Meeting notice: The 03.Nov.18 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. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Note: This list is moving to a new provider: polymathy.org. I am asking subscribers to resubscribe directly. Those who have done so should get two copies of this announcement: the last to be distributed by the World and the first by Polymathy. If you have resubscribed to the list and do not get two copies within 24 hours the process has broken down somewhere. Let me know if there are any glitches. The announcements in December will be distributed by polymathy exclusively. If you have not yet resubscribed but are interested in continuing to receive these notices, either send blank email to nsg- subscribe@polymathy.org or (if subscribing from a different address than that to which notices are to be sent) fill out the form at http://polymathy.org/mailman/listinfo/nsg_polymathy.org. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Suggested topic: Nanotech action as a fiction genre. Recently I got around to reading Prey, Michael Crichton's book about NT- gone- horribly- wrong. At the time the book was published, Chris Phoenix wrote a trenchant critique, demonstrating convincingly that subtracting the sum of the risibly implausible and physically impossible reduced the work by about nine pages out of ten. Still, there should be a quasi- realistic NTGHW story to be told (as opposed to a mere speculation; the difference being that a story requires a resolution at the end). Two weeks ago I put the question to the group. Dave spun some entertaining variations on the theme of evil environmentalists using nanotech to wipe out the human race, but nothing quite jelled. In a NT-gone-wild world, every tenth person would be busy programming self- replicating agents to advance their interests. Teenage boys would program agents to follow pretty girls home and grow cameras in their shower. Anti-violence groups would release agents that would infect your limbic structures, go to sleep, wake up when you were about to be "violent", and then put you back to sleep, or perhaps just in a nicer mood. Corporations would program agents that would make you a better consumer. Pro- life groups might use agents to prevent abortions. The DEA would write agents that would look for marijuana plants and infect them. Sports fans might program agents designed to screw around with the physics of the ball or puck depending on who had possession . This reality -- even this prospect, bandued about the hyperactive media -- would create a significant incentive to invent and deploy an ecological immune system. One imagines a sort of smart, active self-replicating film or fabric that would drape over buildings, cars, people, trees, pets, and so on, processing the water and air passing through it, searching for and killing agents of any sort. One possible story concept would be a "Phil Zimmermam meets NT" knock-off, in which the FBI tries to get a back door built into the EIS but are frustrated by sexy, heroic, libertarian hackers. The trouble with that scenario is that in a world whipped up by the threats detailed in the paragraph above there would be hundreds, amybe thousands of EIS development projects, because noone would trust anyone else's work product. Every country, lots of every research groups, lots of ad hoc groups of engineers, open source consortia, etc,, would be cranking them out. In fact there would almost certainly be a huge auto-immune problem, since every EIS will label every other as a threat. The entire complex of interactions would unleash an intense selection pressure for the smartest and most lethal agents. This might or might not be a story, but it's definitely a scenario. Is there any reason why it isn't our default future? <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> 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@polymathy.org. Unsubs follow the same model. Comments, petitions, and suggestions re list management to: nsg@pobox.com.