[ExI] trying to convince a friend that nanotech is not so bad...

[Tomasz Rola]

On Thu, 29 Jul 2010, John Grigg wrote:

> A friend wrote to me:
> Uh hey, yeah, guess what they put nano tech aluminum in your deodorant
> and suntan lotion and oooh its clear - that's so neat!! ooh and dries
> fast but whoops u have cancer because it breaks the brain skin blood
> barrier!!
> oh also now children can get nano carbon bicycle handles and their
> hands rub up against it, and it too breaks the skin brain blood
> barrier, and whoops my kid needs chemo and a blood transfusion!

Uhhum, breaking skin-brain barrier? Does it mean breaking through their 
skulls? Sorry for the pun :-).

> How about leave it perfect the way nature intended it! I am open to

Ah, what the nature intended, we cannot ask it. There is a catch involved 
with this phrase. Example: if the nature intended us to drive bicycles, we 
would have had seats permamently stuck to our bottoms - so I am grateful 
it did not (apparently) intended so. But I would like to drive my bicycle 
anyway.

Also, nature gave us those big brains, which means (to me at least) we are 
expected to meddle with things, try, search, make mistakes and try again.

> non- misappropriate uses of nano but most of what i have ever seen is
> being used as a weapon against ppl across the board. we already have
> reverse engineered space technology, most of nanotech is being used to
> fuck people in my humble opinion.

Well, not really, I think. It's not nanotech that is misused but just the 
word is applied and twisted to fit with quite normal (one would like to 
say, classical) products. So if people are fscked, it's not nanotechnology 
to be blamed, because there is not so much of it in real production use 
nowadays (I suppose). And where there is some, the trend is to not call it 
by name (like with microelectronics).

> My question to the list members is this, how do you deal with these
> complaints against the *current state* of nanotechnology?
>  And will
> these problems get worse or better, as time goes by?

Probably worse for some time. Nano is new for common folk, not many people 
care about DNA repairing machines and marketoids have already started to 
abuse the term because it is mentally connected to "The Future". In the 
real future, there is some potential in nano automatization, which will 
add to uncertainty. Why bother about being RFID-ed (or other-way-ID-ed) 
when I can have a fabricated drink? I can be put under surveillance in 
almost no time and at minimal cost thanks to the coming of microbots. One 
can be sure there will be new flavors of antigovt activism.

I didn't have the need to deal with such complaints. If I had, I would try 
my best to point the folk to positive sides while trying to make them 
understand what was nonsense. I believe in the long term positives will 
prevail. Like better implants of all kinds for elderly and disabled. 
Repairing failing body parts and tissues (as an alternative/complement to 
gene therapy and tissue engineering). Giving water cleaning kits to those 
that lack potable water access. And prospects of having amazing devices 
built really cheap, one day. And in the longer run, if it is possible to 
build transistors and vaccum tubes in a home lab today, sometime in a 
future some people (maybe we ourselves) will have truly wonderful powers 
at their disposal [1].

Well, that's just theory. As I observe a so called computer revolution, 
I have to say that while we have on our desks rough equivalents of 
supercomputers from 20 years ago, now the "power" is used in really 
strange ways. Like rendering flies hoovering over dead enemies in first 
person shooter. On the other hand, there is very real movement towards 
donating CPU cycles to research projects. So not all is bad, just I would 
like more of the good, rather than reading about "third gen hoovering 
flies".

So, whatever we think of nano future, our imagined applications will 
probably be marginal, while mainstream will go with light emitting hairs, 
animations stuck on cheeks and self moding into mythical animals (or 
those... you know... franco bilbos, bingo bilbos, gandalfs, whatever is 
their bloody name). Perhaps this is the price (very moderate indeed) for 
microbotic surgery or ability to build even better space telescopes... in 
space.

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

[1] Actually, if we want to look at it from some perspective, those who 
will posess nanotech might choose to keep it to themselves. For them, 
god-like power, for us, endless (in theory, again) obedience. Myself, I 
detest such outcome as very nonhumane in nature (I perceive transhumanism 
as humane, because in my view it intends to improve the whole mankind).

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **