Social/Technological Implications Of Nanotech? 141
Morficflux asks: "I am a high school student currently working on my 18-plus-page College Prep paper. Currently, I am trying to write something that is not only interesting to me, but pertains to the all-important issue of the progression of technology. I really want to take the bull on by the horns so I am tackling the issue of the social and technological implications that will occur with the invention and mainstream use of Nanotechnology. What is going to happen when we must deal with these issues? Where might I find more information on this so I may proceed? What will be the scope of change, and how will it affect us all?"
Steal from Stephenson's The Diamond Age (Score:1)
George
Just a warning. (Score:2)
By college professors.
Telling you to do your own fscking resarch.
Meanwhile, I will follow the occasional link listed in this article, and hopefully learn something new.
That is all.
SLAVES WANTED (Score:1)
Technology is my false idol
Minimalism is the way to go as I see it.
No harm in the amazingly great things nanotechnology could do to improve our lives collectively...
Just don't accelerate these improvements to a point that we don't have lives.
It Won't. (Score:2)
Nanotech would mean bad news for Enviro-wackos... (Score:2)
This would force Al Gore et al to either just come out and admit that their environmentalist hysterics are simply an attempt to force everyone in America to have the same dismal life as a Beltway insider, or to "roll with it" and remove a hundred years of ineffective Federal law.
Oh yeah... I bet we'd have a better handle on eugenics as well, and that would lead to the genetic perfection of the human race. I can't wait!
First GoD Post (Score:1)
#insert (Score:1)
Tell me you didn't just cut-and-paste your assignment text into Ask Slashdot... =)
Resources for Nanotechnology (Score:4)
Of course, Eric Drexler's book Engines of Creation [amazon.com] started it all. Unbounding the Future [amazon.com] , by Drexler, Chris Peterson, and Gayle Pergamit, is a less technical popularization of the ideas put forth in Engines. Drexler's Nanosystems [amazon.com] is the authoritative technical book on the subject.
Zyvex researcherRalph Merkle [merkle.com] is acknowledged worldwide as one of foremost authorities on nanotechnology; his nanotech website [zyvex.com] is the definitive starting place for locating nanotech resources on the web.
go here for a good starting point... (Score:2)
KNOCK IT OFF SLASHDOT (Score:1)
Cliff, what are you thinking? Knock it off with these "Please do my homework when I could just run a search on Google and get more resources then I know what to do with!"
It's hard to blame Morficflux, but Cliff should know better!
Various books (Score:1)
The following books are ones that I would personally reccomend:
The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
Tech Heavan - Linda Nagata
The Bohr Maker - Linda Nagata
Bloom - Wil McCarthy
I hope these books are as enjoyable to you as to me, and useful to boot.
--
It will be a difficult guess... (Score:1)
It is quite hard to estimate how technologies will actually be used. Take the Internet as an example - it started in 1969 with four universities being connected to it. Nobody thought about e-mail, which originated from a hack (someone deployed a file on some other workstation which was then read by the recipient when he logged in). Before e-mail, the 'net did not really take off, and it really started to rise like a comet when the WWW was born with the creation of the first browser.
Even back then, nobody could have estimated the impact of the *uses* of these technologies on society. Guesses about that will always be quite far from what will happen.
However, it is *vital* that we think about possible implications now, lest we are rolled over by new technologies before we know what effects they have.
you know.. (Score:1)
a word of advice: if you are trying to do research by asking around on the internet, you ought to be careful. the signal to noise ratio is very low, and you can get trapped if you don't double check the information you gather by sources that you trust (such as refereed journals).
- pal
Some links (Score:3)
http://www.lucifer.com/~sean/Nano.html [lucifer.com]
http://www.itri.loyola.edu/nanobase/ [loyola.edu]
http://www.dvtech.com/pages/pages/Tec NANO.htm [dvtech.com]
Nanotechnology is very intersting. Hope you enjoy writing the paper. :-)
Wired April 2000 (Score:1)
Good Luck
What kind of Nanotech? (Score:2)
Do you mean MEMS (Micro-ElectroMechanical Systems), or the stuff of science fiction where small machines get injected into our bodies to do things? Do you mean the advances in electronics?
At work we're looking into MEMS to build "low-cost" RF and microwave components-- phase shifters, specifically.
