Nanonoia: More Than Meets the Eye
Glenn Gould
January 21, 2009
For the last forty years, work has been progressing exponentially in the field of nanotechnology. At the outset of this epoch, while accolades built to a commotion, scientists, who knew the field well, advised colleagues to proceed with caution. Of course this warning fell on deaf ears, and science in the hands of ‘investors’ plunged headlong into the unknown. With hundreds of nanoproducts already on shelves, it is a worldwide free-for-all that represented $147 billion in 2008 and is projected to surpass a trillion dollars in the next decade. Like the confusion regarding cell phone protocols spawned by our free market capitalism, nanotech is driven by competition more than good-sense. The Hannibal of our persistent obsession with profit is at the very gates, threatening the building blocks of life – DNA. Unfortunately what we see and hear about is but a tiny fraction of what is actually happening. The technology already deployed today is more frightening than ever imagined by Orwell, Huxley, King or Spielberg.
Renowned physicist Richard Feynman was a pioneer in free thinking – in many areas – and was instrumental in promoting enthusiasm for research in nanotechnology in the late 1950s. On December 29,1959, speaking to the American Physical Society at the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena, Feynman suggested that “In the year 2000, when they look back at this age, they will wonder why it was not until the year 1960 that anybody began seriously to move in this direction.” Today, nanotechnology is
commonplace, found in at least 800 consumer goods worldwide. The Foresight Institute awards the Richard Feynman Prizes in Nanotechnology. “[In 2008] we honor major advances in both understanding and building of nanoscale structures,” according to Christine Peterson, Foresight’s current President. “This work moves us forward on the path to systems of complex, atomically-precise molecular machinery.” The Institute “is the leading public interest organization in nanotechnology. Foresight was founded in 1986 to promote and accelerate the development of beneficial nanotechnology through education, research prizes, and public policy advocacy. Scientists, industry, governments, and the public turn to Foresight for balanced information provided through its publications, public policy activities, roadmaps, prizes, and conferences.” The ‘grandfather’ of Nanotechnology, Eric Drexler, founded the Institute in 1986, and published Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology.
In his book, Drexler speculated that this technology could easily overwhelm us. “What if nanobots start building chairs and don’t stop?” he asks. The self-replicating could run amuck annihilating the world by their nanobot products. Gray Goo is the obliteration of life that might result from the uncontrollable spread of self-replicating assemblers. Drexler illustrates how rapidly the damage would escalate from one rogue replicator. “If the first replicator could assemble a copy of itself in one thousand seconds, the two replicators could then build two more in the next thousand seconds, the four build another four, and the eight build another eight. At the end of ten hours, there are not thirty-six new replicators, but over 68 billion. In less than a day, they would weigh a ton; in less than two days, they would outweigh the Earth; in another four hours, they would exceed the mass of the Sun and all the planets combined.” To avoid a Gray Goo Boo-Boo, Drexler established guidelines for developing “safe” molecular assembler devices. Foresight recommends that nano-devices be constructed in such a way that they are dependent on “a single artificial fuel source or artificial ‘vitamins’ that doesn’t exist in any natural environment.” Foresight also suggests that scientists program “terminator” dates into their atomic creations and update their computer virus-protection software regularly. Sounds a bit like Jurassic Park.
On April 9, 2003, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, allocating funds for nanotechnology, heard from Christine Peterson, president of Drexler’s Foresight Institute. Peterson, closing her written statement, says, "…there is no guarantee that the U.S., an ally, or other democracy will be the first to reach molecular manufacturing, and failure to do so would be military disaster." This bit of nanonoia is relevant to the central issues regarding nanotechnology and the disclosure of this science and the disclosure of ‘alien’ intervention in general. Four important points to consider when thinking about nanotech, which may be overlooked, are critical to understanding the role of this science in the future.
