criminal potentials, social pressures, and sources of authority. These will likely cause its effects to be less positive than they could have been.
Michael E. Buerger writes: Like contemporary Internet defenses, and the laws passed to outlaw new designer drugs, defensive maneuvers almost always stimulate new offensive attacks. Any combination of zeros and ones, in any transportation medium, can be hijacked and compromised: the track record of Internet security does not bode well for the free and easy commercial transfer of assembly codes for the molecules-up creation of products.
3. What Price Freedom? - by Robert A. Freitas Jr.
There is an uncomfortably fine line between terrorism and freedom fighting, in the context of advanced weapons that may require, or at least inspire, democratic governments as well as dictatorships to remove people's ability to fight.
Robert A. Freitas Jr. writes: If the technology allows it—and it does—then eventually some tyrant will seek to close his iron fist around the throat of humankind. We need to decide what, if anything, we ought to do about this.
4. The (Needed) New Economics of Abundance - by Steve Burgess
Today's applied economic theory does not encompass the possibility of abundance, which personal nanofactories will bring. We need a new economic theory.
Steve Burgess writes: We are on the cusp of a new era that has the potential to be an era of abundance. In the coming decades, molecular manufacturing will be a reality.
5. Economic Impact of the Personal Nanofactory - by Robert A. Freitas Jr.
The cost of manufactured goods need not suffer more than modest inflation or deflation as nanofactories are introduced. A number of small costs will add up to a non-disruptive price on most goods.
Robert A. Freitas Jr. writes: In light of the above considerations, a conservative assumption is that the introduction of personal nanofactories over a time period lasting, say, two decades will result in the average prices of consumer nondurables falling perhaps 5-fold from today’s prices, and the average prices of consumer durables falling perhaps 100-fold. How will this affect the overall inflation rate? Perhaps surprisingly, not much.
6. Corporate Cornucopia: Examining the Special Implications of Commercial MNT Development - by Michael Vassar
Corporations may have trouble extracting profit from nanofactories, but there are a variety of strategies they can follow to maintain a competitive advantage.
Michael Vassar writes: Unfortunately, the very size of the opportunity—combined with its extreme suddenness, military significance, potential for disruption of existing institutions, and ease of duplication—creates certain severe complications that lead to difficulties in capturing the value created.
7. Molecular Manufacturing and the Developing World: Looking to Nanotechnology for Answers - by Don Maclurcan
Many of the interactions of developing nations with molecular manufacturing issues can be previewed by studying issues raised by nearer-term nanoscale technologies.Don Maclurcan writes: While many of the issues MM faces may be similar to those presently developing with nanotechnology, MM offers a revolution of a starkly different magnitude. However, MM still faces an ‘identity crisis’ in the developed world, and an ‘identity absence’ in the developing world.
8. Considering Military and Ethical Implications of Nanofactory-Level Nanotechnology - by Brian Wang
Although current and planned military technology is impressive compared with that available only a few decades ago, nanofactory-level nanotechnology will be far more powerful.
Brian Wang writes: The improved sensing ability of nanotechnology-enabled smart dust and nanotechnology-enabled UAVs will revolutionize the military ability to identify and locate valuable opposing assets in real time. An arms race to make stealthy smart dust, smart dust detectors, and smart dust hunter-killers may be inevitable.
9. Molecular Manufacturing and the Need for Crime Science - by Deborah Osborne
Molecular manufacturing will create new opportunities for both criminals and police; crime science will have to change in order to deal with this.
Deborah Osborne writes: The third premise is that existing criminal justice systems will never be good enough to deal with modern crime opportunities—and MM will certainly prove this premise correct.
10. Safer Molecular Manufacturing Through Nanoblocks - by Tom Craver
Devices (fabbers) that merely assemble pre-manufactured “nanoblock” building blocks may be faster, more convenient, and less prone to uncontrolled proliferation than nanofactories that build products from the molecules up.
Tom Craver writes: Making nanoblock-limited fabbers available to everyone promises to provide most of the easily imaginable benefits of unrestricted atom precise MM, with significantly fewer risks. Fabbers can provide useful advantages of speed, efficiency, and safety.
11. Are We Enlightened Guardians, or Are We Apes Designing Humans? - by Douglas Mulhall
The non-humanitarian character of many human choices positions us poorly to argue that a superintelligence—which will appear, one way or another, in the next few decades—should refrain from destroying us.
Douglas Mulhall writes: Many experts argue that each of these forms of super-intelligence will enhance humans, not replace them, and although they might seem alien to unenhanced humans, they will still be an extension of us because we are the ones who designed them. The thought behind this is that we will go on as a species. Critics, however, point to a fly in that ointment.
Honoring Jane Jacobs
One of CRN's founding ideas is that different problems need different kinds
of solutions. For example, very bad things can happen if a forceful solution
is systemically applied to a market-type problem. And organizations to deal
with complex problems (such as molecular manufacturing) will have to be very
careful not to overstep their bounds and apply their internal style to the
wrong kind of problem.
This idea is not original to us. Its originator was Jane Jacobs, who is perhaps
better known for her work on architecture and urban planning. Jacobs identified
two main “ethical systems,” Guardian and Commercial, and warned
about what can happen if the systems are mixed or misapplied (Communism, Nazism,
and the Mafia are three of her examples). Building on work by Pat Gratton,
Chris Phoenix added a third Informational system to reflect the growing influence
of “unlimited sum” copying of digital information, and then
showed that all these systems must be considered in dealing with general-purpose
molecular manufacturing.
After making major contributions in multiple areas, Jacobs died a month ago.
Her New York Times obituary said: “in
at least five distinct fields of inquiry, she thought deeply and innovatively:
urban design, urban history, regional economics, the morality of the economy
and the nature of economic growth.” Despite her age—nearly 90—we
have to wonder whether advanced nanomedicine could have saved her life and
given the world many more years of her keen and valuable insights.
Live-blogging the Singularity Summit
CRN's Mike Treder attended the Singularity
Summit at Stanford University on May 13. He live-blogged it,
producing five moment-by-moment reviews plus an intro and summary.
Although some of the talks were off-topic, it was an interesting conference
full of provocative ideas.
Feature Science Essay: Types of Nanotechnology
Chris Phoenix, Director of Research, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
Now that nanotechnology has been in the public eye for twenty years, and well-funded
for half a decade, it's worth a quick look at just what it is—and how
it got that way.
When the word “nanotechnology” was introduced to the public by
Eric Drexler's 1986 book Engines of Creation, it meant something
very specific: small precise machines built out of molecules, which could
build more molecular machines and products—large, high-performance products.
This goal or aspect of nanotechnology now goes by several names, including
molecular nanotechnology, molecular manufacturing, and productive nanosystems.
The reason for this renaming is that “nanotechnology” has become
a broad and inclusive term, but it's still important to distinguish molecular
manufacturing from all the other types. I'll talk about molecular manufacturing,
and why it is unique and important, after surveying some of the other types
of nanotechnology.
With the funding of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), there
has been a strong financial incentive to define nanotechnology so that one's
own research counts—but not so broadly that everyone's research counts.
There has been a less focused, but still real, incentive to define the goals
of nanotechnology aggressively, to justify major funding, but not too aggressively,
lest it sound scary or implausible.
With all the different research fields applying the above rules to a wide
variety of research, it is not surprising that there's no single hard-edged
definition of nanotechnology that everyone can agree on. Perhaps the most
commonly quoted definition of nanotechnology is the one used
by the NNI: “Nanotechnology is the understanding and control of
matter at dimensions of roughly 1 to 100 nanometers, where unique phenomena
enable novel applications.” I don't know how they decided on the size
scale; thinking cynically, it might have had something to do with the fact
that computer chips were just about to gain features smaller than 100 nanometers,
so they were guaranteed at least one early success.
Nanotechnology can be even broader than that. A rough rule of thumb is: if
it's too small to see with an ordinary light microscope, it's likely to be
considered nanotechnology. Without using special
physics tricks, light can't be used to see anything smaller than half
a wavelength of light, which is a few hundred nanometers (I can't be more
precise because light comes in different colors with different wavelengths).
Because some optics technology uses structures smaller than light (such
as photonic crystals) to manipulate light, you will sometimes see optics
researchers describe their work as nanotechnology. However, because these
structures tend to be larger than the official 100-nm cutoff, many nanotechnologists
will reject this usage.
Another point of contention is how unique the “unique phenomena enabl[ing]
novel applications” have to be. For example, some nanotechnology simply
uses ordinary
materials like clay, in smaller chunks, in fairly ordinary ways. They
can get new material properties; they are using nanoscale materials; they
are studying them with new techniques; but is it really nanotechnology,
or is it just materials science? It might as well be called nanotech, seems
to be the consensus. It's providing early successes for the field and it’s
putting “nano” into consumers' hands in a beneficial, non-threatening
way.
Another kind of nanotechnology involves building increasingly large and intricate
molecules. Some of these molecules can be very useful: for example, it appears
possible to combine a cancer-cell-recognizer, a toxic drug, and a component
that shows up in MRI scans, into a single molecule that kills cancer cells
while showing you where they were and leaving the rest of the body untouched.
This is a little bit different from traditional chemistry in that the chemist
isn't trying to create a new molecule with a single function, but rather to
join together several different functions into one connected package.
Some new nanomaterials have genuinely new properties. For example, small mineral
particles can be transparent to visible light, which makes them useful in
sunscreen. Even smaller particles can glow in useful colors, forming more-stable
markers for biomedical research. For related reasons, small particles can
be useful additions to computer circuits, lending their quantum effects to
make smaller and better transistors.
We should talk about semiconductors (computer chips), a major application
of nanotechnology. Feature sizes on mainstream silicon chips are well below
100 nanometers now. This obviously is a great success for nanotechnology (as
defined by the NNI). From one point of view, semiconductor makers are continuing
to do what they have always done: make chips smaller and faster using silicon-based
transistors. From another point of view, as sizes shrink, their task is rapidly
getting harder, and they are inventing new technology every day just to keep
up with expectations. There are more unusual computer-chip designs underway
as well, most of which use nanotechnology of one form or another, from quantum-dot
transistors to sub-wavelength optics (plasmonics) to holographic storage to
buckytube-based mechanical switches.
Which brings us to buckytubes. Buckytubes are remarkable molecules that were
discovered not long ago. They are tiny strips of graphite, rolled up with
the sides fastened together to form a seamless tube. They are very strong,
very stiff, and can be quite long in proportion to their width; four-centimeter
long buckytubes have been reported, which is more than ten million times
the width of the tube. Some buckytubes are world-class conductors and electron
emitters. They may be useful in a wide variety of applications.
And what about those quantum effects? According to the NNI, “At the
nanoscale, the physical, chemical, and biological properties of materials
differ in fundamental and valuable ways from the properties of individual
atoms and molecules or bulk matter.” Materials are of course made up
of atoms, which contain electrons, and it is the interaction of electrons
that gives materials most of their properties. In very small chunks of material,
the electrons interact differently, which can create new material properties.
Nanoparticles can be more chemically active; as mentioned above, they can
fluoresce; they can even participate in weird physics such as quantum computers.
