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Benefits flooding from nanotechnology |
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"Data
storage is another area set for major change. In laboratory |
"In 15 years time you could
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| Lecture sings
praises of nanotech The president of the Royal Academy of Engineering has added his voice to the debate about nanotechnology BBC News 27 Apr 2005 In the fourth of his BBC Reith lectures, Lord Broers debunks the myth that nanomachines could turn the planet into grey goo. The idea that nano-robots could run amok is "speculative and unproven", he says. Nanotechnology is an umbrella discipline concerned with engineering of matter from individual atoms. SOME CURRENT NANO USES Disk drives with nanometre layers to increase data storage Lipid (fat) globules for anti-cancer drug delivery Stain repellent/waterproof textiles Anti-fungal sprays and fabrics Novel coatings, paints and pigments Source: Inst of Nanotechnology Tiny tech While some aspects of nanotech may need careful monitoring, other parts have been unfairly demonised, says Lord Broers. The idea of tiny machines self-replicating and breaking down biological material was first mooted by Dr Eric Drexler, regarded by some as a "father of nanotechnology". He has since refuted these claims. Lord Broers has added his voice to general scepticism that such machines could even be built let alone replicate. "Our experience with chemistry and physics teaches us that we do not have any idea how to make an autonomous self-replicating machine at any scale," he says. Nanotechnology is the manipulation of atoms and molecules at the "nanoscale". One nanometre is about a million times smaller than the diameter of a pinhead. A human hair is about 80,000 nanometres wide. It is a subject close to the heart of Lord Broers, who is in his own right a world-renowned nanotech pioneer. He is delighted that the science of the small has caught up with the large in terms of practical significance to people's lives. Nanoelectronics key In past centuries, it has been gigantic structures such as the Colossus of Rhodes, the Pyramids or the engineering feats of Brunel that have won praise and held the public's imagination, he says. "It would have been difficult to persuade Brunel that the ability to design and fabricate at the nanometre scale was going to have as much impact upon people as the ability to build bridges and railways, but I believe that is now the case," he says. "We had to wait for the age of electronics for miniaturisation to become an important achievement in its own right - until the same kind of awe could be inspired by the very small," he says. The current fascination with nanotech has led to it embracing many different scientific disciplines, something Lord Broers thinks could be confusing for people. "Those that take on the title gain the glamour of the most successful, and more importantly make themselves eligible for any funding that is allocated by government and private sources," he says. But they also risk being linked to the concerns surrounding the more controversial branches of nanoscience. In his lecture, he lays out what he sees as some of the most important strands of nanotech, charting their evolution and the way many innovations in nanotechnologies have provided a bridge between science and technology. He marvels at the developments in the 20th Century which have made nanotech a reality, the most important of which has been the miniaturisation of electronics. "It has now reached the point where microelectronics has become nanoelectronics, and electronic chips are now without doubt amongst the most useful of the nanotechnologies," he says. SOME POTENTIAL USES OF NANOTECHNOLOGIES 1 - Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) for displays 2 - Photovoltaic film that converts light into electricity 3 - Scratch-proof coated windows that clean themselves with UV 4 - Fabrics coated to resist stains and control temperature 5 - Intelligent clothing measures pulse and respiration 6 - Bucky-tubeframe is light but very strong 7 - Hip-joint made from biocompatible materials 8 - Nano-particle paint to prevent corrosion 9 - Thermo-chromic glass to regulate light 10 - Magnetic layers for compact data memory 11 - Carbon nanotube fuel cells to power electronics and vehicles 12 - Nano-engineered cochlear implant |
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| Small science
to be big in 2005 "Nanotechnology" will be a much more familiar word to everyone in 2005, not just scientists, say analysts. BBC News 20 January, 2005 Nanotechnologies involve the manipulation of structures at the molecular scale and can change the behaviour of materials. It has been slowly moving into sun creams, drug delivery and computer disk drives to improve storage. But it will soon be the cornerstone of every manufacturing industry says a Deloitte research trends report. The Deloitte research Predictions 2005 report points to key developments to keep an eye on in the coming year. "We find that nanotechnology is extremely poorly understood in general," David Tansley, Deloitte telcoms and technology partner, told the BBC News website. "As soon as you mention it, people conjure up images of small robots carrying out surgery or things that are not desirable. "It tends to be something of science fiction and something to be feared. The reality is that nanotechnologies have been around for some time." But this year, he thinks, people will start noticing its mundane uses, like making car paint shinier, windows that clean themselves and smaller and better mobile batteries. Nanotech can also be used to make new materials. Snowballing interest "What we may see happen is as the companies backing these developments begin to see a return on their investment... so we might see a wave of enthusiasm and people will start to notice that these products have an impact. "That could create snowball of interest." He added that research and development that had been going on for some time would "break cover" in 2005, and would bear fruit in useful and better products. There still remains an element of fear about nanotechnologies and what impact new materials and substances might have on people and the environment. Mr Tansley also said that at least two major mobile companies were set to release fuel cell-powered handsets in 2005. Fuel cells turn the chemical energy stored in hydrogen into electrical energy to power devices. Unlike traditional lithium ion batteries, they can be made in a variety of shapes and form. They are also refillable, as opposed to rechargeable via electricity and last for days rather than hours. "The form factor of early fuel cells will be significantly larger than current battery technology, but the power capacity will be significantly greater," he said. "Whether they are bundled with handsets or not remains to be seen." They are likely to be an option for those who need lasting power - such as emergency workers or business people- rather than mobiles that make fashion statements. Mobile threat |
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| Radio tagging, which is gradually
replacing barcoding, will be increasingly common as businesses adopt the
technology to counter theft, cut waste and improve productivity. The small chips transmit radio signals and can be embedded in products, from trainers, food transport crates, to cars, to act as tracking devices. The combination of these technological developments will inevitably be accompanied by an element of trepidation, said Mr Tansley. "I suspect that anxiety will increase rather than decrease in the near future and some of that will be attached to nanotech - unfairly and fairly," he said. "From a technology point of view, I think we can be fairly confident that all kinds of innovations will continue to increase computing power, make things smaller, and capture information to be processed. "Mobiles, combined will tagging, combined with networks will provide much more information about where things are moving." This is good news for businesses looking to cut costs, but individuals may feel more threatened by the potential for these technologies to be used negatively. Deloitte's predictions are based on research with key analysts and industry leaders, and is meant to reflect the growing trends in technology. |
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SOME POTENTIAL USES OF NANOTECHNOLOGIES 1 - Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) for displays 2 - Photovoltaic film that converts light into electricity 3 - Scratch-proof coated windows that clean themselves with UV 4 - Fabrics coated to resist stains and control temperature 5 - Intelligent clothing measures pulse and respiration 6 - Bucky-tubeframe is light but very strong 7 - Hip-joint made from biocompatible materials 8 - Nano-particle paint to prevent corrosion 9 - Thermo-chromic glass to regulate light 10 - Magnetic layers for compact data memory 11 - Carbon nanotube fuel cells to power electronics and vehicles 12 - Nano-engineered cochlear implant |
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| NANOTUBES If the whole world could be made bigger so that a nanotube had the width of a human hair -- on that scale, each hair would have the girth of a large redwood tree Earth & Sky Monday, January 17, 2005 JB: This is Earth and Sky. In his lab at Cornell University in New York, Paul McEuen, Professor of Physics, is checking out the properties of nanotubes. DB: Nano means "billionth." A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. A nanotube is a single sheet of carbon atoms rolled into a cylinder. The longest nanotube so far measures about a centimeter -- about half an inch. But nanotubes are skinny -- just a few atoms in diameter. A one-centimeter nanotube is ten million times longer than it is wide. Paul McEuen: They're very thin, but they're also very stiff. So maybe think of a steel guitar string.... a guitar string has some rigidity, but it's pretty flexible. But it's not flexible because it's weak; it's flexible because it's really long and skinny so that it bends... JB: Nanotubes are stronger than steel and have electrical properties that rival the best semiconductors. Paul McEuen: We just want to play with them, and do curiosity-driven science what are these little things like, and what kinds of little widgets we can make with them . . . and I think it's important for people to understand that there's a discovery ad fundamental playing-around stage in which you don't want to hamper your instincts, your creativity, your desire to just sort of wander around in the scientific landscape -- and later comes a period where you start to say, okay, let's think about what this is good for. www.earthsky.org/shows/shows.php?t=20050117 |