First, serious discussion about nanotechnology is clouded by references to the concept as a marketing ploy – that is the iPod Nano, nano-processors and nano materials used throughout the many industries. Nano sizing is not the essential element in the discussion – there are and have been particles this size in our environment from the beginning. The important element is the ability to control the elements of this particle. Building these particles, on a molecular level, enables the implementation of any number of technologies at a scale which can not be seen. Particles made on this
scale can only be seen with the most sensitive and specialized equipment. One cannot inspect the contents of these products using the technology of a jewelers loop. Nanotechnology means programming the construction of materials from the molecular level, and incorporating functionality beyond anything previously imagined. It means molecular assembly to the extent that the particles themselves self-assemble into the programmed configuration, similar to the way DNA assembles itself based on the genetic code. There is nothing simple about this technology – it is essentially tampering with the very basis of the material universe. This is a product that is created by corporate or government science, and which is unregulated and not monitored at any stage. There is no one looking out for the possible abuses of these systems, and worse, there is no technology available to combat or control the devastating possibilities except those tools in the hands of those who made them in the first place.
Secondly, nanoscience is the future. Molecular manufacturing will completely replace contemporary forms of making the objects we need, and that as a necessary reality. The simple fact is that when a molecular formula is known - either by invention or reverse engineering – it then can be assembled by nanobots from raw materials found in the periodic table and available in everything, without lighting the first foundry flame, sharpening the first die or tool, or hiring the first unskilled laborer. The future is clean, not because we have made cleaner factories by following the 5S practices of Taiichi Ono, or have all adopted the perfect quality policy eliminating all waste. The future is clean and orderly because nano assemblers, and disassemblers make the items the dominant life form on the planet require and have neatly recycled the trash of history and used it efficiently for other purposes. This is a far-out utopian concept today, and one that will not work in a capitalist paradigm guided by the hording mentality. The world capitalist economy must first be shifted to some alternative form. It is nonetheless the essence of the study of molecular manufacturing and it the only possible future in which this planet’s environment survives.
But what we do not know, that we do not perceive when the term nano is uttered in advertising and media, is the fact that this science has been ongoing for almost three generations, or fifty years, in a serious way. The news that reaches the general public is only a tiny part of the actual extent of development that has been achieved in that time. And like zero-point, or “free” energy, it is a technology that our sociology is not currently able to adopt – it is non-exploitable in terms of a persistent financial agenda. The main form of resistance to nanoscience and molecular manufacturing is the fact that it is about as controllable and billable as sunlight. There is no exploitation possible when energy is free and materials are produced from waste matter overly available on this polluted planet. Only a small window of
exploitation opportunity exists and that is in the control of the molecular formulas needed to instruct the nanobots what to build – very similar to the issue of maintaining rights to computer software via the “dot-net” method and the retention of media rights to entertainment products through licensing. The axiom that “knowledge is power” is really going to be fleshed out as the cheap and efficient technologies of free-energy and molecular assembly proliferate and eventually overtake our world.
Thirdly, when the media talks about nanotechnology, it is talking about small particles and science used in the medical, pharmaceutical and textile industries which are sold to us as avant-garde and beneficial to us on selfish and impractical levels. The current scope of nano product marketing is still new and is being desperately waved by our strange society as a banner of newness and to create the necessary dissatisfaction with out current products, methods and materials. Most of the products that hail ‘nano-something’ are the simple unessential flotsam and jetsam of the shipwreck of our modern postindustrial age. Sunscreens, socks and self-cleaning surfaces, nanotech has gone mainstream as a marketing tool in the most insidious manner. From microprocessors to bike parts, everyday products are starting to incorporate nanotechnology. Nanotech to put paint in the past (Apr.10, 2005), Fujitsu Siemens eyes nanotech for chips (Mar.10, 2005), Moore says nanoelectronics face tough challenges (Mar.9,2005), Intel sketches out nanotechnology road map (Oct.25, 2004), Nanoparticles for energy,explosions (Oct.21, 2004), Nanotechnology aims to cure smelly feet (Sept.27, 2004) are a few pitiful examples. There are almost 800 more products, and more being introduced daily, which tout some kind of “nano” something. This is to be expected, but is not the ultimate configuration of nanoscience of the future. An inventory of nano products can be seen at the Nanotechnology Project in the Project on Emerging Nanotechnology, sponsored in part by the Pew Charitable Trust and the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, and can be located at http://www.nanotechproject.org/inventories/consumer As stated, the majority of the products are simply an extension of the new materials boom, and do not necessarily represent the ground truth of current nanoscience.
