Nanotechnology and Peace: Drexler, Merkle

IMAGINE what it would be like if we could clean up the Earth's air and water by manufacturing products from the pollutants themselves. IMAGINE what it would be like if there were limitless resources. IMAGINE what it would be like if there were a way to create tremendous wealth, sufficient to cause radical change to the political and economic structures of the world. IMAGINE sitting with your family in a garden outside a house that built itself, waiting for your roast-nanoturkey dinner to be ''assembled'' from a nanotech ''feedstock'' derived from the normal waste products of your family's life. The ability to do the first three things on the above list may be in place in less than a decade. And the turkey dinner is only a more sophisticated application of the same approach. It's called ''nanotechnology.''[1] And a world at peace is one of the key futurist scenarios set forth by those involved in this radical new science. The Spirit of Ma'at interviewed Christine Peterson, PhD, president of the Foresight Institute, a nonprofit organization guiding new technologies to improve the human condition. Dr. Peterson gave us an expanded vision of this possible future. ''Imagine walls,'' she said, ''that use some highly advanced screen technology, so that one minute it looks like a wall, the next it's like a window, the next minute it's a video screen. Clothing could have an active component, so that it could re-arrange itself. One minute you're wearing slacks, it gets hot and you and want shorts, so you type something into your pants and they become shorts. They re-arrange themselves, basically.'' According to nanotechnology guru K. Eric Drexler, Ph.D., "To have any hope of understanding our future, we must understand the consequences of assemblers, disassemblers, and nanocomputers. They promise to bring changes as profound as the industrial revolution, antibiotics, and nuclear weapons all rolled up in one massive breakthrough." Drexler is chairman of the Foresight Institute, and also is a research fellow of the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing. As such, he was asked to testify in 1992 before a Senate subcommittee on nanotechnology. In this testimony, Dr. Drexler estimated the total development time for nanotechnology to be 15 years. By this estimate, we may be seeing major scientific benefits as early as 2007. According to Drexler, "The idea that new kinds of nanomachinery will bring new, useful abilities may seem startling: in all its billions of years of evolution, life has never abandoned its basic reliance on protein machines. ... Any production manager can well appreciate the reasons; even more than a factory, life cannot afford to shut down to replace its old systems. "Improved molecular machinery should no more surprise us than alloy steel being ten times stronger than bone, or copper wires transmitting signals a million times faster than nerves. Cars outspeed cheetahs, jets outfly falcons, and computers already outcalculate head-scratching humans. The future will bring further examples of improvements on biological evolution, of which second-generation nanomachines will be but one."[2] Dr. Peterson stressed the zero-pollution aspects of nanotechnology. ''Basically,'' she said, ''pollution is atoms and molecules that are out of place. They're not where they belong, and are causing a problem. And in this vision of molecular manufacturing –which is another term for advanced nanotechnology –we should be able to take those materials and use them as feedstock into some other process. The goal is zero chemical pollution. Someday, with this technology, we can do that economically. Dr. Drexler also stressed the antipollution aspects when he suggested to the Senate subcommittee that some of the products of nanotechnology include: Clean, highly productive manufacturing systems New molecular instruments for science and medicine Extremely compact, energy-efficient computers Stronger materials for lighter and more efficient vehicles Inexpensive solar cells suitable for use in roofing and paving[3] Comparing nanotechnology to the technology of green plants, Dr. Drexler suggested in his Senate testimony that this new science can provide: Low-cost production of solar collectors Low-cost production of large structures stronger than wood Manufacturing that creates no waste products, thus eliminating the need for disposal of toxic chemicals Absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide Compatibility with the natural world[4] What Is Nanotechnology Nanotechnology is the science of manufacturing products at a whole new level of existence –the level of molecules and atoms. "Nano" means one-billionth. Nanotechnology works with structures in the size range of 1 to 1000 nanometers, or one-billionth to one-millionth of a meter. We may gain some perspective on how small this is by comparing a nanometer to a micron, the unit of measurement for living cells. Since micron measurements are used for gene splicing, we can see that nanotechnology involves manufacturing systems that are a thousand times smaller than those used by genetic research. A nanometer is a thousand times smaller than a micron. Part of the innovation in this new technology is that the manufacturing process is self-replicating –just as