Category: Opinion

from the read-the-literature dept.
PatrickUnderwood brings to our attention a Reason writeup of the recent AAAS nanotech seminar: "While appreciative of Drexler's pivotal role in nanotech, Whitesides was at pains to disagree with many of his ideas. 'I personally don't think that these kinds of things are going to work,' said Whitesides. 'We already have biological motors'…Whitesides dismissed Drexler's notion of nanotech assemblers…How would one power an assembler, asked Whitesides. How would one get it the information it needs to know what to do? And would it be really be strong enough to break atomic bonds?" CP: How long has Nanosystems been out — eight years, isn't it?…sigh.

from the not-Microsoft-Office dept.
Senior Associate and well-known VC Steve Jurvetson has a CNET think-piece called "The new convergence: Infotech, biotech and nanotech". The closing: "The best way to create a large and complex system is to grow it. It's not a Microsoft Office install. It's not a brain by design. We are entering a period of a profound learning and expansion of our capabilities in both molecular engineering and information processing. By expanding these capabilities, we further expand our ability to learn. It is a period of exponential growth in the learning-doing cycle in which the power of biology, IT and nanotech compounds the advances in each formerly discrete domain. Despite a human tendency to presume a regression to linearity, the pace of progress will continue to accelerate." In an email, Steve said "Special Thanks to [Senior Associate] Robert Bradbury, who is brilliant on these topics, and helped me a lot." Join Steve at the April 20-22 Gathering.

from the glad-I-wasn't-there dept.
An article in the Feb 17 San Jose Mercury News' religion and ethics section entitled Guiding Science covered a debate between Bill Joy and various others including nanotechnologist James Heath: "Bill Joy is once more trumpeting the dangers of technology run amok…" Joy quoted a rabbi: "Zalman said, 'Maybe we should declare that nanotechnology isn't kosher; and maybe the pope should declare it a mortal sin'. I said, 'That's an interesting perspective. Most of the people in my company [Sun Microsystems] don't think like that.' " Heath is quoted as saying that "nanobots" are "science fiction". CP: Sigh — let's have some higher-quality debate on this topic. We'll try at the April 20-22 Foresight meeting.

from the someone's-very-upset dept.
Prominent conservative Dinesh D'Souza has an essay in the Jan. 22 National Review entitled "Staying Human", in which he argues vehemently against human germline engineering. Unfortunately, it's not online, so see instead this piece by Adam Wolfson in Winter 2001's The Public Interest (URL is temporary) and a rebuttal entitled "Right-wing Technological Dread" by Ron Bailey of Reason.
Fortunately, D'Souza's concerns don't have to apply to nanotech, since in that case changes can be made by adults on themselves, not applied involuntarily on offspring by their parents. Read more for excerpts from the D'Souza essay.

from the debugging-P2P-networks dept.

Biomednet's HMS Beagle web magazine has an opinion piece, Something Rotten at the Core of Science? reprinted from the February edition of Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, calling for more openess and objective evaluation of peer review procedures. "Evidence suggests serious flaws exist in the peer review process; one study indicates that it's no better than chance in evaluating papers." The abstract says "A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision and an analysis of the peer review system substantiate complaints about this fundamental aspect of scientific research. Far from filtering out junk science, peer review may be blocking the flow of innovation and corrupting public support of science."