Nanotechnology: Hell or Heaven?

Perhaps a little bit of both

Ronald Bailey | October 27, 2004

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However, nanotech savants like Eric Drexler at Foresight and Chris Phoenix no longer believe that efficient molecular manufacturing will involve self-replicating nanobots. Instead they foresee self-contained desktop nanofabs under the complete control of operators. They would function somewhat like photocopiers do today—producing copies of products on demand from various feedstocks supplied by operators.

Still, it would be surprising if such a powerful suite of technologies couldn't be used for ill as well as for good. Chris Phoenix worried about tensions between consumers and corporations since "the value of nanotech products is 1000 times greater than their manufacturing costs." Evidently, he believes that corporations will try to push the prices of their products up to obtain super high profits. As a corollary, Phoenix thinks that this will lead, at least initially, to higher concentrations of wealth.

Unless there is just one super powerful corporation with sole access to and complete control over nanofabs, this scenario seems highly implausible. Competition between firms will drive down prices as it always has. If nanofabs build themselves and are as general purpose as nanotech boosters believe they will be, inventors will likely just give them away, and economics based on scarcity and rationing by prices will disappear. How the economy will be structured once material scarcity disappears cannot now be known, but a post-manufacturing, post-job economy will certainly not be dominated by giant corporations.

I suspect that human needs for status, hierarchy, and competition will move away from the economic arena to art, scientific research, and politics. For example, handmade items, e.g., paintings and genetically modified orchids, will become much more expensive relative to consumer goods like cars and computers. Bryan Bruns foresees the growth of an "experience economy" in which novel experiences, not mere objects, will be sought after.

Nanotechnology begets more worrisome concerns in the area of civil liberties and human rights. Phoenix notes that nanotech enables the creation of cheap ubiquitous sensors for surveillance. Imagine the East German Stasi with microscopic television cameras in every home, office, car, and on every piece of your clothing.

Phoenix also notes, "Any unrestricted nanofactory could become a WMD factory." (A restricted nanofactory would be one that can produce only certified pre-programmed designs.) In a nano world, it would be incredibly hard to find out what other countries are doing and/or verifying treaty commitments when it comes to weapons. The temptation to pre-empt a possible attack by launching yours first may become irresistible.

Small high-performance nanoproducts could also aid in freelance criminal attack and spying. In the future you might receive a call in which a voice tells you, "I have embedded something near your heart. Wire some money to this Swiss bank account or else I'll kill you in an hour."

Brad Templeton, the chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, talked about "The Automation of Good and Evil," discussing privacy concerns raised by nanotech. The future will likely see cheap ubiquitous sensors using micropower supplies linked to cheap ubiquitous networks in both private and public hands. Surveillance might be undetectable because, instead of using radio or laser pulses to send out information, the sensors might just crawl out of your house or office to be collected by their operators.

Templeton doesn't believe laws can stop such surveillance, though perhaps there might be a nanotech arms race between would-be watchers and those seeking to guard their privacy. Perhaps social conventions would evolve so that people simply don't watch one another in certain circumstances. He did point out that surveillance by oppressors has never been a complete success (though nanotech seems to offer a technical solution that allows unprecedented ubiquity).

Is there any way to manage such possible nanothreats? The Foresight Institute has been devising guidelines for the safe development of nanotech. The Institute released its new 4.0 Version of the guidelines earlier this year. One of the chief guidelines is that the creation and use of self-replicating systems should generally be avoided.

Phoenix evidently believes (or perhaps just hopes) that concerted, planned human foresight can maximize benefits and minimize risks. However, our species' record for the type of long-range planning Phoenix implies we need frankly sucks. Even with the devoted efforts of a bunch of really smart people like those at the Foresight conference, it's not likely to get much better. "The alternative is to accept drastic change that we can neither predict nor change," declares Phoenix. That's been true for all of human history and it's not going to change for the nano-bio-info-cognitive technological era now dawning.

The hopeful news is that while technological advances could in fact make humanity worse off, that has not been our record so far. Every technological advance has produced downsides, but so far the benefits have far outweighed the risks. It's my bet that that will also be true of nanotechnology. We are unlikely to descend to nanotech hell. But it is probably inevitable that some of us will be scorched by a bit of nanotech hellfire as we ascend to nanotech heaven.