crystals and living cells are. And in a self-replicating system, the cost of manufacturing is the cost of the materials themselves. Since the waste products of civilization actually contain, at the molecular level, all of the raw materials we need, nanotechnology thus offers the utopian future vision of absolute sustainability and abundance for all. But self-replicating machines may be a ways off, Dr. Peterson told us. ''Generally, the self-replicating kinds of nanotechnology –the zero-pollution type thing, for example –I really don't think we will see those for at least a decade, and lots of folks would argue two decades or more. Of course, we see it in living systems, but not yet in man-made systems. But that is where you get the really powerful stuff. That's how you get the cost down, when you get these systems copying themselves. It doesn't require any human labor.'' How Does Nanotechnology Work Nanotechnology replicates products in the same way that DNA, RNA and even viruses do. If you will recall, the DNA molecule is a sequence of chemically-encoded instructions. When nutrients are supplied to a cell, DNA uses these nutrients to ''assemble'' the life form it represents according to these encoded instructions. In the same way, manufacturing at the nanometer level requires an assembler, which is a kind of molecular robot, and a manufacturing program that defines the product's matrix: how the pieces fit together into a complete and coherent system. Using the program, the assembler positions the atoms and molecules into the matrix. ''The assemblers would look like little robots,'' Dr. Peterson said, ''with little assembly lines bringing the materials to them, in an organized fashion. It's a pretty complex system.'' There are "wet" (organic), "dry" (inorganic carbon- or silicon-based, or metallurgical), and "computational" (computer modeling) nanotechnology systems.[5] Nanotechnology and the Future The relationship between nanotechnology and future peace is on many fronts. The most conspicuous are the vistas of abundance and ease that would exist in a world where factory labor is a thing of the past, and the competition for goods no longer provides a basis for war. On a subtler level, the healing of the earth's air and water which nanomanufacturing implies would eliminate much of the strife we now experience on a worldwide basis. The relationship between crimes of violence and pollution levels is well established (see [6]). In this, as in many other ways, manufacturing technologies that work in harmony with nature can transform our world. It's Not All Turkeys and Roses Self-replicating systems have unique risks. Ralph Merkle, PhD, principle fellow of Zyvex –the first molecular nanotechnology company –writes, "Unlike ordinary systems, they [self-replicating systems] can theoretically inflict an unlimited amount of damage. They could theoretically, for example, replicate unchecked and destroy the planet."[7] Like Drexler, Merkle is an adviser to the Foresight Institute, and is involved with others whose concerns have led them to look for ways to regulate nanotechnology's development. One idea is to create a central clearinghouse for coordinating and sharing data and ideas, and determining the boundaries of further research.[8, 9] In line with these goals, in the last two years the federal government has begun to support a major new National Nanotechnology Initiative. President Clinton's FY 2001 budget request included $500 million in funding for nanotechnology, almost double that for FY 2000.[10] Dr. Peterson, asked how the future of nanotechnology relates to future peace, said that her organization, the Foresight Institute, ''was founded to look at that question and say, gee, at first glance, this technology would seem to be able to make really powerful weapons. And that was a concern, and still is a concern of ours, it's probably our major concern, and how to head that off. Now it turns out that this technology is also very useful for things like arms control surveillance technology, arms control verification. And I think that's what is going to have to make the difference. ... [and] if people are getting their basic needs met and have a really good quality of life there's less incentive to have resource wars. So this would remove the material reasons for war, the resource reasons. ''This is all going to happen,'' Dr. Christine Peterson concluded. ''And then we'll see to what extent people are discouraged from fighting by material prosperity and environmental quality.'' Whatever it leads to, Nanotechnology has moved beyond the realm of science fiction and into science fact. How We Can Help What can we, as ordinary citizens, do to help guide this brilliant new technology past the many possible dangers into a reality of peace and prosperity for all? On thing we can do is to visualize that the matrix chosen by nanotechnologists will be the same one used by Nature: the Flower of Life. Since scientists receive inspiration from the group mind, if we seed this group mind with structures in the form of Platonic solids, these are the morphologies they will use.[11] More generally, we can simply project a future in which nanotechnology has been put to the service of an abundant and peaceful world. ''You want some nanogravy on that?'' Top of Page Print Version