Nanofactory Design Study Prompts Concern
Mike Treder writes "A detailed design study for a personal-size nanofactory has been published by Chris Phoenix, Director of Research for Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN). The proposed nanofactory could rapidly manufacture a wide array of advanced products, including more nanofactories, while using minimal resources. 'Design of a Primitive Nanofactory' appeared in the peer-reviewed Journal of Evolution and Technology. The 84-page technical paper is the most comprehensive examination of nanofactory architecture yet produced."
Mike Treder continues:
"We've shown that large-scale molecular manufacturing could be easier and faster to develop than many people think, so the return on investment could be much higher," said Phoenix. "One or more nations may soon find it worthwhile to begin developing this technology." This leads to the concern that the capability might arrive before adequate means for controlling it are in place. Issues of environmental safety, military conflict, and economic disruption must be addressed well ahead of time.
"This new information should motivate policy makers to begin discussion of potential consequences, both positive and negative," said CRN Executive Director Mike Treder. "We urge international leaders to open a dialogue on preparing for the sweeping economic and societal consequences that molecular nanotechnology may usher in."
A nanofactory will make use of the principles of molecular manufacturing, building products from the bottom up, molecule by molecule. Tiny machines, called fabricators, would manipulate atoms and molecules to make small parts and then join them together. A single fabricator cannot build large items, so a nanofactory must include numerous fabricators and perform multiple steps to assemble products. Others have considered one or more of these steps, but this paper represents the first time anyone has described a complete factory system in detail.
Much work still remains, particularly in the area of designing and building a fabricator. But one of the key findings of this new study is that the span of time from the first working fabricator to the first nanofactory might be far shorter than previously anticipated. "And after that, each tabletop factory could make ten thousand more pretty quickly," said Treder. "The factories can't run amok, but the people using them might."
"Every aspect of nanofactory design other than the fabricator mechanism is well within the capability of today's engineering practice," said Phoenix. "Building a fabricator entails chemical design, which will require significant research and development. But there is no known reason why a basic fabricator can't be built–and then a nanofactory soon after."
The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology is headquartered in New York. CRN is an affiliate of World Care, an international, non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization. For more information on CRN, see http://CRNano.org/.
November 5th, 2003 at 10:53 PM
Hard Copy Now Available
CRN's paper, "Design of a Primitive Nanofactory", is now available for purchase in a bound, hardcopy format. To order, please visit http://CRNano.org/papers.htm
Mike Treder
Executive Director
Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
http://CRNano.org
November 6th, 2003 at 5:54 PM
Nanofactory Design Study Seeds Widespread Research
Being an optimist by nature and more interested in progress than in politics, I would have titled this Nanodot item "Nanofactory Design Study Seeds Widespread Research". After all, Chris has written a great paper for germinating research ideas.
Although one can understand Foresight's politically-sensitive positioning over the last few years, the day that engineering design studies are greeted with "concern" instead of with "interest" is the day that some of us will start to wonder whether we are where we actually want to be.
November 9th, 2003 at 1:31 AM
Re:Nanofactory Design Study Seeds Widespread Resea
Trouble with optimists, is there's too much mist, in their opti
.
day that some of us will start to wonder whether we are where we actually want to be
Ha! Take a look around! You can't shake a stick without finding some reptile who wants to rule the world – translate that: have control over people, make them do what you want the to do.
In a nut shell, the simple version, that's what the problem is.
Nevertheless, the article sounds very interesting – must go read.
Regards,
Bryan
November 9th, 2003 at 7:20 AM
Re:Nanofactory Design Study Seeds Widespread Resea
Ha! Take a look around! You can't shake a stick without finding some reptile who wants to rule the world – translate that: have control over people, make them do what you want the to do.
I agree entirely with you, the world is full of demagogues, coercers, blinkered idealists, and just plain old criminals, on both sides of the law. The reptiles you mention are very real.