You're posting to /., so you know about the advance in electronics.
Both of these have little social consequences.
As far as the ethical and social ramifications of other nanotechnology uses, what worries do you have? fortunately, we're shielded from many of them by scale-- there's a limit at which mechanical devices can't be made any smaller due to molecular effects. Things that are smooth at our sensory scale are unimagineably rough on microscopic scales. We have to deal with surface roughness in microwave electronics, as it can significantly change design parameters from what the classical (read: simple) analysis says they should be.
Don't want to sound too negative, but I don't see it as exciting as many people.
Here are the Implications (Score:4)
Nanotechnology is a cool ploy implemented by college professors and researchers to keep their jobs. You see, it works like this. Some dumb old college provost goes down into academia and asks what the profs are up to. They respond, "We're researching stuff that will change the world...and oh yeah, it will make your college famous and filthy rich from all the patented technologies that are developed....but of course, the technologies will be developed over the course of decades, which will require serious dollars from the college to buy lab equipment, assistants and such"
The end result is the profs go out and buy shit loads of Dreamcasts and PSX2's and generally have a rip roaring time. They fly in cute showgirls from Las Vegas and Cuban cigars. After 10 or 15 years, they transfer to another college...of course taking all the best assistants and researches, forcing the colleges to start all over again.
So there you have it. Nanotechnology won't ever bother you because it isn't real....sort of like the internet, but that's another story.
Nanotech can -- (Score:2)
Nanotech can to anything , just like atomic power could in the 1950s.
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Kill Switch? (Score:1)
Wired 8.04 [wired.com] suggests that humans won't be particularily useful in the future, but I think we should assume that we'll want to keep nanobots in our control as long as possible. The question then comes down to our ability to destory them: if nanobots get out of hand, will we be able to guarantee that we can deactivate them? How much should we worry about nanobots getting out of control? (Obviously the media and therefore the general public will worry about it, but should the professionals?)
If you're looking for a more technical paper, talk about how we would go about making a kill switch and how nanobots could be used for evil. If you're looking for something softer, talk about how the public will view nanotechnology and how it might end up causing more subtle problems like an economic divide.
NanoTech - Research (Score:1)
You might want to try looking at Molecular Manufacturing Enterprises Incorporated (MMEI) [mmei.com]. Their websire has a lot of stuff on it about molecular nanotech.
In my opinion, Nanotech will have a posative affect on society - You always hear about releasing a box of nanosized bugs on your lawn to keep your grass cut to a certain length, or a nanorobot cleaning out your arteries or doing delacate surgery. It could be compared to the internet - While everyone has illegal mp3's and there's warez trading and hacking going on, no open minded person would say the internet is bad, it just has potential bad uses and demented phreaks.
same applies to nanotech. i'm sure someone will find a way to make nanobugs do something harmful, but overall it is exciting to see what may come
~zero
insert clever line here
Age of Nanotech (Score:1)
On a global level, nanotechnology raises some serious issues. On the one hand there are enormous benefits that the technology may produce i.e. possibly final cures to the aging and diseases that have plagued us for our entire history. On the other hand are the dangers, hard to visualize at this point, but all stemming from the radical power of this new tool, i.e. home-made attempts at genocide. I wonder if the heralded "Age of Nanotechnology" will be nothing more than a finely engineered disaster. But who knows.
Re:KNOCK IT OFF SLASHDOT (Score:4)
All sorts of crazy stuff will happen (Score:1)
The real problem would arise whenever it turned out that nanotech could not be controlled as easily as the internet. On the internet, you basically decide whether or not you will be monitored, and if you will read a given data. Ignoring something in real life is much harder than online. You can always scroll past the retarded punch the monkey ads in your browser, but you can't easily scroll past a punch the monkey robot array type thingy when it covers up the instrument panel (or worse, your windshield) in your car. It would get annoying to see nothing but ads whenever the advertisers manage to land nano-bots on your eyeglasses.
Simply, when nanotech comes, we'd all better become way more ethical, or we're all screwed.