But, as the above overview should make clear, a lot of “nanotechnology” does
not make use of these quantum effects.
Molecular manufacturing (MM) is a fairly mundane branch of nanotech, or it
would be if not for the political controversy that has swirled around it.
The idea is simple: Use nanoscale machines as construction tools, joining
molecular fragments into more machines. Every biological cell contains molecular
machines that do exactly that. There are, however, a few reasons why molecular
manufacturing has been highly controversial.
Much of the controversy stems from the fact that MM proposes to use engineered
devices to build duplicate devices. Although biology can do this, intuition
suggests that such self-duplication requires some special spark of complexity
or something even more numinous: surely a simple engineered machine can't
be so lifelike! This ultimate spark of vitalism is fading as we learn how
machinelike cellular molecules actually are, and as increasingly detailed
plans make it clear that hardware does not have to be very complex in order
to make duplicate hardware. (Even the software doesn't have to be very complex,
just intricate and well-designed. This has been known by computer scientists
for many decades, but the paradigm has taken a while to shift in the wider
world.)
There is another problem with self-replication: in some forms, it may be dangerous.
In 1986, Eric Drexler warned that tiny engineered self-replicators could outcompete
natural life, turning the biosphere into boring copies of themselves: “grey
goo.” This formed a cornerstone of Bill Joy's essay “Why The Future
Doesn't Need Us,” which hit just as the NNI was ramping up. No nanoscientist
wanted to be associated with a poorly-understood technology that might destroy
the world, and the easiest thing was to assert that MM was simply impossible.
(Modern MM designs do not use small self-replicators; in fact, they have been
obsolete since Drexler's 1992 technical book Nanosystems.)
A third source of controversy is that MM plans to use diamond as its major
building material, not bio-based polymers like protein and DNA. (Some pathways
to this capability, including the pathway favored by Drexler, go through a
biopolymer stage.) Although there is a wide variety of reactions that can
form diamond and graphite, living organisms do not build with these materials,
so there is no existence proof that such structures can be built using point-by-point
computer-controlled molecular deposition.
If diamond-like structures can be built by molecular manufacturing techniques,
they should have astonishingly
high performance characteristics. To those who study MM, its projected
high performance indicates that researchers should work toward this goal
with a focused intensity not seen since the Manhattan Project. To those
who have not studied MM, talk of motors a million times more powerful than
today's merely seems fanciful, a reason (or an excuse) to discount the entire
field.
At least as problematic as the extreme technical claims are the concerns about
the extreme implications of molecular manufacturing. It is rare that a technology
comes along which revolutionizes society in a decade or so, and even more
rare that such things are correctly predicted in advance. It is very tempting
to dismiss claims of unstable arms races, wholesale
destruction of existing jobs, and widespread personal capacity for mass destruction,
as improbable.
However, all the skepticism in the world won't change the laws of physics.
In more than two decades (almost five, if you count from Richard
Feynman's visionary speech), no one has found a reason why MM, even
diamond-based MM, shouldn't work. In fact, the more work that's done, the
less complex it appears. Predicting social responses to technology is even
more difficult than predicting technology itself, but it seems beyond plausibility
that such a powerful capability won't have at least some disruptive effects—perhaps
fatally disruptive, unless we can understand the potential and find ways
to bypass the worst pitfalls.
In the near future, nanotechnology in the broad sense will continue to develop
dozens of interesting technologies and capabilities, leading to hundreds of
improved capabilities and applications. Meanwhile, molecular manufacturing
will continue to move closer, despite the (rapidly fading) opposition to the
idea. Sometime in the next few years, someone will have the vision to fund
a targeted study of molecular manufacturing's potential; less than a decade
after that, general-purpose nanoscale manufacturing will be a reality that
the world will have to deal with. Molecular manufacturing will build virtually
unlimited quantities of new products as rapidly as the software can be designed—and
it should be noted that most of today's physical products are far less complex
than today's software. Molecular manufacturing will both enable and eclipse
large areas of nanotechnology, further accelerating the achievements of the
field. We are in for some interesting times.
* * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * *
FUNDRAISING ALERT!
Significant progress in efforts to roadmap
the technical steps toward molecular manufacturing make the work of
CRN more important than ever. It is critical that we examine the global
implications of this rapidly emerging technology, and begin creating wise
and effective solutions. That's why we have formed the CRN
Global Task Force.
But it won't be easy. We need to grow, and rapidly, to meet the expanding
challenge. You can help!
Your tax-deductible donation
to CRN will enable us to achieve that growth. We rely largely on individual
donations and small grants for our survival. This is important work and
we welcome your participation.
Thank you!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
C-R-Newsletter #40 April 29, 2006
CRN
Task Force Essays
State of Global Emergency
France is Paying Attention
Phoenix in New Jersey
Prix Ars Electronica!
New Diamond Mechanosynthesis
Paper
Drexler on Physics and
Computation
CRN Goes to Vanderbilt
Talking Nanotech
in New Zealand
Feature Science Essay: Bottom-up
Design
Every month is full of activity for CRN. To follow the latest happenings on
a daily basis, be sure to check our Responsible
Nanotechnology weblog.
=========
CRN
Task Force Essays
In last month’s C-R-Newsletter, we were very pleased
to introduce the first 11 essays written by members of our Global
Task Force on Implications and Policy. Now we’re getting close
to publication of our second set of 11 essays:
- Nanoethics and Technological Revolutions: A Précis - by Nick BostromFrom The Enlightenment to N-Lightenment - by Michael BuergerWhat Price Freedom? - by Robert A. Freitas Jr.The (Needed) New Economics of Abundance - by Steve BurgessEconomic Impact of the Personal Nanofactory - by Robert A. Freitas Jr.Corporate Cornucopia - by Michael VassarMolecular Manufacturing and the Developing World: Looking to Nanotechnology For Answers - by Don MaclurcanConsidering Military Implications of Nanofactory-level Nanotechnology - by Brian WangMolecular Manufacturing and the Need for Crime Science - by Deborah OsborneSafer Molecular Manufacturing Through Nanoblocks - by Tom Craver
- Are We Enlightened Guardians, Or Are We Apes Designing Humans? - by Douglas Mulhall
Covering topics
from commerce to criminology, from ethics to economics, and from our remote
past to our distant future, this new collection illustrates the profound
transformation that nanotechnology will have on every aspect of human
society.
It's been a great experience for us to work closely with and learn from such
knowledgeable authors. We’re excited about the opportunity of presenting
these essays in the next issue of Nanotechnology
Perceptions. That issue is due on May 8, and, as before, we also
will post the essays online at KurzweilAI.net and
at Wise-Nano.org.
State of Global Emergency
Earlier this month, CRN executive director Mike Treder received an invitation
from the Foundation
For the Future to take part in a special meeting in Bellevue, Washington
(USA) called "Crossroads for Planet Earth." Topics included human population,
extreme and widespread poverty, biodiversity, energy and environment, public
health, world economies, and global priorities. Nine
participants, described as "experts in these fields...plus additional
voices from the USA and abroad," made presentations and were joined in
discussion by principals from
the foundation.
Based on what was shared, it's clear that we are in a state of global emergency
regarding the potential for rapid and disastrous climate change. This may
not be news for most of our readers, but the statistical evidence presented
at this event was highly alarming. CRN’s presentation on "Nanotechnology:
Driving Toward a Crisis" emphasized the opportunity for exponential general-purpose
molecular manufacturing to enable intervention in the rapid deterioration
of global climate stability. Of course, the same technology that will provide
many potential benefits also can be misused and cause great harm.
France is Paying Attention
Jean-Marc Manach has written two excellent, in-depth pieces on ethical
issues of nanotechnology, or “Problèmes éthiques
des nanotechnologies,” at the French language blog, InternetActu.
His articles were stimulated by the publication of the first
group of essays from the CRN Global Task Force. We're pleased to see
that lecteurs de Français are gaining the opportunity to learn
more about these important matters.
Phoenix in New Jersey
Chris Phoenix, CRN's Director of Research, was invited by the New
Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) to conduct a two-hour public seminar
on "Nanotechnology: Its Promises and Perils." The event took place on April
5 and was well attended. The following day, Chris was able to have several
informal group discussions with physics students and professors from NJIT
about both technical matters and ethical implications of advanced nanotechnology.
Prix Ars Electronica!
We’re proud to report that CRN’s Responsible
Nanotechnology weblog has been nominated for Prix
Ars Electronica, the annual "International Competition for CyberArts." Our
category is Digital Communities, which covers “political, social,
and cultural projects, initiatives, groups, and scenes from all over the
world utilizing digital technology to better society and assume social
responsibility.” Just to be nominated is quite an honor, and it
is both gratifying and humbling.
New Diamond Mechanosynthesis Paper
An important new
research paper on the simulation of tooltip designs for molecular manufacturing
is now available online. The paper was published in February 2006 in the
peer-reviewed Journal of Computational and Theoretical Nanoscience. Through
detailed computer simulations, researchers are learning a great deal about
the performance properties of different tips at different temperatures.
Basically, this says that a germanium (DBC6Ge) tooltip should work reliably
at room temperature, which is a significant finding.
Drexler on Physics and Computation
Eric Drexler's website, e-drexler.com,
has been updated with two new papers written by Drexler and published in scientific
journals. The papers are: “Productive nanosystems: the physics of molecular
fabrication” and “Toward Integrated Nanosystems: Fundamental issues
in design and modeling.” Fuller descriptions are available
here.
CRN Goes to Vanderbilt
CRN has accepted the invitation to participate in a symposium on "Nanotechnology
Governance: Environmental Management from a Global Perspective" scheduled
for May 19, 2006 at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. It will
be co-hosted by the Environmental
Law Institute and the Vanderbilt
Center for Environmental Management Studies.
The symposium, which will include approximately 40 invited participants from
both the public and private sectors, is intended to: 1) Focus on the development
of environmental, health, and safety governance structures for nanotechnology
from an international perspective; 2) Examine how nanotechnology governance
structures, including traditional regulation, voluntary programs, industry
standards, disclosure, and other approaches, are developing in the U.S., Europe,
and Asia; and 3) Consider the implications for corporate environmental management
of the development of disparate governance approaches.
Talking Nanotech in New Zealand
The Institution of Professional Engineers
New Zealand has graciously invited CRN Executive Director Mike Treder
to visit their beautiful country for a speaking tour of nine cities over
two weeks, from September 4-14, 2006. Cities on the itinerary include Dunedin,
Timaru, Christchurch, Nelson, Wellington, New Plymouth, Wanganui, Palmerston
North, and Auckland. If you're a New Zealander who is interested in the
relationship between science and society—especially in the transformative
potential of nanotechnology—perhaps
you can meet Mike in September.
Feature Essay: Bottom-up Design
Chris Phoenix, Director of Research, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
At first encounter, the idea of designing products with 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
atoms, each in an engineered position, and each one placed without error,
may seem ridiculous. But the goal is not as implausible as it sounds. Today's
personal computers do that number of transistor operations every few weeks.
The operations are done without error, and each one was engineered—though
not directly. There are two reasons why computers can do this: digital
operations and levels of abstraction.
