In reason's March cover story, Todd Seavey says that nanotechnology isn't as frightening, terrible, or transformative as either the sci-fi optimists or the doomsaying activists would have you believe.
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J sub D | February 27, 2008, 12:41pm | #
One of those famous Scots was the 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell.I present the (IMHO) top six physicists of all time. In no particular order -
Isaac Newton (England)
Maxwell Planck (Germany)
Albert Einstein (Germany)
James Clerk Maxwell (Scotland)
Ernest Rutherford (New Zealand)
Galileo Galilei (Italy)
You may have your own favorites.
The Wine Commonsewer | February 27, 2008, 1:00pm | #
The Frankenpants gag that whats-his-name drew for the cover was great.Hey TWC! You finally fixed that comma in your embedded URL. Thanks!
J sub D | February 27, 2008, 1:21pm | #
Excellent piece. I figure the folks at Scottish Enterprise must eagerly anticipate going to work in the morning. As a rational environmentalist, I think it would be a crime against the planet to choke off this research with burdensome regulations based on luddite nightmares. Which leads to -Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, along with various European green groups, have called for a moratorium on nanotech until it can be proven safe.
How are you to "prove it safe" (impossible in any case) with a moratorium on research? Oh, that's right, you can't even try. Has there been any techological advance in human history that the Friends of the Earth/Greenpeace, scared of shadows mindset, would not have opposed? Trot out any of the technological/scientific advances throughout mankind's history, and I'll give you a Greenpeace, nervous nellie, reason that we should have prohibited it.
Environmental extremists, like all other extremists, do more harm than good for the cause. If that blind pig Greenpeace ever finds an acorn, I won't read the press release. After a few thousand pieces of unmitigated crap, why would I bother?
stuartl | February 27, 2008, 2:02pm | #
Both our hopes and fears regarding nanotechnology have been extreme from the beginning, if we take as the beginning K. Eric Drexler’s 1986 book Engines of Creation.Normally this is considered the beginning of nanotech.
Richard Feynman (United States)
Niels Bohr (Denmark)
sv | February 27, 2008, 2:14pm | #
as an engineer i find this stuff fascinating.i probably have more favorite mathematicians than i do favorite physicists, but einstein and newton must be in all physics top 5's. maxwell's in mine.
cbmclean | February 27, 2008, 2:20pm | #
The author of this article claims that the "divine" aspects of nanotechnology are being overplayed because the dreams are so far ahead of current technology. She even mentions Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near" and appears to implicitly criticize it as overly ambitious. In doing so, I think that she is completely missing one of the main points of the book: namely that technological progress is not linear, but exponential. Kurzweil's ideas seem like pipe dreams because at current rates of technological progress, they will take centuries to realize. Kurzweil's point was that technology won't be advancing at anything like its current rate in the next few deacdes. It will be vastly faster. I think I remember him estimating that the technological progress in the 21st century will be equivalent to some 20,000 years of progress at the year 2000 rate.Indeed, I have doubts about Kurzweil's hypothesis, but mainly because of the fear that humanity will either run out of energy, or destroy itself before we make the leap to post-humanity. But I think the author is falling into the same fallicy of linear thinking that most other people fall into.
sv | February 27, 2008, 2:28pm | #
exponential thinking could be as fallacious as linear thinking. both are 'extrapolative', if that's a word, of current trends without adequately considering future changes in circumstance. (e.g., moore's law has hit atomic limits as foreseen.) kurzweil's ideas are visionary, but i think his timescale's off. besides, the author's main point in bringing that up, which i think is correct, is that focusing public policy discussions excessively on those far-reaching aspects of nanotechnology's possibilities is like putting the cart before the horse.also, the author's name is Todd Seavey, so it is probably a he rather than a she.
Morat20 | February 27, 2008, 3:17pm | #
I don't buy most of Kurtweil, and certainly not his timescale -- but stuff IS moving fast.And the age of molecular machines is coming -- because it turns out, if nothing else, that the very small can do wonders. (Think about the fact that space elevators went from 'Ha! Right! to 'Wait a second...we actually have a material that can do that, if we can grow the tubes a bit longer' in less than a decade.)
I don't expect flying clouds of semi-sentient nanobots maintaining my body, but it's still going to change the world.
And it's possibly quite dangerous -- destruction is always easier than creation. But hell, someone's going to do it, so you might as well be good at it to guard against the invietable misuse. (I don't think grey goo -- I think targetted machines that transmit like viruses, and chew apart critical proteins and reproduce inside human cells. A nastier, more virulent bioweapon, basically).
