June 10, 2004
Nanotech is Safe Honest!
The shock news of the day was an opinion piece in 'Nanotechnology' by Eric Drexler suggesting that chemistry sets can be safe when used under the supervision of a responsible adult. - At least that is how it appeared to us after we had the article translated into English. We had a quick trawl around and made a few phone calls.
The Guardian has a different view, with the headline "Civilisation safe as nanobot threat fades Whoopee!" and the BBC has "Nanotech guru turns back on goo" before launching off into the dangers of nanotech and illustrating the piece with a couple of stock shock nanotech images.
Meanwhile the scientific community has been treating this as an admission of fundamental flaws in the original vision of molecular nanotechnology making the whole thesis untenable. The song coming out of the Oxbridge bars is "One-Nil to the scientific establishment."
At the green end of the political spectrum, the paper is being viewed as an attempt to counter recent criticism by environmental groups, somewhat akin to Monsanto scientists discovering that GMOs are good for you, or British agriculture minister John Selwyn Gummer force-feeding his daughter a hamburger at the height of the BSE scare. But its all OK, because "All risk of accidental runaway replication can be avoided."
So, is molecular nanotechnology unfeasable or perfectly safe? To be honest afer reading this we are none the wiser.
Actually, nothing was said in the paper suggesting either unfeasibility or perfect safety. It instead notes the superiority of non-self-replicating systems with respect to complexity, efficiency, and so forth, and hence the lack of incentive to build anything remotely resembling a runaway replicator. This is a simple, factual message about alternative approaches to molecular manufacturing. Odd to see it so muddled so soon.
The body (not the first sentence) of the BBC article ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3788673.stm ) is rather accurate, as is the Institute of Physics press release ( http://www.iop.org/news/763 ).
Posted by: Eric Drexler at June 11, 2004 10:03 PM