Meeting notice: The 99.12.07 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: Justifying NT A number of events this year suggest that the culture's tolerance for the risk associated with technological adventures, is falling rapidly, while the very definition of risk is expanding to include the introduction of changes in the ecology. The implications for NT seem grave, given that even the briefest perusal of the archives of sci.nanotech would leave the average environmentalist in a coma. If current trends continue, sooner or later NT advocates and spokes will be asked, directly and directly, as a community and as individuals, for the benefits that would compensate the public for exposure to the admittedly extraordinary risks involved in developing the technology. There are several answers to this question. One is 'you can't do anything about it; the technology is inevitable'. While this might be true in the long run, history suggests that goading an enraged and frightened populace into an aggressive exploration of its options can be imprudent. NT is often presented as an advanced manufacturing technology -- to make really fast computers or super-light airplanes -- but this is no selling point to people who are essentially comfortable with the status quo and interested in repelling threats to it. How do we know those superlight airplanes won't be used to environmentally destructive ends, such as turning the rain forests of the world into shopping centers and theme parks? Another possibility is delivering truly long life spans, but as counter- intuitive as many find it, not everyone has a positive reaction to that prospect. Even NT buffs gag at the prospect of all the positions of power being hogged by the same names for hundreds of years, while for the constituency of interest here, long life spans read as more meddling, not to mention their effect on population levels. Another approach would be to sell nanotech as the ultimate environmental technology. It would permit the colonization and settlement of both outer space and the underground, in both cases ending the zero-sum game between humans and the biota over surface occupancy. On the surface itself, the technology could be used to build large protected spaces within which indigenous ecologies could be defended against exotic invaders, whether engineered or evolved. There would be no oil spills in a NT world. This argument appears to give the critics their agenda, but in fact it only goes partway. At the heart of the anti-tech worldview is an intensely felt anti- corporate, anti- capitalist, anti-consumerism, anti-materialist set of values. Environmentalism in the sense of habitat restoration is only a means to advancing the goals of economic self-sufficiency and the de- sacralizing of material goods; habitat restoration is good to the degree that it encourages (or compels) "simplicity". From this perspective talking about space elevators and underground cities etc. still sounds like more of the same -- more activity for large multinationals, more buying and selling, more, or at least as much, emphasis on the importance of accumulating stuff. Fortunately, NT speaks to this agenda as if designed to fit. If a technology that allows its owners to make almost anything they want from the dirt in their garden (except still more dirt) doesn't promote self-sufficiency then the state is an impossibility (which might well be true). What is more likely to desacralize the role of artifacts in the culture than the ability to fabricate anything you might want? Status hierarchies might be based on your wit or connections or personal reputation for sagacity or probity, but not on owning fancy suits or jeweled wrist watches or having leather seats in your skycar. NT distributes ownership of the means of production to every home and hand, to every worker. It erodes the cash nexus. It is in that sense a Marxist technology, preferentially advancing anti-corporate and anti-materialistic values. While I do not expect to see Greenpeace organizing large-scale protests demanding Nanotechnology Now! ("Hey Hey Ho Ho. Nanotechnology has got to grow." ) the point is worth making the next time one of us gets ourselves interviewed. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Those who think the assembler is most like to emerge from genetic and microbial engineering (check this out, but be sure to kepe the URL on one line: http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid%5F533000/533416.stm) can track progress on http://www.phrma.org/genomics. Exceptional update rates and depth of resources. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> The MITRE report "Architectures for Molecular Electronic Computers" is available as a .pdf file at http://www.mitre.org/technology/nanotech. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Announcement Archive: http://world.std.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage.html. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> 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 you must post from the address from which you subscribed (An anti-spam thing). Comments, petitions, and suggestions re list management to: nsg@pobox.com