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C-R-Newsletter #60:
December 28, 2007
Our Fifth Anniversary
CRN Scenarios Published
Roadmap Now Available
IEEE Urges MM Funding
The Age of Nanotechnology
Creating Nanotech
Communities
Ranking the Risks
Feature Essay: Restating CRN’s
Purpose
Editor’s Note:
Even by our usual busy standards, this has been a remarkably active month -- and
year! -- for CRN. To keep up with all the latest happenings on a daily basis,
be sure to check our
Responsible Nanotechnology weblog.
==========
Our Fifth Anniversary
It has been five years now since Mike Treder and Chris Phoenix
founded the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology in
December 2002. In next month’s newsletter, we’ll publish an overview of our
accomplishments, our disappointments, and our plans for the future. We would
have offered that assessment this month, except we’ve been too busy with
everything else that’s going on!
Below you’ll read about this month’s publication of eight detailed
nanotechnology scenarios that CRN developed, the release of an important
molecular manufacturing roadmap, new books that contain contributions from CRN,
several new articles we have posted on the Web, and more. It’s an exciting time
to be involved with emerging technologies, and a time when we -- all of us --
are faced with many difficult decisions about managing powerful new
capabilities. We appreciate your continued interest, and
your support for our efforts.
CRN Scenarios Published
On December 11, we released our long-awaited series of nanotechnology scenarios
depicting various versions of a near-future world into which transformative
manufacturing concepts may emerge. Across eight separate storylines, an
international team of policy, technology,
and economic specialists organized by CRN imagined in detail a range of
plausible, challenging events -- from pandemics to climate crises to
international conflicts -- to see how they might affect the development of
advanced nanotechnology over the next 15 years.
All eight scenarios, plus an introduction putting them into context, were
posted online at Nanowerk.com, as well on CRN’s
main website. The scenarios also will be published in the peer-reviewed
print journal,
Nanotechnology Perceptions, beginning early next year.
In pursuing this ambitious project, we pulled together more than 50 people from
six continents, with a range of backgrounds and points of view, as
collaborators. Over the course of several months, a unique series of “virtual
workshops” -- using a combination of teleconferencing, Internet chat, and online
shared documents -- produced eight intriguing scenarios. We hope you’ll find
them stimulating and encourage you to offer feedback by joining the conversation
at our new
CRN-Talk group discussion site.
Roadmap Now Available
After two and a half years, and numerous meetings pulling together dozens of
researchers, the “Technology
Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems” has finally been made available to the
public. We offer congratulations to the steering committee, to the sponsors, and
especially to the many workshop and working group participants who tirelessly
devoted their time and talents to this important undertaking.
Combined with the remarkable progress of the British
IDEAS Factory, and the U.S. government report calling for
increased funding of research toward bottom-up
molecular manufacturing, it's clear that things are moving rapidly forward.
CRN's oft-criticized timeline for development of desktop nanofactories seems
less extreme with each passing year. (For more on that, see our
Feature Essay below.)
IEEE Urges MM Funding
It's worth paying attention when a large and respected organization such as the
IEEE
-- the world's largest professional technology association --
publicly takes a stand
calling for funding of research related to molecular manufacturing (MM), also
known as molecular nanotechnology.
A recent article on the IEEE’s Tech Talk blog states:
Proposed funding for further research into the potential of
molecular nanotechnology is overdue and hopefully will lead to some productive
research in this field. . . Hopefully, the combination of announced funding and
a research agenda will remove much of the speculation and acrimony that seems to
have surrounded molecular nanotechnology and just bring it to where it should
have been all along: a field of scientific endeavor.
READ MORE...
The Age of Nanotechnology
Another new book on nanotechnology has been published that includes a chapter we
contributed. The book is
The Age of Nanotechnology, edited by Nirmala Rao Khadpekar. It was
published in India, but contains items written by both Indian researchers and by
others from around the world. Our chapter is titled "Bridges to Safety, and
Bridges to Progress" -- an updated version of this
paper, which you can download from our website.
Other recent books that contain contributions from CRN include
Worldchanging: A
Users Guide for the 21st Century, edited by Alex Steffen, and
Nanoethics, edited
by Fritz Allhoff, Patrick Lin, James Moor, and John Weckert.
Creating Nanotech Communities
CRN has posted another column to the popular
Nanotechnology Now web
portal, this time authored by our new Director of
Research Communities, Jessica Margolin. Her article is titled "Creating
Productive Nanotech Communities." Here is the abstract:
Moving forward into a rapidly changing world and making good
decisions about safe development and responsible use of advanced nanotechnology
will require the creation of healthy, diverse, productive communities of
nanotech researchers, students, policy analysts, and interested observers.
We hope you'll read
all our
columns, offer feedback, and tell others about them too.
Ranking the Risks
On the LinkedIn network,
D.K. Matai, an engineer, entrepreneur and philanthropist, recently posted a list
of 26 areas of serious global risk, and asked people to prioritize them. Here is
part of
the answer offered by CRN Executive Director Mike Treder…
I've divided the listed risks into four levels of declining
concern. On the top level are:
1. Nanotechnology
2. Climate Chaos
3. Environmental Degradation
4. Financial Systemic Risk
Today's nanoscale technologies pose little risk beyond familiar concerns of
chemical toxicity and life-cycle assessment. However, as the field progresses
toward general-purpose atomically-precise exponential manufacturing, it could
present perilous issues ranging from an unstable arms race to severe economic
disruption and more. There are as many potential benefits as there are possible
dangers, of course, so we shouldn't consider halting or slowing nanotech R&D.
What we must do is speed up investigation of the technology's powerful
implications and seriously explore various options for international regulation.
Climate chaos already is causing environmental degradation and this will only
get worse, possibly much worse and much faster than we are prepared for.
Together these two issues easily could lead to financial systemic failures, and
that process might be further accelerated by ill-advised attempts to deal with
climate change using geoengineering techniques made possible by advanced
nanotechnology, with unforeseen consequences causing the whole assemblage to
spiral out of control.
READ MORE…
Feature Essay: Restating CRN’s Purpose
By Jamais Cascio, Director of Impacts Analysis
How soon could molecular manufacturing (MM) arrive? It's an important question,
and one that the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology takes seriously. In our
recently released series of scenarios for the
emergence of molecular manufacturing, we talk about MM appearing by late in the
next decade; on the CRN main website, we describe MM as being plausible by
as early as 2015. If you follow the broader
conversation online and in the technical media about molecular manufacturing,
however, you might argue that such timelines are quite aggressive, and not at
all the consensus.
You'd be right.
CRN doesn't talk about the possible emergence of molecular manufacturing by
2015-2020 because we think that this timeline is necessarily the most realistic
forecast. Instead, we use that timeline because the purpose of the Center for
Responsible Nanotechnology is not prediction, but preparation.
While arguably not the most likely outcome, the emergence of molecular
manufacturing by 2015 is entirely plausible. A variety of public projects
underway today could, with the right results to current production dilemmas,
conceivably bring about the first working nanofactory within a decade. Covert
projects could do so as well, or even sooner, especially if they've been
underway for some time.
CRN's leaders do not focus on how soon molecular manufacturing could emerge
simply out of an affection for nifty technology, or as an aid to making
investment decisions, or to be technology pundits. The CRN timeline has always
been in the service of the larger goal of making useful preparations for (and
devising effective responses to) the onset of molecular manufacturing, so as to
avoid the worst possible outcomes such technology could unleash. We believe that
the risks of undesirable results increase if molecular manufacturing emerges as
a surprise, with leading nations (or companies, or NGOs) tempted to embrace
their first-mover advantage economically, politically, or militarily.
Recognizing that this event could plausibly happen in the next decade -- even if
the mainstream conclusion is that it's unlikely before 2025 or 2030 -- elicits
what we consider to be an appropriate sense of urgency regarding the need to be
prepared. Facing a world of molecular manufacturing without adequate forethought
is a far, far worse outcome than developing plans and policies for a
slow-to-arrive event.