Fourth – nanoscience impinges on our long association with our ‘alien’ friends and upon the subject of the end of the truth embargo and Full Disclosure.
Steven Bassegtt illustrated that President Elect Obama is assembling what could be viewed as a cabinet and staff geared well for disclosure. His selections all share some thread that could be construed as a preparatory effort to move toward the goal of a release of information relative to ‘alien’ interference. The problem with the disclosure of all information
relative to the association with aliens is the action we have undertaken in connection with that presence. Without a comprehensive amnesty program, admission of all the facts regarding alien association with our government (or, quasi-governmental agencies) will result in the disclosure of some dark deeds. Given our torts condition, this will give the overabundance of lawyers our society creates something to do for many, many years. The syphilis crimes at Tuskegee Alabama will pale in comparison to the release of all the facts to date relative to a full disclosure. The technology transferred by various means in connection to the ‘alien’ presence alone is a vast ocean of scary stories, and there be monsters there. Corporations and agencies are mired in this technology and have done things in secret which would be inadvisable to reveal, given the nature of our courts system. But of course, this will not be allowed.
An innuendo made on the Military.com site, purportedly from the Army War College, suggests that the Obama administration will face a “strategic shock” within the first eight months on the job. Only our myopic attention to the melting economy will prevent us from seeing this come our way, but our government is intently preparing for calamity and has made plans accordingly.
So while our good President Elect may have visions of letting this cat out of the bag – which thing we really do need now more than a new iPod – the ancient Military-Industrial-Corporate-Congressional-Complex will not easily let it fly. Without a blanket amnesty policy, people will go to prison forever and be sued, with their corporate sponsors, back to the Stone Age. And if the full extent of contemporary nanoscience were revealed, as it would be if a complete truth embargo were lifted, the conscious public would panic.
Far from being a utopian enabler, nanoscience has the profound ability to alter the very molecules and atoms of our material world, and our genetics. By using materials at hand, molecular assemblers can rearrange elements into whatever configuration is desired by the programmer. As DNA assembles life based on a code passed on to each succeeding generation, a similar code will enable nano-machines to build whatever their designers can imagine.
Today, nanoscience has deployed materials into the environment which can receive radio signals, deliver drugs through the lipid membranes of cells with no antibiotic resistance, use DNA to assemble carbon and gold structures at the molecular level. Nanoscience has given us biological factories which can produce virtually anything using the DNA of e. coli. The “accidental” release
of chemicals into our environment may have placed at the disposal of nanobots materials engineered for particular purposes, with particular features. We find chemicals in our water and air we cannot explain. Our food is shrouded in plastics with chemical properties easily adaptable to the needs of nanoscience. Artificial sweeteners and heavy metals have plagued us for generations, a chemical soup of frightening ingredients. These chemicals may serve as deeply
buried supply centers, caches of material for use at a time in the future. Unused but available, these materials may only need assembling into appropriate configurations, by nanoassemblers, switched on by way of radio signals. Conveniently, these signals will soon pass much more readily through walls and structures, thanks to the introduction of DTV in February of this year (2009). And a critical step, the shift of the world’s capitalist, free-market paradigm and the collapse of the world’s economic structure, is already underway.
The Orwellian future seems to have been avoided, but only through modification – Big Brother is now potentially inside us, not just watching. Huxley’s future of a Brave New World, genetically engineered for precise control, is in fact here to stay. Hans Moravec, who established the world's largest robotics research program at Carnegie Mellon, is convinced he can create a conscious robot in 30 years and is quite enthused by the prospect. The convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science (NBIC) is adjusting the trajectory of the future of humanity, and it is no accidental detour. Imagine controllable spontaneous human combustion, or switchable flesh eating viruses in the hands of a modern Adolph Hitler. What need would he have of gas chambers and ovens? The whole process would have been much cleaner and more efficient with the applied science of nanotechnology at his disposal. The thought gives fears of the New World Order’s vision of eliminating 80% of the population a sharper point.
