FREE ESSAY ON NANO TECHNOLOGY

NANO TECHNOLOGY

Nanotechnlogy
18 seems to be the magic number in today's manufacturing process. Intel and AMD both
boast their upgraded production, and note that it will lead to ever increasing speeds and
capabilities. Quietly, however, there is a growing consensus among the scientific
community that silicon based-chips are on their way out. Tiny, molecular computers are
becoming more and more feasible, and may do to silicon what transistors did to vacuum
tubes.
Across the world, universities and government institutions are making advances in
nano-technology that could shatter today's concept of electronics. As far as speed and
memory are concerned, the results may be incomprehensible to consumers and businesses
alike.
Consumers are routinely fooled by the false-security of a megahertz rating. Most buyers
think an extra 50Mhz is appealing, despite a $75-$100 increase on the price tag. True, a
550 Pentium 3 has a 10% speed advantage over a 500 Pentium 3, but it realistically only
performs a 5% increase in most applications. Consumers need to understand that speed and
performance are mutually exclusive. An extra 100 bucks is hardly worth the
10-12-millisecond improvement when launching Microsoft Word. Still, an 800 Athlon this
Quarter, a 900 next Quarter, seems to signal the dominance of silicon-based computers for
some time. Most computer-chip manufacturers estimate that they will have plenty of
business until 2014 when they expect to reach their theoretical limit in silicon-based
computers: .10 microns. The translation meaning processors and other components would be
built at 100-billionths of a meter, or 100 nanometers- 100 nanometers being the distance
between each transistor.
Now, realize that with nanotechnology we could shrink components down to .001 microns-
one nanometer. Chips would be exponentially faster, more efficient, and powerful than
anything on the drawing board today. While some labs, like the ones at UCLA, IBM, and HP
are well publicized, many are working under top-secret conditions and have supposedly
made several prototypes of working nanotechnology. One such rumor is of a molecular
device capable of functioning as RAM in a nano-computer.
The impact would be tremendous on the scientific and commercial communities. A near-term
application in 2-5 years might be a DVD-like movie stored in a space half the size of
today's semiconductor chips.
If nanotechnology were to exist today, it would make every CEO in the computer chip
industry cringe at the costs they have endured to produce the latest and greatest chips.
Current chips are made in multi-billion dollar fabrication plants (fabs) that use light
waves to etch layers of circuitry onto a silicon wafer. It is an enormously expensive
process, mostly because of the conditions in which the clean rooms must be maintained.
Any dust or particles in the room would contaminate the chips produced. Nano-produced
computer components would not require any such plant. While the current trend provides
that with the advances in computer technology, the more 'finicky' they are to produce.
Molecular computers would have their components produced in vast numbers without such
hindrances. One such idea involves massive self-assembling vats that produce the chips
using chemical reactions at a fraction of current costs.
The idea behind nanotechnology is in reproducing what nature already does: produce things
atom-by-atom, molecule-by-molecule. Not only would this allow humans to control
properties like color, texture, and density, but also it might be possible to create
things that repair themselves when damage occurs. Self-Assembly seems to be a key concept
in the nanotechnology movement, which was revolutionized only ten or so years ago.
While the idea is not new, advanced microscopes and computer software have brought it
from theories and crazy ideas to feasibility. For instance, in 1990 IBM brought
nanotechnology to the headlines when it spelled IBM with 35 atoms of the element xenon.
Nanotechnology carries with it the idea of building anything imaginable, from a diamond
coat to paint over your car (to prevent scratches), to diagnosing illnesses from one
droplet of blood.
In 1998, the White House Science and Technology Council created the Interagency Working
Group charged with developing ideas for future nanotechnology in 10-20 years from now.
They have drawn up ideas about curing cancers and legions on the body with nanoparticles
traveling through the body to fix it from the inside. Artificial limbs could be made up
in batches and its prospective owner would personalize prosthetic limbs for use. Of
course, memory and storage would be millions, if not billions, of times faster and
larger.
Unfortunately, we are still in the blueprint and laboratory stage. An Interagency Working
Group report noted that nanotechnology today is where transistors were in the 1950's.
Problems persist, not with the application of such technology, but with the execution of
it.