"Assume the worst about people, and you'll generally be correct"
BBC article on nanomachine advances (Score:2)
As I posted on GeekPress [geekpress.com]: According to a BBC article [bbc.co.uk], researchers at the University of Massachusetts have made two major advances towards creating nanomachines from matter: a glue to group particles into highly ordered clusters and the capacity to move single atoms at room temperature. Looks like it's going to be a while before DNA rewriters replace colored contact lenses, though.
-- Diana Hsieh
Implications (Score:1)
Of course, I'm a fan, not the man of nano, so please feel free to flame away at my foolishness.
klyX
You're asking the wrong people (Score:2)
And slashdot? Yeah, that's the forum for people with well-thought out views about political and social issues. After all, spending all your time programming computers gives you a well-balanced view of the world, an appreciation for the difficult and complex nuances of human social relations, plus it gives you a load of spare time to think about things. And of course, slashdot readers are an incredibly representative sample of the population -- black, female, old, there's one of each, maybe more. Sure there are a few nutty knee-jerk libertarians out there, but in general they're swamped by the tide of reasonable, well thought-out debate.
Prepare to be swamped by a thousand links on the technological feasibility of nanotechnology, two thousand links to Bill Joy's speech, and precisely nothing of use to you in your essay. When you get an 'F' for failing to tackle any important issues whatsoever, do feel free to post to slashdot once more, and I will help to sue your school for causing emotional distress. Before long, your teacher will be strutting round the exercise yard, dealing crack, having knife-fights with other inmates, smoking blunts and pimping out his stable of bitches to the warders. And since he would almost certainly be sent to a minimum-security, white-collar prison, that kind of behaviour is going to stand out.
streetlawyer, abusing the privilege of posting at +2 since last week.
welp ... (Score:1)
Perhaps nanites instead of surgery, that are targeted for cancer cells. Maybe artificial immune systems for those whose natural ones have failed.
nanomachines to make molecular level computers perhaps. payloads of nanites to observe for eploration of space, heck, something on that scale could be accelerated close to lightspeed without using resources on the kind of scale sending macro scale hardware requires. perhaps nanites could construct macro scale hardware both lighter and stronger than we can now. send them to alpha centuri with a mission to reproduce, mine, build communactions gear and explore
Perhaps the computers that design the nanites will engineer a machine intellect, perhaps not self knowing but quite possibly way more a powerful brain than you or i could have, especially if you consider distibuted computing.
the dark side of course is making a race of machines and pissing them off by treating them as subservient. the matrix has you neo...
Start with Feynman (Score:2)
The first nanotech prize winner, a really small motor, is still on display at Caltech's phsyics building.
I can't wait for nanotechnology because... (Score:1)
I would suggest the following (Score:1)
Do a search on altavista for nanotech.
Do a search on /. for nanotech.
Do a search on amazon for nanotech.
Doing just that will provide you with more material than you can read in your lifetime.
Personally I would recommend Stephensons Diamond age, Bill Joy's Why the future doesn't need us and Eric Drexlers Engines of creation, all very interesting reads.
That said (I know I'm going to get flamed for this), IMHO this a rather abundant Ask /. question. We've had plenty of discussions on nanotech here, and I can't see why this one would provide anything new (since it's a question, and not an article about something nanotech advance). And it's not like it's difficult to find resources on nanotech on the net (or even on /.) either.
However, that's just the thoughts that most recently penetrated my mind, and I may very well be wrong. Comments anyone?
Re:KNOCK IT OFF SLASHDOT (Score:1)
It's about as bad as me going up to a teacher or a friend who knows about the subject in question, and saying "I don't know where to get started, could you help me find some references?"
The *real* work is actually getting 18 pages out of this. Nanotech is pretty theoretical right now, and although computers are getting smaller and smarter, we don't have tiny robots or wonderful AI, so we can only speculate on what self-organizing nanites would behave like, or if they will ever exist.
Personally, I'd pick a subject with more information, but if he pulls it off, I'm sure it will be a great paper, even with no help from you!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Re:Just a warning. (Score:1)
Singularities (Score:2)
Don't forget to include slashdot in your citations page...
Article about this in WIRED (Score:1)
I can already hear the, "Do your own fsking research!" flames... However, I think it is a good topic for discussion.
There was an excellent article [wired.com] in the April 2000 issue of WIRED magazine about this, written by Bill Joy.