What prevents this from recurring? What can be done to avoid this future? These are important questions to which no answer immediately presents itself.
Renowned physicist Richard Feynman was a pioneer in free thinking – in many areas – and was instrumental in promoting enthusiasm for research in nanotechnology in the late 1950s. On December 29,1959, speaking to the American Physical Society at the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena, Feynman suggested that “In the year 2000, when they look back at this age, they will wonder why it was not until the year 1960 that anybody began seriously to move in this direction.” Today, nanotechnology is
commonplace, found in at least 800 consumer goods worldwide. The Foresight Institute awards the Richard Feynman Prizes in Nanotechnology. “[In 2008] we honor major advances in both understanding and building of nanoscale structures,” according to Christine Peterson, Foresight’s current President. “This work moves us forward on the path to systems of complex, atomically-precise molecular machinery.” The Institute “is the leading public interest organization in nanotechnology. Foresight was founded in 1986 to promote and accelerate the development of beneficial nanotechnology through education, research prizes, and public policy advocacy. Scientists, industry, governments, and the public turn to Foresight for balanced information provided through its publications, public policy activities, roadmaps, prizes, and conferences.” The ‘grandfather’ of Nanotechnology, Eric Drexler, founded the Institute in 1986, and published Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology.
In his book, Drexler speculated that this technology could easily overwhelm us. “What if nanobots start building chairs and don’t stop?” he asks. The self-replicating could run amuck annihilating the world by their nanobot products. Gray Goo is the obliteration of life that might result from the uncontrollable spread of self-replicating assemblers. Drexler illustrates how rapidly the damage would escalate from one rogue replicator. “If the first replicator could assemble a copy of itself in one thousand seconds, the two replicators could then build two more in the next thousand seconds, the four build another four, and the eight build another eight. At the end of ten hours, there are not thirty-six new replicators, but over 68 billion. In less than a day, they would weigh a ton; in less than two days, they would outweigh the Earth; in another four hours, they would exceed the mass of the Sun and all the planets combined.” To avoid a Gray Goo Boo-Boo, Drexler established guidelines for developing “safe” molecular assembler devices. Foresight recommends that nano-devices be constructed in such a way that they are dependent on “a single artificial fuel source or artificial ‘vitamins’ that doesn’t exist in any natural environment.” Foresight also suggests that scientists program “terminator” dates into their atomic creations and update their computer virus-protection software regularly. Sounds a bit like Jurassic Park.
On April 9, 2003, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, allocating funds for nanotechnology, heard from Christine Peterson, president of Drexler’s Foresight Institute. Peterson, closing her written statement, says, "…there is no guarantee that the U.S., an ally, or other democracy will be the first to reach molecular manufacturing, and failure to do so would be military disaster." This bit of nanonoia is relevant to the central issues regarding nanotechnology and the disclosure of this science and the disclosure of ‘alien’ intervention in general. Four important points to consider when thinking about nanotech, which may be overlooked, are critical to understanding the role of this science in the future.
First, serious discussion about nanotechnology is clouded by references to the concept as a marketing ploy – that is the iPod Nano, nano-processors and nano materials used throughout the many industries. Nano sizing is not the essential element in the discussion – there are and have been particles this size in our environment from the beginning. The important element is the ability to control the elements of this particle. Building these particles, on a molecular level, enables the implementation of any number of technologies at a scale which can not be seen. Particles made on this
scale can only be seen with the most sensitive and specialized equipment. One cannot inspect the contents of these products using the technology of a jewelers loop. Nanotechnology means programming the construction of materials from the molecular level, and incorporating functionality beyond anything previously imagined. It means molecular assembly to the extent that the particles themselves self-assemble into the programmed configuration, similar to the way DNA assembles itself based on the genetic code. There is nothing simple about this technology – it is essentially tampering with the very basis of the material universe. This is a product that is created by corporate or government science, and which is unregulated and not monitored at any stage. There is no one looking out for the possible abuses of these systems, and worse, there is no technology available to combat or control the devastating possibilities except those tools in the hands of those who made them in the first place.