No one, for instance, has discovered a way to link all the nano-particles, which process
data as 1's and 0's together. And it was only recently that UCLA was able to get the
components to repeatedly work. Basically, it could only work with data once, and could
not switch back and forth between the 1's and 0's. As with any other technology, the
bumps in the road and problems to come will meet with new questions and innovative
solutions.
But the most exiting part of the whole nanocomputer idea is that it will require
radically different architecture that would look alien to any computer engineer working
in today's laboratories. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they are working
on architectures that resemble their biological counterparts in mammal brains. The idea
is to assemble trillions of circuits and then map out and identify the good and bad
pathways- much like the human brain. A simplified comparison might be declaring faulty
sectors on hard-drives off limits for reading/writing. Possibly, that could mean every
nanocomputer would be unique and personalized-much like the human brain. The ideas are
innovative and most go out on a tangent from current doctrine. A program manager at the
Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency noted, We don't want to be standing on the
shoulders of silicon.
Recently, IBM showed how the circuitry of atomic scale computing could be achieved.
Called a quantum image the technique demonstrates that it could one day be
technologically practical to make a nano-circuit. Heat would be virtually eliminated and
batteries that never die out might power the computers. The IBM researchers found that
they could project the image of one cobalt atom (about 20 nanometers) onto a second point
within the same area. This experiment proves that it is possible to read and write 1's
and 0's without the benefit of wiring. The research is the benefactor of the increasing
wealth of IBM and thus its augmented Research and Development budget.
All this comes as the Clinton Administration, along with bipartisan support in Congress,
proposes an increase from $260 million to $487 million dollars in nanotechnology
research. The increase will mostly benefit University research and joint ventures like
the UCLA-Hewlett Packard alliance. Federal agencies like the National Science Foundation,
the Department of Defense, the Energy Department, NASA, the National Institute of Health
and the Commerce Department will all have earmarked funding for nanotechnology
development.
Will the new millennium herald us into a new era of computing and personal electronics?
Yes. Will we see nanotechnology tomorrow? No. In 10-20 years, however, supercomputers
might be the size of calculators and consumer computers may fit on your watch. No one can
predict the new abilities we will have or the upcoming products that will fill our
closets after we don't want to use them anymore. In the end, the only real question that
remains is: What kind of games will run on these bad boys?
What objects we commonly know should disappear because of nanotechnology?
People living before and through the transition - at first and because of prejudice for
things we know and because people have not imagined the variety and super rich realm of
new possibilities -- the objects failure to everyday life will be sought by the public
and reproduced by assembler technology. People will still want cotton beach towels,
although the cotton farmer will no longer be needed when fibers can be manufactured atom
by atom from carbon in the air or from limestone. Lots of familiar items will appear
traditional on the outside, yet posses a multitude of new tricks and functionality made
possible with MNT -- cars with Utility Fog crash protection for instance. Of course, MNT
Smart Materials can look like anything, yet perform magic.
Now, the next generation and generations to follow, born into the age of nanotechnology
will a clean slate without concrete historical prejudices, will design objects and
lifestyles that take advantage of the new wealth of possibilities and I should expect
design objects and environments that would appear bizarrely alien, extraordinarily novel
to even the most advanced nano tinker today. The general concept is familiar in science
fiction, only now we have a clear engineering path to make real, the stunning constructs
of uninhibited imaginations and those yet to be born. 
The wild card to consider and the reason that frankly, it is ludicrous to project past a
few decades -- or more than say, one generation or so, is the effect nanotechnology will
have on intelligence enhancement efforts. Once these efforts are even mildly successful,
the the experimenters will spend much of their time amplifying intelligence enhancement
efforts and the valve controlling what is imaginable and what can be engineered opens at
a geometric rate. By definition, what can and will be is unimaginable now, and I'm not
even addressing the issue of machine intelligence in the equation. The curve approaches
vertical. 
What new objects should appear because of nanotechnology? 
Perhaps the big story -- with mature nanotechnology, any object can morph into any other
imaginable object... truly a concept requiring personal exposure to fully understand the
significance and possibilities, but to get a grip on the idea, consider this: 
The age of digital matter -- multi-purpose, programmable machines, change the software,
and something completely different happens.
