“Christine Peterson, president of the Foresight Institute based in Palo Alto, California, warns that without safeguards, the data we gather about each other might one day be used to undermine rather than to protect our freedom. ‘We are moving to a new level of data collection that our society is not accustomed to,’ she says.” …

“‘We need to look urgently at who is getting the data, what they are doing with it, what it does to our freedoms and whether the information can be abused,’ she says. ‘And we need to think about these things now.’”

Establishing standards now for current and near future widespread sensing based upon smart phones owned by individual members of the public will set precedence for considering the future in which MEMS and nanotechnology will make truly ubiquitous and thorough sensing inexpensive.

From the Jamestown Foundation, China’s Secure Communications Quantum Leap

In May 2010 a team of 15 Chinese researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing and the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences, a government-directed research center, published a research paper announcing a successful demonstration of “quantum teleportation” (liangzi yinxing chuan) over 16 kilometers of free space. These researchers claimed to have the first successful experiment in the world. The technology on display has the potential to revolutionize secure communications for military and intelligence organizations and may become the watershed of a research race in communication and information technology.

Although much of the science behind this technology is still young, quantum technologies have wide-ranging applications for the fields of cryptography, remote sensing and secure satellite communications. In the near future, the results from this experiment will be used to send encrypted messages that cannot be cracked or intercepted, and securely connect networks, even in remote areas, with no wired infrastructure, even incorporating satellites and submarines into the link…

From the UK, Bristol scientists develop photonic chip for ‘quantum’ computers

Scientists have developed a computer chip that could pave the way for a new generation of powerful ‘quantum’ computers.

The photonic chip, built by scientists from Bristol’s Centre for Quantum Photonics, uses light rather than electricity to pass information.

The breakthrough could lead to ‘quantum’ computers capable of performing complex calculations and simulations that are impossible for today’s computers.

The researchers believe that their device represents a new route to a quantum computer – a powerful type of computer that uses quantum bits (qubits) rather than the conventional bits used in today’s computers.

Senior Associate Alvin Steinberg suggests that we portray the nanotech race as in part a security race involving quantum computing, and that Foresight use this as a way to get Congress interested in funding nanotechnology R&D. What do you think?

Dr. Long Que, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Louisiana Tech University, has reported success in designing and fabricating a device that allows microscale electronic devices to harvest their own wasted energy.

… this technology uses a cantilever made out of piezoelectric material — material capable of converting distortions to itself into electrical energy — and is coated with a carbon nanotube film on one side. When the film absorbs light and/or thermal energy, it causes the cantilever to bend back and forth repeatedly, which causes the piezoelectric material to generate power as long as the light and/or heat source is active. …

“The greatest significance of this work is that it offers us a new option to continuously harvest both solar and thermal energy on a single chip, given the self-reciprocating characteristics of the device upon exposure to light and/or thermal radiation,” said Que. “This characteristic might enable us to make perpetual micro/nano devices and micro/nanosystems, and could significantly impact the wireless sensory network.”

…Que believes that, in the future, the device could be used to power a number of different nano and microsystems such as implanted biomedical devices or remotely located sensors and communication nodes.

Enabling microsensors and microcomputers to harvest power from their environments should advance the advent of global networks of sensing and surveillance devices. Those interested in the looming conflict between those using sensors to collect data and those whose data is being collected should take a look at Foresight Institute’s “Open Source Sensing Initiative“.

Journal Reference (courtesy of ScienceDaily):
Venu Kotipalli, Zhongcheng Gong, Pushparaj Pathak, Tianhua Zhang, Yuan He, Shashi Yadav, Long Que. Light and thermal energy cell based on carbon nanotube films. Applied Physics Letters, 2010; 97 (12): 124102; 10.1063/1.3491843

With terrorism back in the news, so, too, is a curious footnote: Of the hundreds of individuals involved in political violence, nearly half of those with degrees have been engineers. This finding, first published in 2008, has been substantiated by two years of additional research by Oxford sociologist Diego Gambetta and political scientist Steffen Hertog, of the London School of Economics. Host Steven Cherry talks with Hertog about why terrorists seem to have a knack for engineering.

I have not listened to this, but the obvious answer would seem to be that many people might wish to be effective terrorists, but only the more technical ones have the needed skills to carry out an action that causes significant harm.  (I have often been thankful that the superb technical people I know appear to have no leanings in that direction.)

See also Open-Source Warfare and Extremist Engineers.

For now, nanotechnologies are primarily being developed by people who are not likely to deploy them for terrorist purposes, but as time passes this will change.  It took about a century for airplanes to be used outside traditional warfare to do major harm; probably that sequence will be faster for nanotechnologies.  We will need to model both offenses and defenses so that “white hat” nanotechnologists stay ahead; this proposal came from Mark S. Miller.  See the Foresight Guidelines and Open Source Sensing for further thoughts.  —Chris Peterson

Many of you will recall Bill Joy’s famous article in Wired called Why the future doesn’t need us, where he expressed concern about various technologies including advanced nanotech. Apparently he gave an update of his views on this in his talk for TED, viewable here. An excerpt:

So if we can address, use technology, help address education, help address the environment, help address the pandemic, does that solve the larger problem that I was talking about in the Wired article? And I’m afraid the answer is really no, because you can’t solve a problem with the management of technology with more technology. If we let an unlimited amount of power loose, then we will — a very small number of people will be able to abuse it. We can’t fight at a million-to-one disadvantage. So what we need to do is, we need better policy. And for example, some things we could do that would be policy solutions which are not really in the political air right now but perhaps with the change of administration would be — use markets.