Secondly, nanoscience is the future. Molecular manufacturing will completely replace contemporary forms of making the objects we need, and that as a necessary reality. The simple fact is that when a molecular formula is known - either by invention or reverse engineering – it then can be assembled by nanobots from raw materials found in the periodic table and available in everything, without lighting the first foundry flame, sharpening the first die or tool, or hiring the first unskilled laborer. The future is clean, not because we have made cleaner factories by following the 5S practices of Taiichi Ono, or have all adopted the perfect quality policy eliminating all waste. The future is clean and orderly because nano assemblers, and disassemblers make the items the dominant life form on the planet require and have neatly recycled the trash of history and used it efficiently for other purposes. This is a far-out utopian concept today, and one that will not work in a capitalist paradigm guided by the hording mentality. The world capitalist economy must first be shifted to some alternative form. It is nonetheless the essence of the study of molecular manufacturing and it the only possible future in which this planet’s environment survives.
But what we do not know, that we do not perceive when the term nano is uttered in advertising and media, is the fact that this science has been ongoing for almost three generations, or fifty years, in a serious way. The news that reaches the general public is only a tiny part of the actual extent of development that has been achieved in that time. And like zero-point, or “free” energy, it is a technology that our sociology is not currently able to adopt – it is non-exploitable in terms of a persistent financial agenda. The main form of resistance to nanoscience and molecular manufacturing is the fact that it is about as controllable and billable as sunlight. There is no exploitation possible when energy is free and materials are produced from waste matter overly available on this polluted planet. Only a small window of
exploitation opportunity exists and that is in the control of the molecular formulas needed to instruct the nanobots what to build – very similar to the issue of maintaining rights to computer software via the “dot-net” method and the retention of media rights to entertainment products through licensing. The axiom that “knowledge is power” is really going to be fleshed out as the cheap and efficient technologies of free-energy and molecular assembly proliferate and eventually overtake our world.
Thirdly, when the media talks about nanotechnology, it is talking about small particles and science used in the medical, pharmaceutical and textile industries which are sold to us as avant-garde and beneficial to us on selfish and impractical levels. The current scope of nano product marketing is still new and is being desperately waved by our strange society as a banner of newness and to create the necessary dissatisfaction with out current products, methods and materials. Most of the products that hail ‘nano-something’ are the simple unessential flotsam and jetsam of the shipwreck of our modern postindustrial age. Sunscreens, socks and self-cleaning surfaces, nanotech has gone mainstream as a marketing tool in the most insidious manner. From microprocessors to bike parts, everyday products are starting to incorporate nanotechnology. Nanotech to put paint in the past (Apr.10, 2005), Fujitsu Siemens eyes nanotech for chips (Mar.10, 2005), Moore says nanoelectronics face tough challenges (Mar.9,2005), Intel sketches out nanotechnology road map (Oct.25, 2004), Nanoparticles for energy,explosions (Oct.21, 2004), Nanotechnology aims to cure smelly feet (Sept.27, 2004) are a few pitiful examples. There are almost 800 more products, and more being introduced daily, which tout some kind of “nano” something. This is to be expected, but is not the ultimate configuration of nanoscience of the future. An inventory of nano products can be seen at the Nanotechnology Project in the Project on Emerging Nanotechnology, sponsored in part by the Pew Charitable Trust and the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, and can be located at http://www.nanotechproject.org/inventories/consumer As stated, the majority of the products are simply an extension of the new materials boom, and do not necessarily represent the ground truth of current nanoscience.
Fourth – nanoscience impinges on our long association with our ‘alien’ friends and upon the subject of the end of the truth embargo and Full Disclosure.