A simple can opener or a complex asphalt paver are both, single purpose machines. Ask
them to clean your floor or build a radio tower and they stare back blankly. A computer
is different, it is a multi purpose machine -- one machine that can do unlimited tasks by
changing software... but only in the world of bits and information.
I'm involved with a company developing Fractal Shape Shifting Robots. Fractal Robots are
programmable machines that can do unlimited tasks in the physical world, the world of
matter. Load the right software and the same machines can take out the garbage, paint
your car, or construct an office building and later, wash that building's windows. In
large groups, these devices exhibit what may be termed as macro (hold in your hand) sized
nanobots , possessing AND performing many of the desirable features of mature
nanomachines (as described in Drexler's, Engines of Creation, Unbounding the Future,
Nanosystems, etc.). This is the beginning of Digital Matter.
These Robots look like Rubic's Cubes that can slide over each other on command, changing
and moving in any overall shape desired for a particular task. These cubes communicate
with each other and share power through simple internal induction coils, have batteries,
a small computer and various kinds of internal magnetic and electric inductive motors
(depending on size) used to move over other cubes (details here). When sufficiently
miniaturized (below 0.1mm) and fabricated using photolithography methods, cubes can also
be programmed to assemble other cubes of smaller or larger size. This self-assembly is an
important feature that will drop cost dramatically.
The point is -- if you have enough of the cubes of small enough dimension, they can slide
over each other, or morph into any object with just about any function, one can imagine
and program for such behavior. Cubes of sufficiently miniaturized size could be programed
to behave like the T-2 Terminator Robot in the Arnold Schwartznegger movie, or a lawn
chair... Just about any animate or inanimate object.
Fractal Shape Shifting Robots have been in prototype for the last two years and I rather
expect this form of digital matter to hit the commercial seen very soon. In the near
future, if you gaze out your window and see something vaguely resembling an amoeba
constructing an office building, you'll know what IT is.
This is not to say individual purpose objects will not be desirable... Back to cotton --
although Cubes could mimic the exact appearance of a fuzzy down comforter (a blanket), if
made out of cubes, it would be heavy and not have the same thermal properties. Although
through a heroic engineering effort, such a blanket could be made to insulate and pipe
gasses like a comforter and even levitate slightly to mimic the weight and mass, why
bother when the real thing can be manufactured atom by atom, on site, at about a meter a
second (depending on thermal considerations).
Also, single purpose components of larger machines will be built to take advantage of
fantastic structural properties of diamondoid-Buckytube composites for such things as
thin, super strong aircraft parts. Today, using the theoretical properties of such
materials, we can design an efficient, quiet, super safe personal vertical takeoff
airocar. This vehicle of science fiction is probably science future.
Which industries should disappear because of nano-technology?
Everything -- but software, everything will run on software, and general engineering, as
it relates to this new power over matter... and the entertainment industry.
Unfortunately, there will still be insurance salesmen and lawyers, although not in my
solar orbiting city state. If as Drexler suggest, we can pave streets with self
assembling solar cells, I would tend to avoid energy stocks. Mature nanites could mine
any material from the earth, landfills or asteroids at very low cost and in great
abundance. The mineral business is about to change. Traditional manufacturing will not be
able to compete with assembler technology and what happens to all those jobs and the
financial markets is a big, big issue that needs to be addressed now. I intend to start
or expand organizations addressing these issues and cover progress in the pages of
NanoTechnology Magazine.
We will have a lot of obsolete mental baggage and programming to throw out of our
heads... Traditional pursuits of money will need to be reevaluated when a personal
assembler can manufacture a fleet of Porche, that run circles around todays models. As
Drexler so intuitively points out, the best thing to do, is to get the whole world's
society educated and understanding what will and can happen with this technology. This
will help people make the transition and keep mental, and financial meltdowns to a
minimum.
How does the technology evolution of the last thirty years shape the future of your
field?
Never before has 30 years been such a long, long time, technologically. I am speaking of
course, of the ever increasing curve of advancement in all fields of tech and science. 
Imagine a world without cell phones, wireless phones, beepers, fax and answering
machines, video tape players, cam corders, cable TV, CD audio, Sony Walkmans, Microwave
ovens, Intendo, personal computers and the World Wide Web. Back then, few people had the
luxury of a remote control for their tube! I tell ya... it was a dismal dark age of hand
operated analog devices. We should fall to the ground in pity for our parents and
grandparents and ourselves for the drudgery of just surviving grocery checkouts with no
laser readers. 
