Meeting notice: The 06-01-99 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. If you're new and can't recognize us, ask the manager. He'll probably know where we are. Suggested topic(s): Nanotechnology and the World Socialist State Most of us imagine NT developing in a context of either contending nation-states or competing corporations. There is a third alternative... Many bears (market bears) believe that when large asset bubbles pop they tend to impose contractions in their sectors of 80%-90%. While they have no very good example to point to in this regard in recent American history, they do have Albania and Japanese real estate (which seems likely to reach this point) in the recent news, and several historical illustrations, like the South Sea Bubble. Being bears, they think several sectors in this society are now hosting bubbles of this magnitude. This is partly because of easy credit and highly- leveraged debt instruments; partly because fewer and fewer investors seem to worry about actual profits; and partly because the current atmosphere allows business models whose fundaments are being eroded by new technologies to find the money they need to continue to deny their situation. However, when the money stops, their fall will be long and hard, especially if all the bubbles pop at once; if the failure of one problematical sector brings them all down. I can think of no simple reason to disprove or exclude this train of thought. Thus it seems not impossible that at some time over the next decade the global economy might fall into a mighty depression. If so, how will the cultures of the world react? In particularly, how will the Baby Boomers of Europe and North America behave? This is a culture for which being forced to drink from the tap qualifies as a traumatic deprivation and perhaps even the foundation of a lawsuit. How will they react when they lose their jobs in week one, see all their savings (carefully invested in index funds) melt away in week two, and watch as the value of their houses shrink to 30% or less of their mortgage balance? Or when their SUVs are repossessed? They might not react well. Something a bit like this happened in the last quarter/first quarter of the 19th/20th century. The period was a time of substantial economic progress and a near-universal acceptance among the elite of free market liberalism. However, eventually market fluctuations, ending with the depression of the 30's, led educated opinion to abandon Smith and Ricardo and embrace the state. A similar catastrophe in our time might provoke a similar outcome: a general demand that the authorities take over control of the economy and run it for the sake of 'people not profit,' AKA come up with fat subsidies for the beleaguered middle classes. Depending on the landscape, the agencies thus appealed to might be quasi-international: the World Court, the World Bank, the IMF, etc., since modern technologies make it difficult for national governments to exert a more than ritualistic control over their economies. Such a response might be the nucleus of the world socialist state, and that might in turn be the environment in which nanotechnology will emerge. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> In the last announcement I suggested that simulatability is a probe for technological potential, and predicted on that basis that in ten years MEMS would be a larger industry than biotech, because the former are simulatable while cells are not. Ryan wrote to NSG-D by way of correction that there are at least two cell simulators under development: the e-cell and the Virtual Cell. Since many subscribers to NSG do not get NSG-D I thought I would pass on his references. The e-cell: www.e-cell.org. The Virtual Cell: www.nrcam.uchc.edu. Article on them both: "Building Working Cells _in silico_", by Dennis Normile (_Science_, 99.04.02, pp. 80-81) . http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~mt/mt-lab/publications/Paper/ecell/science-article/full-text.html. (Note wrapped URL.) Extracts from article: On the e-cell: "With a single mouse click, the user can knock out particular genes or groups of related genes, expose the cell to a foreign substance or deprive it of a nutrient, and then run the simulation again. Graphical interfaces allow the user to monitor the cell's changing chemistry.... (The) cell "lives," maintaining a simple, stable metabolism: It takes up glucose from the virtual culture medium, generates the enzymes and proteins to sustain internal cell processes, and exports the waste product lactate. On the Virtual Cell: "For example, a researcher can add a certain amount of calcium ... and then sit back and let the Virtual Cell solve equations describing reaction and diffusion rates for each of the molecular participants affected by calcium ... the simulation not only looked much like the calcium waves measured in actual cells--indicating that the simulation was realistic--but it also predicted the dynamics of an intermediary molecule called IP3, which cannot be monitored inside the cell itself. " -Ryan <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Announcement Archive: http://world.std.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage.html. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Online discussion should be sent to 'nsg-d@world.std.com. Note: you must be subscribed to nsg-d to post to it and you must post from the subscribed address. (An anti-spam thing.) You can subscribe by sending the string 'subscribe nsg-d' or 'subscribe nsg-d
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