Whether you agree with him or not, it’s a useful discussion to have. As he says:

We can’t pick the future, but we can steer the future…So we can design the future if we choose what kind of things we want to have happen and not have happen, and steer us to a lower-risk place.

Check it out. —Chris Peterson

We’ll miss you, but you can watch the conference live at:

http://fora.tv/live/open_science/open_science_summit_2010

Put it on your calendar now!  Or we’ll hope to see you in person, especially for the session where I’m speaking: “Safety and Security Concerns, Open Source Biodefense” at 5:15 PM on Friday.  –Chris Peterson

A routine traffic-stop in Switzerland has allegedly thwarted eco-terrorists from blowing up the site of the £55million nano-technology HQ of IBM in Europe…

The group describes itself as anarchist and is opposed to all forms of micro-technology as well as nuclear power and weapons…

The IBM facility that the Il Silvestre group was targeting is still under construction.  When finished, it will contain the most state-of-the-art facilities in Europe for nano-and-bio-technological research, with the probability of billions of pounds in profit for IBM.

The article describes the suspects as ‘eco-terrorists’ but I am not sure we should encourage them by using that term.  (Or ‘anarchists” either, for that matter—peaceful anarchists should object to that.)

The more terrorism there is, the more we need Open Source Sensing.  —Chris Peterson

Thirty-five years ago, Martin Hellman, Whitfield Diffie and Ralph Merkle developed an easy method for sending secure messages over insecure channels. With the advent of the Internet, their technology, called public key cryptography, is now used continuously everywhere in the world.

“When a lock icon appears at the bottom of your browser, it’s using public key cryptography. Your computer and the merchant’s computer can talk back and forth across an insecure channel and exchange credit card information in a way that someone listening in cannot get it,” said Hellman, Stanford professor emeritus of electrical engineering.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has named Hellman, Diffie and Merkle the 2010 Richard W. Hamming Medalists. Hellman said he was especially happy that the award recognizes the contribution of Merkle, whose early work on public key encryption didn’t get the acknowledgement it deserved.

“Ralph really deserves equal credit with us. I am really glad to see him being recognized on this award,” Hellman said.

Read the whole article for the interesting details and politics behind the work, and a great photo of all three back in 1975 (lots of hair).  Congratulations!  —Chris Peterson

For the misuse of nanotechnology, the groups explored scenarios in which state or nonstate adversaries might use nanotechnology applications against the US and allies.  These groups also considered proliferation challenges.  The specific threats considered were new or nanoenabled biochemical agents; malfeasant exploitation of the toxicological or other deleterious health effects; evasion of vaccines, innate human immunity, or other medical countermeasures; and self-assembled materials and devices to molecular assemblers.

Scenarios involving “abiotic or mechanical self-replicating synthetic self-assembly” were regarded as beyond the timeframe covered by the book.

Those of us who answer questions from the public about potential abuse of nanotech frequently point out that there is a much more immediate concern coming from biological technologies.  This book looks at those issues and how nanotech might help.

As one who rarely envisions biotech threats, I found the workshop scary.  But it’s good that someone is paying attention to these concerns.  Check out the book, edited by Margaret Kosal of Georgia Tech.  —Chris Peterson

“When we look at cells as machines, it makes them very straightforward in the future to design them for very unique utilities,” Venter told participants at DLD. Of course, Venter has often referred to the possibility of designing cells to help clean the environment, but his premise could be applied for any purpose. Indeed, biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey is promoting the use of bio-engineering methods to repair human cells and fight aging. However, some worry that human-driven evolution could bring about harmful, unforeseen consequences.

“Accusing a scientist of playing God is obviously stupid,” Dawkins said, “but what is not obviously stupid is accusing a scientist of endangering the future of the planet by doing something that could be irreversible.”

He’s right about that, and that’s why a conversation about how scientists can safely create new life forms and alter existing ones has already begun in labs around the globe and at organizations like the Foresight Nanotech Institute. Indeed, most scientists are developing their work with an eye to improving the human lot, not the other way around.

There is no stopping the march of science, as some hope, including Sun Microsystems’ (Nasdaq: JAVA) cofounder Bill Joy. Instead, the focus should be on the best practices created within the community itself. Plus, of course, technologies such as gene manipulation and nanotechnology are only pieces of the larger puzzle. Robotics is another…

All these examples show that the future of human enhancement is rocketing forward, and many people from a variety of disciplines are contributing. Technology is the common driver, but in the end, is simply a tool. Tools can be used for good or evil purposes, and it’s up to involved and responsible people to make sure they use the technology and innovations in a beneficial way. There is reason to believe that enhancement technologies will be used for both good and evil purposes, but in an age of greater communication, globalization and transparency, the good should stand a better chance of winning.

Sounds right to us. Go, Sonia! —Christine