Out side of these extraordinary advances in computer tech, the rise of biotech and
genetics has conspired to make people think small. That's where the power is. Did you see
that IBM logo spell out with 35 individual atoms back in the late '80? That was done with
a new microscope that can not only image individual atoms, but move them around as well.
This one act proved definitively that atoms can be manipulated with precision by human
beings.
Yes, technology is moving fast! However, something bizarre is on the horizon... and I
mean truly bizarre. Something wonderful. (Clark)
If you found a genie in a bottle offering the proverbial three wishes, what would you
wish for? What? Material wealth? End world hunger? A space condo orbiting the rings of
Saturn? Intelligence enhancement? How about the truly grand prize, the ancient dream of
(most) all humanity... youth and open ended life span?
If I found a green gen, I would state... only one wish. Something called nanotechnology.
Let me explain...
Computers reproduce information at almost no cost. A push is well underway to invent
devices that manufacture at almost no cost, by treating atoms like computers treat bits
of information. This would allow automatic construction of consumer goods with out
traditional labor, like a Xerox machine produces unlimited copies without a secretary
retyping the original information.
Electronics is fueled by miniaturization. Working smaller has led to the tools capable of
manipulating individual atoms like the proteins in a potato manipulate the atoms of soil
and water to make copies of itself (Drexler, Merkle paraphrased). The secret to self
replication, biological or synthetic, is prefabricated building blocks. Biology uses
atoms. Atoms are as new and squeaky clean as the instant they condensed out of pure
energy of the Big Bang, come in 92 flavors (elements), each atom is identical
(electronically) to any other atom in a flavor and have the remarkable attribute of
sticking to each other like Lego Blocks. They are prefabricated building blocks. Biology
uses atoms and soon, so shall we.
This is the shot gun marriage of chemistry and engineering called molecular
nanotechnology (MNT). If we can place atoms on a structure under construction
individually, this opens up a realm of super large molecules not found in nature,
designed by engineers (adhering to the normal laws of chemistry). Structures, big
structures, or microscopic structures and machines could be made of materials with
unusual physical properties like carbon in its ultra-strong form, diamond. Ideally,
programed nanites, machines with atomic sized components could take any source of
required atoms and energy, make copies of themselves, then grow things without
traditional manufacturing techniques and without byproducts. No waste and no side
reactions means this tech would be super green. Nanites could be programed and unleashed
to clean up existing industrial pollution (and will within two decades).
Nanotech's goal is a device called a Universal Assembler that takes raw atoms in one side
and delivers consumer goods out the other. It could also make a copy of itself you could
give to a friend. What happens to the economy if demand for just about everything is
foiled by a household appliance... is a good question.
Scientists are on the verge of manipulating atoms and molecules with the same precision
as life. Research in molecular biology, chemistry, and scanning probe microscopy (scopes
that can see and move atoms) are laying the foundations for a technology of
self-replicating molecular machines by developing positional controlled chemical
synthesis. By building objects on such a fine scale, we could make extraordinary things
from ordinary matter. If the fields of molecular biology (which some call wet nano),
chemistry and solid state physics were all to shut down today and make no more advances,
chip manufactures in their quest for evermore speed would develop MNT single handed. They
have the incentive.
Society is in for a spin as we head for a novel form of economics in an age of self
replicating machinery, where the design of an object cost about the same as today yet
production cost is nearly zilch. All first wave manufacturing will be obsolete. No
cobblers, just shoe designers, no autoworkers, just car designers, no feed lots, just
chefs. Ask yourself, what will be of value? What is money in a nano age? How will
politics and war change when we don't have traditional resources to fight over?
As an example of this new economic era, here is a response to an inquire from a gentleman
with the Natural Resources Canada / Resources naturelles Canada:
Subject: hydrocarbon reservoir characterization I am curious if anybody knows of
companies or research organizations that work in the field of hydrocarbon reservoir
characterization using nanotechnology?
Allow me to provide a perspective I think you'll find very relevant to your industry. I
have good news and bad... Perhaps the good news (although disruptive) is so good, you
won't mind the bad.