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| Small Wonders Nanotechnology will give humans greater control of matter at tiny scales. That is a good thing, says Natasha Loder ATOMS are the fundamental building blocks of matter, which means they are very small indeed. The world at the scale of atoms and molecules is difficult to describe and hard to imagine. It is so odd that it even has its own special branch of physics, called quantum mechanics, to explain the strange things that happen there. If you were to throw a tennis ball against a brick wall, you might be surprised if the ball passed cleanly through the wall and sailed out on the other side. Yet this is the kind of thing that happens at the quantum scale. At very small scales, the properties of a material, such as colour, magnetism and the ability to conduct electricity, also change in unexpected ways. |
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It is not possible to see the atomic world in the normal sense of the word, because its features are smaller than the wavelength of visible light (see table 1). But back in 1981, researchers at IBM designed a probe called the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM), named after a quantum-mechanical effect it employs. Rather like the stylus on an old-fashioned record player, it could trace the bumps and grooves of the nanoscale world. This allowed scientists to see atoms and molecules for the first time. It revealed landscapes as beautiful and complex as the ridges, troughs and valleys of a Peruvian mountainside, but at the almost unimaginably small nanometre (nm) scale. A nanometre is a billionth of a metre, or roughly the length of ten hydrogen atoms. Although scientists had thought about tinkering with things this small as long ago as the late 1950s, they had to wait until the invention of the STM to make it possible. Nanotechnology is generally agreed to cover objects measuring from 1 to 100nm, though the definition is somewhat arbitrary. Some people include things as small as a tenth of a nanometre, which is about the size of the bond between two carbon atoms. At the other end of the range, in objects larger than 50nm the laws of classical physics become increasingly dominant. There are plenty of materials that simply happen to have features at the nanoscalesuch as stained glass, mayonnaise or cat litterbut do not qualify for the nanotechnology label. The point about nanotechnology is that it sets out deliberately to exploit the strange properties found in these very small worlds. At the nanoscale, explains George Smith, the amiable head of materials science at Oxford University, new, exciting and different properties can be found. If you were to start with a grain of sugar, he says, and chopped it up into ever smaller pieces and simply ended up with a tiny grain of sugar, that would be no big deal. But as an object gets smaller, the ratio between its surface area and its volume rises. This matters because the atoms on the surface of a material are generally more reactive than those at its centre. So icing sugar, for instance, dissolves more quickly in water than does the granulated form. And if silver is turned into very small particles, it has antimicrobial properties that are not present in the bulk material. One company exploits this phenomenon by making nanoparticles of the compound cerium oxide, which in that form are chemically reactive enough to serve as a catalyst. In this invisible world, tiny particles of gold melt at temperatures several hundred degrees lower than a large nugget, and copper, which is normally a good conductor of electricity, can become resistant in thin layers in the presence of a magnetic field. Electrons, like that imaginary tennis ball, can simply jump (or tunnel) from one place to another, and molecules can attract each other at moderate distances. This effect allows geckos to walk on the ceiling, using tiny hairs on the soles of their feet. But finding novel properties at the nanoscale is only the first step. The next is to make use of this knowledge. Most usefully, the ability to make stuff with atomic precision will allow scientists to produce materials with improved, or new, optical, magnetic, thermal or electrical properties. And even just understanding the atomic-scale defects in a material can suggest better ways of making it. Indeed, entirely new kinds of material are now being developed. For example, NanoSonic in Blacksburg, Virginia, has created metallic rubber, which flexes and stretches like rubber but conducts electricity like a solid metal. General Electric's research centre in Schenectady in New York state is trying to make flexible ceramics. If it succeeds, the material could be used for jet-engine parts, allowing them to run at higher, more efficient temperatures. And several companies are working on materials that could one day be made into solar cells in the form of paint. Because nanotechnology has such broad applications, many people think that it may turn out to be as important as electricity or plastic. As this survey will show, nanotechnology will indeed affect every industry through improvements to existing materials and products, as well as allowing the creation of entirely new materials. Moreover, work at the smallest of scales will produce important advances in areas such as electronics, energy and biomedicine. |
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From small beginnings Nanotechnology does not derive from a single scientific discipline. Although it probably has most in common with materials science, the properties of atoms and molecules underpin many areas of science, so the field attracts scientists of different disciplines. Worldwide, around 20,000 people are estimated to be working in nanotechnology, but the sector is hard to define. Small-scale work in electronics, optics and biotechnology may have been relabelled nanobiotechnology, nano-optics and nanoelectronics because nano-anything has become fashionable. The nano prefix is thought to derive from the Greek noun for dwarf. Oxford's Mr Smith jokingly offers an alternative explanation: that it comes from the verb which means to seek research funding. And research funding is certainly available by the bucketload. Lux Research, a nanotechnology consultancy based in New York, estimates that total spending on nanotechnology research and development by governments, companies and venture capitalists worldwide was more than $8.6 billion in 2004, with over half coming from governments. But Lux predicts that in future years companies are likely to spend more than governments. |
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For America, nanotechnology is the largest federally funded science initiative since the country decided to put a man on the moon. In 2004, the American government spent $1.6 billion on it, well over twice as much as it did on the Human Genome Project at its peak. In 2005, it is planning to shell out a further $982m. Japan is the next biggest spender, and other parts of Asia as well as Europe have also joined the funding race (see chart 2). Perhaps surprisingly, the contenders include many developing countries, such as India, China, South Africa and Brazil. In the six years up to 2003, nanotechnology investment reported by government organisations increased roughly sevenfold, according to figures from Mihail Roco, senior adviser for nanotechnology at America's National Science Foundation. This large amount of funding has raised expectations that may not be met. Some people worry that all the nanotechnology start-ups will help to inflate a bubble reminiscent of the internet one. But there are good reasons to think that the risk has been exaggerated. Private investors are being much more cautious than they were during the dotcom boom, and much of the money that is being spent by governments is going on basic science and on developing technologies that will not become available for years. However, a number of existing products have already been improved through nanotechnology, with more to come in the next few years. Bandages for burns have been made antimicrobial by the addition of nanoparticles of silver. Fabrics have been stain- and odour-proofed by attaching molecules to cotton fibres that create a protective barrier. Tennis rackets have been strengthened by adding tiny particles that improve torsion and flex resistance. Other applications include coatings for the hulls of boats, sunscreen, car parts and refrigerators. In the longer term nanotechnology may produce much bigger innovations, such as new kinds of computer memory, improved medical technology and better energy-production methods such as solar cells. The technology's most ardent proponents claim that it will lead to clean energy, zero-waste manufacturing and cheap space travel, if not immortality. Its opponents fear that it will bring universal surveillance and harm the poor, the environment and human healthand may even destroy the whole planet through self-replicating grey goo. This survey will argue that both sides overstate their case, but that on balance nanotechnology should be welcomed. |
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| Nanomechanical
memory demoed Nov 2004 A bit -- the basic unit of computer information -- can be made from anything that can be switched between two states, which represent 1 and 0. Computer chips use the presence and absence of electric current to represent 1 and 0; disk drives use positive and negative magnetic poles. The 19th- and early 20th-century precursors to today's computers used mechanical rather than electrical elements to store and process data. The rise of nanotechnology has led many researchers to revisit mechanical computing. Nanotechnology has yielded microscopic materials that range from microns, or thousandths of a millimeter -- around cell size -- to nanometers, or millionths of a millimeter -- the realm of molecules. "It turns out that... nanomechanical memory cells, due to their size and speed, could outperform their counterparts in magnetoelectric systems," said Pritiraj Mohanty, an assistant professor of physics at Boston University. Rest of article at: http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2004/111704/Nanomechanical_memory_demoed_111704.html |
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Here Comes Nanotechnology From: Merrill Lynch, Global Securities Research & Economics Group, on introducing the Merrill Lynch Nanotech Index, 1 April, 2004, to track this rapidly evolving industry We believe nanotechnology could be the next growth innovation, similar in importance to information technology over the past 50 years. Nanotech is the science of fabricating things smaller than 100 nanometers (a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter). Like the Internet, nanotech risks being overhyped. But unlike the Internet, there are intellectual property and patent barriers to entry but low barriers to adoption. Nanotech is real - the questions generally are when, not if. Nanotech is not a separate industry, but an approach applied to multiple disciplines (chemistry, biology, etc). We believe nanotechnology is the next logical step in
miniaturization. At 100 nanometers classical gives was to quantum physics.
