Meeting notice: The 02.Nov.05 meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the Royal East (782 Main St., Cambridge), a block down from the corner of Main St. and Mass Ave. If you're new and can't recognize us, ask the manager. He'll probably know where we are. More details below. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Suggested topic: Top-Down NT. In his Ventus the excellent SF novelist Kurt Schroeder imagines a point at which our species will have spread beyond our system without losing its taste for living on the bottom of gravity wells. When a planet of about the right size and orbit (Ventus) but with a hostile chemistry turns up, the civilization seeds it with nanotech agents designed to channel the physical and chemical processes of the surface and atmosphere along more favorable directions. Unfortunately when the first colonists arrive there is a glitch. The learning algorithms driving the agents have apparently evolved a step too far and refuse to hand over root privileges. As a result the agents see the settlers as just another physical process to be controlled in the name of keeping the planet pristine for eventual colonization. The settlers survive, but are unable to develop, in either numbers and technologies, past the level we would associate with the Middle Ages. Any time the settlers try to push those limits the terraforming agents kill them. The novel raises an interesting problem. Generally when we worry about NT we think of decentralized threats: rogue nanotech that gets too smart too soon, sociopaths, adolescents, sects, cults, etc. The only context within which we have discussed state NT is that of the control of crazies trying to blow things up. But there is no reason at all to expect these powers to stay confined to that application. To the contrary. So perhaps the darkest cloud on the horizon is the prospect of the technology's being used to impose a total conformity on every issue and value the state chooses to interest itself with. If it's against the law to drive without a seatbelt and you try to do so the car would refuse to start. Is there a law against hurtful speech or promulgating stereotypes or questioning state authority? The air itself, permeated as it will be with utility foglets, might refuse to carry pressure waves bearing illegal content. You have total freedom of speech, but you might as well be speaking in a vacuum. You can wear whatever you like on your T-shirt ("Smith sucks"); but it the state doesn't want that message to get out, nobody will see it -- the utility fog will substitute a more acceptable message or image ("I love Smith"). Toss a bit of litter on the sidewalk and it will bounce back. Try to walk out with some office supplies and they will scream. Try to organize a friendly poker game and the cards will call the cops. Nobody will ever be able to resist a law and therefore the law-making process will lose the feedback supplied by the friction of reluctant compliance. Recently the Commonwealth finally got around to repealing its laws against blasphemy, presumably in part because everyone blasphemes all the time, especially in politics. The legislators could see that blasphemy, even ubiquitous blasphemy, has no consequences requiring the attention of the state. Had the State had NT when those laws had been passed compliance would have been perfect, from then till now. No one would blaspheme; no one would ever even think about blaspheming, and the laws would stay on the books forever. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> In twenty years half the population of Europe will have visited the moon. -- Jules Verne, 1865 <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Announcement Archive: http://www.pobox.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage.html. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Legend: "NSG" expands to Nanotechnology Study Group. The Group meets on the first and third Tuesdays of each month at the above address, which refers to a restaurant located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The NSG mailing list carries announcements of these meetings and little else. If you wish to subscribe to this list (perhaps having received a sample via a forward) send the string 'subscribe nsg' to majordomo@world.std.com. Unsubs follow the same model. Discussion should be sent to nsg- d@world.std.com, which must be subscribed to separately. You must be subscribed to nsg-d to post to it and must post from the address from which you subscribed (An anti- spam thing). Comments, petitions, and suggestions re list management to: nsg@pobox.com.