There's a larger issue at work here, too, particularly in regards to the
scenario project. The further out we push the discussion of the likely arrival
of molecular manufacturing, the more difficult it becomes to make any kind of
useful observations about the political, environmental, economic, social and
especially technological context in which MM could occur. It's much more likely
that the world of 2020 will have conditions familiar to those of us in 2007 or
2008 than will the world of 2030 or 2040.
Barring what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls "Black
Swans" (radical, transformative surprise developments that are extremely
difficult to predict), we can have a reasonable image of the kinds of drivers
the people of a decade hence might face. The same simply cannot be said for a
world of 20 or 30 years down the road -- there are too many variables and
possible surprises. Devising scenarios that operate in the more conservative
timeframe would actually reduce their value as planning and preparation tools.
Again, this comes down to wanting to prepare for an outcome known to be almost
certain in the long term, and impossible to rule out in the near term.
CRN's Director of Research Communities Jessica Margolin noted in conversation
that this is a familiar concept for those of us who live in earthquake country.
We know, in the San Francisco region, that the Hayward Fault is
near-certain to unleash
a major (7+) earthquake sometime this century. Even though the mainstream
geophysicists' view is that such a quake may not be likely to hit for another
couple of decades, it could happen tomorrow. Because of this, there are public
programs to educate people on what to have on hand, and wise residents of the
region have stocked up accordingly.
While Bay Area residents go about our lives assuming that the emergency bottled
water and the batteries we have stored will expire unused, we know that if that
assumption is wrong we'll be extremely relieved to have planned ahead.
The same is true for the work of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. It
may well be that molecular manufacturing remains 20 or 30 years off and that the
preparations we make now will eventually "expire." But if it happens sooner --
if it happens "tomorrow," figuratively speaking -- we'll be very glad we started
preparing early.
C-R-Newsletter #59:
November 30, 2007
Military Nanotechnology Book
Review
Nano Risk Perception
Modular Models of Molecular
Manufacturing
Shifting International Orders
Acid, Oceans, and Oil
Context is Everything
Feature Essay: Imagining the
Future
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.
==========
Military Nanotechnology Book Review
The
current issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists includes a
review by Mike Treder, CRN Executive Director, of Jürgen Altmann's important new
book,
Military Nanotechnology: Potential Applications and Preventive Arms Control.
Here is how the article begins:
Deeply researched and carefully worded, Military Nanotechnology is an
overview of an emerging technology that could trigger a new arms race and
gravely threaten international security and stability. Jürgen Altmann's
academic style allows the reader to assess nanotechnology's perilous military
implications in plain, dispassionate terms. What we face might sound like
science fiction, but, in this book, we have the facts laid bare, and they are
hair-raising enough without embellishment.
You can download the full review
as a PDF, or look for November/December issue of the magazine at your local
bookstore or library.
Nano Risk Perception
At his excellent Nanowerk site,
Michael Berger writes:
The benefits of new technologies, whether they are new medical treatments, an
innovative approach to farming or new ways of generating energy, almost always
come with some new risks as well. In the emerging stages of a new technology,
experts and the public generally differ in their perceptions of risk... It is
not surprising that a new study found that, in general, nanoscientists are
more optimistic than the public about the potential benefits of
nanotechnology. What is surprising though, is that, for some issues related to
the environmental and long-term health impacts of nanotechnology,
nanoscientists seem to be significantly more concerned than the public.
We
think there is something else revealed by
the study Berger cites, which is that scientists and the public are thinking
about two different kinds of nanotechnology.
Health-related risks and pollution issues are both more typically associated
with current and near-future
nanoscale technologies, while concerns about privacy erosion, economic
disruption, and a new arms race are more often connected with longer-term
advanced nanotechnology, i.e. molecular manufacturing.
So, the
differing responses are not really a surprise at all, if it's understood
that each group is considering risks related to technology levels that are
vastly different in terms of power and potential.
Modular Models of Molecular Manufacturing
In a
recent article on CRN’s Responsible Nanotechnology blog, Nato Welch writes
about the new “BUG”
modular hardware platform and discovers some insights for the future of
molecular manufacturing. He compares the modular
hardware approach with
Tom Craver’s
proposal for “nanoblock” use inside nanofactories:
Each nanoblock could be anything -- motors, computers, sensors, memory, etc.
The major differences are that nanoblocks would, of course, be much smaller,
would be built to atomically-precise specifications, and would have to be
assembled by a fabrication device designed for the nanoblock scale, rather
than being hand-assembled. The striking similarities between Craver's
nanoblocks model and the BUG platform suggests to me that we don't even need
to presuppose atomically-precise manufacturing in order to design and deploy
the kind of infrastructure Craver suggests... When it arrives, molecular
manufacturing could be designed to just plug in to existing fabrication
standards already developed for larger-scale systems in the meantime.
Shifting International Orders
In the last 100 years, our world has experienced several huge shifts of social,
economic, political, and military power. These transitions took place at the
ends of World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Before, between, and after
each of those shifts, international order was relatively stable. But within the
lifetimes of many people living today, three titanic rearrangements of global
power have taken place.
Will it happen again? Almost certainly. The big question is when, and how?
In an entry on CRN’s blog, we distinguish
four different international orders that have prevailed during the previous
100 years: The Age of Modern Empires (before ~1920), The Rise and Fall of
Fascism (~1920 to ~1950), Cold Wars (~1950 to ~1990), and Unipolar Power (~1990
to the present).
If you accept the argument that we're living today in the fourth different
period of the last 100 years, it should be obvious that this is not a permanent
state. So, what comes next? How can we anticipate it? How might we shape it? And
how will the development of powerful new technologies, such as
molecular manufacturing, fit into that big picture?
Acid, Oceans, and Oil
Over at the WorldChanging site,
Emily Gertz reminds us:
Some of the most profoundly disturbing climate crisis news this year has been
the growing evidence that the planet's natural systems for absorbing
greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere, particularly the oceans, are beginning
to fail. There's simply more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than these
powerful sinks can uptake.
While in a
related article on the Wired blog network, we read about the end of
oil:
If there are any lingering doubts as to whether the age of oil is nearing its
end, the International Energy Agency has put them to rest and made it clear
that only a massive and immediate investment in sustainable energy will
prevent a global crisis.
So, we're running out of cheap oil at the same time that global energy demand is
skyrocketing. And as we're pouring more greenhouse gases into the air, the
atmosphere and the oceans are
becoming less able to recycle those gases.
These are two separate but related crises:
1. We need much more energy, but it's becoming less available and more
expensive.
2. Damage to the ecosphere from energy use is rapidly becoming more severe.
Is there a simple solution to both of these complex problems? Almost certainly
not. Some will suggest heavy investment in
nuclear energy; some will say conversion to
solar, wind, or geothermal energy is the answer; some few will recommend
drastically scaling back society's energy demands; still others will say
that we must embark on
radical "re-terraforming" of the Earth.
Finally, there is the whole question of whether we should just admit that
climate change can't be stopped, and begin figuring out
how to live with it. We may not be that far gone yet, but the signs aren't
looking good.
Context is Everything
Sometimes when we write about climate change (see above),
or geopolitics, or privacy erosion,
we’re criticized for straying too far from CRN’s primary topic: safe
development and responsible use of molecular manufacturing.
The explanation for this has to do with how we are, over time, coming to see
that the issues CRN is nominally concerned with are inextricably linked with a
wide range of other topics.
Molecular manufacturing will not be developed in a
vacuum, nor will it emerge unhindered into a welcoming world. How, when, or even
whether desktop nanofactories are finally produced will depend largely on
external factors that have little or nothing to do with nanotech. This is a big
drive behind our efforts to create a series of
professional-quality scenarios about the near-future development of
molecular manufacturing within the context of projected trends in science,
technology, and global politics.