Building at the nanoscale enables new interactions in materials,
semiconductors, and biological agents. The new scale allows manipulation on
the cellar level, which should enable new discoveries in pharmaceuticals,
biodefense, and healthcare. The National Science Foundation sees a potential
market totalling $1 trillion in the next 10-12 years. |
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| Nature's tiny helping hands
Karen F. Schmidt U.S. News & World Report 12-01-04 Angela Belcher has some tiny, talented assistants. Belcher, a materials scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wanted to fashion semiconductor materials into circuits less than a hundredth the size of devices on a standard microchip, and she had a wild idea. Why not draw on the engineering talents of viruses, the smallest living things? They proved to be able helpers. By now her team has developed harmless viruses that can handle 30 different materials. She'll soon report how the microbes can grow wires for some of the world's tiniest transistors. Belcher is one of a growing number of researchers aiming to build circuits and structures measured in nanometers, or one billionth of a meter--the length of 10 hydrogen atoms lined up in a row. Nanodevices could form the heart of superdense computer chips, more efficient solar cells, and perhaps even tiny factories. And biology can help construct them. After all, life's molecules are masters at building nanomachines, from the molecular motors in muscle to the tiny cellular power plants that extract energy from food. The idea is not to mimic what nature already does but to exploit biology's assembly skills to build new technologies. "We're doing things that are different and suit our own purposes; we just steal from biology," says Nadrian Seeman, who builds miniature scaffolds from DNA in his lab at New York University. Other nanotechnologists harness proteins and even whole organisms as templates and assemblers. "About 10,000 years ago, man began to domesticate plants and animals," says Susan Lindquist, director of MIT's Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. "Now it's time to domesticate molecules." That elegant idea is spawning a new research field with a cumbersome name--bionanotechnology--and growing support from government and industry. Last August, the U.S. Army announced a $50 million Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, bringing together biotech and engineering skills from leading universities and companies. And early last month, President Bush signed the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, which authorizes $3.7 billion over five years--a hefty chunk of which will go to bionanotechnology. Bottom up. The payoff won't come for years, but scientists already know they need a new approach to building tiny devices. Right now it takes giant machines in multibillion-dollar factories to carve chunks of material into microchips. This "top-down" approach is far too inefficient to be practical for making devices on a scale a hundred or a thousand times finer. So researchers are co-opting biology to design nanodevices that build themselves, from the bottom up. "One day we may be able to throw all the components into a vat, and they will assemble into a device," predicts Evelyn Hu, a materials scientist at the University of California-Santa Barbara. "Wouldn't that be great?" Lindquist is trying to do just that with the help of aberrant proteins called prions. Protein molecules normally fold up like origami into a shape that enables them to do their job; in prions, the folding somehow goes wrong. Prions are notorious as the cause of fatal brain ailments like mad cow disease, but Lindquist discovered that one kind of prion--from yeast--can do something potentially useful. She triggered a chain reaction in which the yeast prions spin themselves into long, durable fibers. Lindquist then genetically engineered these fibrous prions so they could bind to gold and silver nanoparticles. As she reported last spring, the result was prion fibers clad in precious metal--ultrafine conductive wires that could someday shuttle electrons around nano-size circuits. Those nanocircuits might draw data from superdense memory devices built with the help of other biomolecules. Andrew McMillan and his team at the NASA Ames Research Center in California started with "heat shock" proteins from microbes that live in hot springs. These unusual molecules assemble into cagelike structures called chaperonins, which help the microbes survive searing heat. In the lab, the team coaxed the proteins to form lattices, with a mesh spacing of just 20 nanometers. The researchers then altered the proteins so they could trap tiny magnetic particles in a dense, regular array--a potential basis for a computer memory 100 times as compact as today's hard disks, says McMillan. "If you could make each 10-nanometer particle represent a bit of data, you'd have the highest memory storage [currently] possible," he notes. Other aspiring nanoengineers work with DNA. DNA strands snap together like precision parts, with each strand seeking and linking to another strand containing a matching sequence of genetic code. Erez Braun and his team at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology recently exploited that property to build circuits out of carbon nanotubes--whiskers of carbon just 1 nanometer across. Nanotubes have extraordinary electrical properties that could make them the basis of future nanoelectronics. But manipulating and wiring up these tiny rods isn't easy. DNA offers a hand. Two months ago in Science, Braun and his team described how they used DNA, along with certain proteins, as "smart Velcro" to connect nanotubes to minuscule electrodes. The result was a set of nanotransistors--the basic components of a computer chip--that built themselves in a test tube. Groundwork. DNA can also build more elaborate structures. Researchers at Duke University, for example, devised self-assembling, square grids of DNA, which in turn can organize other DNA-linked molecules and devices. The group now envisions arranging proteins, magnetic particles, tiny motors, sorters, and sensors into the DNA-based structures. These miniature mechanisms could one day serve as new kinds of solar cells or even nanofactories churning out complex chemical products, says Thomas LaBean. "There are lots of technical problems to work through, but we know enough now that we can have that kind of vision." Of all the approaches to exploiting nature's molecules, Belcher's most resembles true domestication. Her viruses, called bacteriophages, are little more than DNA with a protein coat, but they do reproduce. She lets them multiply by the billions. Then, like a farmer breeding sheep for the best wool, she selects viruses bearing proteins that can bind to certain materials. Many cycles of breeding and selection produce viruses that not only bind to a semiconductor but trigger it to crystallize all over their coat, forming tubular wires. Now her group is further altering the microbes to have a tip and a tail that stick to gold. The resulting viruses can hook themselves to gold electrodes, then create semiconductor wires that complete the circuit, forming transistors. The team soon expects to make a prototype, and then it's only a matter of time before the virus-built transistors end up in a real device, says Belcher. Biology could help make tomorrow's devices greener as well as smaller. With viruses, "we're looking at new synthetic routes that are more environmentally friendly because they occur at lower temperatures and in solvents that are nontoxic," Belcher notes. And the nanofactories the Duke group envisions might use energy and materials more efficiently than current industrial processes. If so, domesticating biological molecules may, in the end, allow researchers to give something back to Mother Nature. Copyright 2004 U.S. News & World Report, L.P. |
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| The Smaller the Better The limitless promise of nanotechnology -- and the growing peril of a moratorium Originally from: www.reason.com/0312/fe.rb.the.shtml December 2003 Ronald Bailey "The best way I can describe it is if you close your eyes and dream. You could never be hungry, never be sick, have all the energy you need, all the water, all the food and no diseases. There is no aspect in the world economy or your personal life that is not assumed to be transformed by this new technology." The amazing development that is supposed to usher in this utopia is nanotechnology, the manipulation of matter at the molecular and atomic level. But the man who made these wild-eyed, pie-in-the-sky claims was not nanotech prophet Eric Drexler, author of The Engines of Creation, the 1986 book that popularized the concept, and founder of the Foresight Institute, dedicated to working out its implications. Nor was it Neal Stephenson, the visionary science fiction writer who imagined a future transformed by nanotechnology in his 1995 novel The Diamond Age. And it wasnt Richard Smalley, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry, director of the Rice University Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, and co-discoverer of the novel carbon molecules called nanotubes and fullerenes, whose strength and electronic properties are at the heart of future nanotech applications. No, the speaker expounding on the wonders of nanotechnology was Roy Pat Mooney, a longtime anti-globalization activist who directs the Action Group on Erosion, Technology, and Concentration (ETC Group). His nanotech vision was part of a talk he gave at a November 2002 conference in the Philippines. The funny thing is that Mooney and his allies want to impose an immediate, comprehensive global moratorium on the development of nanotechnology. Thats right: Mooney wants, at a minimum, to delay the arrival of technologies he himself believes could banish hunger, disease, and material want forever. The ETC Group, which issued its call for a moratorium in a January 2003 report, wants to stop nanotech until "civil society" has a chance to catch up. "In the future," its report declares, "molecular manufacturing poses enormous environmental and social risks and must not proceed -- even in the laboratory -- in the absence of broad societal understanding and assessment." The ETC Group "proposes that governments declare an immediate moratorium on commercial production of new nanomaterials and launch a transparent global process for evaluating the socioeconomic, health and environmental implications of technology." Since "emerging technologies require scientific, socioeconomic, and societal evaluation in order for governments to make informed decisions about their risks/benefits and ultimate value," the group advocates an International Convention for the Evaluation of New Technologies. ETC is not alone in demanding a nanotech moratorium. In an editorial in the September 2003 issue of smalltimes magazine, Greenpeace UKs chief scientist Douglas Parr writes: "Greenpeace has not called for a ban on nanoparticles, but a moratorium until the hazards are characterized and understood." Mooney and his fellow activists cannot be lightly dismissed. They have been leaders in the largely successful global campaign against plant biotechnology. And Mooney already has the support of major organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation. The prestigious Dag Hammarskjld Foundation helped organize and pay for a conference on nanotech last year at its headquarters in Uppsala, Sweden. The ETC Group and like-minded activists are backed by a coalition of foundations known as the Funders Working Group on the New Technologies, based in San Francisco. "They have more money to organize against nanotech than we have to promote it," complains Mark Modzelewski, executive director of the NanoBusiness Alliance, an industry group. The advocates of a nanotech moratorium are apt to find a sympathetic audience among the "nanoethicists" who are emerging as a result of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NNI, launched in 2000, has grown to be a $774 million federal program, of which about $28 million has been allocated to study the social implications of nanotechnology. Writing in the February 2003 issue of the journal Nanotechnology, bioethicists