Steven Bassegtt illustrated that President Elect Obama is assembling what could be viewed as a cabinet and staff geared well for disclosure. His selections all share some thread that could be construed as a preparatory effort to move toward the goal of a release of information relative to ‘alien’ interference. The problem with the disclosure of all information
relative to the association with aliens is the action we have undertaken in connection with that presence. Without a comprehensive amnesty program, admission of all the facts regarding alien association with our government (or, quasi-governmental agencies) will result in the disclosure of some dark deeds. Given our torts condition, this will give the overabundance of lawyers our society creates something to do for many, many years. The syphilis crimes at Tuskegee Alabama will pale in comparison to the release of all the facts to date relative to a full disclosure. The technology transferred by various means in connection to the ‘alien’ presence alone is a vast ocean of scary stories, and there be monsters there. Corporations and agencies are mired in this technology and have done things in secret which would be inadvisable to reveal, given the nature of our courts system. But of course, this will not be allowed.
An innuendo made on the Military.com site, purportedly from the Army War College, suggests that the Obama administration will face a “strategic shock” within the first eight months on the job. Only our myopic attention to the melting economy will prevent us from seeing this come our way, but our government is intently preparing for calamity and has made plans accordingly.
So while our good President Elect may have visions of letting this cat out of the bag – which thing we really do need now more than a new iPod – the ancient Military-Industrial-Corporate-Congressional-Complex will not easily let it fly. Without a blanket amnesty policy, people will go to prison forever and be sued, with their corporate sponsors, back to the Stone Age. And if the full extent of contemporary nanoscience were revealed, as it would be if a complete truth embargo were lifted, the conscious public would panic.
Far from being a utopian enabler, nanoscience has the profound ability to alter the very molecules and atoms of our material world, and our genetics. By using materials at hand, molecular assemblers can rearrange elements into whatever configuration is desired by the programmer. As DNA assembles life based on a code passed on to each succeeding generation, a similar code will enable nano-machines to build whatever their designers can imagine.
Today, nanoscience has deployed materials into the environment which can receive radio signals, deliver drugs through the lipid membranes of cells with no antibiotic resistance, use DNA to assemble carbon and gold structures at the molecular level. Nanoscience has given us biological factories which can produce virtually anything using the DNA of e. coli. The “accidental” release
of chemicals into our environment may have placed at the disposal of nanobots materials engineered for particular purposes, with particular features. We find chemicals in our water and air we cannot explain. Our food is shrouded in plastics with chemical properties easily adaptable to the needs of nanoscience. Artificial sweeteners and heavy metals have plagued us for generations, a chemical soup of frightening ingredients. These chemicals may serve as deeply
buried supply centers, caches of material for use at a time in the future. Unused but available, these materials may only need assembling into appropriate configurations, by nanoassemblers, switched on by way of radio signals. Conveniently, these signals will soon pass much more readily through walls and structures, thanks to the introduction of DTV in February of this year (2009). And a critical step, the shift of the world’s capitalist, free-market paradigm and the collapse of the world’s economic structure, is already underway.
The Orwellian future seems to have been avoided, but only through modification – Big Brother is now potentially inside us, not just watching. Huxley’s future of a Brave New World, genetically engineered for precise control, is in fact here to stay. Hans Moravec, who established the world's largest robotics research program at Carnegie Mellon, is convinced he can create a conscious robot in 30 years and is quite enthused by the prospect. The convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science (NBIC) is adjusting the trajectory of the future of humanity, and it is no accidental detour. Imagine controllable spontaneous human combustion, or switchable flesh eating viruses in the hands of a modern Adolph Hitler. What need would he have of gas chambers and ovens? The whole process would have been much cleaner and more efficient with the applied science of nanotechnology at his disposal. The thought gives fears of the New World Order’s vision of eliminating 80% of the population a sharper point.
What prevents this from recurring? What can be done to avoid this future? These are important questions to which no answer immediately presents itself.
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