Which is why a strategy that starts off by placing all control in the hands of some of the biggest reptiles in the pond is blinkered in the extreme.
Before we depart too much from the topic though, greeting a new design study with "concern" instead of with "interest" just reinforces the hold that those reptiles will have over the world. It's an abrogation of our responsibility to shout "Concern, concern!!!" in their general direction before we've even had a chance to analyse a study closely.
What next? Disallow open design studies altogether? It's the next logical step for those who shout "Concern!" the instant that a design is published.
I sincerely hope that that's not where we're heading, because if that happens then only the criminal designer will have any semblence of freedom left.
June 22nd, 2004 at 5:57 AM
Nanofactory NEEDS bottom-up, the other kind!
I wholeheartedly agree!
Our current timeline forming before us has great potential for optimism. HOWEVER, if non-benevalent corporations, our U.S. Gov't, and 'reptiles' as this forum has called them, get ahold of an assembler, a fabricator, a nanofactory, or ANY form of technology that through any path of reasoning can create OPEN-ENDED objects (food, houses, bombs), then Drexlerian "engines of destruction" will be upon us!
Just as, from the bottom-up, MP3 technology was released (the fastest way, over the internet, as things like that should be), from the hands of people who stand to gain the least (yet the most, in sentimental value, such as that good, warm feeling you get for the rest of humanity, or your brothers), the theory I erected holds still:
"If there is available a method to create an analog source of a digital copy, there is the means to re-create a digital copy of that analog source."
The same holds true for nanofactories: no matter how much encryption, safeguard, or "political control" (i.e. LICENSES/CERTIFICATIONS to use, operate, and study nanomachinery/nanoassemblers), if there is a person of questionable ethical motives with enough motivation, they can obtain/replicate that original basic part, and another basic part, until he has the whole factory, and can once again create whatever he so desires– without interference.
Hence starts the nanotechnology hacker manifesto.
"All information, light, and technology should be free.
We will give free food to the foodless, and free homes to the homeless. We will not discriminate and restrict source data that constructs objects of necessity. We will not hold back the information revolution from the technologically and socially destitute, allowing open access to the universal and Library of Congress, without login nor password, nor clearance, nor moral/economic certification.
We will make work-arounds for Drexlerian "safe-labs," to facilitate open-ended research in countries where it is forbidden to have nanomachinery. We will take machines that are programmed only to make simple molecules, and transform them slightly to create machines that will create slightly more complex molecules that when put together will form a nanofactory, and then supply such people with information databases for creating assembler, diamondoid objects, factories, and engines of abundance.
Let no Man be kept under the oppressive foot of the intellectual property owner, the policy-maker, the capital-owner, or the Chicken Littles against the Singularity Revolution.
We will not reprogram people, we will not destroy, we will not use super-technology as a lever against another; let us see in the impoverished only the suffering of a human being.
Analog sources make for handy distributable digital copies."
We need to SUPPORT the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, the Foresight Institute, and other institutions which promote nanotechnology education, and also organizations with compassionate idiologies that don't discriminate based on capital, commercialistic, or industrialistic greed!!!!!
If we don't, we may well see the U.S. government declare nanotechnology illegal to own, and every new assembly project will be confuscated and burried in the name of "National Security," "Homeland Security," "International Security," or some such rubbish. Alternatively, either this could happen and then someone else developes molecular assembly hardware first, or we invent it first and some other malicious group, such as the Al Quada, or other violently extreme extremist Muslims (don't bash, you know you were thinking it too) try to reprogram our brains for Islam or violently disassemble us in our sleep, or some equally unnerving Outer Limits ghastly ending.
In closing, these basic technologies must be GIVEN away, for free, to those who have been deemed (by whatever loving agency) morally capable of wielding such double-edged swords,
and education must be tantamount, not in a propagandal, secular humanist way, but with wreckless abandon, allowing each to choose her random way through the freakishly large pages of the Encyclopaedia Galactica.
Ambiguous User