from the Joint Center for Bioethics at the University of Toronto note that as nanotech expenditures have increased, so have calls for regulation. "These two trends seem to be on a collision course towards a showdown of the type that we saw with GM [genetically modified] crops," they write. "As the science of NT [nanotechnology] leaps ahead, the ethics lags behind....The ethical issues fall into the areas of equity, privacy, security, environment and metaphysical questions concerning human-machine interactions." The article concludes: "The call by ETC for a moratorium on deployment of nanomaterials should be a wake up call for NT. The only way to avoid such a moratorium is to immediately close the gap between the science and ethics of NT. The lessons of genomics and biotechnology make this feasible. Either the ethics of NT will catch up, or the science will slow down." Nanotechnology excites both extravagant hopes and deep fears, sometimes in the same people. While there are grounds for caution, the tremendous promise of nanotechnology will never be realized if we allow fear to rule us and give in to those who insist upon zero risk as a condition of progress. The manageable hazards associated with nanotechnology are small compared to the danger posed by the burgeoning movement to stop its development until all objections have been satisfied. Nanotech Wow! In congressional testimony on May 12, 1999, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Richard Smalley argued that "the impact of nanotechnology on health, wealth, and the standard of living for people will be at least the equivalent of the combined influences of microelectronics, medical imaging, computer-aided engineering, and man-made polymers in this century." And nanotechnology is coming on fast. "For the first time in history, a technical revolution will approach the abruptness of a political event," writes technology analyst William Atkinson in his 2003 book Nanocosm: Nanotechnology and the Big Changes Coming From the Inconceivably Small. "No one in any age has heard, seen, or felt anything like it. But you will." He adds, "A.D. 2003 will seem antediluvian not in fifty years but in fifteen." At a recent nanotechnology conference in Washington, D.C., Commerce Undersecretary Philip Bond predicted: "Nanotech will produce materials 100 times stronger than steel with a fraction of the weight. The Library of Congress can be stored in a memory module the size of a sugar cube. Nanotechnology will enable clean, pollution-free manufacturing; do something about global warming; provide a sensurround education; [make] information technology...a utility accessible everywhere; [produce] more-efficient renewable energy; and [offer] bioengineered tissues to replace damaged ones. These predictions are not just pie in the sky....Almost every frustration we deal with in this Vale of Tears will be touched by this technology." As these predictions suggest, nanotech is not one thing; it is more a conceptual breakthrough than a specific technology. Nanotechnology arises from the insight that it is possible to manufacture objects by placing individual atoms and molecules in precise locations. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. Ten hydrogen atoms lined up would fit within a nanometer. Our DNA molecules are 2.5 nanometers wide. A typical bacterium, say E. coli, is a thousand times bigger, measuring between 1,000 and 2,000 nanometers, while a virus like the ones that cause the common cold measures around 20 nanometers. The width of the dot above this letter i is approximately 1 million nanometers. From the point of view of the nanocosm, the tiny etchings on our densest microchips are vast highways. Nanotechnology cuts across every business and industry, from information processing, telecommunications, and computers to industrial materials and pharmaceuticals. Every industry can benefit from smaller, more efficient products. At an April conference sponsored by the National Nanotechnology Initiative, Mihail Roco, the nanotech guru at the National Science Foundation, noted, "Developments in nanotechnology are going much faster than expected; in fact, development time is less than half that we expected." Roco also flatly declared, "If a company does not enter nanotechnology now -- in five years it will be too late -- it will be out of business." The NanoBusiness Alliances Modzelewski estimates there are already 1,200 nanotechnology startups in the United States alone, and he predicts that number will double in the next 18 months. Roco, who chairs the National Science and Technology Councils Subcommittee on Nanoscale Science, Engineering, and Technology, points out that 75 percent of the 7,000 or so nanotechnology patents are held by Americans. The budget for the National Nanotechnology Initiative has grown from $270 million in 2000 to $774 million in 2003 and is expected to rise to $850 million next year. According to Roco, private nanotech R&D funding is at least three times the governments spending. The National Science Foundation projects that global markets for nanotech products will exceed $1 trillion annually sometime between 2010 and 2015. This will include markets for novel nanoscale materials ($340 billion), new nanotech-enabled pharmaceuticals ($180 billion), and new electronics ($300 billion). Getting Small Nanotechnology is not just a gleam in some inventors eye; nanotech products already exist. Right now most commercial nanotech applications involve nanocoatings and catalysts. Window manufacturers Pilkington and PPG Industries, for example, offer self-cleaning windows coated with nanoparticles that catalyze dirt and cause rainwater to sheet down and wash away the grime rather than bead up. The same technique is being developed for self-sanitizing tiles in restaurants and hospitals. Lee Jeans and Eddie Bauer offer spill-resistant pants using "nanowhisker" fabric technology developed by NanoTex. NanoTex fabrics feature billions of 10-nanometer-long nanowhiskers that repel moisture and stains. Popular sunscreens use nanoparticles of zinc oxide to block damaging ultraviolet rays. Pharmaceutical companies are devising nanosized systems that deliver precise doses of drugs to specific tissues. Such systems will greatly reduce side effects while boosting therapeutic benefits. Nanotech also will have a profound effect on electronics. Kodak and DuPont are producing organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), made of carbon-based polymers rather than semiconductors. Display screens made of OLEDs, unlike LCDs, emit their own light; theyre brighter, thinner, lighter, faster, and more energy efficient than LCDs, and they can be viewed from any angle without losing their brightness or contrast. Kodak offers an OLED screen in one of its high-end digital cameras. Such displays are ideal for computers, PDAs, and cell phones, or whatever combination of these comes to dominate the market for personal electronics. DisplaySearch, a market research firm that focuses on flat panel displays, projects that the market for OLED displays will rise from $85 million in 2002 to more than $3 billion in 2007. Similar technology is being used to create highly energy-efficient lighting that could cut U.S. energy consumption by 10 percent and save $100 billion annually. Within a decade, analysts foresee various nanotechnologies enabling things like complete medical diagnostic laboratories on one-inch computer chips; ubiquitous computers, some built into clothing; powerful, long-lasting batteries; efficient solar cells; new drugs and drug delivery systems; cheap visual displays; medical monitoring systems embedded in peoples bodies ready to sound an alert when a disease organism strikes or a cancer cell develops; and cheaper space travel. And such products will be created using less energy and producing less waste than conventional manufacturing. Further in the future, visionaries like Eric Drexler foresee the advent of molecular manufacturing based on self-replicating nanoassemblers capable of making any item you might desire. The main ingredients would be dirt and air. Shovel in some dirt, and out would pop a computer, a car, a pair of khakis, or a cabbage, depending on the recipe you specified. Nanomedical applications would include nanobots smaller than seven-nanometer-wide red blood cells that would cruise peoples bodies on search and destroy missions, looking for pathogens and cancer cells. The National Science Foundations Roco predicts that nanotechnological developments could someday extend human life spans by 20 to 30 years. Nanobiomedical visionary Robert Freitas has proposed a scheme for replacing the entire circulatory system with sapphire "vasculoids" that use nanomachines to ferry oxygen, nutrients, and anti-pathogenic elements around the body. He expects such a system to be available in less than 50 years. Nanotechnology would so boost computing capacities that it might be possible to upload your personality into an almost indestructible inorganic substrate, thereby achieving a kind of immortality. "We will make progress equivalent to that of the whole 20th century in the next 15 years," declared information technology entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil, author of The Age of Spiritual Machines, at a 2002 Foresight Institute conference. "Progress in the 21st century will be equivalent to 20,000 years of progress at todays rate." Of course, humanity will achieve that sort of progress only if were allowed to. Nanotech Yuck! If the dazzling visions of nanotechnologys benefits are the "wow" phase, the gathering backlash against nanotechnology might be described as the beginning of a "yuck" phase. That reaction is based on an exaggeration of the risks posed by nanotechnology, coupled with a fundamental misunderstanding of how innovation leads to progress. The ETC Group sees three nanotechnological risks that require regulation. First, it believes nanomaterials could threaten human health and the natural environment. Second, it worries about the danger of uncontrollable self-replication by nanotech automatons. Finally, it fears the consequences of dramatic socioeconomic change. The ETC Group commissioned a review of the scientific literature on the toxicology of "ultrafine" particles from British toxicologist Vyvyan Howard. (One can be forgiven for suspecting that it selected Howard because he is a vigorous campaigner against crop biotechnology.) After surveying 27 scientific studies that looked at the health effects of ultrafine particles, many of which focused on particulate air pollution, Howard concluded that various relatively harmless substances may become toxic when transformed into nanoparticles because of "the increased reactivity associated with very small size." After all, one of the qualities that researchers prize in nanoparticles is their increased reactivity. Based on this conclusion, the ETC Group wants to shut down all research on nanomaterials, at least until laboratories design "best practices" for handling them. It also wants a five-year moratorium on the commercialization of any nanomaterial products. The effects of loose nanoparticles do need to be (and are being) studied. But contrary to the ETC Groups implication, heedless scientists and greedy corporations are not about to flood our bodies and the world with dangerously toxic nanoparticles. Its important to recognize that people already breathe in lots of nanoparticles. Humanity began manufacturing them as soon as we tamed fire. And as Ken Lyon, director of business development at Altair Nanomaterials, notes, "Nature made nanomaterials a long time before mankind started making them on purpose. There are lots of natural sources of nanomaterials -- salt particles from ocean storms, for example. They are all around us. Enzymes and viruses are all in the nanosphere." Gunter Oberdorster, a professor of environmental medicine at Cornell University, has noted that "ultrafine particles [smaller than 20 nanometers] have the highest number concentration but the lowest mass concentration, a major anthropogenic ETC source being emissions of internal combustion engines," especially diesel engines. Matter Engineering, a Swiss firm specializing in the measurement of ambient nanoparticles, notes that each cubic centimeter of urban air already