The task of designing effective policy toward safe development and responsible
use of advanced nanotechnology is both highly complex and vitally important. A
broad base of knowledge is required for that,
including as good an understanding as we can get of the rapidly changing social,
economic, and political systems that atomically-precise exponential
manufacturing eventually will encounter. Those new conditions must be taken into
account, because the world of circa 2020 is expected to be vastly different from
2007 -- and in developing responsible global solutions, context is everything.
Feature Essay: Imagining the Future
By Jamais Cascio, CRN Director of Impacts Analysis
I'm one of the lucky individuals who makes a living by thinking about what we
may be facing in the years ahead. Those of us who follow this professional path
have a variety of tools and methods at our disposal, from subjective
brainstorming to models and simulations. I tend to follow a middle path, one
that tries to give some structure to imagined futures; in much of the work that
I do, I rely on scenarios.
Recently, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
undertook a project to develop a variety of scenarios regarding the
different ways in which molecular manufacturing might develop. One of the
explicit goals of that project was to come up with a broad cross-section of
different types of deployment -- and in that task, I think we succeeded.
I'd like to offer up a different take on scenarios for this month's newsletter
essay, however. With the last scenario project, we used "drivers" -- the various
key factors shaping how major outcomes transpired -- consciously intended to
reflect different issues around the development of molecular manufacturing. It's
also possible, however, to use a set of drivers with broader applicability,
teasing out specific scenarios from the general firmament. Such drivers usually
describe very high-level cultural, political and/or economic factors, allowing a
consistent set of heuristics to be applied to a variety of topics.
Recently, I developed a
set of scenarios for a project called "Green Tomorrows." While the scenario
stories themselves concerned different responses to the growing climate crisis,
the drivers I used operated at a more general level -- and could readily be
applied to thinking about different potential futures for
molecular manufacturing. The two drivers, each with two extremes, combine to
give four different images of the kinds of choices we'll face in the coming
decade or two.
The drivers I chose reflect my personal view that both how we live and how we
develop our tools and systems are ultimately political decisions. The first,
"Who Makes the Rules?", covers a spectrum from Centralized to Distributed. Is
the locus of authority and decision-making limited to small numbers of powerful
leaders, or found more broadly in the choices made by everyday citizens, working
both collaboratively and individually? The second, "How Do We Use Technology?",
runs from Precautionary to Proactionary. Do the choices we make with both
current and emerging technologies tend to adopt a "look before you leap" or a
"he who hesitates is lost" approach?
So, how do these combine?
The first scenario, living in the combination of Centralized rule-making and
Precautionary technology use, is "Care Bears." The name refers to online games
in which players are prevented by the game rules from attacking each other. For
players who want no controls, the rules are overly-restrictive and remove the
element of surprise and innovation; for players who just want an enjoyable
experience, the rules are a welcome relief.
In this scenario, then, top-down rule-making with an emphasis on prevention of
harm comes to slow overall rates of molecular manufacturing progress. The result
is a world where nanotechnology-derived solutions are harder to come by, but one
where nanotechnology-derived risks are less likely, as well. This is something
of a baseline scenario for people who believe that regulation, licensing, and
controls on research and development are ultimately good solutions for avoiding
disastrous outcomes. The stability of the scenario, however, depends upon both
how well the top-down controls work, and whether emerging
capabilities of molecular manufacturing tempt some people or states to grab
greater power. If this scenario breaks, it could easily push into the
lower/right world.
The second scenario, combining Centralized rule-making and Proactionary
technology use, is "There Once Was A Planet Called Earth..." The name sets out
the story fairly concisely: competition between centralized powers seeking to
adopt the most powerful technologies as quickly as possible -- whether for
benign or malignant reasons -- stands a very strong likelihood of leading to a
devastating conflict. For me, this is the scenario most likely to lead to a bad
outcome.
Mutually-assured global destruction is not the only outcome, but the probable
path out of this scenario is a shift towards greater restrictions and controls.
This could happen because people see the risks and act accordingly, but is more
likely to happen because of an accident or conflict that brings us to the brink
of disaster. In such a scenario, increasing restrictions (moving from
proactionary to precautionary) are more likely than increasing freedom (moving
from centralized to distributed).
The third scenario, combining Distributed rule-making and Proactionary
technology use, is "Open Source Heaven/Open Source Apocalypse." The name
reflects the two quite divergent possibilities inherent in this scenario: one
where the spread of user knowledge and access to molecular manufacturing
technologies actually makes the world safer by giving more people the ability to
recognize and respond to accidents and threats, and one where the spread of
knowledge and access makes it possible for super-empowered angry individuals to
unleash destruction without warning, from anywhere.
My own bias is towards the "Open Source Heaven" version, but I recognize the
risks that this entails. We wouldn't last long if the knowledge of how to make a
device that would blow up the planet with a single button-push became
widespread, and some of the arguments around the destructive potential of
late-game molecular manufacturing seem to approach that level of threat.
Conversely, it's not hard to find evidence that open source knowledge and access
tends to offer greater long-term safety and stability than does a closed
approach, and that insufficiently-closed projects leaking out to interested and
committed malefactors (but not as readily to those who might help to defend
against them) offers the risks of opening up without any of the benefits.
Finally, the fourth scenario, combining Distributed rule-making and
Precautionary technology use, is "We Are As Gods, So We Might As Well Get Good
At It." Stewart Brand used that as an opening line for his
Whole
Earth Catalogs, reflecting his sense that the emerging potential of new
technologies and social models gave us -- as human beings -- access to far
greater capabilities than ever before, and that our survival depended upon
careful, considered examination of the implications of this fact.
In this world, the widespread knowledge of and access to molecular manufacturing
technologies gives us a chance to deal with some of the more pressing big
problems we as a planet face -- extreme poverty, hunger, global warming, and the
like -- in effect allowing us breathing room to take stock of what kind of
future we'd like to create. Those individuals tempted to use these capabilities
for personal aggrandizement have to face a knowledgeable and empowered populace,
as do those states seeking to take control away from the citizenry. This is,
admittedly, the least likely of the four worlds, sadly.
But you don't have to take my word for it. This "four box" structure doesn't
offer predictions, but a set of lenses with which to understand possible
outcomes and the strategies that might be employed to reach or avoid them. The
world that will emerge will undoubtedly have elements of all four scenarios, as
different nations and regions are likely to take different paths. The main
purpose of this structure is to prompt discussion about what we can do now to
push towards the kind of world in which we'd want to live, and to thrive.
C-R-Newsletter #58:
October 31, 2007
Productive
Nanosystems Conference
The Nanofactory
Ecosystem
Scenario
Publication Plans
Keeping Tabs on
China
Monstrous Hybrids
Alive
Feynman Prizes
Awarded
Foresight Vision
Weekend
Guest Science
Essay: Exploring the Productive Nanosystems Roadmap
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.
==========
Productive Nanosystems Conference
One of the biggest events of the year in advanced nanotechnology was a recent
conference titled “Productive
Nanosystems: Launching the Technology Roadmap.” The event, organized by the
Society of Manufacturing Engineers, the Foresight Nanotech Institute, and
Battelle, was reported extensively -- almost minute-by-minute -- by CRN's Chris
Phoenix on our blog, and is also the subject of this month’s guest science essay
by Damian Allis (see below). Chris. For your convenience we’ve created
a listing of the superb coverage that Chris provided, including every
presentation at the conference.
The Nanofactory Ecosystem
We’re pleased to report that CRN's latest monthly column for the popular
Nanotechnology Now
web portal was authored by our new Director of
Impacts Analysis, Jamais Cascio. His article is titled "The
Nanofactory Ecosystem." Here is the abstract:
In addition to understanding the progress of nanotechnology
toward building atomically-precise desktop manufacturing systems --
nanofactories -- we also need to consider the infrastructure needed to
sustain that new technology paradigm. What sort of "ecosystem" might spring up
around nanofactories?