I've talked about both of these in previous essays, but it bears repeating:
at the lowest level of operations, personal computers do a mole of engineered,
reliable transistor operations every few weeks, and the techniques used
to accomplish this can be applied to molecular manufacturing.
Computers can be so precise and reliable because they are based on digital
operations. A digital operation uses discrete values: either a 1 or a 0. A
value of 0.95 will be corrected to 1, and a value of 0.05 will be corrected
to 0. This correction happens naturally with every transistor operation. Transistors
can do this correction because they are nonlinear: there is a large region
of input where the output is very close to 1, and another large region of
input where the output is very close to 0. A little bit of energy is used
to overcome entropy at each step. Rather than letting inaccuracies accumulate
into errors, they are fixed immediately. Thermal noise and quantum effects
are corrected before they compound into errors.
Forces between atoms are nonlinear. As atoms approach each other, they feel
a weak attractive force. Then, at a certain distance, the force becomes repulsive.
If they are pushed together even more closely, the force becomes more strongly
attractive than before; finally, it becomes sharply repulsive. Chemists and
physicists know the region of weak distant attraction as “surface forces”;
the closer, stronger attraction is “covalent bonds”; and the intervening
zone of repulsion is responsible for the “activation energy” that
is required to make reactions happen. Of course, this picture is over-simplified;
covalent bonds are not the only type of bond. But for many types of atoms,
especially carbon, this is a pretty good description.
Several types of errors must be considered in fabricating and using a mechanical
component. A fabrication operation may fail, causing the component to be damaged
during manufacture. The operations may be correct but imprecise, causing small
variances in the manufactured part. During use, the part may wear, causing
further variance. As we will see, the nonlinear nature of molecular bonds
can be used (with good design) to virtually eliminate all three classes of
error.
Nonlinear forces between atoms can be used to correct inaccuracies in fabrication
operations before they turn into errors. If the atom is placed in slightly
the wrong location, it will be pulled to the correct location by inter-atomic
forces. The correction happens naturally. If the placement tool is inaccurate,
then energy will be lost as the atom moves into place; as with transistors,
entropy isn't overcome for free. But, as with transistors, reliability can
be maintained over virtually unlimited numbers of operations by spending a
little bit of energy at each step.
In practice, there are several different kinds of errors that must be considered
when a moiety—an atom or a molecular fragment—is added to a part
under construction. It may fail to transfer from the “tool” molecule
to the “workpiece” molecule. This kind of error can be detected
and the operation can be retried. The moiety may bond to the wrong atom on
the workpiece. Or it may exert a force on the workpiece that causes other
atoms, already in the workpiece, to rearrange their bonds. This is called “reconstruction,” and
avoiding it imposes additional requirements for precise placement of the moiety,
but it is also a non-linear phenomenon: if the moiety is positioned within
a certain range of the ideal location, reconstruction won't happen, at least
in well-chosen structures.
Errors of dimensional tolerance, which in traditional manufacturing are caused
by imprecise operations or wear during operation, need not be a factor in
molecular manufactured components. If an atom is pulled slightly out of place,
either during manufacture or during operation, it will be pulled back into
place by its bonds. In engineering terms, there is no plastic deformation,
only elastic deformation. Of course, if a strong enough force is applied,
the bonds can be broken, but preventing this is a matter of engineering the
product properly. It requires a lot of force to break a bond. If a component
must be either perfectly fastened or broken, then it will remain perfect for
a long, long time under normal usage.
Traditional mechanical engineering and manufacturing involve a lot of operations
to deal with errors of dimensional tolerance—including measuring, finishing,
and sensing during operation—that will not be required with molecular
manufactured components. This will make molecular manufacturing systems significantly
easier to automate. As long as low-level operations are reliable and repeatable,
then higher-level operations built on them also will be reliable. Knowing
precisely how the system works at the lowest level will allow confident engineering
at higher levels. This design principle is called levels of abstraction.
A computer programmer can write an instruction such as, “Draw a black
rectangle in the middle of the screen,” in just a few characters of
computer code. These few characters, however, may invoke thousands of low-level
instructions carried out by billions of transistor operations. The programmer
has implicit confidence that each transistor will work correctly. Actually,
programmers don't think about transistors at all, any more than you think
about each spark in your car's engine when you step on the gas. Transistors
are combined into registers, which are used by CPU microcode, which is controlled
by assembly language, which is machine-generated from high-level languages,
which are used to write several layers of operating system functions and libraries,
and this is what the programmers actually use. Because transistors are, in
effect, completely reliable and predictable, each level built on top of them
also is completely reliable and predictable (with the exception of design
errors).
Molecular manufacturing will involve massive numbers of simple mechanosynthetic
operations done under fully automated control. A nanofactory building a product
would not be much different, at several important levels of function, from
a computer-driven printer printing a page. The nanofactory product designer
would not see each atom, any more than a graphic artist sees each ink droplet.
Graphic artists usually work in abstractions such as splines, rather than
individual pixels. The user does not even see each spline. The user just hits "Print" and
the picture comes out of the printer with each ink droplet in its proper place.
A molecular manufactured product could include a microscopic component containing
a billion atoms—which could be placed with complete reliability by a
single instruction written by a designer. An array of a billion identical
components, each containing a billion atoms, could be specified without any
additional difficulty. Each component could reliably work for many years without
a single broken bond. Thus, just as a computer programmer can write a simple
program that does an almost unlimited number of reliable calculations, a product
designer could write a simple specification that placed an almost unlimited
number of atoms—reliably and predictably—making exactly the product
that was desired. (Background radiation is beyond the scope of this essay;
it will introduce failures and require redundancy at scales larger than about
a micron, but this should not require much
additional complexity.)
Operation of the manufactured product can be similarly planned from the bottom
up. If the smallest operations happen in a predictable way at a predictable
time, then higher-level operations can be built on top of the low-level functionality.
This is not the only way to implement high-level functionality, of course.
Biology uses statistical processes and analog feedback loops to implement
its actions. Although this is more elegant and efficient in some ways, it
would be difficult to design systems that worked along these lines, and it
is not necessary. Digital operations can be made to happen in lockstep, and
aggregates of digital operations can be treated as reliable primitives for
higher levels. The more predictable a system is, the less sensing is required
to make it work as desired. Nanoscale sensing often is cited as a weak point
in nanomachine design, but in principle, nanomachines designed on digital
principles would not need any sensing in order to work reliably. In practice,
only a small amount of internal feedback would be required, which could be
provided by relatively crude sensors.
It is important to realize that digital design using levels of abstraction
does not imply increased complexity at higher levels. An assembly language
instruction that causes a billion transistor operations may be specified completely
with a paragraph of description. Its results may be very intricate—may
invoke a lot of diverse activity—but there is a crucial distinction
between intricacy and complexity. Similarly,
a high-level language instruction that invokes a billion assembly language
instructions may be understood completely at a glance. And so it goes, through
as many levels as are useful to the programmer/designer. As long as the lower
levels are reliable, the upper levels can be reliable, intricate (useful),
and simple (easy to use).
One of the most important features of molecular manufacturing is that its
very lowest level—the formation of molecules from precisely positioned
building blocks—is precise and reliable due to digital operations. Every
level of abstraction above the foundation of molecular fabrication can thus
be equally precise and reliable. Google, the World Wide Web, and modern video
games all have been engineered from molar numbers of transistor operations.
In the same way, masses of diverse, highly functional products will be engineered
from molecular fabrication operations.
* * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * *
FUNDRAISING ALERT!
Significant progress in efforts to roadmap
the technical steps toward molecular manufacturing make the work of
CRN more important than ever. It is critical that we examine the global
implications of this rapidly emerging technology, and begin creating wise
and effective solutions. That's why we have formed the CRN
Global Task Force.
But it won't be easy. We need to grow, and rapidly, to meet the expanding
challenge. You can help!
Your tax-deductible donation
to CRN will enable us to achieve that growth. We rely largely on individual
donations and small grants for our survival. This is important work and
we welcome your participation.
Thank you!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
C-R-Newsletter #39 March 30, 2006
SPECIAL
EDITION: CRN Task Force Essays
In August 2005, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology announced
the formation of a Global Task Force convened to study the societal
implications of this rapidly emerging technology. Bringing together a diverse
group of world-class experts from multiple disciplines, we are spearheading
an historic, collaborative effort to develop comprehensive recommendations
for the safe and responsible use of nanotechnology.
For their first major project, members of the CRN Task Force chose
to generate a range of independent essays identifying and defining specific
concerns about the possibilities of advanced nanotechnology. The first 11
of those essays were published in the March 2006 issue of Nanotechnology
Perceptions, a peer-reviewed academic journal of the Collegium
Basilea in Basel, Switzerland.
In this special edition of the C-R-Newsletter, we bring you a sampling of
the essays as well as what some Global Task Force members are saying about
them.
CTF Essays Overview
Singularities And Nightmares:
The Range Of Our Futures
Is AI Near a Takeoff Point?
Nano-Guns, Nano-Germs, and
Nano-Steel
Molecular Manufacturing:
Too Dangerous to Allow?
Cultural Dominants and
Differential MNT Uptake
Globalization and
Open Source Nano Economy
The Need For Limits
Nanotechnology Dangers
and Defenses
Nanoethics and Human
Enhancement
Molecular Manufacturing
and 21st Century Policing
Strategic Sustainable Brain
Coming Soon!
Feature Science Essay: Trends
in Medicine
Reminder: Every month this newsletter gets you up to date on recent events,
but to follow the latest happenings on a daily basis, be
sure to check our Responsible Nanotechnology weblog.
=========
CTF
Essays Overview
Nanotechnology -- the precise engineering of tiny but powerful machines --
is advancing quickly, leaping from the pages of science fiction into world-class
research laboratories, and coming soon to a desktop near you.
Like electricity or computers before it, nanotechnology will bring greatly
improved efficiency and productivity in many areas of human endeavor. In its
mature form, known as molecular nanotechnology (MNT) or molecular manufacturing
(MM), it will have significant impact on almost all industries and all parts
of society. Personal nanofactories may offer better built, longer lasting,
cleaner, safer, and smarter products for the home, for communications, for
medicine, for transportation, for agriculture, and for industry in general.
However, as a general-purpose technology, MM will be dual-use, meaning that
in addition to its civilian applications, it will have military uses as well
-- making far more powerful weapons and tools of surveillance. Thus, it represents
not only wonderful benefits for humanity, but also grave risks.
Progress toward developing the technical requirements for desktop molecular
manufacturing is moving forward rapidly. Many of the profound implications
of molecular manufacturing are explored in our
initial collection of 11 new essays written by members of the CRN
Task Force. From military and security issues to human enhancement,
artificial intelligence, and more, these articles take a look under the
lid of Pandora's box to see what the future might hold.
"Our plan from the beginning was to concentrate first on defining the challenges
posed by nanotechnology," said Mike Treder, executive director of CRN and
chairman of the Global Task Force. "What risks do we really face? How do they
relate to each other? What is most important to know in order to cope wisely
and effectively with molecular manufacturing?"
"We jumped at the chance to publish the CRN Task Force essays," said Jeremy
Ramsden, editor-in-chief of the Nanotechnology Perceptions journal. "To us,
these papers represent world-class thinking about some of the most important
challenges that human society will ever face."