contains about 10,000 nanoparticles. Natural sources of nanoparticles include volcanic activity, forest fires, and sea spray. Of course, breathing particulates is not good for your lungs; studies show that air pollution increases the risk of lung and cardiovascular diseases. But theres little reason to believe that manufactured nanoparticles raise special concerns in this connection. Keep in mind that most manufactured nanoparticles are not going to be running around loose. Altairs Ken Lyon notes, "Nanomaterials are usually incorporated into something else -- ceramic coatings, glass, plastics. By the time its in a coating, it no longer exists as a nanomaterial." Altair makes titanium dioxide nanoparticles that are incorporated into products such as self-cleaning glass and UV-blocking sunscreens. Titanium dioxide is considered to be so nontoxic that it is approved for use in food, generally up to 1 percent of the products final weight. A 1998 Environmental Protection Agency risk assessment concluded, "Based on its low toxicity, there is reasonable certainty that no harm will result from aggregate exposure to the U.S. population, including infants and children, to residues of titanium dioxide." Lyon notes, "We know what happens to people who ingest titanium dioxide: Their poop turns white." Pat Collins of Hyperion Catalysis International, which makes multiwall carbon nanotubes for use in products such as automobile plastic composites, points out: "We compound our carbon nanotubes into plastics. You can sand, grind, slice, and dice, and the nanotubes wont get liberated. Weve looked for free nanotubes and have never found them. The plastic particles in which the nanotubes are incorporated are much bigger than the nanotubes themselves." Asked about the ETC Groups proposed moratorium, Collins says: "I dont want to get into a public pissing match, but I dont think its a valid concern. What theyre talking about is all very hypothetical risks. Theres no risk using nanotubes in plastics." Lyon also rejects the call for a moratorium but agrees that "the industry has an obligation to be cautious as we develop new products." He says "adequate steps are being taken to make sure that people exposed to the stuff are safe." We dont have to just take the nanotech industrys word for it. The National Science Foundation established a Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN) at Rice University; its mission is to evaluate the health and environmental effects of new nanomaterials. Kevin Ausman, CBENs executive director, says the ETC Groups concerns are "based largely on speculation and hypotheses." About the proposed moratorium, Ausman says: "I dont think a ban is reasonable. Its such a broad class of materials; if we have to wait until everything is proved absolutely safe, were never going to develop nanomaterials. What you need is a parallel development of the application of nanomaterials and impact assessment at the same time." In other words, proceed with caution. Paul Burrows, manager of the Nanoscience Initiative at the federal governments Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, says of nanomaterials: "I wouldnt eat them. We should treat nanoparticles like we would any other chemical." Burrows notes that our current technologies contain a lot of materials that would be hazardous if they didnt stay put. "Your cell phones contain chips with gallium arsenide in them," he says. "Arsenic isnt good for you." Ausman notes that most particulate inhalation problems, such as black lung or silicosis, "result from exposures over a long time and at high levels; occasional exposures for short periods would not be dangerous." He expects the same would be true for nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes. Ausman also thinks the laboratory "best practices" regime envisioned by the ETC Group is unnecessary. "The standard precautions in labs and manufacturing are sufficient to protect people in labs and factories," he says. "They are part of a research community used to handling hazardous materials." The ETC Group is fond of quoting CBEN Director Vicki Colvins estimate that only $500,000 has been spent so far on evaluating the health and environmental risks of nanotechnology. An irritated Mihail Roco dismisses Colvins claim as the grandstanding of "a younger researcher who is trying to raise money for her center." Colvins center is spending $500,000 on environmental research, Roco says, but the National Nanotechnology Initiative is spending about $50 million researching the environmental and social issues raised by nanotechnology. In any case, he says, "It would be unwise to spend 50 percent of nanotech research money thinking about the societal and environmental issues of products that will not ultimately be developed." Or as Ausman puts it, "I am not worried that in the near term nanomaterials are going to cause any serious problems," and "theres a lot of lead time before theres a lot of stuff out there." Gray Goo The second nanotechnology risk that worries ETC Group activists is runaway self-replication. Mooney points to a scenario suggested by Eric Drexler himself in The Engines of Creation: Self-replicating nanobots get out of control and spread exponentially across the landscape, destroying everything in their path by converting it into copies of themselves. In this scenario, the biosphere is transformed by rampaging nanobots into "gray goo." But according to Nobelist Richard Smalley, "Self-replicating nanorobots like those envisioned by Eric Drexler are simply impossible to make." Mihail Roco likewise dismisses such nanobots as "sci fi," insisting there is "common agreement among scientists that they cannot exist." Drexler replies, reasonably enough, that we know nanoassembly is possible because thats what living things do. Cells, using little machines such as ribosomes, mitochondria, and enzymes, precisely position molecules, store and access assembly instructions, and produce energy. Some have quipped that biology is nanotechnology that works. As that analogy suggests, there is a close affinity between nanotechnology and biotechnology. "The separation between nanotechnology and biotechnology is almost nonexistent," said Minoo Dastoor, a senior adviser in the National Aeronautics and Space Administrations Office of Aerospace Technology, at the National Nanotechnology Initiatives conference in April. For future missions, NASA needs machines that are resilient, evolvable, self-sufficient, ultra-efficient, and autonomous. "Biology seems to be able to do all these things very elegantly and efficiently," noted Dastoor. "The wet world of biology and the dry world of nanotechnology will have to live side by side and merge." The fact is that no one has yet definitively shown that Drexlers vision of molecular manufacturing using nanoassemblers is impossible. So lets suppose Smalley and Roco are wrong, and such nanobots are possible. How dangerous would self-replicating nanobots be? One of the ironies of the debate over regulation of nanotechnology is that it was nanotech boosters like Drexler who first worried about such risks. To address potential dangers such as the uncontrolled self-replication envisioned in his gray goo scenario, Drexler and others founded the Foresight Institute in 1989. Over the years, Foresight devised a set of guidelines aimed at preventing mishaps like a gray goo breakout. Among other things, the Foresight guidelines propose that nanotech replicators "must not be capable of replication in a natural, uncontrolled environment." This could be accomplished, the guidelines suggest, by designing devices so that they have an "absolute dependence on a single artificial fuel source or artificial vitamins that dont exist in any natural environment." So if some replicators should get away, they would simply run down when they ran out of fuel. Another proposal is that self-replicating nanotech devices be "dependent on broadcast transmissions for replication or in some cases operation." That would put human operators in complete control of the circumstances under which nanotech devices could replicate. One other sensible proposal is that devices be programmed with termination dates. Like senescent cells in the human body, such devices would stop working and self-destruct when their time was up. "The moratorium is not a new proposal," says Foresight Institute President Christine Peterson. "Eric Drexler considered that idea a long time ago in The Engines of Creation and dismissed it as not a safe option. With a moratorium, we, the good guys, are going to be sitting on our hands. Its very risky to let the bad guys be the ones developing the technology. To do arms control on nanotechnology, youd better have better nanotechnology than the bad guys." Software entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil is confident that nanotech defenses against uncontrolled replication will be stronger than the abilities to replicate. Citing our current ability to reduce computer viruses to nuisances, Kurzweil argues that we will be even more vigilant against a technology that could kill if uncontrolled. Smalley suggests we can learn how to control nanotech by looking at biology. The natural world is filled with self-replicating systems. In a sense, living things are "green goo." We already successfully defend ourselves against all kinds of self-replicating organisms that try to kill us, such as cholera, malaria, and typhoid. "What do we do about biological systems right now?" says Smalley. "I dont see that its any different from biotechnology. We can make bacteria and viruses that have never existed before, and well handle [nanobots] the same way." Nanotech theorist Robert Freitas has written a study, "Some Limits to Global Ecophagy by Biovorous Nano-replicators With Public Policy Recommendations," which concludes that all "scenarios examined appear to permit early detection by vigilant monitoring, thus enabling rapid deployment of effective defensive instrumentalities." Frei-tas persuasively argues that dangerous self-replicating nanobots could not emerge from laboratory accidents but would have to be made on purpose using very sophisticated technologies that would take years to develop. Magic Monopolies Nanofactories would be magic boxes that could produce whatever a person desired. A world of nanotech abundance would be highly disruptive: If material needs could be satisfied at the touch of a button, who would have to work? Who would own the nanofactories? How would people pay for items produced by nanotechnology? If nanotech works, big changes are in store. Not surprisingly, the ETC Groups worries in this connection are chiefly egalitarian, specifically that nanotechnology will increase the power of corporations and governments while further immiserating the poor. Yet the new technologies that have been developed during the last two centuries -- antibiotics, electricity, telephony -- have greatly benefited billions, and the main economic problem in the world is that billions are still too poor to gain access to them. Furthermore, new technologies tend to be safer than the ones they replace. Lets consider a couple of dystopic nanotech visions outlined by University of Saskatchewan sociologist Michael Mehta, an ETC Group sympathizer: "nanopanopticism" and "nanomercantilism." The philosopher Jeremy Bentham imagined an architecture for a prison he called the Panopticon. In Benthams prison all the cells are open to surveillance by a single guard hidden in a tower at the center. The idea is that prisoners would behave themselves because they could never be sure they were not being watched. It doesnt take much imagination to see how nanotechnology could shrink video cameras and microphones while vastly expanding the ability to record and store information. In fact, this trend seems unavoidable in the long run. Such technology solely in the hands of governments and corporations would be oppressive. Mehta, of course, recommends the creation of new regulatory agencies to control nanotechnology and the enactment of new privacy laws to protect against the advent of nanopanopticism. In his 1998 book The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?, science fiction writer and futurist David Brin suggests another way to handle intrusive surveillance: make sure the watchers are