Meeting notice: The 04-20-99 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.
                         

Suggested topic: NT and Risk


Perhaps the most imposing threat to the development of 
nanotechnology (and for that matter the suite of all 
technologies) is not the difficulty of molecular engineering 
but the steadily falling tolerance for risk in the society. 

We could all cite a hundred examples of the point -- that 
children are no longer allowed to ride bicycles or climb 
trees is a famous case -- but one on my desk at the moment 
involves a study of cost trends in the development of 
underground space.  

Better technologies have lowered the cost of large sewer and 
water tunnels 50% per foot over the last ten years (adding 
to a 50% decline in costs over the decade before that), 
while during this same period the cost of underground 
highways, subways, and light rail tunnels (which are dug 
with the same kinds of tools) has gone up by a factor of 3!  

In short, holding technology constant, the tide of 
regulations, almost all of which are safety-inspired, has 
increased the cost of underground transportation for humans 
six-fold.  The number of such projects has fallen 
accordingly, to two or three a year (nationally).

This is a depressing story for anyone who once looked to 
underground development to increase the number of transport 
options while evading the classic zero-sum conflicts with 
other land uses (including habitat preservation).  For all 
its promise on paper the demand for ever-higher degrees of 
safety assurance has dashed those hopes by driving costs out 
of reach.

It is easy to imagine this falling tolerance for risk 
affecting the development of nanotechnology, especially 
since the risks in question are often ascribed not just to 
humans but to 'the balance of nature' or ecological 
'health'.  Any change that holds out a chance of introducing 
a serious change in the distribution of species -- or even 
of disturbing their normal behavioral routines -- is 
questionable to some and self-evidently wrong to others.  
All these forms of risk-aversiveness -- the risks to 

children, the risks to the environment, the risks to 
property, and the risks to workers and consumers -- 
represents a field of hurdles that new technologies are 
asked to clear.  The higher these hurdles grow, the fewer 
technologies will be able to do so.

It therefore behooves us to ask if these hurdles are going 
to grow forever, eventually reaching (and growing through) 
the point where direct human control of cars is no longer 
permitted, where staircases and ladders are banned, where 
911 access is a required implant, and where robot lifeguards 
patrol the oceanfront, searching for and arresting any human 
swimmers found in the water without waterwings.  ("We just 
doing this for your own good, Sir. Think of the message 
you're sending to your children.")

One way of approaching this question is to ask where the
current delta in risk-aversiveness came from in the first
place.  Theories include:

	-- the feminization of the workplace.  As more and 
more women have risen to positions of authority they have 
imposed their estrogenic values on more and more behavioral 
routines.  If this is right, then eventually the hurdles 
will stop growing, if only because the proportion of woman 
in positions of influence finds its natural limit at the 
total number of women.

	-- increasing life expectancy.  Many people now 
expect to live considerably longer than their parents; this 
inflates the cost (in lost years) of a given basket of risky 
behaviors.  If this theory is right, and if as some feel
the prospects for life extension are nearly infinite, then
the hurdles will keep growing.  Perhaps as they grow the
cost of developing life extension technologies will rise
accordingly, leading to a steady state. 

	-- increasing prosperity.  This argument is that as 
people get richer they tend to spend a steadily larger 
fraction of their incomes on personal health and safety 
(which doesn't mean those expenditures really make them 
significantly or even meaningfully healthier or safer, viz 
all those people out there now getting their energy fields 
repolarized, having their ears candled, and drinking bottled 
water flown in from Austria).  While ordinarily we think of 
rich people spending this money directly, a more prosperous 
society might also be willing to spend this money 
indirectly, through the higher cost of regulations and 
prohibitions. The prosperity theory also suggests the
hurdles will grow without limit. 

	-- the ethics of individuation.  In the good old 
days (fill in your dates here) group identities of all kinds 
were stronger, which meant that when someone died in an 
accident there were others to carry on the identities that 
defined his life. (Further, he or she might have died in 
ways that actually benefitted the group identity, perhaps by 
burnishing its reputation for courage or self-sacrifice.) 
Today, outside of the Balkans, identity is increasingly 
based on the individual, which makes all individuals unique 
and therefore that any loss of an individual a total loss of 
that particular assembly of meaning.  

This reconfiguration of the basic element of society 
naturally lowers risk tolerance. Whether it will lower it 
forever is unclear, depending on whether it makes sense to 
think of individuation as an infinitely graded process. I 
tend to think not but am open to discussion.

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Thoughts on the structure of internet commerce: 
http://world.std.com/~fhapgood/texts/tupperware.htm. Reactions 
solicited. (Warning: Relevance to nanotechnology indirect.)


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