We hope you'll read
all our
columns, offer feedback, and tell others about them too.
Scenario Publication Plans
CRN is excited to have an agreement with
Nanotechnology
Perceptions, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Switzerland's
Collegium Basilea, to begin releasing our
nanotechnology scenario series starting with their November 2007 issue. They
will publish two scenarios in that first issue, then follow with two more in
their March 2008 issue, and conclude with the remaining four scenarios in July
2008. Each issue also will include at least one commentary article from a
"European perspective." Simultaneous with the November 2007 issue of the
journal, all eight of our scenarios will be posted online at the
Nanowerk.com
site, where they also will host a discussion space for readers. We're quite
pleased with both of these arrangements; together they will help us to reach a
wide audience for this important project.
Keeping Tabs on China
At CRN, we spend a lot of time thinking and writing
about China, and we believe with good reason. It's common to hear the last
100 years referred to as "The American Century," and many observers now suggest
that the next 100 years eventually will be known as "The Chinese Century."
Of course, a lot could happen to change that outcome. For one thing, China faces
huge internal and external challenges on its path to global supremacy. For
another, the United States is still the preeminent superpower in both economic
and military terms and is likely to remain so for some time.
But in looking outward over the next several decades, it's hard to conceive a
plausible scenario of world development that does not include China in some
capacity. So, as we try to envision how, where, and when molecular manufacturing
will emerge and what its implications will be, we
must include China in our calculations of context.
READ MORE…
Monstrous Hybrids Alive
What's the most important book you could read that's not about science or
technology to gain a better understanding of CRN's work?
One strong candidate would be
Systems of Survival
by the late great social scientist Jane Jacobs. Although the book itself is not
especially readable (our “Three Systems” paper
includes the most important stuff), her ideas are profound.
Another book we've frequently recommended is Jim Garrison's
America as Empire: Global
Leader or Rogue Power? It offers a compelling review of previous
historical empires, their rise and fall, and compares them with the U.S. today.
Most relevant to CRN's work is Garrison's prescription for something he calls
network democracy.
Now, we may have a third title to add to this short list:
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise
of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein. I don't have the book yet, but
from what I've heard it looks like a must-read, with a lot to say about the
unstable global future into which molecular manufacturing may emerge in the next
decade or two.
READ MORE…
Feynman Prizes Awarded
Every year, the Foresight Institute awards prizes to leaders in research,
communication and study in the field of nanotechnology. Prizes are conferred on
individuals whose work in research, communication and study are moving society
toward the ultimate goal of atomically-precise manufacturing.
This year's
winners are:
Theory Prize - David Leigh, University of Edinburgh, UK
Experimental Prize - Fraser Stoddart, UCLA
Communication Prize - Robert A Freitas Jr., Institute for Molecular
Manufacturing
Distinguished Student Prize - Fung-Suong Ou, Rice University
Congratulations to all!
Foresight Vision Weekend
Previous editions of the annual fall conference presented by the Foresight
Nanotech Institute have been open only to their "senior associates." But this
year, they're opening up the event to related groups, including people involved
with CRN. It's got a wide-open format this time too (it’s described as an
“un-conference”) with a very broad topic list. For more information on the
November 3-4 event in Sunnyvale, California,
click here.
Guest Science Essay: Exploring the Productive Nanosystems Roadmap
Damian Allis, Research Professor of Chemistry at Syracuse University and Senior
Scientist for Nanorex, Inc.
What follows is a brief series of notes and observations about the
Roadmap Conference,
some of the activities leading up to it, and a few points about the state of
some of the research that the Roadmap is hoping to address. All views expressed
are my own and not necessarily those of other Roadmap participants,
collaborators, my affiliated organizations (though I hope to not straddle that
fine line between "instigation" and "inflaming" in anything I present below).
Some Opening Praise for Foresight
There are, basically, three formats for scientific conferences. The first is
discipline-intensive, where everyone attending needs no introduction and
certainly needs no introductory slides (see the division rosters at most any
National ACS conference). The
only use of showing an example of
Watson-Crick base pairing
at a DNA nanotechnology conference of this format is to find out who found the
most aesthetically-pleasing image on "the Google."
There is the middle ground, where a single conference will have multiple
sessions divided into half-day or so tracks, allowing the carbon nanotube
chemists to see work in their field, then spend the rest of the conference
arguing points and comparing notes in the hotel lobby while the DNA scientists
occupy the conference room. The
FNANO
conference is of a format like this, which is an excellent way to run a
conference when scientists dominate the attendee list.
Finally, there is the one-speaker-per-discipline approach, where introductory
material consumes roughly 1/3 of each talk and attendees are given a taste of a
broad range of research areas. Such conferences are nontrivial to organize for
individual academics within a research plan but are quite straightforward for
external organizations with suitable budgets to put together.
To my mind, Foresight
came close to perfecting this final approach for nanoscience over the course of
its annual Conferences on Molecular Nanotechnology. Much like the organizational
Roadmap meetings and the Roadmap conference itself, these Foresight conferences
served as two-day reviews of the entire field of nanoscience by people directly
involved in furthering the cause. In my own case, research ideas and
collaborations were formed that continue to this day that I am sure would not
have otherwise. The attendee lists were far broader than the research itself,
mixing industry (the people turning research into products), government (the
people turning ideas into funding opportunities), and media (the people bringing
new discoveries to the attention of the public). Enough cannot be said about the
use of such broad-based conferences, which are instrumental in endeavors to
bring the variety of research areas currently under study into a single focus,
such as in the form of a technology Roadmap.
Why A "Productive Nanosystems" Roadmap?
The semiconductor industry
has its Roadmap. The
hydrogen storage community has its Roadmap. The
quantum computing and
cryptography
communities have their Roadmaps. These are major research and development
projects in groundbreaking areas that are not in obvious competition with one
another but see the need for all to benefit from all of the developments within
a field (in spirit, anyway). How could a single individual or research group
plan 20 years into the future (quantum computing) or plan for the absolute limit
of a technology (semiconductor)?
The
Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems falls into the former
category, an effort to as much take a snapshot of current research and very
short-term pathways towards nanosystems in general as it is to begin to plot
research directions that take advantage of the continued cross-disciplinary
efforts now begun in National Labs and large research universities towards
increasing complexity in nanoscale study.
On one far end of the spectrum, the "productive nanosystem" in all of its
atomically-precise glory as envisioned by many forward-thinking scientists is a
distant, famously debated, and occasionally ridiculed idea that far exceeds our
current understanding within any area of the physical or natural sciences. Ask
the workers on the first Model T assembly line how they expected robotics to
affect the livelihoods and the productivity of the assembly lines of their
grandchildren's generation, and you can begin to comprehend just how
incomprehensible the notion of a fully developed desktop nanofactory or medical
nanodevice is even to many people working in nanoscience.
On the other end of the spectrum (and the primary reason, I think, in molecular
manufacturing), it seems rather narrow-minded and short-sighted to believe that
we will never be able to control the fabrication of matter at the atomic scale.
The prediction that scientists will still be unable in 50 years to abstract a
carbon atom from a diamond lattice or build a computer processing unit by
placing individual atoms within an insulating lattice of other atoms seems
absurd. That is, of course, not to say that
molecular
manufacturing-based approaches to the positional control of individual atoms
for fabrication purposes will be the best approach to generating various
materials, devices, or complicated nanosystems (yes, I'm in the field and I
state that to be a perfectly sound possibility).
