“Today’s manufacturing methods are very crude at the molecular level…It’s like trying to make things out of LEGO blocks with boxing gloves on your hands. Yes, you can push the LEGO blocks into great heaps and pile them up, but you can’t really snap them together the way you’d like. In the future, nanotechnology will let us take off the boxing gloves. We’ll be able to snap together the fundamental building blocks of nature, easily, inexpensively and in almost any arrangement that we desire.”
–Ralph C. Merkle, Zyvex Corp.
An emerging science called nanotechnology aims to build products from the atomic level up, using molecule-sized, self-replicating machines. It is already theoretically possible to build small machines that build smaller machines, which in turn will build even smaller machines, until eventually the smallest units will be only a few atoms wide. Their size will be measured in nanometers (billionths of a meter). These tiny machines will be able to manipulate atoms into whatever configurations their programmers desire. The power of nanotechnology springs from two sources: the ability of these tiny assemblers to make almost anything cheaply, and their ability to make copies of themselves.
Here are some future scenarios predicted by scientists: We will be able to make supercomputers that fit onto the head of a pin; People will be injected with nanorobots to repair cells damaged by age and to destroy cancer cells. Molecular manufacturing will make any desired product cheaply with no waste or pollution. Materials people now discard as trash will be recycled within the household to make food, clothing and household goods. In short, the world will be a terrific place to live, once nanotechnology has solved the problems of disease, pollution, energy shortages and hunger. And this is all predicted to start within the next 20 years.
If you think 20 years is a long way in the future, take a moment to consider how technological advances have changed our lives in the last twenty years. Those of us who are boomer-aged or older remember a time not so long ago when the Internet, cell phones, Palm Pilots and fax machines would have been considered science fiction. Brace yourself for the future, because it’s coming faster than you think — in January of last year, President Clinton called for a $500 million National Nanotechnology Initiative to help scientists and manufacturers do basic research in this field.
Nanotechnology has the potential to make us healthy and wealthy, but not necessarily wise. Any powerful new technology can cause great harm, either because it is used by people with evil intent, or because it has unanticipated consequences. It would be easy for even the non-paranoid personality to imagine a terrorist developing a super-germ based on this technology. Another scenario has been referred to as “The Gray-Goo Factor.” It envisions a future in which nano-machines use raw materials to make copies of themselves, in much the same way plants and animals do. If these critters escape into the environment, they could potentially spread like a fungus all over the planet, crowding out all the less-efficient, living organisms. Bill Joy, cofounder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, suggested last year that the best course would be to discontinue all research and development in nanotechnology because it presented too many dangers.
Is this a practical way to deal with our fears, no matter how well-founded they may be? Ralph C. Merkle, principal fellow of Zyvex, a nanotechnology company, said: “This approach suffers from major problems: telling researchers not to research nanotechology and companies not to build it, when there are vast fortunes to be made, glory to be won, and national strategic interests at stake either won’t work or will push research underground where it can’t be regulated…” Another point to consider is that even if we block or slow down the development of nanotechnology in the United States, it is certain to be developed somewhere in the world, and the more we know about it, the better chance we have of combating it if it is used against us by a foreign power. If this sounds like a discussion of atomic power, it is because there are ominous similarities. A good discussion of these issues can be found in a Web site maintained by The Foresight Institute. An essay on the Web site, foresight.org, compares nanotechnology to genetic engineering, suggesting that similar opportunities and dangers are present in both fields. As with genetic engineering, it seems more practical to institute controls over research than to attempt to outlaw it. The Foresight Institute suggests the following controls, among others: Artificial replicators must not be capable of operating in a natural, uncontrolled environment; they must have an absolute dependence on an artificial fuel source or artificial components not found in nature; and they must use encryption codes to prevent unintended alterations in their blueprints.
It is important that ordinary citizens keep an eye on what’s happening in this field and make sure new laws and controls keep pace with the problems and challenges presented by nanotechnology. If we are to avoid major disasters, rules must set out to ensure safety, researchers must be monitored and manufacturers must be inspected. You may be surprised to hear me asking for more government regulation in this column – that’s usually the last thing I would advocate. But in this case, the stakes are too high for us to ignore.