watched. Brin persuasively argues that if spies know they are likely to be observed, they will be more restrained. Along with invisible spy devices, nanotechnology will give us tiny sensors that tell people when theyre under surveillance. Such spy countermeasures also might inhibit or destroy surveillance devices that approach too closely. There is an added benefit for those who worry that someone might abuse nanotechnology. In a truly transparent society, would-be terrorists who try to build dangerous replicators would always know someone could be monitoring them. In other words, nanopanopticism would deter misbehavior rather than encourage it. Mehtas other concern is nanomercantilism. He suggests that once a country developed the capability for molecular manufacturing using nanoassemblers, it would lose its incentive to trade. There would be no need to trade raw materials because the feedstocks for nanofactories would be derived from ubiquitous substances such as dirt and air. In another scenario, Mehta suggests that a nation with nanofactories would become so powerful that it could reduce the rest of the world to the status of colonies. Perhaps the countries or companies that develop assembler technology would build assemblers in other countries and sell licenses to manufacture various objects. Such a world would be a true information economy, with trade consisting chiefly of blueprints for products. Or countries might not want to give assemblers to other countries, in which case assembler products might be modeled on software that works only when a license fee is paid. If the licenses were not renewed, the products would stop working or fall apart. Like the ETC Group, Mehta evidently believes the creators of assembler technology will want to manufacture artificial scarcities to keep or expand their power or to maintain certain social institutions. Perhaps so. But once it is known that building assemblers is possible, other countries and companies no doubt will embark on crash programs to create their own nanofactories. Assuming that nanofactories really can provide people with anything they need and want, why would anyone care to block access to them by others? To the extent that competition and status seeking are inherent in human nature, those drives in a world of nanotech abundance will have to be satisfied in new ways. Dangerous Caution To address the social and economic effects of nanotechnology, the ETC Group is proposing a sweeping international effort to regulate and control its development. "Extreme care should be taken that, unlike with biotech, society does not lose control of this technology," warns Mooney. For the ETC Group, raising health and environmental concerns about nanomaterials and nanobots is mainly a delaying tactic. "The biggest concern really is that with a technology as powerful as this one, society has a role in deciding how it can and will be used," says Mooney. "This is going to have a profound effect on peoples lives. Let people know that their jobs are going to be taken away." In an April report on nanotechnology, the ETC Group declares: "The international community must begin work on a legally binding mechanism to govern atomtechnology, based on the Precautionary Principle, one that will look beyond laboratory research to consider the wider health, socioeconomic and environmental implications of nanoscale technologies....This protocol should be embedded in one or more of the relevant United Nations agencies....Ultimately, ETC Group believes that the international regulations for atomtechnology should be incorporated under a new International Convention for the Evaluation of New Technologies (ICENT)." The framework for ICENTs evaluation of new technologies would be the Precautionary Principle. As the ETC Group explains, "The Precautionary Principle says that governments have a responsibility to take preventive action to avoid harm to human health or the environment, even before scientific certainty of the harm has been established. Under the Precautionary Principle it is the proponent of a new technology, rather than the public, that bears the burden of proof." Greenpeaces Douglas Parr also advocates using the Precautionary Principle to regulate the development of nanotechnology. The Precautionary Principle can be summarized as "never do anything for the first time." (See "Precautionary Tale," April 1999.) The chief problem with the Precautionary Principle is that it encourages the natural conservatism of our species. People far more easily imagine the harms new developments might bring than the benefits. But history clearly demonstrates that the benefits of modern technology have far outweighed the harms. "Basically, people who support the strong Precautionary Principle say, We dont care if we throw the baby out with the bathwater," says the Foresight Institutes Peterson. "They dont want any risks, so they are willing to forgo the benefits." The ETC Group also wants nanotechnology regulation to be "transparent, democratic and involve those who are potentially adversely affected by new technologies." That last proviso might have given whale oil entrepreneurs the power to veto electric lighting or allowed mimeograph machine manufacturers to nix photocopiers. When asked about how Michael Faraday, the inventor of the electric motor, might have fared under an ICENT evaluation, Mooney doesnt blink. It would "have been great if we had had a societal discussion about the impact of electricity," he says. "Someone might have said, This is going to be hell on horses." An effective ICENT would have an effect opposite from the one the ETC Group imagines. By forbidding the spread of a technology that could end hunger, homelessness, and pollution, ICENT would in effect force poor people to remain in their traditional menial jobs while preserving corporate profits. Mehta agrees with the ETC Group. He points to the automobile as a transformative and disruptive technology. "In the late 1800s, 85 to 90 percent of vehicles were electric," he says. "If we had had a regulatory authority that could have made the decision to go with electric instead of internal combustion engines and the power to enforce it, we would be in a different world and would have avoided a lot of later problems like urban sprawl....In 1900 people didnt have a sensitivity to social issues or a well-developed social science. We cant risk the same thing with nanotechnology, which could accelerate social injustice." Its not clear on what basis such an authority would have opted for electric cars over internal combustion engines. Electric cars were and are more expensive than cars fueled by gasoline. If only electric cars had been permitted, we might be living in a world where people were much poorer, more crowded, and suffering from heavy metal poisoning from lead/acid batteries. Ironically, it may well be nanotechnology that finally ushers in the age of affordable electric automobiles by making possible more-efficient batteries or better fuel cells. ICENT Assent The ETC Groups ICENT proposal is starting to be taken seriously. Committees of both the European Parliament and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization have called for the adoption of an ICENT. "ICENT would have the power to conduct analyses of the economic impacts, the effects on labor, on restructuring society," says Mooney. "ICENT would examine all scientific, economic and social issues of any new technology." Mooney argues that ICENT would improve our ability to forecast the effects of new technologies. The track record for social, economic, and technological forecasting by experts is not very encouraging. Consider the notorious 1972 Club of Rome study The Limits to Growth and President Carters Global 2000 report, both of which predicted that humanity would run out of a wide variety of natural resources by now. Or take Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlichs prediction that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in massive famines in the 1970s. Such forecasts are not harmless. The predictions in the 1970s that the world would soon run out of oil, for instance, resulted in the creation of the expensive and polluting Synfuels program. Corporations arent any better at forecasting than government agencies. In 1876 a Western Union internal memo concluded, "This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." In 1943 IBM CEO Thomas Watson famously predicted there would be a global demand for perhaps five computers. Over the short term, nanotechnology will seem less odd than the telephone or the computer did. It will simply be incorporated into products that we already know how to use: computers, cameras, clothing, cars. It will make them function better and more cheaply. By contrast, a full-fledged nanotechnology, especially if molecular assemblers can be built, will disrupt all kinds of social and economic processes. Yet there is no reason to believe that humanity will be unable to cope with what is coming. As for unintended consequences, someday something will go wrong with nanotechnology, as it has with electricity, cars, and computers. But we shouldnt deny ourselves the benefits of a new technology just because we cannot foresee every consequence. We should proceed by trial and error and ameliorate problems as they arise. Thats how the dramatic progress humanity has seen during the last two centuries was accomplished. If an ICENT had existed in the 19th century, we probably would still be riding horses, using candles for lighting, cooking on wood stoves, and gulping whiskey for anesthesia. Mooney comes close to celebrating the emancipating possibilities offered by the new technologies he fears. Yet he seems almost wistful for a time when he and many others believed ecological and economic collapse was imminent. "We have lived so long by the assumptions of The Limits to Growth, it is hard to contemplate alternative possibilities," he writes. "If nanotech does work, we might console ourselves with the knowledge that we were not really wrong all this time, it is just that The Limits to Growth have been postponed a few billion years....If nanotechnology is commercialized successfully, Armageddon may have to be put on the back burner." Armageddon may indeed be postponed indefinitely, but only if, with due caution, we leave human genius free to harvest the fruits of technological progress. Ronald Bailey is Reasons science correspondent and the editor of Global Warming and Other Eco Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death (Prima). |
