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Foresight Update 9 - Table of Contents |
A publication of the Foresight Institute
This is the conclusion of John Cramer's survey of fiction
with themes related to molecular technologies. [See Part I in
Update 8.]
Two mid-80s novels, Greg Bear's Blood Music (Arbor
House, 1985) and Paul Preuss' Human Error (Tor,
1985), both preceding the 1986 publication of Engines of Creation,
deal with the dangers of runaway biotechnology. In both novels,
micro-organisms that have been bioengineered for use in computing
go out of control. In both novels these organic computers evolve
and organize themselves into intelligent systems capable of
infecting and "taking over" and/or enhancing human
beings. The outcome for humanity, by good luck rather than any
result of effort or planning, turns out to be beneficial in both.
Again these scenarios can be taken as warnings that any
technology capable of evolution can "run away" in a
direction beyond our control. This is a concern that has also
been expressed in connection with the release of genetically
engineered organisms into the environment. The concern is a real
one, and nanodevices will have to be designed so that this loss
of control cannot occur. On the basis of the pre-design studies
that have already been done, this goal is readily achievable.
"Counters" that limit the number of device
duplications, and encryption schemes for DNA coding sequences are
two methods that have been suggested. Probably the danger
inherent in nanotechnology lies in its misuse through human
malice and stupidity rather than from a runaway of evolving
nanomachines.
Perhaps the bravest attempt to write the Great American nanotek
(or perhaps biotek) novel and to deal with the impact on a broad
front is Leo Frankowski's Copernick's Rebellion (Del
Rey, 1987). In Frankowski's novel an international agreement has
eliminated all government funding of genetic engineering, thereby
nearly killing the field. Martin Guidebo, an erratic genius who
escaped Germany in 1940 with the Nazis at his heels, and Heinrich
Copernick, his war-orphan nephew who is now a successful 1990s
industrialist, decide to develop genetic engineering using their
own funds. They have developed such super-tools as an "X-ray
resonance microscope", a microscalpel using an X-ray laser,
and a supercomputer based bio-simulator which allow them to
directly manipulate the DNA programming of organisms and to
accurately predict the results of such manipulations. They use
this technology to rebuild their own bodies and to rejuvenate
themselves. They focus their new technology on the consumer,
developing a series of "treehouse" habitats that
provide for all the needs of the humans living in them, and they
distribute treehouse seeds free to all takers. The economic
disruption that results produces a duel between the "stuffed
shirts," as Guidebo calls elected officials, and our rebel
nanotek heroes. The escalating warfare that ensues, after many
thousands of deaths and the calculated sabotage of most
pre-organic machines, results in the replacement of our present
politico-economic system with an idyllic anarchy.
Frankowski's technocratic vision is a nice try at a possibly
impossible task. He avoids many of the problems of a real
technology revolution by putting the capabilities exclusively in
the hands of just two clever and lucky men who, to the best of
Frankowski's abilities, are described as using it wisely. The
novel is thought provoking but far from satisfying and
unintentionally rather horrifying. By the conclusion, the number
of loose ends gives the novel the aspect of a shag rug. The
implication of Frankowski's work is that even the rather limited
biotechnology he describes, which offers considerably less
potential than true nanotechnology, intolerable stresses are
placed on our existing slow-moving ill-prepared political system.
Even with "good guys" at the controls, the result is
military intervention, violence, anarchy, and a large number of
dead bodies.
Vernor Vinge, a SF writer of note and a mathematician who
understands well the behavior of the exponential function, has
focused attention on the implications of our exponentially rising
technological capabilities, among which are those implicit in
nanotek. In his story collection True Names Vinge
discussed his expectation that this techno-explosion will
culminate in a few decades in what he calls "The
Singularity." His novel Marooned in Realtime
describes a group of post-Singularity stragglers living on a
depopulated Earth. They have "spaced over" the
Singularity, having had the fortune (or misfortune) to be
suspended in stasis at the time when it occurred and when the
rest of the human population mysteriously vanished. This premise
forms the background for an entertaining futuristic murder
mystery.
In using this format for his novel, Vinge the writer has himself
spaced over the need to describe the Singularity or the events
leading up to it, except with a few obscure hints. This is
perhaps inevitable, but it provides us with little insight as to
what nanotek explosion may be store for us in the coming decades
or how we should prepare.
Jeffrey Carver's novel From a Changeling Star
(Bantam, 1989) uses nanotechnology as a central plot element and
even has a central character named E'rik Daxter. Another
character is repeatedly "assassinated" and restored by
nanomachines in his body, and intelligent nano-creatures are one
of the power groups. However, nanotek has not impacted Carver's
civilization as a whole. Rather it is a kind of "magic"
possessed in secret by one particular faction. This is an
enjoyable book that develops many interesting ideas, but as a
guide to how nanotechnology might impact our civilization Changeling
Star isn't very helpful.
