Mmmmmmm... Nanotech....

[Odin2005]

This blog I found has this cool video on nanotech-based manufacturing:

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/?p=180

And the text of the blog post:

By 2020, and potentially as early as 2010, we will know enough about carbon chemistry, kinematic self-replication, and nanoscale positional control to build a desktop nanofactory - a machine that uses many trillions of tiny arms to put together macro-scale products. Because tiny arms can move incredibly fast, they will be radically productive. It has been estimated that a 100 kg nanofactory will be able to manufacture its own weight in product in about three hours, perhaps less.

Nanofactory technology will begin with an assembler - a reprogrammable molecular machine capable of making a copy of itself. An assembler would be extremely small, composed of maybe a couple million atoms. This is about the same as a ribosome. For a reference, see this picture of some nanoparts next to a virus:

An assembler would basically be an artificial ribosome. Ribosomes are the little machines in the cell that manufacture every protein in your body. Its basic design hasn’t changed in over a billion years.

Feasibility arguments for molecular nanotechnology (MNT) are well-documented in the literature. Its not a question of if, but when. The technological and sociological impact of personal nanofactories (PNs) is certain to be extreme. If regulations permit it, you will be able to construct, right in your very home, just about any structure allowed by the laws of chemistry and available feedstock. All current manufacturing, communication, and transportation processes will be fundamentally restructured over a period of mere years or even months. The first nanofactories are likely to use carbon feedstock, meaning most of the products will be made out of diamond. Water may be used as a ballast for some diamond products.

Products built using MNT will be extremely cheap: around the cost of their raw materials. This is because human labor, the primary cost of manufacturing today, is largely subtracted from the equation. Carbon is extremely cheap, and can be mined by the megaton from practically anywhere. Power requirements are modest. Made of diamond, a nanofactory will not require much maintenance.

Quickly, typical products made of plastic, ceramic, or metal will be redesigned to accommodate the new diamondoid medium. There will be diamond plates, diamond tables, diamond cutlery, ovens, coffee makers, microwaves, tiles, walls, chairs, televisions, cameras, printers, scanners, shelving, windows, computers, pens, notepads, pottery, showerheads, and so on. Something like 90% of all manufactured products will be replaced by diamondoid versions. This is what Neal Stephenson was thinking when he wrote a book called The Diamond Age.

The father of nanotechnology, Eric Drexler, lists a few things which would become possible with MNT on his website:

desktop computers with a billion processors
inexpensive, efficient solar energy systems
medical devices able to destroy pathogens and repair tissues
materials 100 times stronger than steel
superior military systems
additional molecular manufacturing systems

MNT has been called “magic”, and the word choice is not entirely inappropriate. We will be able to build products with greater performance and more diverse functionality than anything you or any university Ph.Ds have imagined. All shortages of energy, food, water, and shelter will be rapidly solved, as long as nanofactories are made available to developing countries. Subdermal heaters, nanoproducts designed to do little more than generate waste heat, will eliminate the problem of obesity practically overnight. The size and range of products will be limited only by whatever regulations are built into the first round of nanofactories. And I hope that these regulations are extremely strict. You see, nanofactories will be the most dangerous technology that mankind has ever faced, thousands of times more dangerous than nuclear weapons.

Given an unrestricted nanofactory and a few million dollars worth of programming and engineering, here are a few products that I could manufacture in almost arbitrary quantities, given a couple months manufacturing time:

sniper rifles that weigh less than 5 kg, capable of firing a lethal projectile at Mach 10 towards any target within my line of sight.
extremely light and strong armor capable of stopping 10 kg explosive shells moving at faster than 10 km/sec.
Metal Storm systems which fire as many as 1,000,000 projectiles per minute through ballistics arrays.
UAV swarms capable of actively neutralizing very large rockets, providing comprehensive area denial, working together to disassemble buildings, etc.
highly maneuverable VTOL craft able to destroy almost any number of F-22 Raptors or F-35 Lightnings.
gigawatt-class, solar array or nuclear-powered microwave beams capable of completely melting tanks, aircraft, destroyers, incoming missiles, etc. from hundreds of miles away.
isotope separation systems that enrich uranium efficiently, at great speeds, giving enough fissile material to make bombs in days rather than years.
gigantic lenses capable of redirecting sunlight towards arbitrary coordinates in extremely high concentrations; a solar furnace.
missile swarms composed of individual missiles about 1 meter long, carrying 1 kg warheads, manufactured by the millions, capable of traveling through the upper atmosphere and surviving reentry.