To say that we will never have that kind of control, however, is a bold
statement that assumes scientific progress will hit some kind of technological
wall that, given our current ability to manipulate individual hydrogen atoms
(the smallest atoms we have to work with) with positional control on atomic
lattices, seems to be sufficiently porous that atomically precise manufacturing,
including the mechanical approaches envisioned in molecular manufacturing
research, will continue on undaunted. At the maturation point of all possible
approaches to atomic manipulation, engineers can make the final decision of how
best to use the available technologies. Basically and bluntly, futurists are
planning the perfect paragraph in their heads while researchers are still
putting the keyboard together. That, of course, has been and will always
be the case at every step in human (and other!) development. And I mean that in
the most positive sense of the comparison. Some of my best friends are futurists
and provide some of the best reasons for putting together that keyboard in the
first place.
Perhaps a sea change over the next ten years will involve molecular
manufacturing antagonists beginning to agree that "better methods exist for
getting A or B" instead of now arguing that "molecular manufacturing towards A
and B is a waste of a thesis."
That said, it is important to recognize that the Technology Roadmap for
Productive Nanosystems is not a molecular manufacturing Roadmap, rather a
Roadmap that serves to guide the development of nanosystems capable of atomic
precision in the manufacturing processes of molecules and larger systems. The
difference is largely semantic, though, founded in the descriptors of molecular
manufacturing as some of us have come to know and love it.
Definitions!
If we take the working definitions from the Roadmap...
Nanosystems are interacting nanoscale structures, components, and
devices.
Functional nanosystems are nanosystems that process material, energy, or
information.
Atomically precise structures are structures that consist of a specific
arrangement of atoms.
Atomically precise technology (APT) is any technology that exploits
atomically precise structures of substantial complexity.
Atomically precise functional nanosystems (APFNs) are functional
nanosystems that incorporate one or more nanoscale components that have
atomically precise structures of substantial complexity.
Atomically precise self-assembly (APSA) is any process in which
atomically precise structures align spontaneously and bind to form an atomically
precise structure of substantial complexity.
Atomically precise manufacturing (APM) is any manufacturing technology
that provides the capability to make atomically precise structures, components,
and devices under programmable control.
Atomically precise productive nanosystems (APPNs) are functional
nanosystems that make atomically precise structures, components, and devices
under programmable control, that is, they are advanced functional nanosystems
that perform atomically precise manufacturing.
The last definition is the clincher. It combines atomic precision (which means
you know the properties of a system at the atomic level and can, given the
position of one atom, know absolutely about the rest of the system) and
programmable control (meaning information is translated into matter assembly).
Atomic precision does not mean "mostly (7,7) carbon nanotubes of more-or-less 20
nm lengths," "chemical reactions of more than 90% yield," "gold nanoparticles of
about 100 nm diameters," or "molecular nanocrystals with about 1000 molecules."
That is not atomic precision, only our current level of control over
matter. I am of the same opinion as
J. Fraser Stoddart,
who described the state of chemistry (in his
Feynman
Experimental Prize lecture) as "an 18 month old" learning the words of
chemistry but unable to speak the short sentences of supramolecular assembly and
simple functional chemical systems, make paragraphs of complex devices from
self-assembling or directed molecules, or the novels that approach the scales of
nanofactories, entire cells, or whatever hybrid system first can be pointed to
by all scientists as a first true productive nanosystem.
Plainly, there is no elegant, highly developed field in
the physical or natural sciences. None. Doesn't exist, and anyone arguing
otherwise is acknowledging that progress in their field is dead in the water.
Even chiseled stone was state-of-the-art at one point.
The closest thing we know of towards the productive nanosystem end is the
ribosome, a productive nanosystem that takes information (mRNA) and turns it
into matter (peptides) using a limited set of chemical reactions (amide bond
formation) and a very limited set of building materials (amino acids) to make a
very narrow range of products (proteins) which just happen to, in concert, lead
to living organisms. The ribosome serves as another important example for the
Roadmap. Atomic precision in materials and products does not mean
absolute positional knowledge in an engineering, fab facility manner. Most
cellular processes do not require knowledge of the location of any component,
only that those components will eventually come into Brownian-driven contact.
Molecular manufacturing proponents often point to the ribosome as "the example"
among reasons to believe that engineered matter is possible with atomic
precision. The logical progression from ribosome to
diamondoid nanofactory, if that progression exists on a well-behaved
wavefunction (continuous, finite -- yeesh-- with pleasant first derivatives), is
a series of substantial leaps of technological progress that molecular
manufacturing opponents believe may/can/will never be made. Fortunately, most of
them are not involved in research towards a molecular manufacturing end and so
are not providing examples of how it cannot be done, while those of us doing
molecular manufacturing research are both showing the potential, and the
potential pitfalls, all the while happy to be doing the dirty work for opponents
in the interest in pushing the field along.
It is difficult to imagine that any single discipline will contain within its
practitioners all of the technology and know-how to provide the waiting world
with a productive nanosystem of any kind. The synthetic know-how to break and
form chemical bonds, the supramolecular understanding to be able to predict how
surfaces may interact as either part of self-assembly processes or as part of
mechanical assembly, the systems design to understand how the various parts will
come together, the physical and quantum chemistry to explain what's actually
happening and recommend improvements as part of the design and modeling process,
the characterization equipment to follow both device assembly and manufacturing:
each of these aspects relevant to the assembly and operations of productive
nanosystems are, in isolation, areas of current research that many researchers
individually devote their entire lives to and that are all still very much in
development.
However, many branches of science are starting to merge and perhaps the first
formal efforts at systems design among the many disciplines are likely to be
considered the ACTUAL beginning of experimental nanotechnology. The
interdisciplinaritization (yes, made that one up myself) of scientific research
is being pushed hard at major research institutions by way of the development of
Research Centers, large-scale facilities that intentionally house numerous
departments or simply broad ranges of individual research. Like research efforts
into atomically precise manufacturing, the pursuit of interdisciplinary research
is a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, with the bottom-up effort
a result of individual researchers collaborating on new projects as ideas and
opportunities allow and the top-down efforts a result of research universities
funding the building of Research Centers and, as an important addition, state
and federal funding agencies providing grant opportunities supporting
multi-disciplinary efforts and facilities.
But is that enough? Considering all of the varied research being performed in
the world, is it enough that unionized cats are herding themselves into small
packs to pursue various ends, or is there some greater benefit to having a
document that not only helps to put their research into the context of the
larger field of all nanoscience research, but also helps them draw connections
to other efforts? Will some cats choose to herd themselves when presented with a
good reason?
The Roadmap is not only a document that describes approaches to place us on the
way to Productive Nanosystems. It is also a significant summary of current
nanoscale research that came out of the three National Lab Working Group
meetings. As one might expect, these meetings were very much along the lines of
a typical Foresight Conference, in which every half hour saw a research
presentation on a completely different subject that, because each provided a
foundation for the development of pathways and future directions, were found to
have intersections. The same is true of the research and application talks at
the official SME
release conference. It's almost a law of science. Put two researchers into a
room and, eventually, a joint project will emerge.
On to the Conference
In describing my reactions to the conference, I'm going to skip many, many
details, inviting you, the reader, to check out the Roadmap proper when it's
made available online and, until then, to read through Chris Phoenix's
live-blogging.
As for what I will make mention of...
Pathways Panel
A panel consisting of Schafmeister, Randall, Drexler, and Firman (with Von Ehr
moderating) from the last section of the first day covered major pathway
branches presented in the Roadmap, with all the
important points caught by Chris Phoenix's QWERTY mastery.
I'll spare the discussion, as it was covered so well by Chris, but I will point
out a few important take-homes:
Firman said, "Negative results are a caustic subject... while fusing proteins,
sometimes we get two proteins that change each other's properties. And that's a
negative result, and doesn't get published. It shouldn't be lost." Given the
survey nature of the types of quantum chemical calculations being performed to
model tooltip designs that might be used for the purposes of mechanosynthesis
(molecular manufacturing or otherwise),
Drexler,
Freitas,
Merkle, and
myself spend
considerable time diagnosing failure modes and possibly unusable molecular
designs, making what might otherwise be "negative results" important additions
to our respective design and analysis protocols. Wired readers will note
that Thomas Goetz covered this topic ("Dark Data") and some web efforts to make
this type of data available in Issue 15.10.