I have to admit that I whole heartedly agreed with the passage, "The New Luddite Challenge", and was more than a little freaked out to find that such unsettling words of wisdom were coming from the Unabomber Manifesto.
Also, there are good references to follow in the footnotes.
Good luck with your assignment.
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Can't students do their own research anymore? (Score:5)
That said, you can find some nanotech links here:
* The Open Directory Project has a number of great links here [dmoz.org], including a link to the important Foresight Institute [foresight.org].
* And, of course, there is Ralph Merkle's page [merkle.com].
Good luck. I wish /. had some rule that we would only offer assistance to students who let us read their finished products.
A. Keiper
Washington, D.C.
Roswell material was nanotech technology? hmm (Score:1)
Re:Just a warning. (Score:1)
Re:Just a warning. (Score:1)
forget about the paper (Score:1)
Enough homeworks (Score:1)
If you want to say something unorthodox... (Score:2)
I'm a nanosceptic. As interesting as this sort of technology is, I don't think it is quite the miracle cure for everything or a source of world-ending destruction. Too many things have billed themselves that way in the past and haven't lived up to their promises.
First of all, read Bill Joy's article on Wired, and some of the follow up articles, like the ones at Salon.com. I heard him speak at a symposium at Stanford a couple weeks ago. If a transcript is on the web read it too. You look a lot better on these essays if you at least read the public press on the subject.
Right now, the public press is all there is. Very little research in nanotechnology as such makes it into the journals. The field is awfully young.
Now, doomsayers and optimists alike see nanotech as way of handling large problems by using self-replicating machines to, for example, convert chemicals into more useful or less toxic ones, or to cure diseases like cancer by simply attacking the cancer directly and non-invasively. The doomsayers also warn of nano-infections killing millions and turning ecosystems into sludge.
However, nature hes been throwing the worst it has to offer in self-replicating nanotechnology at living organisms for billions of years, and most of the time we live through it. I am sceptical that humans will build machines as resilient as those nature provides anytime soon.
This doesn't eliminate medical potential - we might flood a body with short-lived machines designed to hunt down a cancer to do some other specific work, and let them run until the immune system kills them. I just don't think we'll see artificial diseases killing people off - human immune systems are much too good for that and the real world is a very caustic, destructive place for tiny machines. I suspect the average toxic waste dump is also going to be a poor place to deploy nanotech.
Biotech is much more useful and dangerous in that respect, since nature has already done most of the work of constructing self-replicating machines that can survive in nature.
I'm not convinced that any of the recent advances in nanotech lead to self-replication at all. Remember, we can't even build reliably self-replicating machines at any scale. Why miniaturisation should make this easier is something I don't understand.
Nanotech has a lot of potential for manufacturing, no doubt about that, but household replicators strike me as a bit far-fetched, although perhaps not impossible. The most immediate benefit I expect to see is the construction of largely unspecialised factories that are able to retool to a new product or new specifications in a matter of days or even hours. This is a trend already underway, but I think nanotech could make it a lot easier.
The result might be a manufactuing process not unlike the software design process. Someone makes a design, tests it in a computer, weeds out the bugs, and distant factories are able to assemble the product from nothing but the plans. Perhaps it's time to discuss open source industrial design? GNU four-slice toaster v6.2? Weirder things have happened.
Another major area for realistic progress is brain research. At present, a lot of neurological research depends on a small number of patients with a form of epilepsy that can only be cured by opening the skull and operating directly on the brain while the patient is awake. With nanotechnology, we could do even more direct and small scale research on the brain without ever having to open the skull at all.
But, I'm sceptical of claims of doom and claims that nanotech can solve all our problems. There are no ultimate solutions.
Re:Just a warning. (Score:1)
Ask Slash:
My math assignment is posted here [stileproject.com] please post all answers into the cgi forum, and remeber to show your work.
What exactly do you mean when you say "nanotech"? (Score:4)
There are technolgies under development now, which will be commercial in 3-10 years, which could easily be considered "nanotech". For example: nanosized magnetic core memory (recently on
Another level of development will be marked by the use of nanomachines to assemble bulk materials. At the simplest level, such a machine would act as a filter: pour in slurried ore, and it spits out streams of refined metal. At greater levels of complexity, you can produce things like wood, meat, cloth, etc. This requires a high degree of fine control, but it is relatively simple because you're just building the same "cell" over and over and over.