Ray Kurzweil, renowned inventor, entrepreneur, and best-selling author, said, "As
the pace of technological advancement rapidly accelerates, it becomes increasingly
important to promote knowledgeable and insightful discussion of both promise
and peril. I'm very pleased to take part in this CRN Task Force effort by
including my own essay, and by hosting discussion of the essays on the 'MindX'
discussion board at KurzweilAI.net."
What follows is a brief description of each essay and a sample of the author's
ideas. We encourage you to read the full essays online and to participate
in discussing them. All essays are posted at KurzweilAI.net, and most are
also available for comment at Wise-Nano.org.
Singularities And Nightmares: The Range
Of Our Futures
By David Brin
Options for a coming singularity include self-destruction of civilization,
a positive singularity, a negative singularity (machines take over), and retreat
into tradition. Our urgent goal: find (and avoid) failure modes, using anticipation
(thought experiments) and resiliency -- establishing robust systems that can
deal with almost any problem as it arises.
David Brin writes: In
times to come, the worst dangers to civilization may not come from clearly
identifiable and accountable adversaries as much as from a general democratization
of the means to do harm. New technologies, distributed by the Internet and
effectuated by cheaply affordable tools, will offer increasing numbers of
people access to modalities of destructive power—means that will be
used because of justified grievances, avarice, indignant anger, or simply
because they are there.
Is AI Near a Takeoff Point?
By J. Storrs Hall
Computers built by nanofactories may be millions of times more powerful than
anything we have today, capable of creating world-changing AI in the coming
decades. But to avoid a dystopia, the nature (and particularly intelligence)
of government (a giant computer program -- with guns) will have to change.
J. Storrs Hall writes: The
most likely place for artificial intelligence (AI) to appear first is in corporate
management; corporations have the necessary resources and clearly could benefit
from the most intelligent management. Initial corporate development could
be a problem, however, because such AI's are very likely to be programmed
to be competitive first, and worry about minor details like ethics, the economy,
and the environment later, if at all.
Nano-Guns, Nano-Germs, and Nano-Steel
By Mike Treder
Within our lifetimes, we are likely to witness battles on a scale never before
seen. Powered by molecular manufacturing, near-future wars may threaten our
freedom, our way of life, and even our survival. Superior military technology
allowed the Spanish to conquer the Incan empire in 1532. Could today's most
powerful civilization, the United States, be just as easily conquered by a
nano-enabled attacker?
Mike Treder writes: It
is not certain, of course, that large-scale war will occur within the next
few decades. But if it does, and if both (or all) sides are nano-enabled,
that event could last a relatively long time, and casualties could be in the
billions. If, on the other hand, only one combatant possesses the awesome
capabilities of nano-built weapons, computers, and infrastructure, that war
might be over very quickly, and could leave the victor in total command of
the world.
Molecular Manufacturing: Too Dangerous to
Allow?
By Robert A. Freitas Jr.
Despite the risks of molecular manufacturing, such as global ecophagy, replication
is not new. Engineered self-replication technologies are already in wide commercial
use and can be made inherently safe. And defenses we've already developed
against harmful biological replicators all have analogs in the mechanical
world that should provide equally effective, or even superior, defenses.
Robert
A. Freitas Jr. writes: Perhaps the earliest-recognized and best-known
danger of molecular manufacturing is the risk that self-replicating nanorobots
capable of functioning autonomously in the natural environment could quickly
convert that natural environment into replicas of themselves on a global
basis, a scenario often referred to as the ‘grey goo problem’ but
more accurately termed ‘global ecophagy’ Such self-replicating
systems, if not countered, could make the earth largely uninhabitable.
Cultural Dominants and Differential MNT
Uptake
By Damien Broderick
The impacts of radical and disruptive technologies such as molecular nanotechnology
on societies deserve serious study by economists, sociologists and anthropologists.
Would civil societies degenerate almost instantly into Hobbesian micro states,
where the principal currency is direct power over other humans, expressed
at best as involuntary personal service and, at the worst, as sadistic or
careless infliction of pain and consequent brutalization of spirit in slaves
and masters alike?
Damien Broderick writes: Are
we, indeed, doomed to this outcome through frailties in our evolved nature
or perhaps to the rapacity of the current global economy? Even if we assume
that rich consumerist and individualist First World cultures like the USA
could be prone to such collapse, is that true of all extant societies? Might
more rigid or authoritarian societies have an advantage?
Globalization and Open Source Nano Economy
By Giulio Prisco
Some of the problems of today's globalized world could be eliminated or reduced
by developing operational worldwide molecular design and manufacturing capabilities.
Instead of shipping physical objects, their detailed design specification
in a "Molecular Description Language" will be transmitted over a global data
grid evolved from today's Internet and then physically "printed" by nano printers
at remote sites. This would allow communities wishing to remain independent
to retain their autonomy.
Giulio Prisco writes: What
happens if the Molecular Description Language descriptions of basic goods
that a local community needs are priced beyond their reach? And what happens
if these licenses are withdrawn for political reasons, perhaps to force a
community to submit to an aggressor community or to an overreaching central
authority?
The Need For Limits
By Chris Phoenix
Molecular manufacturing will give its wielders extreme power and has the potential
to remove or bypass many of today's limits, including laws. That could lead
to a planet-wide dictatorship, or to any of several forms of irreversible
destruction. Perhaps the biggest problem of all will be how to develop a system
of near-absolute power that will not become corrupt.
Chris Phoenix writes: Molecular
manufacturing has the potential to remove or bypass many of today's limits.
It is not far wrong to say that the most significant remaining limits will
be human, and that we will be trying our hardest to bypass even those. To
people with faith in humanity's good nature and high potential, this will
come as welcome news. For many who have studied history, it will be rather
frightening. A near-total lack of limits could lead straight to a planet-wide
dictatorship, or to any of several forms of irreversible destruction.
Nanotechnology Dangers and Defenses
By Ray Kurzweil
To avoid dangers such as unrestrained nanobot replication, we need relinquishment
at the right level and to place our highest priority on the continuing advance
of defensive technologies, staying ahead of destructive technologies. An overall
strategy should include a streamlined regulatory process, a global program
of monitoring for unknown or evolving biological pathogens, temporary moratoriums,
raising public awareness, international cooperation, software reconnaissance,
and fostering values of liberty, tolerance, and respect for knowledge and
diversity.
Ray Kurzweil writes: We
are becoming increasingly reliant on mission-critical software systems, and
the sophistication and potential destructiveness of self-replicating software
weapons will continue to escalate. When we have software running in our brains
and bodies and controlling the world's nanobot immune system, the stakes will
be immeasurably greater.
Nanoethics and Human Enhancement
By Patrick Lin and Fritz Allhoff
Human enhancement—our ability to use technology to enhance our bodies
and minds, as opposed to its application for therapeutic purposes—is
a critical issue facing nanotechnology. It will be involved in some of the
near-term applications of nanotechnology, with such research labs as MIT's
Institute for Soldier Technologies working on exoskeletons and other innovations
that increase human strength and capabilities. It is also a core issue related
to far-term predictions in nanotechnology, such as longevity, nanomedicine,
artificial intelligence, and other issues.
Lin and Allhoff write: The
implications of nanotechnology as related to human enhancement are perhaps
some of the most personal and therefore passionate issues in the emerging
field of nanoethics, forcing us to rethink what it means to be human or, essentially,
our own identity. For some, nanotechnology holds the promise of making us
superhuman; for others, it offers a darker path toward becoming Frankenstein’s
monster. This will not be in the distant future, but rather sooner than many
of us might have expected.
Molecular Manufacturing and 21st Century
Policing
By Thomas J. Cowper
Will nanofactories foster global anarchy? Will nations devolve into a technologically-driven
arms race, the winner dominating or destroying the planet with powerful molecular-manufacturing-enabled
weapons? Or will the world's Big Brothers grow larger and more tyrannical,
using advanced nanotechnology to "protect" their law abiding masses through
increasing surveillance, control and internal subjugation? A law-enforcement
executive asks the tough questions.
Thomas J. Cowper writes: What
capabilities do we want police to have and which do we want to restrict? How
much do they need in order to provide for public order and safety in an age
of advanced nanotechnology? Are they capable of wielding the power afforded
them through augmented reality, unmanned aerial vehicles, robots, surveillance,
data-mining, and biometrics—technologies that will be greatly enhanced
and widely distributed by personal nanofactories? Can we afford to place such
power in the hands of government? And if not, what is the alternative for
ensuring peace and social stability for the world’s billions?
Strategic Sustainable Brain
By Natasha Vita-More
Markets point to an expected increase in neurosurgery, neuroinformatics, neuromarketing,
biotechnologies, and human performance enhancements with an explicit focus
on nanotechnology. But the consequential inclination is that of machine intelligence
challenging human intelligence. Lurking in the foreground of the future is
whether or not the human brain will be able to keep pace with new technologies
that will otherwise outperform it.
Natasha Vita-More writes: The
brain is too fragile. It is far too vulnerable in its current state to continue
providing the necessary cognitive processes for society's increasing life
span. The brain needs resources to ensure that its components are not depleted
or permanently damaged. In order to properly sustain the brain, we need to
know what it likes, the challenges it craves, the rest it requires, and the
protection it deserves. In short, the brain must have a strategy for its future.
Coming Soon!
Part two of this important collection of essays will appear on May 8, 2006,
in the next issue of Nanotechnology Perceptions. We will present
articles from many more leading thinkers, including Oxford philosopher Nick
Bostrom, security expert Deborah Osborne, and Douglas Mulhall, author of Our
Molecular Future.
As editors of the Global Task Force essays, we will be pleased if you are entertained and informed. But we will be further gratified if you are inspired to learn more. We hope you'll want to get involved in the vital work of raising awareness and finding effective solutions to the challenges presented to the world by advanced nanotechnology.
, CRN Executive Director
, CRN Director of Research
Note: The opinions
expressed in these essays are those of the individual authors and do not
necessarily represent the opinions of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology,
nor of its parent organization, World Care.
Feature Science Essay: Trends in Medicine
Chris Phoenix, Director of Research, Center for Responsible
Nanotechnology
I just returned from
a Future
Medical Forum conference where I spoke on the nanotechnology panel.
Other speakers covered topics such as device design, regulation, setting
prices for products, future trends in medical research, and more. Much
of what I heard confirmed ideas I've had about where medicine could go
once it was enabled by molecular manufacturing—but
it seems that some things are happening already. A number of these trends
will disrupt the medical industry. Thus, molecular manufacturing should
reinforce the direction medicine is going—but that direction will
not always be comfortable for medical companies.
I had some interesting conversations with speakers on the Design panel. They
confirmed that rapid prototyping of complete products would speed their work
significantly. They did not seem upset at the prospect of learning to use
such a powerful capability. At one point, I asked one of them: "Let me spin
you a science fiction story. Sometime in the future, people are coming to
you for body modifications to make their lives easier. Things like extensible
fingers—sort of a lightweight Inspector Gadget. Your job is to figure
out how to design these things." His response: "That would be totally cool!"
Norbert Reidel of Baxter spoke about trends in medical research and treatment.
His talk confirmed what I have been expecting: as we gain the ability to gather
increasing amounts of information about a person's biological state, we will
be able to make research and treatment more personal. Today, clinical trials
with placebos are used to tell statistically what works on a broad population.
In the future, we'll be able to move away from clinical trials as a way to
tell what works statistically, and toward individually designed treatment
protocols based on individual genetic makeup and other personal data. His
talk was full of phrases like "in-life research" and "adaptive trials" and "personal
medicine." I asked him whether the ability to gather lots of medical data
would make it possible to research the effects of daily life, such as diet
and activities. He said yes, but the bigger problem would be getting people
to act on the results; he mentioned a doctor who frequently prescribed "a
pair of sneakers" but found that the prescription usually was not filled.
I was most struck by a talk on globalization. The speaker, Brian Firth, is
Cordis's vice president for Medical Affairs and Health Economics Worldwide.
Brian structured his talk around a book by Shell (yes, the oil company): Shell
Global Scenarios to 2025 [PDF]. The scenarios are built around three
major forces: security, market efficiency, and social cohesion. Readers
who are familiar with CRN's Three Systems theory
will be noticing that the first two forces are very similar to the Guardian
and Commercial systems that we, following Jane Jacobs, have identified as
major systems of action in today's world. The third force, social cohesion,
appears to be almost unrelated to our Informational system. But Firth's
talk mainly focused on the first two, so it covered familiar ground.
I find it significant that Firth discussed a lot of what would seem to be
Market issues under Security. He spoke extensively about factors affecting
the price of medical devices. For example, buyers are starting to notice that
devices can cost four times as much in one country as in another. Devices
are sometimes bought in inexpensive regions and then shipped to areas where
they are expensive. These factors would seem to indicate the Market at work—but
Firth listed them all under Security. Apparently, the reasoning is: companies
that control a market don't have to work at being efficient; instead, they
have to defend their territory. Monopolies tend to be more Guardian. Several
other things in Firth's talk, such as his emphasis on (development) risk justifying
luxurious returns, sounded more Guardian than Commercial.
Firth's talk was one of the first, so it influenced my thinking throughout
the rest of the conference. Medicine today is essentially a fight to maintain
a reasonably healthy status quo. Stasis is a good thing; any change from health
is disease, which is to be combated. This is a very Guardian worldview. In
the Guardian system, those who are best at fighting the enemy deserve high
praise, luxuries, and a valuable "territory" that they can own. Efficiency
is not a Guardian value. In fact, Guardians traditionally try to avoid commercial
and market transactions. Firth's discussion of market forces was purely pessimistic,
focusing on the bad things would happen if the market made medical device
companies unprofitable—including less luxurious conferences.
Is there a connection between the Guardian approach to disease, and the Guardian
approach to the business side of medicine? I strongly suspect that there is.
People get used to thinking in a certain style. In addition to their natural
approach to disease, the reverence—and suspicion—that doctors
receive from the public could help to set the tone for a Guardian mindset.
Then, any change in doctors' ability to treat patients could threaten their
ability to maintain the more-or-less healthy status quo. Medical companies
could easily become comfortable with a regulatory environment that makes it
easy to maintain monopolies.
So, what will molecular manufacturing do to the
status quo? It will certainly challenge it. The first challenge may be a wave
of broad-spectrum diagnostic devices that would provide enough information
to allow computer-equipped researchers to know the state of the body, moment
to moment and in detail. The ability to diagnose disease is one of the primary
medical mysteries. Broad-spectrum molecular detectors already are being developed
in the form of DNA chips. As they become less expensive and more widely available,
and as a database relating DNA measurements to physiological conditions is
created, diagnosis will become less of a medical skill and more automated.
With real-time diagnosis comes the ability to treat more aggressively and
even experimentally without increasing risk, and to identify effective treatments
more rapidly. Instead of waiting weeks or even years to see whether secondary
disease symptoms appear, a treatment's direct effects could be detected almost
as soon as the treatment is delivered. Discovering unsuspected impacts on
health will be a lot easier, leading to increased ability to avoid unhealthy
situations and an increased rate of discovery (or rediscovery) of "folk" remedies.
If doctors traditionally fight a zero-sum battle to prevent disease as long
as possible, this implies that a new ability to increase health beyond nominal
might turn the whole medical profession on its head. I discussed this observation
with a conference attendee; the next day, he gave me a copy of Spontaneous
Healing by Dr. Andrew Weil. Weil begins with the observation that in
ancient Greece, there were two health-related professions: doctors, whose
patron was the god of medicine, and healers, whose patron was the goddess
of health. Doctors combated disease; healers advised people on how to support
their body's natural health status. This seems to confirm my observation about
medicine's focus on combating disease, but the ancient Greek healers still
stopped at the goal of maintaining health.
What would happen if science developed the ability to make people healthier
than healthy? What if medicine could change from fighting disease to actually
improving the lives of healthy people? The first question is whether the existing
medical infrastructure would be able to adjust. Doctors have opposed advances
in the past, including, for example, anesthesia
for childbirth. Perhaps doctors will continue to focus on fighting disease.
Unfortunately, they may also fight the advances that researchers outside
the medical system will make with increasing frequency.
If not doctors, then what group could implement the new hyper-health technologies?
In the Middle Ages, medical duties were divided between doctors and barber-surgeons.
Barbers were used to using their sharp blades in close proximity to people's
bodies, and most likely it was a natural progression to progress to minor
surgery like lancing boils. Meanwhile, the original Hippocratic Oath actually
forbade doctors from cutting people. I'm told that tension between surgeons
and other medical doctors remains to this day. So, what might be the modern
equivalent of barber-surgeons?
There is a business that already does voluntary body modification. They are
used to working on, and in, the human body with small tools. They are frequented
by people who are accustomed to ignoring authority. I'm speaking, of course,
of tattoo parlors. When a complete surgical robot can be squeezed into something
the size of a tattoo needle or even an acupuncture needle, perhaps tattoo
parlors will be among the first to adopt it. There may be a natural progression
from decorating the surface of the body to improving other aspects. This is
not quite a prediction—tattoo parlors may not be interested in practicing
medicine; the medical industry may successfully ban such attempts; and others,
notably alternative medicine practitioners, also have experience with needles.
But it is a scenario that's worth thinking about. It could happen.
Trends already developing in medicine will be strengthened by molecular manufacturing. Studying
molecular manufacturing and its implications may provide useful insights
into technological drivers of medical change. Although not all the change
will come from molecular manufacturing, it does present a package of technological
capabilities that will be obvious drivers of change, and can be used to
understand more subtle changes coming from other sources.
* * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * *
FUNDRAISING ALERT!
Significant progress in efforts to roadmap
the technical steps toward molecular manufacturing make the work of
CRN more important than ever. It is critical that we examine the global
implications of this rapidly emerging technology, and begin creating wise
and effective solutions. That's why we have formed the CRN
Global Task Force.
But it won't be easy. We need to grow, and rapidly, to meet the expanding
challenge. You can help!
Your tax-deductible donation
to CRN will enable us to achieve that growth. We rely largely on individual
donations and small grants for our survival. This is important work and
we welcome your participation.
Thank you!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
C-R-Newsletter #38 February 28, 2006
WorldChanging
Interview
CRN Goes to Switzerland
From Heaven to Doomsday
The Future And You
CRN Task Force Essays
Developing Countries and Nano
Law
Nanotech Basics for Students
A New Definition of
Nanotechnology
Sander Olson’s Interviews
CRN Goes to Spain
Nanomanufacturing
Conference
Feature Essay: Who remembers
analog computers?
As you can see, the month of February has been full of activity for CRN. To
follow the latest happenings on a daily basis, be
sure to check our Responsible Nanotechnology weblog.
=========
WorldChanging
Interview
"Revolution in a Box" is the title of a long
interview about CRN's work posted by Jamais Cascio at the popular WorldChanging
web site. Here is the introduction:
Founded in December 2002, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology has a modest goal: to ensure that the planet navigates the emerging nanotech era safely. That's a lot for a couple of volunteers to shoulder, but Mike Treder and Chris Phoenix have carried their burden well, and done much to raise awareness of the potential risks and benefits of molecular manufacturing, including a major presentation at the US Environmental Protection Agency on the impacts of nanotechnology. We first linked to CRN back in October of 2003, and have long considered them a real WorldChanging ally.
CRN Goes to Switzerland
In early February, CRN executive director Mike Treder traveled to Zurich,
Switzerland, to participate in a "Risk Governance for Nanotechnology" workshop
organized by the International Risk Governance
Council. Among the 30 attendees were representatives from the European
Commission, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD),
the World Economic Forum, Environmental Defense, CBEN at Rice University,
Swiss RE, Pfizer, and the NanoBusiness Alliance.
The event was coordinated by Ortwinn Renn from the University of Stuttgart
and Mike Roco from the U.S. National Science and Technology Council, and moderated
by Tim Mealey of the Meridian Institute. CRN was pleased overall with the
direction taken and with the content of the workshop. It was refreshing to
see that some international leaders are willing to consider longer-term risks
and more serious implications than nanoparticle toxicity. If all goes well,
we may be developing a framework within which productive
nanosystems can effectively be evaluated in terms of economic, environmental,
geopolitical, and societal impacts.
From Heaven to Doomsday
The Hungarian scientist and author Dennis Gabor wrote, "The future cannot
be predicted, but it can be invented." As humans, we will invent (or create)
our future; there’s little doubt about that. But will it be the future
we want? If we're not careful, tomorrow may happen accidentally, without forethought
or planning. And it may not be a pleasant place to live.
Although the future cannot be accurately predicted, we do have the power to
imagine several different possible tomorrows. By doing that, we could choose
the future we like best, and then try to make it come about. In his latest
essay for Future Brief, Mike Treder suggests seven
possible futures that we may inherit.
The Future And You
Two installments of an extensive conversation about nanotechnology between
science fiction author Stephen Euin Cobb and CRN’s Mike Treder have
been posted online. "The
Future And You" is a semi-weekly podcast about, well, the future and
you. Have a listen and
CRN Task Force Essays
Due to the number and the depth of essays written by members of the CRN
Task Force, we have decided to publish our 22 submitted pieces in two
separate issues of the Nanotechnology
Perceptions journal. This is so readers won't feel daunted by too
much material in a single issue. We think our actual readership will be
higher this way.
The first half, to be published in mid-to-late March, will include:
1. "Nanotechnology Dangers and Defenses" by Ray Kurzweil
2. "Molecular Manufacturing: Too Dangerous to Allow?" by Robert A. Freitas, Jr.
3. "Nano-Guns, Nano-Germs, and Nano-Steel" by Mike Treder
4. "Molecular Manufacturing and 21st Century Policing" by Tom Cowper
5. "The Need For Limits" by Chris Phoenix
6. "Globalization and Open Source Nano Economy" by Giulio Prisco
7. "Cultural Dominants and Differential MNT Uptake" by Damien Broderick
8. "Nanoethics and Human Enhancement" by Patrick Lin and Fritz Allhoff
9. "Strategic Sustainable Brain" by Natasha Vita-More
10. "Is AI Near a Takeoff Point?" by J. Storrs Hall
11. "Singularities and Nightmares: The Range of Our Futures" by David Brin
The second half will
follow five or six weeks later, at the beginning of May.