I loved the panel’s discussion of replication, long a point of great controversy
over concerns and feasibility. Drexler mentioned how his original notion of a
"replicator" as proposed in
Engines of Creation is obsolete for pragmatic/logistical reasons. But
the next comment was from Schafmeister, who, in his research talk, had proposed
something that performs a form of replication (yes, that's the experimental
chemist making the bold statement); it would be driven externally, but
nonetheless something someone could imagine eventually automating. Christian
also performed a heroic feat in his talk by presenting his own (admittedly, by
him) "science fiction" pathway for applying his own lab research to a far more
technically demanding end, something far down the road as part of his larger
research vision.
Randall, on the use of the Roadmap, said, "The value of the Roadmap will be
judged by the number of people who read it and try to use it. Value will
increase exponentially if we come back and update it." The nature of nanoscience
research is that six months can mean a revolution. I (and a few others at the
very first Working Group meeting) had been familiar with structural DNA
nanotechnology, mostly from having seen
Ned Seeman present
something new at every research talk (that is also a feat in the sciences, where
a laboratory is producing quick enough to always have results to hand off to the
professor in time for the next conference). The Rothemund
DNA Origami paper [PDF] was a turning point to many and made a profound
statement on the potential of DNA nanotech. I was amazed by it. Drexler's
discussions on the possibilities have been and continue to be contagious.
William Shih
mentioned that his research base changed fundamentally because of DNA Origami,
and seeing the complexity of the designs AND the elegance of the experimental
studies out of his group at the Roadmap Conference only cemented in my mind just
how fast a new idea can be extended into other applications. It would not
surprise me if several major advances before the first revision of the Roadmap
required major overhauls of large technical sections. At the very least, I hope
that scientific progress requires it.
Applications Panel
A panel consisting of Hall, Maniar, Theis, O'Neill (with Pearl moderating) from
the last section of the second day covered applications, with short-term and
very long-term visions represented on the panel (again,
all caught by Chris Phoenix).
For those who don't know him,
Josh Hall was the wildcard of the applications panel, both for his far more
distant contemplations on technology than otherwise represented at the
conference and for his exhaustive historical perspective (he can synthesize
quite a bit of tech history and remind us just how little we actually know given
the current state of technology and how we perceive it; O'Neill mentioned this
as well, see below). Josh is far and away the most enlightening and entertaining
after-dinner raconteur I know. As a computer scientist who remembers wheeling
around hard drives in his graduate days, Josh knows well the technological
revolutions within the semiconductor industry and just how difficult it can be
for even industry insiders to gauge the path ahead and its consequences on
researchers and consumers.
Papu made an interesting point I'd not thought of before. While research labs
can push the absolute limits of nanotechnology in pursuit of new materials or
devices, manufacturers can only make the products that their facilities, or
their outsourcing partner facilities, can make with the equipment they have
available. A research lab antenna might represent a five-year leap in the
technology, but it can’t make it into today's mobile phone if the fab facility
can't churn it out in its modern
6 Sigma
manifestation.
Nanoscience isn't just about materials, but also new equipment for synthesis and
characterization, and the equipment for that is expensive in its first few
generations. While it’s perhaps inappropriate to refer to "consumer grade"
products as the "dumbed down" version of "research grade" technologies,
investors and conspiracy theorists alike can take comfort in knowing that there
really is "above-level" technology in laboratories just hoping the company lasts
long enough to provide a product in the next cycle.
O'Neill said, "To some of my friends, graphite epoxy is just black aluminum."
This comment was in regards to how a previous engineering and technician
generation sees advances in specific areas relative to their own mindset and not
as part of continuing advancements in their fields. It's safe to say that we all
love progress, but many fear change. The progress in science parallels that in
technology, and the ability to keep up with the state-of-the-art, much less put
it into practice as Papu described, is by no means a trivial matter. Just as
medical doctors require recertification, scientists must either keep up with
technology or simply see their efforts slow relative to every subsequent
generation. Part of the benefit of interdisciplinary research is that the
expertise in a separate field is provided automatically upon collaboration.
Given the time to understand the physics and the cost of equipment nowadays,
most researchers are all too happy to pass off major steps in development to
someone else.
Closing Thoughts
Non-researchers know the feeling. We've all fumbled with a new technology at one
point or another, be it a new cell phone or a new (improved?) operating system,
deciding to either "learn only the basics" or throw our hands up in disgust.
Imagine having your entire profession changed from the ground up or, even worse,
having your profession disappear because of technology. Research happening today
in nanoscience will serve a disruptive role in virtually all areas of technology
and our economy. Entire industries, too. Can you imagine the first catalytic
system that effortlessly turns water into hydrogen and oxygen gas? If filling
the tank of your jimmied VW ever means turning on your kitchen spigot, will your
neighborhood gas station survive selling peanut M&M's
and Snapple at ridiculous prices?
C-R-Newsletter #57: September 29, 2007
CRN Leadership Expands
A
Successful Nano-Bio Conference
Scenario
Publication Plans
Nanoethics
Questions
CRN Goes to
Hoboken
Journey vs.
Destination
Live-Blogging
Productive Nanosystems
Feature
Essay:
Levels of Nanotechnology Development
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
Leadership Expands
The Center
for Responsible Nanotechnology is adding two new
members to its leadership team. Jamais Cascio will become CRN’s Director of
Impacts Analysis, and Jessica Margolin will take on the role of Director of
Research Communities, effective October 1, 2007. CRN co-founder
Chris Phoenix will begin his scheduled sabbatical
in October. Co-founder Mike Treder will continue to
serve as Executive Director of CRN.
“I’ve been
looking forward to this opportunity for some time,” said Phoenix. “With growing
recognition about the importance of molecular manufacturing, with Jamais and
Jessica, two extremely talented people, coming on board, and with Mike’s ongoing
leadership, I feel comfortable taking a sabbatical.”
Jamais
Cascio is a writer, blogger and futurist covering the intersection of emerging
technologies and cultural transformation. He speaks about future scenarios
around the world and his essays about technology and society have appeared in a
variety of print and online publications. He is a fellow at the
Institute for Ethics and Emerging
Technologies, as well as a research affiliate at the
Institute for the Future. He
also works on a variety of independent projects including serving as a lead
author of the recent
Metaverse Roadmap Overview report.
“I’ve
admired CRN’s work for a long time,” said Cascio, “and in recent months I’ve
become more actively involved. Now I’m extremely pleased to be joining the team
in a leadership capacity.”
In 2003,
Cascio co-founded
WorldChanging.com, a Web site dedicated to finding and calling attention to
models, tools, and ideas for building a ‘bright green’ future. Cascio authored
nearly 2,000 articles during his time at WorldChanging, looking at topics such
as energy and the environment, global development, open-source technologies, and
catalysts for social change. In 2006, he started
OpenTheFuture.com as his
online home.
Jessica
Margolin is an entrepreneur who consults in the area of purposeful conversations
and messaging systems. Her professional background includes industry roles in
financial analysis, business development, organizational design, and marketing
strategy and communications; her education includes an MS in Materials Science
in the area of nanotechnology, and an MBA.
“It's
important to ensure all voices are heard during periods of profoundly rapid
scientific innovation,” said Margolin. “Many nanoscale technologies are poised
to be disruptive, and CRN focuses on what is potentially the most disruptive of
all. I look forward to accelerating the development of the community surrounding
CRN's work.”
