Nanotech is coming

oker56 · 2002-11-22 17:48:39

I started threads about Rare Earth and so on becuase I see holes in Zubrin's idea's about nanotechnology. He seems to want to count this one out. I would like to argue about stable non-equilibrium structures and autopoiesis because I don't agree with his ideas about nanotechnology disobeying the laws of life, but really, It isn't important. To argue that nanotechnology isn't going to happen is folly. I think he does so because it undermines his mars direct ideas which are brilliant in a non-nanotech world, but the fact is that molecular nanotechnology is inevitable, and it is going to happen long before mars direct makes a permanent mars colony.

Phobos · 2002-11-23 01:54:36

Nanotech is definately coming and it's going to revolutionize everything. There's already a number of luddites out there like Jeremy Rifkin who are beginning the rallying cry against the development of nanotechnology. Even they see that the writing's on the wall.

oker56 · 2002-11-23 11:23:57

This Jeremy Rifkin has disturbed me before; even Eric Drexler rips on him in his Engines of Creation. I wonder why this guy is still around; i'd like to know what J. Rifkin know's and say's about nanotechnolgy please.

Phobos · 2002-11-23 14:49:29

Rifkin basically says that humanity is too immoral to develop nanotechnology so a moratorium should be placed on all nanotech research. Such a moratorium won't work though. You can ban it in this country or that but somebody is going to keep working on it. It simply has too many promises for both good and evil. Anyhow I don't remember Allah giving Rifkin the moral authority to tell us what we should and shouldn't do so he can cram his totalitarian politics up where you know where.

oker56 · 2002-11-30 15:57:39

Nanotech is ah coming . . . .

Sorry, Just have to say it again; i don't know what to make of it. I remember all the 2K computer hooplah; i didn't believe in that, but I do believe drexlerian nanotech is going to happen and more and more, i believe it is coming sooner than a lot of people are going to want.

I remember a year or two ago; i read somebody say molecular nanotech could happen within a year or two; i felt future shock, I really did. I think the world is going to feel it. I came to see it as a false alarm, but now I'm starting to think based on my reading's as I keep up with the latest developments that it is indeed coming quickly long before I'm able technically to be part of it; i could be sent back to the military because they are off to fight some battle.

People are freaking out over this stuff already; most of them don't know about the latest developments(whatever little snippets researchers let out). Every government the world over is practically putting their economic development money into nanotechnology. Anti-knowledge/technology groups of all kinds are trying to get it banned for development; who to take sides with?

I think molecular nanotechnology happens before they make space elevators; in other words, we will not have established ourselves out in space before molecular nanotechnology starts and hence, we're all stuck down here on this earth when the fight over molecular nanotechnology ensues(it is an observation of Alvin Tofflers that wars are waged between the new civilizations over the old; agriculturalists had to hold back hunter gathers, or barbarians, for ages; industrialists fought the agriculturalists[the civil wars of the late 1800's, from the U.S. to the Russian, and Japanese civil wars]; surelly, the informational will fight a war over the industrial?

Drexlerian Nanotech is coming and a lot of people are going to get blindsighted; others will get swooped out of the way. War is bound to be waged, but this one is going to be fought over cyberspace; the normal battle lines are none existent in the coming nanotech world. No single country will have it; all will have it, but that is not all; the transnational corporations will have it to. I really hope space development happens soon after the first primitive assember is developed; that way, the earthling's won't destroy themselves knowing how futile it is to fight over this piece of rock.

Lot's of issues, my mind rambled, but nanotech is coming; i have to get busy now.

Phobos · 2002-11-30 21:36:14

I share your sentiment that nanotechnology will be truly revolutionary. I think instead of us fighting over this rock advanced nanotechnology could instead create such an abundance of goods that we will see no need to fight over resources. Once we understand how to put things together atom by atom we could literally use nanotech to assemble much of what we need from food to tools. Of course we'll need a lot of computing power to do that but if we refine the art of quantum computers we could construct computers that would use the atoms in the devices themselves as informational and computing resources that would far exceed the computing power of anything we have today. Nanotech especially has promise for medical applications. It might become possible in the future to use nanotech to build artificial organs such as livers and stomachs. If Ray Kurzweil's visions come to pass we could even create intelligent AI "fogs" that could polymorph into anything at will. There's even speculation that if we are being visited by extraterrestrials that they may not be coming here in large spaceships but rather could be sending dust sized or smaller probes that utilize nanotech to Earth that would just mix in with the millions of tons of dust that fall to Earth annually and escape our detection.

oker56 · 2002-12-01 06:32:47

I loved it when I recently read about some politician complaining about how the foresight institute people act like they won't get regulated by the government.

Which government? If we don't like your current policies, we'll move to another country! Or off this planet!

Phobos · 2002-12-01 14:17:33

I loved it when I recently read about some politician complaining about how the foresight institute people act like they won't get regulated by the government.

I think we should strive to regulate the more negative uses of nanotech, but I get your point, it's guaranteed that the government will over stretch it's heavy hand even though it still won't reach far enough. Look at human cloning research. It's been banned in the USA and a few other places but it just got shifted to countries like Italy and Israel. The same will happen to nanotech if X government tries to ban it.

Which government? If we don't like your current policies, we'll move to another country! Or off this planet!