Developing Countries and Nano Law
In a cogent and stimulating essay published
recently in the Jakarta Post, Mohamad Mova Al 'Afghani (a member
of the CRN Task Force) describes why "Developing countries
must be ready for nanotechnology." Al 'Afghani is an Indonesian attorney
working in corporate law and intellectual property. His legal background,
his involvement in international business affairs, and his perspective as
a citizen of a developing country give him a unique perspective.
Nanotech Basics for Students
A new page called "Nanotechnology Basics: For Students
and Other Learners" has been added to CRN's website. In addition to
providing answers to common questions about nanotech, the page also features
links to other student resources. If you're a teacher, a student, or a parent
of a student, make sure to direct these eager learners to our new page on
the basics of nanotechnology.
A New Definition of Nanotechnology
The word nanotechnology has two meanings. One is molecular
manufacturing, which CRN studies. The other is a growing collection
of diverse fields. We have seen a lot of questionable, inaccurate, or overly
broad definitions to cover the latter. As an alternative to those, we
suggest the following: nanotechnology is the engineering of
functional systems at the molecular scale.
We like this definition because it points the way toward molecular manufacturing
while excluding technologies that are only peripherally related and including
technologies that specifically involve design and control at the nanoscale.
Sander Olson's Interviews
An in-depth interview with inventor,
entrepreneur, and best-selling author Ray Kurzweil has been posted in a special
new section on CRN's main website. Sander Olson, one of the original
developers of the NanoApex and NanoMagazine web sites,
conducted the interview. Since the acquisition of those sites in 2005 by
the International Small Technology Network, many of Sander's previous interviews
have not been available on the web. To correct this, CRN has begun publishing
several of them on our site.
CRN Goes to Spain
Madrid, Spain, will be the location for the "Segundas Jornadas Convergencia
Ciencia-Tecnología," which means Second Annual Converging Science-Technology.
It's a salon/symposium taking place
March 6-10 in the assembly hall of the Escuela Politécnica Superior
de la Universidad de Alcalá (Polytechnical School of the University
of Alcala). CRN executive director Mike Treder will make a presentation on
ethical use of advanced nanotechnology on Thursday, March 9.
Nanomanufacturing Conference
Molecular nanotechnology and manufacturing, or using matter to build complex
products and structures atom-by-atom like pieces of Legos, will soon lead
us into the sixth industrial revolution. Like steam engines, electricity and
transistors, nanotechnology is primed to completely disrupt markets, industries
and business models worldwide. Similarly, it will replace our entire manufacturing
base with a new, radically precise, less expensive, and more flexible way
of making products. These pervasive changes in manufacturing will leave virtually
no product, process or industry untouched.
That is the description of nanotechnology in the brochure for a Nanomanufacturing
Conference, coming March 29-30 to the Los Angeles Convention Center.
They have a great lineup of speakers, including:
|
Marc Lurie, the new president of Foresight Nanotech Institute |
|
|
Jim Von Ehr, CEO of Zyvex Corporation |
|
|
Mark Sims, president of Nanorex Inc. |
And, as a keynote speaker,
on the topic of "Engineering from the Bottom Up: Productive Nanosystems
and the Future of Technology," K. Eric
Drexler, PhD.
Feature Essay: Who remembers analog computers?
Chris Phoenix, Director of Research, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
Far back in the misty dawn of time, around 1950 or so, there were two kinds
of computers. One was the now-familiar digital computer, doing computations
on hard-edged decimal or binary numbers—the forerunner of today's PC's.
The other kind of computer was the analog computer. At the time, analog computers
were far more powerful than digital computers. So, why did digital computers
come to replace analog, and what lessons does that hold for nanotechnology?
The answer can be found in several properties of digital computers—precision,
abstraction, and high-throughput production of components—that will
also be found in molecular manufacturing systems.
Molecular manufacturing proposes to build useful products by building molecules
using mechanical processes under computer control. A few molecular construction
techniques, repeated many times, would be able to build a wide array of molecular
shapes. These shapes could be used in functional nanosystems, such as sensors,
computers, and motors. The nanosystems could be combined into useful products—even
kilogram-scale or larger products containing vast numbers of nanosystems built
and assembled under automated control.
This type of nanotechnology is sometimes criticized by nanotechnologists working
in other areas. Critics say that the approach is unnatural, and therefore
will be inefficient and of limited utility. The trouble with this argument
is that digital computers are unnatural in similar ways. If this argument
were correct, then digital computers should never have been able to supplant
analog computers.
Digital vs. Analog Computers
Both digital and analog computers represent numerical values by means of electricity
in wires. In an analog computer, the voltage or current in a single wire could
represent a number. Most digital computers have only two meaningful values
per wire: either high or low voltage. In a digital computer, dozens of wires
are needed to represent each number.
Analog computers thus had several major advantages over digital computers.
A single, fast, compact analog circuit with just a few inputs and components
could add, multiply, and even integrate and differentiate. A digital computer
might require hundreds or even thousands of components to do the equivalent
operations. In addition to the larger number of wires and components, the
digital computer must spend energy in order to constrain the signal in each
wire to its discrete value. Circuits in analog computers could be set up to
directly model or simulate actual physical processes of interest, whereas
a digital computer is limited to abstract numbers that can never fully represent
continuously varying quantities.
A digital computer has only a few advantages, but they turned out to be decisive.
The first advantage is the precision of the internal signals. A value represented
by a continuously varying physical quantity can only be as precise as the
components that produce, transmit, and utilize the physical signal, and the
signal—and the value—will inevitably lose precision with each
operation. Because a digital computer performs operations on abstract numbers
represented by discrete voltage levels, the operations can proceed without
any loss of precision. Unlike an analog computer, a digital computer can easily
trade energy for entropy, copying or processing a value billions of times
with no loss of precision.
(Legalistic physicists may object here that even digital computers are subject
to a minimum error rate imposed by entropy. In practice, this error rate can
be made as small as desired—a very small expenditure of energy allows
billions of operations per second for billions of years without a single mistake.)
The second advantage of digital computers is their abstraction—the fact
that a number stored in digital format has no direct connection to any physical
value. This was listed as a liability above, since an analog computer deals
directly and efficiently in physical values. But by adding enough wires, a
digital computer can do things that an analog computer simply cannot hope
to achieve. A sheaf of wires with voltages of five, zero, zero, five, and
zero volts has no apparent connection to a value of 56.25%, whereas a wire
with 56.25 volts has an obvious connection--one that can be used easily in
analog electronic computation. But by adding more wires to the digital sheaf,
a digital computer can precisely represent values with an unlimited number
of digits. A few dozen wires can represent numeric values with more precision
than any analog component could achieve.
Abstraction also allows digital computers to perform a broader range of computational
tasks. An analog computer would be incapable of storing and searching a string
of text. There is no analog equivalent of the letter 'a'. In a digital computer,
'a' can simply be defined as the number 65, 'b' as 66, and so on—or
whatever numbers are convenient. Although an analog computer could be built
that could remember 'a' as 65 volts, 'b' as 66 volts, and so on, after a few
operations the voltages would drift and the text would become garbled. Because
digital computers can store numbers with no loss of precision, a string of
text can be stored indefinitely as a string of arbitrary numbers, processed
and manipulated as desired, and finally converted back to human-readable text.
An additional abstraction is to store the instructions for the computer's
operation as a sequence of numbers. Instead of building a computer for a fixed
sequence of operations, such as multiplying two numbers and then adding a
third, the sequence can be modified by an additional set of numbers indicating
the order of operations. These controlling numbers can be stored and used
to modify the computer's operation without physical re-wiring. Sequences of
instructions can be selected based on newly derived results of calculations.
This abstraction makes digital computers general-purpose machines, able to
implement any calculation. By 1950, even ENIAC, one of the first digital computers,
had been retrofitted to be controlled by stored numbers that were easily changed.
All of these abstractions require a lot of wires and circuits. A general-purpose
computer could be built out of vacuum tubes, as ENIAC was. However, this was
quite expensive. Transistors were smaller, more efficient, and more reliable.
Although their signal-processing characteristics were quite different from
vacuum tubes, this did not matter to digital computers as it would have mattered
to analog computers; all that was needed was a switch that could be set either
on or off, not a precise signal-processing function over an entire range of
analog signal. As time went on, transistors were shrunk until dozens, then
thousands, then millions, could be integrated into a single package the size
of a coin. Parallel manufacturing methods made this possible. A pattern of
wires or transistors could be imposed in parallel on a block of silicon by
shining light through a mask, similar to exposing a photograph. A single exposure
could define thousands or millions of features. A single mask could make thousands
or millions of computer chips. Today, hundreds of transistors can be bought
for the price of a single grain of rice. The simplest general-purpose computers—microcontrollers—still
have only a few thousand transistors, but the most complex and high-performance
chips now have billions of transistors.
The first computers, digital as well as analog, were used to perform calculations
relating to physical systems. As digital computers became more flexible, they
were applied to other types of problems, such as processing symbols including
databases of numbers and strings of text. Computer-driven user interfaces
became increasingly complex, and computers became foundational to infrastructures
such as banking, telecommunications, and the Internet. In the last decade
or two, things have come full circle: digital computers are now used for processing
a wide variety of analog signals, including sound and video. These signals
are processed in real time, for tasks as diverse as synthesizing music and
controlling factories. Digital computers have become so inexpensive and powerful
that it is usually better to convert an analog signal to digital as soon as
possible, process it through the seemingly inefficient digital methods, and
then convert it back to analog at the last second before it is used. This
is becoming true even for signals that do not need to be processed flexibly:
rather than include a few analog processing components, it is often cheaper
to include an entire digital computer just for one fixed signal-processing
task.
Nanoscale Technologies and Molecular Manufacturing
In the last few decades, the advance of technology has begun to address things
too small to see even with a traditional microscope. New kinds of microscopes
that do not use light are creating pictures of molecules and even individual
atoms. Industrial processes are being developed to manufacture particles smaller
and more precise than anything that could be built with traditional machining.
New analytical tools, including computer simulations, are providing new information
about what is going on at these scales—and the results are often useful
as well as interesting. New solar cells, cancer treatments, computer technologies,
and cosmetics are only a few of the applications that are being developed.
These nanoscale technologies share many of the strengths and weaknesses of
analog computer components. Each technology performs a useful function, such
as detecting cancer cells or adding strength to plastics. However, they are
not general-purpose. Each new material or structure must be researched and
developed for a limited set of applications. Each technology forms one functional
component of a larger product. Today's nanoscale technologies are like analog
computing elements: each one does a single thing, and it does it elegantly
and efficiently by interacting directly with physical phenomena.
A digital computer hides the physical phenomenon of voltage under the abstraction
of signal, at a level below even individual numbers. A signal in a wire is
seen, not as a voltage, but as a 1 or a 0. It takes many 1's and 0's to make
a single number. At any higher level, the fact of voltage is ignored, and
designers are free to think in abstractions. Similarly, molecular manufacturing
proposes to hide the physical phenomenon of chemistry under the abstraction
of structure and mechanical function, at a level below even individual molecules.