Greg Bear's short story "Sisters" (Tangents,
Warner, 1989) concerns the downside of tinkering with the human
genome. Letitia is an NG (natural genome) teenager attending a
high school where most of the students are PPCs (pre-planned
children) whose genomes have been manipulated for enhanced
intelligence, physical beauty, and improved athletic abilities. A
latent "bug" in the genetic software of the PPC
children becomes evident, a neural instability leading to
epileptic seizures and death. Letitia, formerly resentful of her
inferiority to the PPC children, loses some of her PPC friends
and grows up.
Bear's scenario is all too plausible. Those of us who write
computer programs know that the easy part of programming is the
writing of the program; the difficult part is the subsequent
elimination of all the bugs, the programming mistakes and
misconceptions. Surely genetic engineering, which involves a
"mainframe" far more complex than a simple digital
computer, will have similar problems. How will the nanotek
engineers of the future debug design-improvements in the human
genome? Simulation? Or trial-and-error?
Gregory Benford's story "Warstory" (IASFM,
January 1990) is, at one level, about another genetic engineering
accident. The greenhouse effect has raised the levels of the
oceans, and southern California has become a new Netherlands,
protected from the incursions of the Pacific behind a wall of
dikes. The dikes are protected by a living organic coating that
prevents corrosion and repels barnacles and other sea life. But
the coating mutates and begins to eat the seawall it was designed
to protect. Or is this techno-thriller the recreational reading
of a stranded pilot fighting a space-war on Ganymede? The reader
isn't quite sure.
Poul Anderson's new novel Boat of a Million Years
Tor, 1989), is, for most of the book, set in the past. But the
immortal protagonists progress through history to the present and
beyond, and the last chapters take place in a future in which
nanotechnology and a nuclear war have radically altered
civilization. The details of the nanotek revolution are never
explicitly spelled out, but the sea-changes in economics,
aesthetics, and values are everywhere apparent. This is certainly
Anderson's best book since Avatar, perhaps his best
novel ever. The level of thought and balanced judgement that has
gone into this convincing portrayal of a post-nanotek
civilization, though a minor part of the overall work, is
impressive. The portrait of the nanotek revolution, however, is a
low-resolution image deep in the background of a work that is
focused elsewhere.
Greg Bear's forthcoming novel Queen of Angels
(Warner, 1990) is set in 2047, roughly a decade after the onset
of a major nanotek revolution. There is abundant nanotek here.
The principal protagonist, a woman police professional, is a
"transform" whose body has been restructured and
improved by nanotek. A sculptor, his hands scarred by the
careless use of nanomachines, is supervising the nanotek
restructuring of an old building from the inside out. Concealed
in the hollow handle of a hairbrush, a nanomachine
"goo" can be used to convert scrap steel and plastic
into a fully loaded pistol as needed. An intelligent
nanotek-based star probe orbiting an earth-like planet of the
Alpha Centauri system is relaying the observations of its
nanomachine "children" on the planet's surface.
Specialized nanomachines are injected into humans to construct
neural interfaces that permit mind-to-mind contact used for
therapy. A variant of the mind-therapy technology, the
"hellcrown" is the ultimate instrument of torture, used
to extract massive retribution from criminals. And so on.
Bear tells a fine story and does the best job in SF so far of
portraying the societal impact of nanotek. My instincts say that
the real impacts of a real nanotechnology will be even more
far-reaching, even more invasive, than those depicted in Queen
of Angels. But they are also far more difficult to
predict.
Nanotek is a relatively new theme in SF, an new flavor of
technical "magic." SF writers are just beginning to
explore its potential, to find ways of exploiting its potential
and dealing with its intrinsic problems and pitfalls. It will
perhaps be decades before the nanotechnological revolution
arrives, but in the interim there will be time for SF writers to
prepare us for this revolution to come. We live in
"interesting times."
John
G. Cramer is a Professor of Physics at the
University of Washington, Seattle, and author of Twistor,
a near-future hard-SF novel published in hardcover by William
Morrow & Company in March 1989. His science-fact column,
"The
Alternate View," is published bi-monthly in Analog
Science Fiction/Science Fact Magazine.
Books are listed in order of increasing specialization and
reading challenge. Your suggestions are welcome. And remember, if
a book's price looks too high, your library should be able to get
it through interlibrary loans.--Editor
Megamistakes, by Steven P. Schnaars, Free
Press (Macmillan), 1989, cloth, $19.95. Useful examination of
technology forecasting mistakes and why they happen.
Business-oriented; repetitive in spots. Fails to support the
subtitle's claim that rapid technological change is a
"myth."
Spacefarers, Voyage through the Universe
series, Time-Life Books, 1989. Includes pp. 116, 117-121 on
proposed uses of nanotechnology in space, much artwork. FI member
Stewart Cobb consulted on the project. Contact 800-621-7026.