Currently a
research affiliate at Institute
for the Future, Margolin synthesizes her
professional
experience in the financial and internet industries as well as her
philanthropic work to address problems concerning the design of organizations,
institutions, and communities.
“I’m
ecstatic about the opportunity to work closely with both Jamais and Jessica as
we move forward in the important cause of ensuring safe development and
responsible use of advanced nanotechnology,” said Treder.
A Successful Nano-Bio Conference
From September 10-12, 2007,
CRN was proud to welcome attendees and speakers to our first conference --
"Challenges &
Opportunities: The Future of Nano &
Bio Technologies” -- hosted and co-organized in Tucson, Arizona, by
World Care.
We filled
three days with compelling speakers, panel discussions and novel interactive
collaborations, plus highly enjoyable social hours in the evening. Most of the
conference presentations have been posted online
for free download, and we’ve also offered
short reviews and commentaries on our blog.
To really
get a feel for the content and flow of the event, read the outstanding live blog
coverage provided by Michael Anissimov at
Accelerating Future and by Simone Syed for the
Frontier Channel. Great thanks to all who participated!
Scenario Publication Plans
CRN is pleased to have an agreement with
Nanotechnology
Perceptions, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Switzerland's
Collegium Basilea, to begin releasing our
nanotechnology scenario series starting with their November 2007 issue. They
will publish two scenarios in that first issue, then follow with two more in
their March 2008 issue, and conclude with the remaining four scenarios in July
2008. Each issue also will include at least one commentary article from a
"European perspective." Simultaneous with the November 2007 issue of the
journal, all eight of our scenarios will be posted online at the
Nanowerk.com
site, where they also will host a discussion space for readers. We're quite
pleased with both of these arrangements; together they will help us to reach a
wide audience for this important project.
Nanoethics Questions
Just what is nanoethics, and why does it matter? That's a
question posed in the Spring 2007 issue of The New Atlantis. Adam Keiper,
the journal's editor, wrote a long article titled "Nanoethics
as a Discipline?" in which he challenged the validity of the field as a
whole and complained specifically about CRN's "many simplistic political and
social assumptions."
CRN wrote a
lengthy rebuttal pointing out the difficulty of stretching towards
understanding in areas where prior work is scant, if it exists at all. At this
stage, we're not ready to go into finer detail with either our analyses or
proposed solutions. Our task for now is to raise awareness of these issues and
to stimulate more comprehensive work by other groups, especially those with
deeper expertise in specific areas.
We also emphatically rejected Keiper’s intimation that because
the future is unknowable, it is therefore uninteresting or unworthy of
speculative exploration. Indeed, it is because we cannot say for sure how
nanotechnology will evolve and how it will affect society that we feel the need
to provoke such discussions. CRN will continue to work on forecasting the future
of nanotechnology, on gaining the facts, on defining our values, and on shaping
politically realistic solutions that give us the best hope for a safe and
responsible world of tomorrow.
Others also had strong responses to Keiper’s provocative article,
including numerous
nanoethics professors and best-selling author David Brin, who wrote a
guest commentary for CRN.
CRN Goes to Hoboken
A few weeks
ago, CRN Executive Director Mike Treder traveled across the Hudson River to
Hoboken, New Jersey, where he presented a seminar on the future of
nanotechnology to graduate students and faculty at
Stevens Institute of
Technology, one of the few universities to offer a
graduate program in
nanotechnology.
Mike said he
was impressed to learn, during sit-down sessions with professors and post-grad
students, about the remarkable work being done at Stevens. It is an institution
on the cutting edge of science and technology, and they show a keen interest in
understanding more about the social implications of their technological work.
Journey vs. Destination
CRN's latest
monthly column for the popular
Nanotechnology Now
web portal has been posted. The current article is titled "Nanotechnology:
Journey vs. Destination" -- here is the abstract:
Nanotechnology has acquired several distinct meanings over the last few
decades. Its development has been marked by this confusion, which has led to
concerns from one field of nanotechnology, molecular manufacturing, being
applied to other fields. As all fields of nanotechnology continue to develop,
molecular manufacturing will reach a point where it is able to accelerate the
other fields.
We hope
you'll read
all our
columns, offer feedback, and tell others about them too.
Live-Blogging Productive Nanosystems
“Productive
Nanosystems: Launching the Technology Roadmap” is the title of an exciting
conference coming soon to Arlington, Virginia (USA), organized by the Society of
Manufacturing Engineers, the Foresight Nanotech Institute, and Battelle. CRN's
Chris Phoenix is planning to attend the October 9-10 event and to "live blog"
his observations for us.
SPECIAL
OFFER: All C-R-Newsletter subscribers are eligible to receive the discounted
member rate -- a $200 savings! When
registering for the conference, enter priority code 07CF308 and member
number 270270 to receive the member rate.
Feature
Essay:
Levels of Nanotechnology Development
Chris
Phoenix, Director of Research, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology capabilities have been improving rapidly. More different things
can be built, and the products can do more than they used to. As nanotechnology
advances, CRN continually is asked: Why do we focus only on molecular
manufacturing, when there's important stuff already being done? This essay will
put the various levels of nanotechnology in perspective, showing where molecular
manufacturing fits on a continuum of development -- quite far advanced in terms
of capabilities. Along the way, this will show which kinds of nanotechnology
CRN's concerns apply to.
For another perspective on
nanotechnology development, it's worth reading the section on "The Progression
of Nanotechnology" (pages 3-6) from a
joint committee economic study [PDF] for the U.S. House of Representatives.
It does not divide nanotech along exactly the same lines, but it is reasonably
close, and many of the projections echo mine. That document is also an early
source for the NSF's division of nanotechnology into
four
generations.
The development arc of nanotechnology
is comparable in some ways to the history of computers. Ever since the abacus
and clay tablets, people have been using mechanical devices to help them keep
track of numbers. Likewise, the ancient Chinese reportedly used nanoparticles of
carbon in their ink. But an abacus is basically a better way of counting on your
fingers; it is not a primitive computer in any meaningful sense. It only
remembers numbers, and does not manipulate them. But I am not going to try to
identify the first number-manipulator; there are all sorts of ancient
distance-measuring carts, timekeeping devices, and astronomical calculators to
choose from. Likewise, the early history of nanotechnology will remain shrouded
in myth and controversy, at least for the purposes of this essay.
The first computing devices in
widespread use were probably mechanical adding machines, 19th century cash
registers, and similar intricate contraptions full of gears. These had to be
specially designed and built, a different design for each different purpose.
Similarly, the first nanotechnology was purpose-built structures and materials.
Each different nanoparticle or nanostructure had a particular set of properties,
such as strength or moisture resistance, and it would be used for only that
purpose. Of course, a material might be used in many different products, as a
cash register would be used in many different stores. But the material, like the
cash register, was designed for its specialized function.
Because purpose-designed materials are
expensive to develop, and because a material is not a product but must be
incorporated into existing manufacturing chains, these early types of
nanotechnology are not having a huge impact on industry or society.
Nanoparticles are, for the most part, new types of industrial chemicals. They
may have unexpected or unwanted properties; they may enable better products to
be built, and occasionally even enable new products; but they are not going to
create a revolution. In Japan, I saw an abacus used at a train station ticket
counter in the early 1990's; cash registers and calculators had not yet
displaced it.
The second wave of computing devices
was an interesting sidetrack from the general course of computing. Instead of
handling numbers of the kind we write down and count with, they handled
quantities -- fuzzy, non-discrete values, frequently representing physics
problems. These analog computers were weird and arcane hybrids of mechanical and
electrical components. Only highly trained mathematicians and physicists could
design and use the most complex of these computers. They were built this way
because they were built by hand out of expensive components, and it was worth
making each component as elegant and functional as possible. A few vacuum tubes
could be wired up to add, subtract, multiply, divide, or even integrate and
differentiate. An assemblage of such things could do some very impressive
calculations -- but you had to know exactly what you were doing, to keep track
of what the voltage and current levels meant and what effect each piece would
have on the whole system.