A molecule would be designed according to its desired shape, and the construction
steps would be planned as needed to build it. Obviously, this bypasses a lot
of possibilities for elegant functioning. And in practice, molecules could
be designed to take advantage of electronic and quantum effects as well as
mechanical functions. But at least initially, it seems likely that designers
will keep their task as simple as possible.
Digital computers and molecular manufacturing both rely on precision. A signal
that drifts away from a value of 0 or 1 is restored to its proper value (by
spending a small amount of energy) and so can be stored indefinitely. The
restoring function is highly non-linear: anything less than 0.5 is forced
to 0, and anything above 0.5 is forced to 1. Fortunately, molecular manufacturing
has access to a similar source of precision. The force between atoms is highly
non-linear. Two atoms placed a distance apart will attract each other up to
a certain point, at which the force changes from attractive to repulsive.
If they are pushed past that barrier, they may (depending on their type) reach
another region of much stronger attraction. Thus a pair of atoms can be either
bonded (joined together closely and strongly) or unbonded (weakly attracted),
and the energy required to form or break a bond—to push atoms through
the repulsive region— typically is large in comparison to the energy
available from thermal noise at room temperature. Because atoms of each type
are exactly identical, their bonds are extremely predictable; each molecule
of oxygen or propane is exactly the same. A molecule forms a very precise
structure, even if built with an imprecise process. Again, the precision comes
at the cost of a small amount of energy. (Thermal and quantum noise add a
statistical distortion to the precise shape. For highly crosslinked molecules,
this distortion can be much less than the width of a single atom.)
The precision of molecular structure means that a molecular manufacturing
system could build a structure that is an exact duplicate. Today's manufacturing
techniques are approximate—precision is lost at each step, and must
be recovered by specialized techniques. A robot that tried to build another
robot would spend a lot of time polishing and grinding and measuring. Maintaining
precision would require many different sensors and tools. But a system that
built a molecular-scale robot would not have to do any of that. Simply putting
the atoms and molecules in approximately the right place would cause them
to snap into their bonded configuration, in a very predictable and repeatable
structure. Of course, if they are too far away from their proper position,
they will bond incorrectly. Some accuracy is still required, but beyond a
certain point, the product will be essentially perfect, and inaccuracy will
only cost energy rather than product quality. Building a copy of a physical
object—including a molecular manufacturing system—can be as precise
as copying a computer file.
Digital computers have become ubiquitous because they are so inexpensive to
manufacture. Billions of transistors—signal processing elements—can
be made in parallel with a single set of process steps. Molecular manufacturing
also will rely on parallel manufacture. Because small devices work more rapidly,
the manufacturing system should be made be as small as possible—perhaps
only a few hundred atoms wide. This is small enough to be built by a single
molecular manufacturing system in a reasonable period of time—probably
less than an hour. It is also too small, if it were working alone, to build
any useful amount of product. But because precision is not lost in molecular
manufacturing operations, a single system could build exact copies, each of
which builds exact copies, and so on for as many duplications as needed to
produce kilogram-scale manufacturing systems capable of building kilograms
of product per hour. Precision also allows the manufacturing process to be
completely automated. Not counting licensing and other forms of artificial
scarcity, the main cost of products—including duplicate manufacturing
systems—would be raw materials and energy. An individual nanoscale molecular
manufacturing system would be quite a lot cheaper than a transistor; in fact,
all the products of molecular manufacturing, including macroscale manufacturing
systems, could have a production cost of a few dollars per kilogram.
Interfacing with the Real World
Digital computers deal with the analog "real" world via specialized circuits
that convert from digital to analog and vice-versa. In theory, a digital computer
could include analog processing elements, doing some operations by "efficient" analog
methods. In practice, although a few hybrid computers were built, such approaches
are not part of modern computer practice. Instead, analog values are converted
to digital as early as possible, processed digitally, and converted back to
analog as late as possible. In fact, for some applications, the signal need
never be converted back; devices such as stepper motors and techniques such
as pulse width modulation are driven directly by digital signals.
Some products of molecular manufacturing, such as medical devices and manufacturing
systems, will have to deal with unknown and sometimes unstructured molecules.
Biological systems frequently let molecules mix together, bump around, and
join and react according to complex and finely tuned affinities. Molecular
manufacturing, by contrast, probably will find it most convenient to bind
molecules to solid receptors so that their structure and orientation is known
precisely, and then work on them using “digital” predictable operations.
In some cases, this may take more volume, time, and energy than biological
methods. In other cases, it will be more efficient. A major advantage will
be ease of design: when the position of molecules is fixed and known, it becomes
easier to engineer desired reactions and prevent undesired reactions. Preventing
random interactions between molecules should also allow new kinds of reactions
to be developed that could not work in traditional chemistry.
Conclusion
Today's nanoscale technologies are comparable to analog computers: they deal
directly and elegantly with physical phenomena. However, digital computers
have replaced analog computers in almost every instance, and have expanded
to perform many tasks that would be impossible with analog methods. In the
same way that digital computers attain greater flexibility, lower cost, and
easier design by abstracting away from physical phenomena, molecular manufacturing
will be able to take advantage of the precision of atoms and their bonds to
build nanoscale manufacturing systems capable of making a wide variety of
products. It remains to be seen whether molecular manufacturing methods will
supplant or only complement other nanoscale technologies, but the history
of computers suggests that such an outcome is possible.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
FUNDRAISING ALERT!
Recent developments in efforts to roadmap
the technical steps toward molecular manufacturing make the work of
CRN more important than ever. It is critical that we examine the global
implications of this rapidly emerging technology, and begin creating wise
and effective solutions. That’s why we have formed the CRN
Task Force.
But it won't be easy. We need to grow, and rapidly, to meet the expanding
challenge.
Your tax-deductible donation
to CRN will help us to achieve that growth. We rely largely on individual
donations and small grants for our survival. This is important work and
we welcome your participation.
Thank you!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
C-R-Newsletter #37 January 27, 2006
Feature
Article on Nanofactories
CRN Goes to Switzerland
New Nanosurgery Paper
Productive Nanosystems
CRN Task Force Update
Best Books on Nanotechnology
Future Brief Polls
Markets, Governments,
and Freedom
CRN Goes to Canada
Milestones & Moving
Forward
Feature Essay: Powering
Civilization Sustainably
Every month this newsletter gets you
up to date on recent events, but to follow the latest happenings on a daily
basis, be sure to check our Responsible
Nanotechnology weblog.
=========
Feature
Article on Nanofactories
A special report titled "Nanofactories:
Glimpsing the future of process technology" is the cover article for
the January 2006 issue of CleanRooms Magazine. The lengthy article,
subtitled "Making sense of the molecular machine shop," quotes extensively
from CRN research director Chris Phoenix, as well as from nanotech researchers
Robert A. Freitas Jr. and Ralph Merkle. This is a must read!
CRN Goes to Switzerland
Mike Treder, executive director of CRN, will participate in a Nanotechnology
Risk Governance Workshop, January 30-31, at the Swiss Re Centre for Global
Dialogue in Zurich, Switzerland. The event is sponsored by the International
Risk Governance Council. Mike's presentation will focus on the "critical
deficits in knowledge and communication of nanotechnology risks, and the
implications of those deficits."
New Nanosurgery Paper
Nanomedicine pioneer Robert A. Freitas Jr. has written a landmark
paper on nanosurgery in a peer-reviewed medical journal ("Nanotechnology,
Nanomedicine and Nanosurgery," International Journal of Surgery 3, December
2005:1-4). Freitas forecasts that surgical nanorobots will "find and eliminate
isolated cancerous cells, perform 'noninvasive' tissue and organ transplants,
conduct molecular repairs on traumatized extracellular and intracellular
structures, and even exchange new whole chromosomes for old ones inside
individual living human cells."
Productive Nanosystems
Our friends at Nanodot recently
posted this notice…
As we enter 2006, our thoughts turn to the future: what can we expect from nanotechnology as it reaches its full potential? For a quick introduction, check out "Productive nanosystems: the physics of molecular fabrication" (PDF, 0.6 MB) by K. Eric Drexler, published in Physics Education. It gets technical, but even the less technical reader can get quite a bit out of it, especially the illustrations.
CRN Task Force Update
We are moving closer to publishing a series of 20 essays by CRN
Task Force members. Each essay identifies and describes a specific concern
about advanced nanotechnology. They will be published in the March 2006
edition of Nanotechnology
Perceptions, a journal of "ultraprecision engineering and nanotechnology." We
will then ask for public feedback on our ideas, as well as input on additional
concerns.
Best Books on Nanotechnology
In response to a request from a reader of our Responsible Nanotechnology blog,
we posted a short list of books that we recommend for anyone who wants to
learn more about molecular manufacturing.
Seven excellent books, ranging from popular to technical, are described at this
link. Some of them can be read for free online.
Future Brief Polls
To gain an understanding of how Americans view privacy, safety, and other
issues in light of new technologies, the online magazine Future Brief commissioned
Zogby International, an opinion research firm, to conduct a
standardized poll on a series of questions. They've begun posting the
results, which are interesting. Several of the questions covered nanotechnology.
Markets, Governments, and Freedom
On January 12, we posted a long entry called "Markets,
Governments, and Freedom" on our blog. The article quoted a few highlights
from answers to the Edge Annual Question, and offered our views.
(This year's question was, "What is your dangerous idea?") That entry has
generated 32 comments so far, which is close to a record for our blog.
CRN Goes to Canada
Upper Canada College in Toronto, Ontario, is the site of the World
Affairs Conference, a student-run event that annually attracts approximately
700 teenagers from grade 10 to 12. This year's theme is "Blueprint for a
New World." CRN executive director Mike Treder will make a presentation
during a session titled "Technology: Are We Watching It or Is It Watching
Us?" If you're in the Toronto area, and especially if you're a high school
student, we hope to see you there on February 13th and 14th.
Milestones & Moving
Forward
As we enter CRN's fourth year of existence, we are proud of what we've accomplished
so far, but mindful that greater challenges await us in 2006. This is important
work that few others are doing. To keep moving forward, we will need to grow
fast.
A new page on this website lists some of the
significant milestones from CRN's first three years. That page also outlines
our current priorities—including research, outreach, and development—and
suggests several ways in which you can help advance this work. Please check
it out!
Feature Essay: Powering Civilization Sustainably
Chris Phoenix, Director of Research, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
Most products, and almost all high-tech products, use energy. Exponential
molecular manufacturing is expected to build a large quantity of products,
and the energy use of those products raises several interesting technical
questions.
Energy must come from a source, be stored and transmitted, be transformed
from one form into another, and eventually be used; the use will generate
waste heat, which must be removed. Encompassing all of these stages are questions
of efficiency and power budget. Several factors may limit desired uses of
energy, including availability of energy, removal of heat, and collective
side effects of using large amounts of energy.
Energy Source
The use of fossil fuels as an energy source is problematic for many reasons.
The supply, and more importantly the rate of extraction, is limited. The source
may be politically troublesome. Burning of fossil carbon adds carbon dioxide
to the atmosphere. Some forms of energy, such as coal and diesel fuel, add
pollutants to the atmosphere in addition to the carbon.