It would certainly be a lot easier to live off planet with advanced nanotech. Living in a closed life support system would be cinch since you could just break down wastes into their constituent elements and recombine them into more useful forms and store the excess in their pure elemental state for future use. It would even break down microbes and viruses so disease itself wouldn't likely breed well in the loop. It would be a crime against humanity if two bit dictator wanna-bes like Jeremy Rifkin decide nanotech is "immoral" and thus retard it's development. God knows it would be stupid not to develop nanotech just so we have some defense should someone else try to deploy it as a weapon.

Shaun Barrett · 2002-12-01 19:43:02

Phobos writes:-

It would even break down microbes and viruses so disease itself wouldn't likely breed well in the loop.

I wonder whether there's any possibility of bacteria developing an immunity (i.e. some kind of defence system) against nano-machines sent to break them down?

It would be an interesting contest. Defences honed by billions of years of savage competition for survival, versus machines created by the most fiendishly ingenious brains that Earthly evolution has yet produced!

Phobos · 2002-12-01 22:17:07

I wonder whether there's any possibility of bacteria developing an immunity (i.e. some kind of defence system) against nano-machines sent to break them down?
It would be an interesting contest. Defences honed by billions of years of savage competition for survival, versus machines created by the most fiendishly ingenious brains that Earthly evolution has yet produced!

Interesting question. Since nano-machines could be as small as a few carbon molecules in length/width it's possible organisms might develop defenses against them but I'm betting on the fiendishly ingenious brains to win out. I just hope nobody falls in the septic tank. No telling what those little bugs might do to you. You'd have to have a good containment system that would destroy the nanotech if they get released from their environment. Not sure how you'd go about doing that. Just another sticky problem that might lead to the end of mankind as we know it.

Shaun Barrett · 2002-12-02 03:33:19

I know nothing about Rifkin and not much about the potential problems presented by nanotechnology.
I suppose one of the most obvious problems would be failing to 'program' these little machines properly (that would include failing to make them exclusive enough in their tasks).
I'm imagining sending out a few nanobots, designed to attack and destroy, say, anthrax microbes. These nanobots self-replicate, creating trillions of copies of themselves, and dutifully kill all the anthrax bugs. For some reason, though, they fail to differentiate between anthrax and E.Coli. So they go on killing until all the E.Coli on Earth are dead ... including the ones in all human digestive systems, on which we depend for our digestive processes!
Humanity then dies from terrible indigestion followed by malnutrition!!

Is any of this remotely possible?
Is this the kind of thing Jeremy Rifkin is worried about?

:0

Phobos · 2002-12-02 22:41:47

I'm imagining sending out a few nanobots, designed to attack and destroy, say, anthrax microbes. These nanobots self-replicate, creating trillions of copies of themselves, and dutifully kill all the anthrax bugs. For some reason, though, they fail to differentiate between anthrax and E.Coli. So they go on killing until all the E.Coli on Earth are dead ... including the ones in all human digestive systems, on which we depend for our digestive processes!
Humanity then dies from terrible indigestion followed by malnutrition!!

Is any of this remotely possible?
Is this the kind of thing Jeremy Rifkin is worried about?

Jeremy Rifkin and his ilk aren't worried so much about the unintended consequences that could arise due to nanotech but rather the intentional use of it as a weapon and for other negative uses. Personally I think we'll be able to solve most of these issues and there's no putting the genie back in the bottle once it's let out. You can try to ban it all you want but it'll eventually surface. It's just too promising and personally I think we should work on it. I think the neo-luddites see nanotech and everything else for that matter with the same eyes that the original luddites spied the mechanized weaving machines. They just don't realize the enormous beneficial uses that nanomachines could be used for. Uses which outweight the negative aspects in my opinion. But then again maybe your right, the law of unintended consequences may do us in and cause us all to die from horrible indigestion.

soph · 2002-12-04 21:14:31

to play devils advocate, nanotech IS dangerous. it could be used for assasinations, infiltrations, spying, and any number of evil things. you cant stop progress, but how do you stop the bad parts of it?

Phobos · 2002-12-04 22:20:18

to play devils advocate, nanotech IS dangerous. it could be used for assasinations, infiltrations, spying, and any number of evil things. you cant stop progress, but how do you stop the bad parts of it?

Wish I knew. I'm optimistic though we'll find the answers. Maybe we'll be able to create somekind of detection net that would warn us about strange or malicious nanomachines in the environment even though it would seem easy to defeat such a scheme. Maybe our immune systems could be augmented with nanotech that catalogs the chemical signatures of nanomachines that are considered friendly and immediately moves to destroy those that don't fit its "catalog" descriptions even though you could just engineer nanobots to defeat those schemes in the same way AIDS virii can escape killer T-cells. I guess time will tell if we'll be able to defend ourselves or not against malicious uses of nanotech.

oker56 · 2002-12-20 11:24:12

I don't think you can stop the misuse of anything. The best way I can imagine is for people to have nanotech and not allow any single one person have it. I believe the majority of people are good, therefore, if you want to stop a bad person with nanotech, you need a lot of good people with nanotech.

Auqakah · 2002-12-26 13:15:15

I don't see much chance of the intentional usage of nanotech for violence on a large scale - at least not very many times. Maybe once or twice. But rather, I see a situation rather like that of the invention of nuclear weapons. Utter standoff. We can kill you, you can kill us - hey, you know what? We could do that before. So, nothing changes.

So I say:

Onward!

oker56 · 2002-12-26 19:52:05

a kind of nano-cold war was drexlers original idea of how to combat people who want to use it for bad. Even if it is workable, it would be one hell of a show! You'd see constantly evolving nanotech fighting each other; not sure that is how I'd like to live my life.

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