Flying cars are everywhere. Large regions of the earth are under transparent domes with controlled weather. Elsewhere, single buildings rise miles into the sky. Huge areas of the ocean are covered with solar cells. Tiny cameras watch everyone everywhere all the time, making sure crime does not pay.
In the near future, each of these visions will become possible. They could become reality. But will they? And should they?
Just because something is possible doesn’t mean that it will, or should, be done. For example, it would be technologically possible right now to build a wall 100 feet thick and 200 feet high around the island of Manhattan to protect it from future tsunamis. Clearly, though, the downsides - enormous financial cost, problems with transportation, barriers to shipping, ugliness, etc. - far outweigh the upsides.
It is true today, and it will be true tomorrow, that we must choose wisely when determining what to do with the power of technology. But there is one crucial difference between now and then: the range of what is possible.
Our ability to undertake vast projects will increase tremendously in the next decade or two. Much of this will be made possible by molecular manufacturing, a form of advanced nanotechnology.
Applying the science of the small—nano means “dwarf” in Greek—to the technology of manufacturing will result in huge increases in material strength, durability, and flexibility. Rapid prototyping, made possible with portable manufacturing appliances (called nanofactories or fabricators) that can produce their own weight in high-quality output every day, will revolutionize design and unleash innovation.
Better built, longer lasting, cleaner, safer, and smarter products for the home, for communications, for medicine, for transportation, and for industry—all this is just the beginning. Add in widely available, inexpensive, renewable energy; cheap, ready access to space flight; remarkably efficient greenhouses, which reduce our agricultural footprint to a fraction of its current size while sharply increasing output.
It all sounds good, right? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.
Molecular manufacturing will be a general-purpose and dual-use technology. What that means is that it will make not only benign products, but powerful weapons too. On top of that, it will enable construction, infrastructure, and ecological modification projects like we’ve never seen before.
Low-cost, reliable flying cars finally may arrive. But what will we do about air traffic control and noise pollution?
We could see new buildings rising so far into the sky that their tops vanish in the atmosphere. But will they become irresistibly tempting targets for terrorists armed with stealthy, super-destructive nano-built weapons?
Today, as we witness horrific tragedies like the Indian Ocean tsunami or the hurricane devastation on the Gulf Coast, we may wonder about the potential for new technologies to avert future catastrophes.
Can “Mother Nature” be controlled? Can “acts of God” be prevented?
Conceivably, yes, but we must consider the costs. What unintended consequences may result? Could the side effects of solutions turn out to be far worse than the original problems? It has happened before.
Think about the benefits of leaded gasoline, thalidomide, chlorofluorocarbons, or DDT. They all were thought to be highly advantageous to society.
Remember that activities most of us regard as terribly damaging, like the cutting down of tropical rain forests or the depleting of ocean fisheries, are not intended to be harmful by the perpetrators.
With hindsight, we can see that putting asbestos insulation in the walls and ceiling of homes or painting baby cribs with leaded paint were not very smart ideas. But, in their time, they were accepted without any great reservations.
In his most recent book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond points out that whole civilizations can unwittingly sow the seeds of their own demise. Will we be wise enough to avoid doing that?
The potential dangers of advanced nanotechnology are many. Obviously, there are many possible benefits as well, but we must not let those camouflage the risks.
Before embarking on magnificent new mega-engineering projects; before plunging ahead into modifying our environments, or even our bodies; before allowing the creation of new super-weapons and triggering an unstable, rapidly escalating arms race - before even the possibility of all this has arrived - we must think very carefully.
If policies are not devised until such problems are staring us in the face, we will not have time to make good decisions. Some of the risks are severe enough, or scary enough, to cause people and governments to panic. Panic and time pressure will tend to produce a patchwork of simple, knee-jerk solutions. It is extremely unlikely that a good set of policies will evolve under those circumstances, and it is also unlikely that bad solutions will be able to prevent bad consequences.
My organization, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, was founded for this very purpose: to research and promote the crafting of effective policy to maximize the benefits and reduce the dangers of molecular manufacturing.
Not long ago, we announced the formation of a new global task force to study the societal and environmental implications of this rapidly emerging technology. Combining the talents of a diverse group of world-class experts from multiple disciplines, the CRN Task Force has begun an historic, collaborative effort to develop comprehensive policy recommendations for the safe and responsible use of advanced nanotechnology.
Visions of a fantastic future could come true in our lifetimes. As we dream of the wonderful possibilities, we should take care also to envision darker scenarios. Because unless we can prevent the worst of the dangers - and there are many - we will deny ourselves any hope of realizing the benefits.
Mike Treder is a fellow of the IEET, and the Executive Director of the non-profit
Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, an organization working to raise awareness of the issues presented by advanced nanotechnology.
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