The Problem of Access to Nanotechnology
Actually I’m addressing the problem of access to molecular manufacturing. Most of what is called nanotechnology today is merely material science working with small particles. Molecular manufacturing involves the control and placement of individual atoms and molecules to build macroscale products.
We all hope nanotechnology will solve our problems. I believe we share a common hope for better medicine, cheaper fuel, less environmental damage from manufacturing, and freely available, basic services. And that is just for starters before we consider all the toys that are possible with nanotechnology. But there is a small dark cloud out there in the future.
Assume we develop Drexler’s nanofactory or something similar in the next 20 years. (see the animation of the nanofactory ) You feed raw materials in one end and almost anything can come out the other end in minutes. Diamonds as big as your fist, medical robots that cure cancer, an oxygen recycler that lets you scuba dive for a week, a pill to overhaul your immune system to cure HIV or any other disease, a wrist watch with enough computer power to out think all the computers in operation today (2006), another pill to install a broadband internet connection in your brain — with sight, sound, force and smell interface, or perhaps something as simple as a fitted dress, custom designed with the latest fad mods in place. The list goes on and on.
The human race has only begun to explore the new world of nano solutions. We are still stuck in the old world of macrotechnology and it will take a while to get our heads into this new world of nanotechnology. When we do, the rate of development will accelerate again.
All that brings us to the problem. How do we make this machine available to the common man without making it just as available to the sort of people who would use it against us? They might be the people who write computer viruses today, or they might be a terrorist out to destroy another race or religion. These people exist and will always be out there no matter what we do to stop them and their activity. It’s more a law of nature than a failure of law — or international diplomacy. We should do everything we can to reduce the number of people who hate us.
If the nanofactory could be developed in private and then emerge from the lab with all it’s security systems intact, then we might distribute the machine to anyone and still prevent it’s misuse. We would set up an internet server as the sole source of safe designs. Any nanofactory out there in the world could download the data to make a product. The nanofactory would not build anything that did not download from that server. Encryption would protect the data and validate the validity of the data. No one could directly build a weapon since the nanofactory would not accept the data from another source.
However, the nanofactory will not appear suddenly, with all it’s functions intact. It will evolve in a hundred different labs over a ten year period. It starts out tiny, primitive and hard to use. It is only productive when wrapped in a million dollar lab and attended by several scientists and technicians. It has no security features. You can build simple things with it provided you need nothing larger than 300 microns on a side.
Later, the nanofactory becomes a commercial product, sold under export restrictions to almost any commercial lab that can pay the asking price. The country in which this happens is not yet determined.
It is a prototyping tool. You use various software packages, such as nanoEngineer, to design microscopic tools and then build and test them. The product that extrudes from this nanofactory is very small because the nanofactory itself is so small it can hardly be seen with the naked eye. Of course, all the lab equipment and computers that run this early version would fill a room.
Nanotechnology is the first technology which develops primarily using tools developed with that same technology. It is a true bootstrap process. All other technologies have been able to use pre-existing tools for primary construction and the technology evolved at a rate limited by human innovation, whereas, nano has been held back by the lack of tools. Human innovation has proceeded but also has been limited by the lack of tools. As the tools arrive, they make possible the creation of new tools and the technology evolves at a rate mainly limited by the rate of tool construction. Of course innovation takes time even when you have a tool, but this race is about developing tools more than it is about discovering new concepts. We have more concepts now than we know what to do with.
It will be hard for one country to share this technology with another, especially if they have a history of armed or economic struggle. This early technology is the foundation of tremendous change to come in the next ten years. In a foot race where most runners have a similar and constant speed, the winner will depend mainly on who is has a faster average speed. But this technology race is between runners with exponentially increasing speeds because the evolving technology allows us to build faster and more capable tools which let us build faster tools still. In this case, who ever gets ahead of the other runners early on will have an overwhelming lead over all other players and will always win.
As you can see, it would be hard to control access to this technology even while self interest groups hold tightly to new advances. There will always be leakage. A scientist may carry information in his head back to his mother country. A visitor may purchase technology from a company desperate for money. An industrial spy may ship components of the nanofactory directly to his client. There are a hundred ways for the technology to leak from where it exists to were it does not. The goal should be that all sources of technology slow the spread of data and devices to ensure that the the creators stay ahead of the crazy segments of society. I know that is heresy today and I don’t like it either.
Can it be done? A computer virus is an excellent analogy since it deals with leading edge technology, it requires very few resources to produce, it can be delivered using the existing infrastructure and it can be defended against. Nano technology is very similar with one exception. Nano has much more potential for damage. The impact of the destruction of a few thousand computer disks is invisible compared to the impact of a dying ecosystem. You ask why anyone would try to destroy the environment. It is more that they want to have an effect on the world and they do something they consider the equivalent of a new and audacious spray paint attack While we see infectious LSD as a problem that must be stopped.
As far as I can see, this means the common man can not have full access to the technology. That is sad and I hate that conclusion. But otherwise, we give it to the crazy ones and they hurt us.
The only solution is to reduce the number of crazy ones to zero. I don’t think that is possible or morally healthy for ourselves. But it would be good to reduce their number by any ordinary method such as treating people decently so their tendency to hate you is reduced. It seems to be a unspoken, but widely accepted belief that we’ve treated people badly in the past because we had to, to survive. Well, the stakes are higher now. Having a sizable portion of the Earth’s population hating us in 30 or 40 years is not the same thing as having that true today. Today, for America, it is like having a wasp sting us when they take down two buildings in New York. Tomorrow, that wasp will look more like a military helicopter. And we will have to look like a military robocop to stay alive. Personally, I don’t want to see ordinary life evolve into a military lifestyle just because we have no other option.
I’d love to hear a more positive view of this, but please don’t ignore the nature of the beast in your analysis of the situation.
John Burch