Nanotechnology, building things atom by atom, is not yet available. This is the level of
technology you seek. However, the first nanotech company formed to develop this ability
is up and running (Zyvex, see: http://www.zyvex.com/). 
With reasonably mature Drexlerian nanotechnology (see what is nanotechnology,
www.nanozine.com) not only could you flood large numbers of nano-robots into a reservoir
in order to collect information that characterizes the reservoir conditions, but also
program nanites to build capillary collection systems out of the carbon in the oil
(diamond), capable of extracting extremely high percentages of a reserve (probably
95-98%). Such nanites could easily be programed and engineered by modifying medical
nanites in design right now by Robert A. Freitas Jr. (rfeitas@calweb.com). Also, with the
novel economics of self replicating machinery that Drextech represents, 10^15 oil field
nanites would cost only slightly more than developing and building the first.
Now the bad news. Nobody will (probably) ever build them, because the same effort could
be used to engineer nanites that deposit molecularly thin solar cells on road and highway
surfaces (then add a layer of tough diamond). Canadian roads could supply the world's
energy needs several times over.
Nanotechnology is a truly revolutionary. Yes, this does mean the obsolescence of oil as
an energy source. Carbon sources, (most important nano building blocks) are numerous....
the atmosphere and limestone deposits for instance.
The oil business is not alone in the disruptive transition to this most powerful
technology. Virtually all manufacturing processes will be obsolete, as will mining and
logging. Nanotechnology will allow the syntheses of wood on a molecular level...
including smell, with process that exclude our contemporary concept of labor (just
extrudes out of the box, pre-sized). The same synthesized wood could be laced with carbon
nanotubes (Buckytubes, Fullerenes). Such a composite would exhibit structural properties
exceeding steel. Diamond will become as common as lumps of coal. Gold could actually be
mined from seawater.
As extraordinary as this sounds, a little research on the web (you may have already) will
tell the same story. While you're researching, you'll no doubt also discover the
extremely positive benefits of nanotechnology. We are on the threshold of material
opulence and greatly enhanced physical health. You will find these and other subjects of
significance on the Magazine's webpage such as, What will be monetarily viable industries
in the nano-era? and the all important question, What's the time frame? 
Best in the future (it's going to be a very different place), Bill.
Stop. Who thought all this up? Where did this outrage originate? Dr. K. Eric Drexler is
the father of nanotechnology, seeing the pattern of the posable in his studies of
biology, computer science, etc. while still a student at MIT in the late seventies. He
realized what a different word we could have, if we could build with individual atoms
like nature. Drexler (and Dr. Chris Peterson) fought one heck of an uphill battle
throughout the '80s and '90s for acceptance of these radical ideas by the scientific
community. Now, things have changed. History will read, Newton, Einstein, Drexler.
Yes, we are on the threshold of material opulence and greatly enhanced physical health.
However, in a bed of roses, one still must avoid the thorns. Like all technology, nano
can be used for good or not so good (serious understatement) and could cause considerable
panic to the under informed during the transition. As post-nano international relations
thinker Tom McCarthy points out, if China's perception of its ancient rival India's
advanced software and technology lead... might produce nanotechnology first, this could
prompt China to nuke Indian research centers before India could strike with nanoweapons.
Now conceder this; unlike nuclear, nano is a desktop industry... and one sufficiently
advanced disgruntled hack working in a garage could program a self replicating nanite to
kill all bovine on the planet, or all people with brown eyes, or indeed, all DNA based
life... 
But wait, check this small example of the wonders possible building things with atomic
precision.
Building on the atomic scale, mechanical computers with the power of a mainframe could be
manufactured so small, that several hundred would fit inside the space of a biological
cell. (http://www.asiapac.com/EnginesOfCreation/)
If you combined microscopic motors, gears, levers, bearing, plates, sensors, power and
communication cables etc., with powerful microscopic computers, you have the makings of a
new class of materials. Smart materials.
Programmable smart materials could shape-shift into just about any desired object. A
house made of smart materials would be quite useful and interesting. Imagine a wall
changing color at your command, or commanding the appearance of a window where there was
none, drapes of any style listed in the smart materials software or from some source on
the Internet. This is all purely mechanical and can be done today, although with much
larger parts, resulting in a coarser effect (and at great expense!).
