Meeting notice: 10-20-98; 7:30 pm.

Until further notice we will be meeting at the Royal
East (782 Main St., Cambridge, a block down from the
corner of Main St. and Mass Ave.


Suggested Topic: 

Nanotech and social regulation

Historically societies have regulated social activities
with three instruments: laws, torts, and reputation.
Nanotech might have the interesting property of being
largely invisible to all three.  The apparent
consequence is that as society learns how to control
ever-smaller units of space, time, and mass, it appears
likely to lose control over itself, as control is
usually defined.  This might be, but is not obviously,
a good thing.

It is a commonplace that NT poses substantial problems
for regulators, both because the information phase of
the activity can be encrypted and the fabrication end
takes place behind closed doors.  While in the extreme
case regulators can send microsurveillance machines
behind those doors, in reality significant advantages
always lie with those who have control over the local
terrain.  For instance, the local owner retains
physical control over the degree of atmospheric
processing that takes place in situ.  It is not hard to
imagine NT-derived air processing technologies that
would sweep a room down to particle sizes much smaller
than any possible, let alone likely, device.

It is less often observed that NT subverts the tort
system as well, but that seems to be the case.
End-fabrication will have been done under the
supervision of the user, presumably the plantiff, while
the original design will have come from companies that
will probably look like most software or design
companies today: small and transient, and therefore
unlikely to have the depth of pocket needed to finance
a serious level of tort-inspired regulation.  (Firms
might also be located differentially in jurisdictions
offering protection against such actions.)  While
consumer injury suits, etc., will probably not
disappear altogether, it is hard to imagine the typical
class action suit taking root in this environment.

The third possibility is a regime of reputation and
endorsement, perhaps somewhat on the model of movies
and popular music.  While imaginable, these examples do
not offer a world of comfort.  No one would want
the degree of quality assurance found in contemporary
popular music to be generalized to, for instance,
pharmaceuticals.  A universe characterized by the rapid
introduction of highly innovative products by large
numbers of small transient firms distributed around the
globe, which is close to the fantasy of the NT
industrial sector, is not well adapted to control
through reputation. 

We do not need to wait for self-replicating assemblers
to experience the effect.  Any increase in control over
smaller units of time, space, and mass appears to
subvert regulatry regimes (by increasing the degrees of
freedom of the end users).  The spam and viruses
thriving in the internet illustrate the point. 3-D
printers that can handle multiple materials, a toy that
might start arriving in the home in a decade or so,
will make the point with the world of atoms. When you
make your own ladders, who will pay any attention to
the Consumer Products Safety Commission?  When you find
you built a ladder around a ladder virus, a design that
craftily waits until you are balanced on the top step
and then collapses, whom will you sue?

Nanonews:

State of the art in brain implants:
http://world.std.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage/implants


Announcement Archive:
http://world.std.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage.html.

hapgood@pobox.com