Moving beyond that, you enter the age of the general assember, and the nanite robot. This is the sort of nanotech people write SF about, and that gives Bill Joy the screaming heebie-jeebies. There are several stages within this level of development.
Initially, probably, general assemblers will be huge, not very efficient, hard to build, and limitted in capability (i.e. they can't build something as complex as another one of themselves). They will only be available to corporations and governments. At this point, you have the potential to produce product very cheaply and sell it for whatever the market will bear. Which means that it may be quite a while before we move beyond this step, because in this phase, big business holds all the cards and the consumers just have to line up and take what they get. Fortunately, there are avenues for research that aren't focussed on profit, and there are profit-oriented research centers that will continue to push the envelope for the sake of getting an edge on the competition. But I suspect there will be a very strong push to keep things more or less at this level, and keep the assemblers under the control of a monied elite. Yes, this worries me.
The resistance is because, in the next phase, general assemblers are smaller, cheaper, more available, and more capable (and capable of reproducing themselves, probably). At this point, there is the potential to develop a pure information economy, because you can make anything you want using just raw materials, electricity (and probably not much of that), an assembler, and a design. You could even have a totally open-source economy. The economics of scarcity and profit go to hell in a handbasket. But you also introduce the very real possibility that any reasonably bright and deranged person can design a nanoplauge to wipe out humanity (the grey goo and the Unabomber problems).
There is also a shift that will occur when it is possible to build self-reproducing nanites. This is somewhat, though not completely, decoupled from assembler technology, so it's hard to say when it occurs. This level of technology is what really heralds the danger that Bill Joy was freaking out over. Without self-reproducing nanites, nanotech is still dangerous, but it's not world-breaking.
Each of these technologies is going to have a whole set of reprocussions and ramifications. You may find that it is hard to survey the entire future history of the development of this technology without winding up writing a book. So you may want to focus on a particular level of development. Also, trying to predict what's going to happen once general assemblers are available, even primitive ones, is basically prophesy and therefore probably bullshit. (Everything I've said that could be construed as a prediction should be read as if it was prefaced with a huge honking disclaimer. I don't pretend to be a seer; these are just my guesses.)
What? A Nanotech Article NOT by Hemos? (Score:1)
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Re:Just a warning. (Score:1)
The Age of Spiritual Machines (Score:1)
I dont think hes asking the wrong people at all :) (Score:2)
First and foremost you must realize that social change is gradual. The ultimate ends to nanotechnology is the ability for anyone to have anything they want at the push of a button. But that wont happen for a long.. long time. Using today as an example, it should already be possible to access any song with a click of a mouse (or a few clicks) but basic marxist theory states that the people in power want to stay in power and will fight for that power to the bitter end. They actually reconstruct society in order for the people not in power to think they have opportunities to advance, but the opportunities for these people to excel are next to nothing. (spare me the story of your great grandfather working in a coal mine, those are outliers usually based on luck.)
So when nanotechnology comes into play, look for billions of dollars being spent to -fight- the introduction of this technology to the general public (similar to the RIAA's spending now). Once the ability to reconstruct matter efficiently and effectivly gets in the hands of the people, there is no -need- for a true power structure anymore, and that scares alot of people.
There would be no need for a governmental system beyond regulating abuse of nanotech (but then again, who cares about that when i can make a cheeseburger out of a rock? Or have natalie portman walk out of my wall for a quick shag.) Puritan morals would be, well, crushed. With everyone being able to recieve instant gratification, we must look towards the other human abilities.
I imagine you would see the division of society into a few categories.. Artists, Explorers, Scientists and Nanobums.
Artists figure out new things to create with nanotech. Explorers travel the universe, as humans are now immortal. Scientists continue thier pursuit. And nanobums live in utter physical extacy or just have fun.
I think there would be alot more nanobums then any other group
I want to again stress that to reach this form of society will take centuries, even after efficient nanotech is invented.
Keep in mind the above are merely the opinion of a sociology student, and are based on my applications of basic sociological theory with a few assumptions on what super-advanced nanotech will be able to do. I dont consider myself an expert in either field, I just find them fascinating.. I wish you the best of luck and feel free to plagerize my ideas.
