Why nano is still macro

In my review of Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near,  I said that I felt the author's ideas about nanotechnology were unconvincing. I'd like to elaborate on that now. I don't claim to have huge expertise in the field: I'm not a chemist. But I have been following it for almost 15 years: I remember hearing Drexler talk about his work when I was based at MIT in the early 1990s and have had an interest in the subject ever since then. I've been editing a publication on the subject for several years and even refreshed myself in this area last month, attending a study trip on the subject for journalists in Switzerland.

There is a mismatch between nanotechnology as it is understood by Kurzweil, Drexler, and much of the public, and what it really is. The fantasy version (depicted by an artist, right) is that machines will be arbitrarily constructed molecule by molecule, and that tiny nanomachines will operate and make decisions independently. Despite Drexler's work, I suspect there will be energy and entropy problems with performing the former, and information problems with the latter. Without getting very technical, all of these come down to the same thing: the more precisely you need to control things, the more energy/entropy/information you require.

Unlike an old editor of mine however, I'm not one of these people who dismisses nanotechnology: there's some truly fascinating stuff happening in the field. In particular, the development of metamaterials—nanostructured materials that have properties very different from the individual chemical compounds they are comprised of—has been extremely important. But these are made in a macroscopic way: chemicals self-organize en masse to produce the tiny structures.

By the same token, the only nanobots that I have seen being seriously developed have been for applications like drug delivery. Again, these are built not one 'machine' at a time, but rather by chemistry. More importantly, they are also controlled the same way: en masse. Light, or some other field, or the injection/presence of another chemical is used to trigger the desired behavior (like releasing the drug). The 'robots' cannot make 'decisions' unless they are hardwired to by their chemistry and then pushed by local conditions, nor can they be addressed individually. This is no surprise: it's the way developmental biology works.

None of which is to say that nanotechnology isn't exciting and important: it is. It's just not what those at some of the more out-there futurologists (like Kurzweil and Drexler) are claiming. I've seen this happen to many technologies and it's a shame: the vast majority of interesting and worthwhile projects are minimized because they can't capture the headlines that outrageous ideas and outright vaporware can. But that gets me onto science journalism, and that's a whole other can of worms...

Comments

[Tom]

That's a really good point; I never thought about it in these terms before. Thanx.

[Joe Rheaume]

I think that if one were able to overcome the building problem, "controlling" nanoscale robots could work using simple emergence. That doesn't give us the intelligent nano-bot needed to alter our bodies into whatever we want, but it might be enough to create some kind of artificial immune system.

[Renato Golin]

Nano technology is in the valve stage, we're still thinking macro of something that is micro.

It'd be physically impossible to build a laptop using valves for the same reasons you state in your post, nevertheless we all use them based on a simple and smaller concept, the transistor.

It's the same with quantum computation, we're still thinking on traditional storage like ions and gates for something that is not classic.

We just need a spark in the right direction...

[Dadster]

No one person can say everything right or everything wrong. The fact that even scientists get carried away by their own hyper-imagination; proves they are after all human. Feynman, Drexler,Kurzweil,Penrose,Bohm to mention only a few,all have provoked human thought, challenged the present and opened
up the possibilities not limited by bio-brains.

Kurtzwell's claim that "mass and energy can be converted into intelligence "( page 139, ch 3 ) begs the question whether intelligence could, by reverse process, be converted into mass and energy?

We are transported into a different dimension altogether when that question occurs to us.It may prove that the growth of intelligence is not limited by the speed of light, but the conversion of it into matter/ energy, may be.