Nuclear energy has a different set of problems, including political opposition
and nuclear weapons proliferation. It is alleged that modern techniques for
pre-processing, use, and post-processing of fission fuel can largely avoid
disposal problems and can release less radiation into the environment than
burning an equivalent amount of coal; it remains to be seen whether non-engineering
problems can be overcome.
Today, solar energy is diffuse, fluctuating, expensive to collect, and difficult
to store. Solar collectors built by nanofactories should be far less expensive
than today's solar cells. The diffuse nature of solar energy may be less problematic
if solar collectors do not have to compete for ground area. High-altitude solar-powered
airplanes such as the Helios, successor to the existing Centurion, are
already planned for round-the-clock flight using onboard energy storage.
With lighter and less expensive construction, a high-altitude airplane,
flying above the weather that troubles ground-based collection, could capture
far more solar energy than it needed to stay aloft.
A fleet of solar collection airplanes could capture as much energy as desired,
providing a primary power source for terrestrial use--once the energy was
delivered, converted, and stored for easy access, as explained below. Their
high altitude also would provide convenient platforms for communication and
planet-watching applications, serving military, civilian, and scientific purposes.
Although individual planes would be too high to see from the ground, if flown
in close formation they could provide partial shade to an area, modulating
its microclimate and perhaps providing a tool for influencing weather (e.g.
removing heat from the path of a hurricane).
Power Budget
Robert Freitas calculated (Nanomedicine,
Volume I, 6.5.7) that for a future population of 10 billion, each
person would be able to use perhaps only 100 kW without their aggregate
heat dissipation causing damage to the Earth's climate. An automobile's
engine can deliver 100 kW of useful power today (100 kW = 134 HP), while
producing several times that much waste heat. This indicates that power
usage cannot be assumed to be unlimited in a post-MM world. Because a lot
of power will probably be allocated to governmental projects, and wealthy
people will presumably use more power than average, I will assume that world
power usage will equal a trillion kW, with a typical person using ten kW--about
what the average European consumes today. (Americans use about twice as
much.)
Energy Storage and Transmission
In chapter 6 of Nanomedicine
I, Freitas analyzes energy storage (section 6.2), conversion (6.3),
and transmission (6.4). The highest density non-nuclear energy storage involves
stretching or rearranging covalent chemical bonds. Diamond, if it could
be efficiently oxidized, would provide 1.2x1011 J/m3.
Methanol's density is almost an order of magnitude lower: 1.8x1010 J/m3 (5000
kWh/m3). In theory, a stretched diamond spring could provide
an energy density of up to 2x1010 J/m3, slightly better
than methanol, and not quite as good as a diamond flywheel (5x1010 J/m3).
Human civilization currently uses about 1 quadrillion BTU, or 1018 J,
per day; somewhat over ten billion kW--about 1% of the maximum environmentally-sound
level. This indicates that many people today use significantly less than even
one kW, which is impressive considering that the human body requires about
100 W (2000 kcal/day).
To store a typical (future) personal daily energy requirement of 10 kW-days
in a convenient form such as methanol or diamond springs would require about
50 liters of material, 1/20 of a cubic meter. To store the entire daily energy
supply of our future civilization would require 5 billion cubic meters of
material.
An efficient and compact way to transmit energy is through a rapidly rotating
diamond rod, which can carry about a gigawatt per square centimeter (Nanomedicine 6.4.3.4).
A person's daily power could be transmitted through a one-square-millimeter
rod in a little less than a second. On the other hand, in order to transfer
all of civilization's future budget of 1015 W, 100 m2 of
rotating diamond rods would be needed. To transfer this energy halfway around
the planet (20,000 km) would require two billion cubic meters of diamond,
which is quite feasible given a carbon-based exponential molecular manufacturing
technology. (The atmosphere contains 5x1014 kg of carbon, and two
billion cubic meters of diamond would weigh 7x1012 kg.)
Solar Collection Infrastructure
Let's go back to the idea of using high-altitude aircraft to collect solar
energy. In space, the sun shines at 1366 W/m2. Considering the
inefficiency of solar cells, the angle of the sun (it may be hard to fly the
airplane at odd angles to make the solar collectors directly face the sun
all through the day), and nighttime, the wing surface may collect only about
100 W/m2 on average. The Centurion solar airplane has a wing area
of 153 m2, which would collect about 1 billion J/day. To store
that much power would require about 232 kg of diamond springs; the weight
of Centurion when configured for flight to 80,000 ft is 863 kg.
It seems, then, that a fleet of 100 billion light-weight auto-piloted aircraft,
each making contact with the Earth for a few seconds every few days to transfer
its stored power, would be able to provide the full 1015 W that
the Earth's civilization would be able to use sustainably. (Remember that
a billion J can be transferred through a 1 cm2 rod in 1 second.
Several other power transfer methods could be used instead.) The total wing
area would be about ten million square kilometers--about 2% of the Earth's
surface area. The total mass would be about 3x1013 kg, about 6%
of the carbon in the Earth's atmosphere. Of course, removing this much carbon
from the atmosphere would be a very good idea.
As calculated in my paper, Design
of a Primitive Nanofactory, building a kg of diamond might require as
much as 200 kWh, or 7x108 J. (Special-purpose construction of
large simple diamond shapes such as springs and aircraft structure could
probably be done a lot more efficiently.) Thus, in a day, an airplane could
collect more than enough energy to build another airplane. While flying
for a day, it would also have the opportunity to collect a lot of carbon
dioxide. The energy cost to convert carbon dioxide to suitable feedstock
would be a small fraction of the 200 kWh/kg construction cost, since most
of that cost went for computation rather than chemistry. Thus it seems that
the airplane fleet could in theory be doubled each day, requiring only a
little over a month to double from 1 airplane to 100 billion.
Energy Use, Transformation, and Efficiency
Energy can come in many forms, such as mechanical energy, electrical energy,
light, heat, and chemical energy. Today, energy is most easily stored in chemical
form and transported in chemical or electrical form. (Actually, the ease of
chemical storage comes largely from the fact that we find it already in that
form. Manufacturing energy-rich chemicals from any other form of energy is
quite difficult, costly, and inefficient with today's technology.)
Energy has a wide variety of uses, including transportation, powering computers,
illumination, processing materials, and heating or cooling. In general, applications
that are implemented with molecular manufacturing can be at least as efficient
as today's technology.
With molecular manufacturing, it will be possible to build extremely dense
conversion systems. Much of today's technology runs on electricity, and electromechanical
conversion (motors and generators) can be built extremely small, with rotors
less than 100 nm across. This is good news because such systems increase in
power density as they shrink. A nanoscale motor/generator could have a power
density of 1015 W/m3. This means that these components
will take almost negligible volume in almost any conceivable product.
There's even more good news. Nanomachines should lose less energy to friction
as they are operated more slowly. Thus, if some of their astronomical power
density is traded for efficiency--incorporating one hundred times as many
motors, and running them 1/100 as fast--then the efficiency, already probably
pushing 99%, will become even better. This means that most products will have
far less internal waste heat to get rid of than if they were built with today's
technologies.
Today's laptop computer might be replaced with one that contained millions
of high-performance CPU's working in parallel--while using less power. This
is because today's computers are quite inefficient; they spend huge amounts
of energy pushing electrons back and forth in sufficient quantities to maintain
a clean signal, and the energy of each signal is thrown away billions of times
per second. Nano-built computers will have better ways of retaining signals,
and will be designed to re-use much of the energy that is thrown away in today's
designs. It is safe to say that a nano-built computer could provide more processing
power than today's programmers would know what to do with, without using more
than a tiny fraction of the personal power budget.
Modern food production is a major resource drain--not only fossil fuels for
machinery and fertilizer, but also water, topsoil, and land area, plus the
costs of associated pollution. Much of this drain could be eliminated by enclosing
agriculture in inexpensive greenhouses with automation. Further efficiency
improvements could be achieved by a gradual switch to manufactured food; although
it would have seemed science-fictional just a few decades ago, people today
are already eating "energy bars" and other high-tech food products that have
little in common with natural food.
The biggest power source in the world today is fossil fuel. This is usually
burned and used to run heat engines, which inevitably throw away more than
half the energy as waste heat. Fuel cells are not heat engines, and are not
limited by Carnot efficiency. Today, fuel cells are finicky, fragile, and
expensive. However, nanofactory-built fuel cells should be less fragile, more
compact, and certainly cheaper. In addition, direct chemomechanical conversion
should be possible for at least some fuels, and may be reasonably efficient.
Because fuel poses storage and safety problems, and needs an air supply, it
seems likely that many nano-built products will use mechanical power storage,
which can be recharged and discharged quickly and efficiently. As noted above,
the power density of diamond springs is about as good as some liquid fuels--far
superior to batteries.
Handling Heat
Several authors, including Eric Drexler, Josh Hall, and Robert Freitas have
pointed out that large masses of nanomachinery may generate far too much waste
heat to be cooled conveniently--or at all. However, the same high power density
that reduces the allowable mass of nanomachinery also means that only small
quantities will be needed to implement functionality equivalent to that found
in today's products. In fact, nano-built products will typically be quite
a bit more efficient. Instead of the mass of active nanomachinery, a more
useful metric is the power generated by the machinery.
To achieve the same results as today's products, nano-built products will
have to handle less heat, because they will be more efficient. This is especially
true in the case of fuel-burning engines, since no nano-built product will
need to use a heat engine; instead, they will be able to store mechanical
energy directly, or at the worst will use a compact and efficient fuel cell.
Products that interact energetically with the environment, such as water pumps
and vehicles, will still need a lot of energy to overcome friction (and probably
turbulence) and accomplish their task. However, their internal mechanisms
will only be transforming the energy they use, not converting much of it to
heat. Energy that is used to overcome fluid resistance will typically be carried
away by the fluid; only in extreme cases, such as supersonic airplanes, do
products suffer significant structural heating.
Summary
Molecular manufacturing will provide the capability to engage in planet-scale
engineering, such as building a new petawatt solar-gathering capability in
a month or so. This could be used to provide perhaps 100 times more energy
than we use today--as much as we can safely use without harming the environment.
The collected energy could be delivered in a near-continuous stream, close
to where it was needed. Even if divided with a moderate degree of inequity,
there should be enough energy for everyone on the planet to enjoy a Western
standard of living.
Many of today's applications can be made significantly more efficient. In
particular, the waste associated with fuel-burning engines and power plants
can be eliminated. However, the energy cost associated with transportation
is likely to remain high, especially since new technology will enable greater
speed.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
FUNDRAISING ALERT!
Recent developments in efforts to roadmap
the technical steps toward molecular manufacturing make the work of
CRN more important than ever. It is critical that we examine the global
implications of this rapidly emerging technology, and begin creating wise
and effective solutions. That’s why we have formed the CRN
Task Force.
But it won't be easy. We need to grow, and rapidly, to meet the expanding
challenge.
Your tax-deductible donation
to CRN will help us to achieve that growth. We rely largely on individual
donations and small grants for our survival. This is important work and
we welcome your participation.
Thank you!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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