Hypertext 89 Proceedings, from the Nov. 5-8
Pittsburgh meeting, chairman Rob Akscyn, published by Association
for Computing Machinery, paper, $30. Most concentrated source of
published information (28 papers) on work being done in the
field; highly recommended for those interested in hypertext. ACM
order #608891 from ACM Order Dept., PO Box 64145, Baltimore, MD
21264.
MEMS-90, Proceedings of the IEEE Conference
on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, held Feb. 11-14 at Napa, CA,
cosponsored by ASME; $28. The "bottom-up" approach to
building continues to infiltrate this "top-down"
meeting series with coverage of STM work from IBM Watson,
Stanford, University of Tokyo, and Matsusita. Most papers on
micro structures, sensors, actuators, machines, and robots. IEEE
catalog #90CH2832-4; phone 800-678-IEEE.
Molecular Electronic Devices: Proceedings of
the Third International Symposium, ed. F.L. Carter, R.E.
Siatkowski, and H. Wohltjen, Elsevier/North Holland, 1988,
$152.75. Proceedings of the 1986 meeting; primarily for chemists,
but does include one paper on mechanical nanocomputers.
The Foresight Institute receives hundreds of letters
requesting information and sending ideas. Herewith excerpts:
On behalf of Don Lavoie, Bill Tulloh, myself, and all of us here
at the Center for the Study of Market Processes, thanks for the
publicity you gave our conference, "Evolutionary Economics:
Learning from Computation." It made a big difference to our
attendance and the quality of discussions. ... The conference was
a big success.
Howard Baetjer
George Mason University
See the article on the conference elsewhere in this issue.--Editor
You have expressed interest in a Soviet publication about Engines
of Creation, and before a copy of it I requested from
there arrives, I'd like to share with you some information. This
was a small monthly periodical in "Radioelectronics and
Communications" series, published, together with many other
brochures, journals, books, etc. by the Soviet Znanie
("Knowledge") Society--a very large and versatile
organization for spreading technological and scientific
knowledge.
Popular and serious at the same time, the article was authored by
Alexandr Smirnov and titled "Chips, LSI Chips, VLSI
Chips..." This seemingly irrelevant title is very
characteristic for today's Soviet life, when people do have new
freedoms, but have to use traditional organizations, channels,
and titles.
Pages 3-16 are devoted to a review of a number of works by V.F.
Dorfman (Soviet) on the history of evolution of shape-forming
instruments, machines, and methods, as well as his
classifications of shape-forming processes and equipment. One of
the interesting questions touched is why industrial equipment is
bigger, while building machinery is smaller, than the objects
they form?
Then, from page 16 to 64, there is a serious, concise (and
uncritical) rendering of all chapters of Engines. As
I understand, the first part was to put a theoretical foundation
under the reader's understanding of the role of nanotechnology in
the process of technological evolution.
I liked the whole brochure for both the contents and style and
think that the Foresight Institute itself would hardly give a
better representation of its ideas.
...This country [USSR], despite its collapsing social structures,
is worth working with, considering its large, and mostly unknown
to the human world, pool of creative ideas, traditions of
long-term and large-scale thinking, and, still, the cheapest
intellectuals on the planet.
Alexander Chislenko
(now in Cambridge, MA)
When we receive a copy of this publication and get it
translated, at least in part, we'll publish more on the state of
nanotechnology information in the USSR.--Editor
The journal Technology Analysis and Strategic Management
published in its December 1989 issue an article on the First
Foresight Conference on Nanotechnology. The December 1989 issue
of Japan's Journal of Micromachine Society covered
the conference on pages 25-29 and perhaps beyond--without a
translation we can't tell where it stops. The March 1990 issue of
JOM (formerly Journal of Metals)
included a one-page review of the conference by David R. Forrest,
former president of the MIT Nanotechnology Study Group.
The May 8, 1990, issue of Newsday had a two-page
article by Kathy Woolard on nanotechnology, an unusually
well-done piece and perhaps the only newspaper article to mention
the engineering problem of thermal motion and how it is solved.
Brava, Kathy.
The June 1990 issue of Ad Astra, the magazine of the
National Space Society, featured a four-page article on
nanotechnology by FI member (and early member of the MIT
Nanotechnology Study Group) Stewart Cobb.
The Summer 1990 issue of the Whole Earth Review
published a ten-page writeup of pros (Drexler) and cons (Simson
Garfinkel) in the technical case for nanotechnology and a
one-page summary of the First Foresight Conference by Steven
Levy.
From Foresight Update 9, originally
published 30 June 1990.
Foresight thanks Dave Kilbridge for converting Update 9 to
html for this web page.
Foresight Update 9 - Table of Contents |
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