Today, nanotechnologists are starting
to build useful devices that combine a few carefully-designed components into
larger functional units. They can be built by chemistry, self-assembly, or
scanning probe microscope; none of these ways is easy. Designing the devices is
not easy. Understanding the components is somewhat easy, depending on the
component, but even when the components appear simple, their interaction is
likely not to be simple. But when your technology only lets you have a few
components in each design, you have to get the most you can out of each
component. It goes without saying that only experts can design and build such
devices.
This level of nanotechnology will
enable new applications, as well as more powerful and effective versions of some
of today's products. In a technical sense, it is more interesting than
nanoparticles -- in fact, it is downright impressive. However, it is not a
general-purpose technology; it is far too difficult and specialized to be
applied easily to more than a tiny fraction of the products created today. As
such, though it will produce a few impressive breakthroughs, it will not be
revolutionary on a societal scale.
It is worth noting that some observers,
including some nanotechnologists, think that this will turn out to be the most
powerful kind of nanotechnology. Their reasoning goes something like this:
Biology uses this kind of elegant highly-functional component-web. Biology is
finely tuned for its application, so it must be doing things the best way
possible. And besides, biology is full of elegant designs just waiting for us to
steal and re-use them. Therefore, it's impossible to do better than biology, and
those who try are being inefficient in the short term (because they're ignoring
the existing designs) as well as the long term (because biology has the best
solutions). The trouble with this argument is that biology was not designed by
engineers for engineers. Even after we know what the components do, we will not
easily be able to modify and recombine them. The second trouble with the
argument is that biology is constrained to a particular design motif: linear
polymers modified by enzymes. There is no evidence that this is the most
efficient possible solution, any more than vacuum tubes were the most efficient
way to build computer components. A third weakness of the argument is that there
may be some things that simply can't be done with the biological toolbox. Back
when computers were mainly used for processing quantities representing physical
processes, it might have sounded strange to say that some things couldn't be
represented by analog values. But it would be more or less impossible to search
a billion-byte text database with an analog computer, or even to represent a
thousand-digit number accurately.
It may seem strange to take a circuit that could add two
high-precision numbers and rework it into a circuit that could add 1+1, so that
a computer would require thousands of those circuits rather than dozens. But
that is basically what was done by the designers of ENIAC, the famous early
digital computer. There were at least two or three good reasons for this. First,
the 1+1 circuit was not just high-precision, it was effectively infinite
precision (until a vacuum tube burned out) because it could only answer in
discrete quantities. You could string together as many of these circuits as you
wanted, and add ten- or twenty-digit numbers with infinite precision. Second,
the 1+1 circuit could be faster. Third, a computer doing many simple operations
was easier to understand and reprogram than a computer doing a few complex
operations. ENIAC was not revolutionary, compared with the analog computers of
its day; there were many problems that analog computers were better for. But it
was worth building. And more importantly, ENIAC could be improved by improving
just a few simple functions. When transistors were invented, they quickly
replaced vacuum tubes in digital computers, because digital computers required
fewer and less finicky circuit designs.
The third level of nanotechnology,
which is just barely getting a toehold in the lab today, is massively parallel
nano-construction via relatively large computer-controlled machines. For
example, arrays of tens of thousands of scanning probes have been built, and
these arrays have been used to build tens of thousands of micro-scale pictures,
each with tens of thousands of nano-scale dots. That's a billion features, give
or take an order of magnitude -- pretty close to the number of transistors on a
modern computer chip. That is impressive. However, a billion atoms would make an
object about the size of a bacterium; this type of approach will not be used to
build large objects. And although I can imagine ways to use it for
general-purpose construction, it would take some work to get there. Because it
uses large and delicate machines that it cannot itself build, it will be a
somewhat expensive family of processes. Nevertheless, as this kind of technology
improves, it may start to steal some excitement from the bio-nano approach,
especially once it becomes able to do atomically precise fabrication using
chemical reactions.
Massively parallel nano-construction
will likely be useful for building better computers and less expensive sensors,
as well as a lot of things no one has thought of yet. It will not yet be
revolutionary, by comparison with what comes later, but it starts to point the
way toward revolutionary construction capabilities. In particular, some
nano-construction methods, such as Zyvex's
Atomically Precise Manufacturing, might eventually be able to build their
improved versions of their own tools. Once computer-controlled
nano-fabrication can build improved versions of its own tools, it will start to
lead to the next level of nanotechnology: exponential manufacturing. But until
that point, it appears too primitive and limited to be revolutionary.
ENIAC could store the numbers it was
computing on, but the instructions for running the computation were built into
the wiring, and it had to be rewired (but not rebuilt) for each different
computation. As transistors replaced vacuum tubes, and integrated circuits
replaced transistors, it became reasonable for computers to store their own
programs in numeric form, so that when a different program was needed, the
computer could simply read in a new set of numbers. This made computing a lot
more efficient. It also made it possible for computers to help to compile their
own programs. Humans could write programs using symbols that were more or less
human-friendly, and the computer could convert those symbols into the proper
numbers to tell the computer what to do. As computers became more powerful, the
ease of programming them increased rapidly, because the symbolic description of
their program could become richer, higher-level, and more human-friendly. (Note
that, in contrast, a larger analog computer would be more difficult to program.)
Within a decade after ENIAC, hobbyists could learn to use a computer, though
computers were still far too expensive for hobbyists to own.
The fourth level of nanotechnology is
early exponential manufacturing. Exponential manufacturing means that the
manufacturing system can build most of its key components. This will radically
increase the throughput, will help to drive down the cost, and also implies that
the system can build improved versions of itself fairly quickly. Although it's
not necessarily the case that exponential manufacturing will use molecular
operations and molecular precision (molecular manufacturing), this may turn out
to be easier than making exponential systems work at larger scales. Although the
most familiar projections of molecular manufacturing involve highly advanced
materials such as carbon lattice (diamondoid), the first molecular manufacturing
systems likely will use polymers that are weaker than diamondoid but easier to
work with. Exponential manufacturing systems with large numbers of fabrication
systems will require full automation, which means that each operation will have
to be extremely reliable. As previous science
essays have discussed, molecular manufacturing appears to provide the
required reliability, since covalent bonding can be treated as a digital
operation. In the same way that the 1+1 circuit is more precise than the analog
adder, adding a small piece onto a molecule can be far more precise and reliable
than any currently existing manufacturing operation -- reliable enough to be
worth doing millions of times rather than using one imprecise bulk operation to
build the same size of structure.
Early exponential manufacturing will
provide the ability to build lots of truly new things, as well as computers far
in advance of today's. With molecular construction and rapid prototyping, we
will probably see breakthrough medical devices. Products may still be quite
expensive per gram, especially at first, since early processes are likely to
require fairly expensive molecules as feedstocks. They may also require some
self-assembly and some big machines to deal with finicky reaction conditions.
This implies that for many applications, this technology still will be building
components rather than products. However, unlike the cost per gram, the cost per
feature will drop extremely rapidly. This implies far less expensive sensors. At
some point, as products get larger and conventional manufacturing gets more
precise, it will be able to interface with molecular manufactured products
directly; this will greatly broaden the applications and ease the design
process.
The implications of even early
molecular manufacturing are disruptive enough to be interesting to CRN. Massive
sensor networks imply several new kinds of weapons, as do advanced medical
devices. General-purpose automated manufacturing, even with limitations, implies
the first stirrings of a general revolution in manufacturing. Machines working
at the nanoscale will not only be used for manufacturing, but in a wide variety
of products, and will have far higher performance
than larger machines.
In one sense, there is a continuum from
the earliest mainframe computers to a modern high-powered gaming console. The
basic design is the same: a stored-program digital computer