Because products made out of diamond can be extremely strong and light, 100 kg of carbon gives you a very large bang for your buck. For example, a Mercedes S-class today weighs about 2,000 kg, but with diamondoid building materials, this weight could be reduced tremendously, if desired - the primary motivation to preserve the vehicle’s current weight would be the preservation of inertia, rather than engineering limitations. An automobile made out of nanodiamond could have an absurdly low weight, on the order of a hundreth of an ounce, not including fuel. If this sounds fantastic to you, take a look at what is already possible today:

This tiny block of transparent aerogel is supporting a brick weighing 2.5 kg. The aerogel’s density is 0.1 g/cm^3.

Anyway, the point of all this is simple: nanofactories need to be extremely restricted in the products they can build, or there is going to be big problems. The open source, anti-digital rights management, P2P-generation needs to get this. Information may want to be free, but if weapons designs are readily available and manufacturable in the post-MNT world, there are going to be problems of the likes we’ve never seen. To minimize the risk of danger, the safest option is to have all product designs authenticated by a central authority. Yes, that scary phrase, “central authority”. This central authority needs to be capable of determining which designs are safe, maintaining an extremely high level of nanofactory security, and enforcing the law when people try to circumvent it. The libertarian dream of minimalist government, unfortunately, must be discarded.

Now, in general, I’m extremely against big government. It can be a huge waste, and extremely inefficient relative to market-driven competition. But when it comes to managing magic, decentralized solutions simply won’t do. There needs to be a global standard and global regulations. Rogue states won’t do, either. One rogue nation could use MNT to manufacture enough weapons to turn the capitals of any opposing nation, no matter how large, into a series of smoking craters. This is a risk we shouldn’t be willing to take, and once the potential of MNT starts to sink in with higher-level government officials, they won’t.

Life extensionists: realize that the greatest risk to living longer is not actually aging, which we will eventually defeat cleanly, but existential risks of the type I frequently discuss, including superintelligence and nanotech arms races. You can extend your expected future life more by lowering the probability of these disasters than through any other means.

[n2doc]

1. sounds like a nightmare to me

'cause the military shit is really scary, and the life extending stuff will only apply to billionaires. And of course this opens up the door to a whole host of really nasty nano based plagues.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. Why would the life extension only apply to billionaires?

On the contrary, nanotech will almost surely make such technology cheap and widely available.

[n2doc]

4. Just like the biotech drugs?

Like Avastin at 10K a month treatment? Oh no, regardless of actual production cost the list price for any kind of real life extending drug will be set in the millions, maybe even tens of millions.
I am being a bit tongue in cheak on this, and you are right that prices SHOULD be low. That doesn't mean that they will. And the potentially evil uses are still possible and real.
There are serious societal impacts if we do manage to come up with ways to make the average human live for, say, 200 years.

[DavidDvorkin]

6. Color me selfish

Even 200 years wouldn't be enough.

[Odin2005]

11. I plan on living forever.

:evilgrin:

[DavidDvorkin]

13. Bingo

There'll be the death of the universe to deal with, but immortality would give us time to plan.

If nothing else, it would give us a few billion years to get used to the idea.

[Spearman87]

14. If you get a chance, thumb through a book by Tipler

"The Physics of Immortality"

Part of his thesis, if I remember right, is they'll we'll even come with ways to re-shape the end of the universe and extend it.

[Odin2005]

16. I'll have to find that book at the library, looks interesting.

[DavidDvorkin]

19. I'll look for it.

Thanks.

[Odin2005]

5. That's why we need a democratic global government.

Technology is advancing at an exponential advancing rate. If we don't want this to cause Mankind to distroy itself the people of the World must discard the sacred cow of nationalism and create a democratic global government that will guarentee the fruits of technology are shared before the corporatists create a de facto plutocratic global government that uses the technology to oppress.

