FastForward Radio -- Nanotechnology in Three (or More) Easy Steps! Part 2
Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon continue their discussion of the milestones that must be achieved before to enable the nanotechnology revolution. In Part 2, they conclude their review of K. Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation and discuss the various scenarios that might get us from our current level of technology to a thoroughly nano-powered world.
Our current focus on nanotechnology continues the discussion we began last summer durig our special series The World Transformed As we noted then...
Nanotechnology promises to change our world in ways that are difficult to predict, or even imagine.
Are you ready for...
...Star Trek style replicators that would allow you to make anything, ANYTHING, you wanted?
...artificial robotic blood cells that will turn an Average Joe into a world-class athlete, or allow you to hold your breath under water for an hour at a time?
...programmable "smart" matter than can take whatever form you want? It's a suitcase. No, a bicycle! No, a TV! No, a puppy!
Nanotechnology promises all of this plus a lot more. In order to take advantage of that promise, we need to understand and prepare for this coming revolution in how we interact with the material world.
Our current focus on nanotechnology continues the discussion we began last summer durig our special series The World Transformed As we noted then...
Nanotechnology promises to change our world in ways that are difficult to predict, or even imagine.
Are you ready for...
...Star Trek style replicators that would allow you to make anything, ANYTHING, you wanted?
...artificial robotic blood cells that will turn an Average Joe into a world-class athlete, or allow you to hold your breath under water for an hour at a time?
...programmable "smart" matter than can take whatever form you want? It's a suitcase. No, a bicycle! No, a TV! No, a puppy!
Nanotechnology promises all of this plus a lot more. In order to take advantage of that promise, we need to understand and prepare for this coming revolution in how we interact with the material world.
Show notes:
- Phil and Stephen recognized this week the 50th Anniversary of Richard Feynman's prescient speech, "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom."
In this speech Richard Feynman asked:
- "Why cannot we write the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica on the head of a pin?"
- "The biological example of writing information on a small scale has inspired me to think of something that should be possible. Biology is not simply writing information; it is doing something about it. A biological system can be exceedingly small. Many of the cells are very tiny, but they are very active; they manufacture various substances; they walk around; they wiggle; and they do all kinds of marvelous things---all on a very small scale. Also, they store information. Consider the possibility that we too can make a thing very small which does what we want---that we can manufacture an object that maneuvers at that level!"
- "computing machines are very large; they fill rooms. Why can't we make them very small, make them of little wires, little elements---and by little, I mean little. For instance, the wires should be 10 or 100 atoms in diameter, and the circuits should be a few thousand angstroms across. Everybody who has analyzed the logical theory of computers has come to the conclusion that the possibilities of computers are very interesting---if they could be made to be more complicated by several orders of magnitude. If they had millions of times as many elements, they could make judgments. They would have time to calculate what is the best way to make the calculation that they are about to make. They could select the method of analysis which, from their experience, is better than the one that we would give to them."
- "But I am not afraid to consider the final question as to whether, ultimately---in the great future---we can arrange the atoms the way we want; the very atoms, all the way down! ...
Up to now, we have been content to dig in the ground to find minerals. We heat them and we do things on a large scale with them, and we hope to get a pure substance with just so much impurity, and so on. But we must always accept some atomic arrangement that nature gives us. We haven't got anything, say, with a ``checkerboard'' arrangement, with the impurity atoms exactly arranged 1,000 angstroms apart, or in some other particular pattern.
What could we do with layered structures with just the right layers? What would the properties of materials be if we could really arrange the atoms the way we want them? They would be very interesting to investigate theoretically. I can't see exactly what would happen, but I can hardly doubt that when we have some control of the arrangement of things on a small scale we will get an enormously greater range of possible properties that substances can have, and of different things that we can do."
- At the end of the talk he offers a push prize: "It is my intention to offer a prize of $1,000 to the first guy who can take the information on the page of a book and put it on an area 1/25,000 smaller in linear scale in such manner that it can be read by an electron microscope." He said he didn't expect that such prizes will have to wait very long for a claimant.
He had to wait until 1985. Tom Newman, a graduate student at Stanford University, used electron-beam lithography to write a page of Charles Dickens at that scale.
This video mentions Tom Newman's accomplishment, but then brings us up-to-date. Stanford University has now demonstrated sub-atomic writing.
- "Why cannot we write the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica on the head of a pin?"
- Phil and Stephen then finished their discussion of K. Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation.
They spent most of their time this week talking about Chapter 10 of that book, "The Limits to Growth."
- From that chapter comes a quote for our times,
"The entropy threat is an example of blatant nonsense, yet its inventors and promoters aren't laughed off the public stage. Imagine a thousand, a million similar distortions - some subtle, some brazen, but all warping the public's understanding of the world. Now imagine a group of democratic nations suffering from an infestation of such memes while attempting to cope with an era of accelerating technological revolution. We have a real problem."
- Phil first mentioned New York City's 19th century horse manure problem in his Amazing Exponentials speech.
- Our music this week was "Not a Ghost" from the band "Fresh Sunday." As usual, you can hear it in stereo by going to Music Alley.