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| Exploring the 'Singularity' by James John Bell The point in time when current trends may go wildly off the charts--known as the "Singularity"--is now getting serious attention. What it suggests is that technological change will soon become so rapid that we cannot possibly envision its results. Originally published in The Futurist June 1, 2003. Published on KurzweilAI.net June 6, 2003. Technological change isn't just happening fast. It's happening at an exponential rate. Contrary to the commonsense, intuitive, linear view, we won't just experience 100 years of progress in the twenty-first century-it will be more like 20,000 years of progress. The near-future results of exponential technological growth will be staggering: the merging of biological and nonbiological entities in biorobotics, plants and animals engineered to grow pharmaceutical drugs, software-based "life," smart robots, and atom-sized machines that self-replicate like living matter. Some individuals are even warning that we could lose control of this expanding techno-cornucopia and cause the total extinction of life as we know it. Others are researching how this permanent technological overdrive will affect us. They're trying to understand what this new world of ours will look like and how accelerating technology already impacts us. A number of scientists believe machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence within a few decades, leading to what's come to be called the Singularity. Author and inventor Ray Kurzweil defines this phenomenon as "technological change so rapid and profound it could create a rupture in the very fabric of human history." Singularity is technically a mathematical term, perhaps best described as akin to what happens on world maps in a standard atlas. Everything appears correct until we look at regions very close to the poles. In the standard Mercator projection, the poles appear not as points but as a straight line. Each line is a singularity: Everywhere along the top line contains the exact point of the North Pole, and the bottom line is the entire South Pole. The singularity on the edge of the map is nothing compared to the singularity at the center of a black hole. Here one finds the astrophysicist's singularity, a rift in the continuum of space and time where Einstein's rules no longer function. The approaching technological Singularity, like the singularities of black holes, marks a point of departure from reality. Explorers once wrote "Beyond here be dragons" on the edges of old maps of the known world, and the image of life as we approach these edges of change are proving to be just as mysterious, dangerous, and controversial. There is no concise definition for the Singularity. Kurzweil and many transhumanists define it as "a future time when societal, scientific, and economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will happen from our present perspective." A range of dates is given for the advent of the Singularity. "I'd be surprised if it happened before 2004 or after 2030," writes author and computer science professor Vernor Vinge. A distinctive feature will be that machine intelligence will have exceeded and even merged with human intelligence. Another definition is used by extropians, who say it denotes "the singular time when technological development will be at its fastest." From an environmental perspective, the Singularity can be thought of as the point at which technology and nature become one. Whatever perspective one takes, at this juncture the world as we have known it will become extinct, and new definitions of life, nature, and human will take hold. Many leading technology industries have been aware of the possibility of a Singularity for some time. There are concerns that, if the public understood its ramifications, they might panic over accepting new and untested technologies that bring us closer to Singularity. For now, the debate about the consequences of the Singularity has stayed within the halls of business and technology; the kinks are being worked out, avoiding "doomsday" hysteria. At this time, it appears to matter little if the Singularity ever truly comes to pass. What Will Singularity Look Like? Kurzweil explains that central to the workings of the Singularity are a number of "laws," one of which is Moore's law. Intel cofounder Gordon E. Moore noted that the number of transistors that could fit on a single computer chip had doubled every year for six years from the beginnings of integrated circuits in 1959. Moore predicted that the trend would continue, and it has-although the doubling rate was later adjusted to an 18-month cycle. Today, the smallest transistors in chips span only thousands of atoms (hundreds of nanometers). Chipmakers build such components using a process in which they apply semiconducting, metallic, and insulating layers to a semiconductor wafer to create microscopic circuitry. They accomplish the procedure using light for imprinting patterns onto the wafer. In order to keep Moore's law moving right along, researchers today have built circuits out of transistors, wires, and other components as tiny as a few atoms across that can carry out simple computations. Kurzweil and Sun Microsystems' chief scientist Bill Joy agree that, circa 2030, the technology of the 1999 film The Matrix (which visualized a three-dimensional interface between humans and computers, calling conventional reality into question) will be within our grasp and that humanity will be teetering on the edge of the Singularity. (See their essays in Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in The Matrix, edited by Glenn Yeffeth, 2003.) Kurzweil explains that this will become possible because Moore's law will be replaced by another computing paradigm over the next few decades. "Moore's law was not the first but the fifth paradigm to provide exponential growth of computing power," Kurzweil says. The first paradigm of computer technology was the data processing machinery used in the 1890 American census. This electromechanical computing technology was followed by the paradigms of relay-based technology, vacuum tubes, transistors, and eventually integrated circuits. "Every time a paradigm ran out of steam," states Kurzweil, "another paradigm came along and picked up where that paradigm left off." The sixth paradigm, the one that will enable technology la The Matrix, will be here in 20 to 30 years. "It's obvious what the sixth paradigm will be-computing in three dimensions," says Kurzweil. "We will effectively merge with our technology." Stewart Brand in his book The Clock of the Long Now discusses the Singularity and another related law, Monsanto's law, which states that the ability to identify and use genetic information doubles every 12 to 24 months. This exponential growth in biological knowledge is transforming agriculture, nutrition, and health care in the emerging life-sciences industry. A field of research building on the exponential growth rate of biotechnology is nanotechnology-the science of building machines out of atoms. A nanometer is atomic in scale, a distance that's 0.001% of the width of human hair. One goal of this science is to change the atomic fabric of matter-to engineer machinelike atomic structures that reproduce like living matter. In this respect, it is similar to biotechnology, except that nanotechnology needs to literally create something like an inorganic version of DNA to drive the building of its tiny machines. "We're working out the rules of biology in a realm where nature hasn't had the opportunity to work," states University of Texas biochemistry professor Angela Belcher. "What would take millions of years to evolve on its own takes about three weeks on the bench top." Machine progress is knocking down the barriers between all the sciences. Chemists, biologists, engineers, and physicists are now finding themselves collaborating on more and more experimental research. This collaboration is best illustrated by the opening of Cornell University's Nanobiotechnology Center and other such facilities around the world. These scientists predict breakthroughs soon that will open the way to molecular-size computing and the quantum computer, creating new scientific paradigms where exponential technological progress will leap off the map. Those who have done the exponential math quickly realize the possibilities in numerous industries and scientific fields-and then they notice the anomaly of the Singularity happening within this century. In 2005, IBM plans to introduce Blue Gene, a supercomputer that can perform at about 5% of the power of the human brain. This computer could transmit the entire contents of the Library of Congress in less than two seconds. Blue Gene/L, specifically developed to advance and serve the growing life-sciences industry, is expected to operate at about 200 teraflops (200 trillion floating-point operations per second), larger than the total computing power of the top 500 supercomputers in the world. It will be able to run extremely complex simulations, including breakthroughs in computers and information technology, creating new frontiers in biology, says IBM's Paul M. Horn. According to Moore's law, computer hardware will surpass human brainpower in the first decade of this century. Software that emulates the human mind-artificial intelligence-may take another decade to evolve. Nanotech Advances Promote Singularity Physicists, mathematicians, and scientists like Vinge and Kurzweil have identified through their research the likely boundaries of the Singularity and have predicted with confidence various paths leading up to it over the next couple of decades. These scientists are currently debating what discovery could set off a chain reaction of Earth-altering technological events. They suggest that advancements in the fields of nanotechnology or the discovery of artificial intelligence could usher in the Singularity. The majority of people closest to these theories and laws-the tech sector-can hardly wait for these technologies to arrive. The true believers call themselves extropians, posthumans, and transhumanists, and are actively organizing not just to bring the Singularity about, but to counter the technophobes and neo-Luddites who believe that unchecked technological progress will exceed our ability to reverse any destructive process that might unintentionally be set in motion. The antithesis to neo-Luddite activists is the extropians. For example, the Progress Action Coalition, formed in 2001 by bio-artist, author, and extropian activist Natasha Vita-More, fantasizes about "the dream of true artificial intelligence . . . adding a new richness to the human landscape never before known." Pro-Act, AgBioworld, Biotechnology Progress, Foresight Institute, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, and other industry groups acknowledge, however, that the greatest threat to technological progress comes not just from environmental groups, but from a small faction of the scientific community. Knowledge-Enabled Mass Destruction In April 2000, a wrench was thrown into the arrival of the Singularity by an unlikely source: Sun Microsystems chief scientist Bill Joy. He is a neo-Luddite without being a Luddite, a technologist warning the world about technology. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems, helped create the Unix computer operating system, and developed the Java and Jini software systems-systems that helped give the Internet "life." In a now-infamous cover story in Wired magazine, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," Joy warned of the dangers posed by developments in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. Joy's warning of the impacts of exponential technological progress run amok gave new credence to the coming Singularity. Unless things change, Joy predicted, "We could be the last generation of humans." Joy warned that "knowledge alone will enable mass destruction" and termed this phenomenon "knowledgeenabled mass destruction." The twentieth century gave rise to nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) technologies that, while powerful, require access to vast amounts of raw (and often rare) materials, technical information, and large-scale industries. The twenty-first-century technologies of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR), however, will require neither large facilities nor rare raw materials. The threat posed by GNR technologies becomes further amplified by the fact that some of these new technologies have been designed to be able to replicate-i.e., they can build new versions of themselves. Nuclear bombs did not sprout more bombs, and toxic spills did not grow more spills. If the new selfreplicating GNR technologies are released into the environment, they could be nearly impossible to recall or control. Joy understands that the greatest dangers we face ultimately stem from a world where global corporations dominate-a future where much of the world has no voice in how the world is run. Twenty-first-century GNR technologies, he writes, "are being developed almost exclusively by corporate enterprises. We are aggressively pursuing the promises of these new technologies within the now-unchallenged system of global capitalism and its manifold financial incentives and competitive pressures." Joy believes that the system of global capitalism, combined with our current rate of progress, gives the human race a 30% to 50% chance of going extinct around the time the Singularity is expected to happen, around 2030. "Not only are these estimates not encouraging," he adds, "but they do not include the probability of many horrid outcomes that lie short of extinction." It is very likely that scientists and global corporations will miss key developments-or, worse, actively avoid discussion of them. A whole generation of biologists has left the field for the biotech and nanotech labs. Biologist Craig Holdredge, who has followed biotech since its beginnings in the 1970s, warns, "Biology is losing its connection with nature." When