Between nanotechnology and synthetic biology, life is gettering damn interesting. I figure my odds of reaching 120 get better every year. :)
Pinette | February 27, 2008, 3:22pm | #
cmclean,she is free to "completely miss one of the main points of the book" because the article was not about the book. It wasn't an article about the singularity.
Pinette | February 27, 2008, 3:30pm | #
"I think the author is falling into the same fallicy of linear thinking that most other people fall into."your comment is completely irrelevant. The point of the article was that we shouldn't fear nanotech simply because of the sci-fi worst-case scenarios that tend to be completely out of line with the practical applications of the new technology.
karl | February 27, 2008, 5:55pm | #
"your comment is completely irrelevant. The point of the article was that we shouldn't fear nanotech simply because of the sci-fi worst-case scenarios that tend to be completely out of line with the practical applications of the new technology."I don't think that it is completely irrelevant. If you are willing to take kurzweil's timeframes seriously, it seems reasonable to ask questions and maybe even work for a moratorium on nanotech.
dbcooper | February 27, 2008, 6:38pm | #
J sub D, nice to see Rutherford on there, but where's the love for the great and massively underrated Josiah Willard Gibbs?Dude developed modern thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, along with a bunch of other things (check out his thoughts on mixing). I am so in awe of that man.
Why would anyone take Kurzweil's "nanobot" and artificial intelligence timeline claims seriously? All the guys that make up this rubbish are not the guys in the clean rooms and rapid prototyping facilities actually developing things. They're not the poor bastards who have to develop in LabView. i.e. They really don't know what they're talking about when it comes to all this "nanobot" nonsense.
Pinette | February 27, 2008, 7:48pm | #
Karl,did you rtfa? It had absolutely nothing to do with kurzweil's timeframes. the author only mentioned kurzwiel in reference to ultra sci-fi horror stories about where technology might take us.
how in the world can you consider a moratorium on nanotech research 'reasonable'?
grumpy realist | February 27, 2008, 9:03pm | #
As someone who's working in nanotech (and the very interesting intersection between nanotechnology and law), this was a pretty good article.Those who want to "put a moratorium on research in nanotechnology" are going to have a hell of a time. How are they going to define it? Research into small particles? Oops, guess they just forbade chemistry. And a lot of biology. And a lot of electrical engineering. Guess material science has to get squelched as well....
And of course, any country that decides to ignore Greenpeace et. al. is going to make out like bandits.
Global capitalism. Gotta love it.
cbmclean | February 27, 2008, 9:59pm | #
sv,You got me on the gender issue. I pride myself on clear thinking, but I don't even remember seeing a female name onthe by line. I have no idea what made me think it was a woman. Maybe someone could do some psychoanalysis on pervasive subconscious sexism.
Anyway, I would agree that exponential thinking is just extrapolation. But, Kurzweil presents quite a bit of evidence that human technological progress is not linear, but exponential.
some sense | February 28, 2008, 12:58pm | #
I now know what is wrong with Lou Dobbs. He has tiny robots in his pants, and that is making him grumpy.Ramesh Raghuanshi | March 10, 2008, 3:30am | #
From ancient time doomsday futurists are fearing common man, that is their bread and butter.Those who have bit of thinking faculty they donot fear, they know well that any advance technology always benifited to mankind,only because how to use any technology is depend on man, he will definately mould even piosonious technology on his favour.So I wllcome nano technology wholeheartly
Both hype and fear surrounding nanotechnology are based on ignorance, stupidity (intellectual limitations), foolishness (poor judgment), credulity and paranoia. There is nothing new about handling matter on this (10 to the -9 meter)scale: in fact chemistry operates on a scale smaller by one order of magnitude. If Greenpeace at al had any credibility to lose, their statement about "a moratorium on nanotechnology" wpould do it.
jdsilk | March 11, 2008, 12:46pm | #
"Drexler, an engineer, described nanotech as the ultimate fulfillment of humanity’s dynamic, self-transforming tendencies: the ability to create whatever we want, whenever we want it, combined with an imperative to take this godlike new power to the stars and turn the universe into our playground. Drexler also described the dark twin of this vision: the “gray goo” scenario."Isn't the supposedly "light" twin merely a wolf's in sheep clothing. The ability to create everything when and whenever we want would leave the galaxy void of value. If scarcity conveys value then non-scarcity would inversely devalue everything. Otherwise stated, man has infinite value for goods, yet all goods have a diminishing marginal rate of utility. Each person, being the god of his/her own universe, would rule over a "empire of dirt". Despair would be the logical outcome, assuming we live in purely materialistic universe.