The natural questions that pop up then, are,

(A) Could the conversion of Cosmic Intelligence into Electromagnetic matter / energy, 'e', be governed by an exponential quotient of 'c'( the speed of light)and, such an equation may take a possible form,

CC = D. k. (e).(c^x)?.

where, CC,stands for "Cosmic Consciousness" or Cosmic Intelligence" or total "information" manifest and unmanifest that resides in the whole of cosmos in all its known,knowable,imaginable and unknown forms or formlessness, structured or chaotic ; 'e' for Electromagnetic energy EM,the very same 'e' in the einsteinian equation; c' for the velocity of light in vaccuo and "x" an arbitrary variable . 'D' is a dimensionality factor (explained below) and 'k' an associated probability function ( explained below again).

x =0 obtains conditions and the physics of our universe, whole with its blackholes. Other values of x yields the physics of other universes with different dimensions or no dimensions at all. Nothing prevents x from taking any arbitrary value including fractional, irrational, differential or any trigonomical or lograthmic or any other functional forms or in algorithmic or cellular format or any imaginary or negative values too with certain associated probabilty function 'k', factored in.'D' is of course the dimensionality constant that determines the metric of the CC depending on the dimensions we are dealing with.

Afterall, Einstein's eqaution e = mc^2 does implicitly indicate a region e > mc^2 . I intrepret it as the existence of higher non-electromagnetic energies,non-measurable with our EM-based instruments , assosciated with the self-same mass 'm'; energies existing perhaps in dimensions where the value of 'c '( which is variable),is greater than the speed of light in our familiar 4-D vaccum where 'c' is compelled to take a constant value for the physical effects that we are heir to. Perhaps the value for the speed of light that we could arbitrarily assign to may determine the dimensions we are dealing with.We may even get the value of speed of light ( which then may not be called "light"then) in any arbitrary dimension that we may we choose to know the physics of.
In this region, the velocity C* of mass 'm' is always greater than 'c', and, C* is variable too ,
In this superdimensional region,the energy- mass conversion formulae can still be of the form e = m C* ^ 2 , where C* = [c ^ ( K D-1) / 2] where 'k' is the scaling factor charcteristic to the dimensions of the universe under consideration. The value of 'K' is to be determined from experimental observations. . 'D' is the dimensions of the universe under consideration . For 3 dimensional universe k=unity. The value of the scaling factor k coud be a complex number too . Dimensions of ' higher ' universes could be fractional or imaginary. Also, K could approx be given the value, ( C / C* ). But more of this later.

(B)The next question that gets prompted is, How much of this "cosmic intelligence" could be converted into that type of mass and energy (of the electromagnetic variety)that we are familiar with and can be measured in our universe and how much of it cannot be converted and may remain as Dark matter or dark energy or some other entity with all its associated gravitational glory,in our own universe? And how much of it can never be converted into anything else, lets say, non-usable "lumpen junk-information"?
We know through our mathematics that quantum-vaccum energies can convert itself spontaneously into massive universes like that of ours blasting energy-conservation laws to smithreens.

(C)Next question that can leap forth flaming from our inquisitive head is, "Does a conservation law for CC (or, Cosmic information) exist" ? Or, is CC (ie, cosmic information) capable of getting destroyed or created on a continual or a non-continual quantum basis? Information can be increased by new combinations or even by the destruction by parts of the ever present information.Is retrieval of a destroyed information possible? Isnt information omnipresent ( even up to femtolevels and proceeding to still smaller unstable levels into discontinuities , if any, too ), omniscient( by connectivity, locality entanglements ) and,omnipotent to the extent of not only form-changing but also of creating,destroying and retrieving itself with random spontaneity?

You may note that Kurzweil's above mentioned statement presenting the possibility of meaningfully converting energy to information and back sparked the arousal and widening of the very concept of "Cosmic Consciousness" ,or at least its measurabilty within the limits of "meaningfulnes".

To answer these yearning questionings of the mind, we need non-bio intelligence with trillions and trillions and trillions of computing power than what we have now.

Kurzweil does show some light at the end of the tunnel by postulating a computer in which the whole or at least a good proportion of the available sola-system mass would be able to partake.

We will then get the quantum computers programmed by the solarmass-computers to ask questions even beyond the ken of our collective silicon and carbon-based intelligence available currently.

I would love to have your reactions or comments on this. I invite those interested for a discussion of the ideas.