Machines Make War Cloning, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and robotics are blurring the lines between nature and machine. In his 1972 speech "The Android and the Human," science-fiction visionary Philip K. Dick told his audience, "Machines are becoming more human. Our environment, and I mean our man-made world of machines, is becoming alive in ways specifically and fundamentally analogous to ourselves." In the near future, Dick prophesied, a human might shoot a robot only to see it bleed from its wound. When the robot shoots back, it may be surprised to find the human gush smoke. "It would be rather a great moment of truth for both of them," Dick added. In November 2001, Advanced Cell Technology of Massachusetts jarred the nation's focus away from recession and terrorism when it announced that it had succeeded in cloning early-stage human embryos. Debate on the topic stayed equally divided between those who support therapeutic cloning and those, like the American Medical Association, who want an outright ban. Karel Capek coined the word robot (Czech for "forced labor") in the 1920 play R.U.R., in which machines assume the drudgery of factory production, then develop feelings and proceed to wipe out humanity in a violent revolution. While the robots in R.U.R. could represent the "nightmare vision of the proletariat seen through middle-class eyes," as science-fiction author Thomas Disch has suggested, they also are testament to the persistent fears of man-made technology run amok. Similar themes have manifested themselves in popular culture and folklore since at least medieval times. While some might dismiss these stories simply as popular paranoia, robots are already being deployed beyond Hollywood and are poised to take over the deadlier duties of the modern soldier. The Pentagon is replacing soldiers with sensors, vehicles, aircraft, and weapons that can be operated by remote control or are autonomous. Pilotless aircraft played an important role in the bombings of Afghanistan, and a model called the Gnat conducted surveillance flights in the Philippines in 2002. Leading the Pentagon's remote-control warfare effort is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Best known for creating the infrastructure that became the World Wide Web, DARPA is working with Boeing to develop the X-45 unmanned combat air vehicle. The 30-foot-long windowless planes will carry up to 12 bombs, each weighing 250 pounds. According to military analysts, the X-45 will be used to attack radar and antiaircraft installations as early as 2007. By 2010, it will be programmed to distinguish friends from foes without consulting humans and independently attack targets in designated areas. By 2020, robotic planes and vehicles will direct remote-controlled bombers toward targets, robotic helicopters will coordinate driverless convoys, and unmanned submarines will clear mines and launch cruise missiles. Rising to the challenge of mixing man and machine, MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (backed by a five-year, $50-million U.S. Army grant) is busy innovating materials and designs to create military uniforms that rival the best science fiction. Human soldiers themselves are being transformed into modern cyborgs through robotic devices and nanotechnology. The Biorobotic Arms Race The 2002 International Conference on Robotics and Automation, hosted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, kicked off its technical session with a discussion on biorobots, the melding of living and artificial structures into a cybernetic organism or cyborg. "In the past few years, the biosciences and robotics have been getting closer and closer," says Paolo Dario, founder of Italy's Advanced Robotics Technology and Systems Lab. "More and more, biological models are used for the design of biometric robots [and] robots are increasingly used by neuroscientists as clinical platforms for validating biological models." Artificial constructs are beginning to approach the scale and complexity of living systems. Some of the scientific breakthroughs expected in the next few years promise to make cloning and robotics seem rather benign. The merging of technology and nature has already yielded some shocking progeny. Consider these examples: - Researchers at the State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn have turned a living rat into a radio-controlled automaton using three electrodes placed in the animal's brain. The animal can be remotely steered through an obstacle course, making it twist, turn, and jump on demand. - In May 2002, eight elderly Florida residents were injected with microscopic silicon identification chips encoded with medical information. The Los Angeles Times reported that this made them "scannable just like a jar of peanut butter in the supermarket checkout line." Applied Digital Solutions Inc., the maker of the chip, will soon have a prototype of an implantable device able to receive GPS satellite signals and transmit a person's location. - Human embryos have been successfully implanted and grown in artificial wombs. The experiments were halted after a few days to avoid violating in vitro fertilization regulations. - Researchers in Israel have fashioned a "bio-computer" out of DNA that can handle a billion operations per second with 99.8% accuracy. Reuters reports that these bio-computers are so minute that "a trillion of them could fit inside a test tube." - In England, University of Reading Professor Kevin Warwick has implanted microchips in his body to remotely monitor and control his physical motions. During Warwick's Project Cyborg experiments, computers were able to remotely monitor his movements and open doors at his approach. - Engineers at the U.S. Sandia National Labs have built a remotecontrolled spy robot equipped with a scanner, microphone, and chemical microsensor. The robot weighs one ounce and is smaller than a dime. Lab scientists predict that the microbot could prove invaluable in protecting U.S. military and economic interests. The next arms race is not based on replicating and perfecting a single deadly technology, like the nuclear bombs of the past or some space-based weapon of the future. This new arms race is about accelerating the development and integration of advanced autonomous, biotechnological, and human-robotic systems into the military apparatus. A mishap or a massive war using these new technologies could be more catastrophic than any nuclear war. Where the Map Exceeds the Territory The rate at which GNR technologies are being adopted by our society-without regard to long-term safety testing or researching the political, cultural, and economic ramifications-mirrors the development and proliferation of nuclear power and weapons. The human loss caused by experimentation, production, and development is still being felt from the era of NBC technologies. The discussion of the environmental impacts of GNR technologies, at least in the United States, has been relegated to the margins. Voices of concern and opposition have likewise been missing in discussions of the technological Singularity. The true cost of this technological progress and any coming Singularity will mean the unprecedented decline of the planet's inhabitants at an ever-increasing rate of global extinction. The World Conservation Union, the International Botanical Congress, and a majority of the world's biologists believe that a global mass extinction already is under way. As a direct result of human activity (resource extraction, industrial agriculture, the introduction of non-native animals, and population growth), up to one-fifth of all living species are expected to disappear within 30 years. A 1998 Harris Poll of the 5,000 members of the American Institute of Biological Sciences found that 70% believed that what has been termed "The Sixth Extinction" is now under way. A simultaneous Harris Poll found that 60% of the public were totally unaware of the impending biological collapse. At the same time that nature's ancient biological creation is on the decline, laboratory-created biotech life-forms-genetically modified soybeans, genetically engineered salmon, cloned sheep, drug-crops, biorobots-are on the rise. Nature and technology are not just evolving; they are competing and combining with one another. Ultimately they will become one. We hear reports daily about these new technologies and new creations, while shreds of the ongoing biological collapse surface here and there. Past the edges of change, beyond the wall across the future, anything becomes possible. Beware the dragons. Keys to Understanding the Singularity Singularity is the postulated point in our future when human evolutionary development-powered by such developments as nanotechnology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence-accelerates enormously so that nothing beyond that time can reliably be conceived. Typical developments include the merging of man and machine (cybernetic organisms-or cyborgs) and accelerated technology beyond our ability to control. Nanotechnology is the development and use of devices that have a size of only a few nanometers, including building and manipulating complex structures on an atomic scale. As we approach the Singularity, nanodevices will be able to replicate themselves like living matter. Biorobotics is the merging of living organisms with technologies. At a simple level, this includes implanting chips encoded with health or security information. Biorobotics also encompasses the development of cyborgs that seamlessly blend living tissue with mechanical devices. Cloning is the growing of genetically identical cells, eliminating the natural role of human biology and bringing us closer to the Singularity. Extropians await the Singularity, seeking to overcome human limits, live indefinitely long, and become more intelligent through technology. Related groups include transhumanists and posthumanists. Neo-Luddites oppose the impending Singularity by raising questions about moral and ethical aspects of modern technology and the threat it may pose to humanity. The Singularity Technological progress grows exponentially and reaches infinity in finite time (click image for larger view) Technological progress goes through four stages: new capability, integration, technological limit, and decline as a new paradigm takes over. Each new capability represents a technological revolution that gradually gives rise to a new techno-economic paradigm, which guides entrepreneurs, innovators, investors, and consumers. Singularity pioneer Vernor Vinge argues that successive innovations will occur in progressively shorter time frames as each new technology increases in power and converges with others, as when advances in the life sciences are accelerated by increasing computer power. Ever-shortening time periods make the aggregate power curve "hyper-exponential," with the resulting waves of technological convergences eventually reaching the Singularity. -James John Bell Resources on the Web Visit the following Web sites to find out more about the Singularity and related technologies. - Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence is a nonprofit organization based in Atlanta, Georgia, devoted solely to creating the Singularity by direct research into Singularity technologies and direct implementation of the Singularity. They provide forums for discussion, coordinate Singularity-related efforts, and publish introductory material and research papers. - Singularity Watch shares news, events, and editorials helpful to understanding the accelerating progression to the Singularity; planning for, investing in, and managing its balanced development; and improving human interdependence and ethics. - Singularity is dedicated to those technologies most likely to take humankind to Singularity. - Singularity expert Ray Kurzweil's Web site (www.KurzweilAI.net) features a discussion by leading "big thinkers" on the technological Singularity and other related science and philosophy. - The Foresight Institute guides emerging technologies, particularly nanotechnologies, to improve the human condition. A feature of this Web site is the Nanotechnology FAQ. Originally from: www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0584.html?m%3D1 |
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