A fabulous type of smart material was invented by Rutgers University's Dr. J. Storrs
Hall, computer scientist, moderator of the sci.nanotech news group and seriously creative
nanothinker. He calls his brainchild, Utility Fog.
(http://nanotech.rutgers.edu/nanotech/Ufog.html)
This intelligent polymorphic (shape changing) substance consists of a mass of tiny
identical nanoengineered robots. Each utility foglet robot is mostly telescoping arms 5
to 10 millionths of a meter long with a central globular body 1 or 2 millionths wide
housing motors, a battery and one of those powerful nanocomputers. Dr. Hall designed the
'bot with 12 arms that can be waved back and forth and grip the ends of other robot arms,
making power and communication connections. 12 arms, so some could be free briefly when
changing neighbors and still be connected to the mass. Also, such an octet truss
structure (invented by Buckminster Fuller) remains rigid even if all the arms are
connected to the bodies by simple hinges This avoids a more complicated attachment
assembly.
Each robot body is small compared to its arm spread, and the arms are relatively thin.
This results in the foglet taking up only 2 or 3 % of the space in a volume they fill,
the balance is left for air and passing light. A room filled with Utility Fog would be
fairly transparent, larger volumes would become cloudy at a distance. 
Much larger foglets can be built with today's technology however, the expense of
producing enough to do anything useful would be most prohibitive. Filling an average
house with the microscopic variety would require trillions of foglets, so the whole
concept depends on the economics of automatic nano-assembly to be remotely affordable.
Now for the fun part. With all this computing power, these puppies can be programmed with
a wide spectrum of behaviors that mimic materials of different mass, motion, appearances
and functions. Each Foglet can sense the force along each and every arm, and react
according to the magnitude and relation of those forces. 
In the words of Dr. Hall in a recent article in NanoTechnology Magazine, If the program
says, extend when the force is trying to stretch, retract when it is trying to compress,
you have a soft material. If it says, resist any change up to a certain force, then let
go, you have a hard but brittle material. If the programming says, maintain a constant
total among the extension of all arms, but otherwise do whatever the forces would
indicate; and when a particular arm gets to the end of its envelope, let go, and look for
another arm coming into reach to grab; you have a liquid. If you allow the sum of the arm
extensions to vary with the sum of the forces on the arms, you have something that
approximates a gas within a certain pressure range. Note that because the Foglets can use
their own power to move or resist moving, the apparent density and viscosity of the fluid
can be anything from molasses to near vacuum. 
Further Dr. Hall states, Run a distributed program that at a specified time, changes a
certain volume from running water to running wood. A solid object would seem to appear in
the midst of fluid. It can just as easily disappear. Now fill your entire house with the
stuff, running air in background mode. Have an operating system that has a library of
programs for simulating any object you may care to; by giving the proper command you can
cause any object to appear anywhere at any time. You could carry a remote control, which
might happen to be shaped like a wand with a star on the end...
More ambitiously, since you're embedded in the Fog, it can sense every detail of your
bodily position. It forms a whole-body dataglove, and you can control it with extremely
subtle gestures. At the ultimate extreme, the Foglets can carry various special sensors
ranging from simple electrodes with voltmeters to SQIDs and form an extremely high
bandwidth polygraph. With proper programming the Fog would almost be able to read your
mind. This combination of extreme reactivity to control and virtually limitless creative
and operational ability suggest a comparison with the Krell machine in Forbidden Planet.

Hall offers the average person with a bucket of Utility Fog a great stage career in Vegas
with these observations. Thus, here's a short list of the powers you'd have or appear to
have if embedded in Fog:
Creation: causing objects to appear and disappear on command. Levitation: causing objects
to hover and fly around. Manipulation: causing forces (squeezing, hitting, pulling) on
objects (real ones) at a distance. This includes a distance of inches; bend steel bars
(real ones) like Superman. Teleportation: nearly any combination of telepresence and
virtual reality between Fog-filled locations. Shape-shifting: Want to be a mouse? the Fog
around you simulates very large feet, baseboards, etc., while your telepresence drives a
mouse-sized fog program. Want to be the Statue of Liberty ... ?