[Ready4Change]

8. Frankly, the military stuff is not the most dangerous problem with nanos.

The nanofactories take in material, and put out product. They do it well, and most likely, do it using small amounts of energy. Say, for example, body heat, or a decently warm day in spring. Sounds wonderful? Researchers talk of "do it yourself" kits, allowing anyone to create nanofactories to produce any thing.

The stage is set. If you're a programmer, get ready to shiver.

Think "infinite loop." Any programmer not only knows what that is, but has done it, inadvertantly, any number of times. It's simple to do, even by accident or a bit of sloppiness.

Now lets say a single home nano-enthusiast gets a great idea. He'll make a nano that sucks in air born carbon and exudes little diamonds. Give it a little heat, a little sun, and off it trundles, leaving a little diamond breadcrumb trail. Even better, he builds a FACTORY that builds carbon sucking diamond machines. Yeah! A one man solution to global warming!

But it's still too slow. One factory, even over a life time, can't produce enough. So, he makes a factory that makes factories.

Around about now, he comes home from work one day and discovers the seals in his home nano-DIY kit are made of carbon compounds. Or rather, WERE made of carbon compounds. As was the wooden bench his DIY kit used to be perched on. As was his house. His yard. His family. His neighbors...

Twinkle twinkle, little diamond...

[Occulus]

10. In order to stop this you need a way to halt the nanites permenantly.

Or somehow otherwise disrupt their replication.

How might one go about doing this?

[Ready4Change]

12. Teensy anti-nano cruise missiles? nt

[Odin2005]

18. LOL

:rofl: :spray:

[NEOBuckeye]

2. This is why the US Millitary-Industrial-Oil Complex must die

For one reason, they're holding us back from reaching this next level.

For another reason, if they got there themselves, they'd destroy the world with their buffoonery at an even faster pace.

[mccoyn]

7. If people can't be trusted, why can the government?

After all, its not just filled with people, but with power hungry people.

Open source replicators is probally the single greatest tool of freedom we can come up with. I'm talking about serious freedom that isn't possible today. Like freedom from work, from bosses. All I need is this machine, some sunlight and CO2 and I can make most the stuff I need today. Proprietary anything doesn't make sense because free sharing will be thousands of times more effecient than controled distribution.

[drm604]

9. Proprietary may not even be possible.

This could radically alter (maybe destroy) economic systems. Companies are currently finding it nearly impossible to protect intangible intellectual property. Combine the current ease of copying and distributing information with the ability of individuals to manufacture nearly anything given a detailed plan. Capitalism and communism may both become relics.

If people no longer require employment to stay nourished, healthy, and comfortable, what happens? The one thing you can't manufacture is land. If we can each manufacture all of our needed goods and services then we have no need for money. How do we control distribution and control of land? How does property change hands? What happens to people who were renting at the time money becomes obsolete? What about people who are paying a mortgage? Does everyone simply get squatter's rights? Does that mean that the person who was living on a huge tract gets to keep it, while the person in the one bedroom efficiency, or living on the street, gets shafted?

I suppose the government could try to come up with an equitable distribution plan but... what government? And how do they enforce the plan? Government, police forces, armies, etc. at all levels consist of paid employees. If there is no need for money then who would act as presidents, mayors, police, soldiers, etc? Would you want to do those things if the alternative was sitting home and doing whatever you want with your new unlimited capabilities?

All of this may become moot if we end up destroying ourselves, or simply sitting around in a nannite induced euphoria with all of our physical needs being met from the surrounding atmosphere.

I hate sounding so negative. Part of me looks forward to the capabilities we may have, but if we try to do a logical extrapolation of what happens next it's hard to see anything but chaos. Hopefully that's simply because it's new territory and we simply aren't equipped to see the possibilities.

[Spearman87]

15. The true believers love to tout this stuff

And I hope they are correct. But there still seems to be plenty of high level debate on whether self-replicating universal assemblers will ever be possible. I remember when Science Friday did a show on it and they had the chemistry Nobel Laureate on, Dr. Smalley, who said it was unlikely to ever happen. But like I said, I hope it does

[Odin2005]

17. I have little respect for the naysayers.

The naysayers are the people who said we would never develop powered flight, who said we would never reach the moon, who said computers would always be huge things that would never find thier way into the average home, who said that everything that could be invented had been invented. Naysayers are fools.