Re:If you want to say something unorthodox... (Score:2)
Re:Steal from Stephenson's The Diamond Age (Score:1)
The implications of nanotech will depend highly on whether it is a powerful technology or a very limited one, and whether it can become cheap or will always be expensive. If it's cheap and powerful, it could change everything, as in The Diamond Age. If it's forever limited and expensive, it won't likely change much.
Some Hints and a question (Score:1)
If I where you I would break the essay into nanotech that is at least feasable from our current level of technology, (ie not actually nanoscale but just really really small) such as biotelemetry trackers and aorta scrubbing robots that help us eat more bacon.
And then go into the more speculative nanotech like machines that can essentially build anything from the ground up. Which would basically destroy the whole power structure in the world today, as suddenly anyone could have anything and we could all just lay around and CAD up giant purple mecha and have them fight it out instead of voting for leaders and whatnot...
BUT here is my general question, what wrong with all you cranky jerks that don't want some kid to ask questions? The ask
Conjecture can be tough, but hey... (Score:1)
Anyway, I think if you want a good piece of sci-fi that outlines some of the enchanting possibilities that may lay before us with nanotechnology, I'd really recommend giving The Diamond Age [amazon.com] a good lookover.
Ever why it's called nanotechnology, by the way? Isn't taking "billionths" and sticking it in front of -technology kind of arbitrary?
Re:KNOCK IT OFF SLASHDOT (Score:1)
Wrong, people are.
He is in highschool, not doing some post doctorial thesis. I'm quite sure that as long as he regurgatates information on the given links he will get at least an C+. If he "adopts" an original idea, B+.
What do people expect him to do. If he really cared about the idea, he could have easily used Yahoo/Google. He wouldn't need slashdot.
And even if he did, there is some kid out there reading this thread, seeing the number of people helping and when he has to do a paper....
Homework cop-out: Death of Slashdot predicted (Score:1)
Try these books as a starting point (Score:1)
This book may discuss some of the topics that you're interested in:
Nano: The Emerging Science of Nanotechnology
by Edward Regis and Mark Chimsky (ed.)
Little, Brown and Co. copyright 1996
ISBN: 0316738522
Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing and Computation
by K. Eric Drexler
John Wiley & Sons, 1992
Nanotechnology: Molecular Speculations on Global Abundance
B.C. Crandall (ed.)
MIT Press, 1996
Drexler's name comes up frequently in the field. I recommend going to your local library, or local University library and doing a search there. The purpose of assignments like this on are frequently to encourage students to develop their own research skills. Consider developing these skills, I've found them to be of immense value during the course of my academic career.
Nanotech means the END of Patents (Score:1)
nanotech is the ultimate culmination of the industrial revolution and the comming information age combined. EG - That instead of ordering that new auto part from the dealer - you will be able to buy some cheap raw materials and micro assemble it at home. If you want that latest processor, fine just download the specs, and nano assembly program and assemble it with your nanobots of various types bought for pennies on the dollar per pound. The same is true with pharmacuticals, and all sorts of other chemichals.
this will cause quite a stir because it will be a pull away from the large scale factories that we think of anytime we think of the production of physical goods - and it will make centralized controll of patents or forceing your way into markets because of cost of scale impossible. This pull will be gradual at first and then harsh later on. It will be from large companies, to mid size companies, to small companies to individuals.
if you wanted to build a house, you might dump 10 tons of wood pulp in the yard, download "house" specs, and dump a bucket of nanobots in the yard. After that it would be automatic. (possibly with the addition of some type of fuel or power source)
if you found you had colon cancer, you might download the colon cancer spec, and inject 10cc's of nanosolution in your blood stream. Or perhaps your spine was ripped to shreads in an auto accident and you need it to be carefully cleaned up and reassembled.
nanotech may also bring warfare to a new level - allowing micro nuclear assembly on a grand scale, or targeted nano dust attacks.
it would also possibly be a boon to space activity. it could be cheaply shot into orbit and self repair/arragne into sattelites, space stations, etc with much more impact resistance and fault tolerance.
just some thinghts. david
This is everywhere (Score:1)
BTW, what's up with only 18 pages? Mine was thirty pages typed in 1982, so no PC to do nice editing, had to use white-out or start the whole page over again... AND WE LIKED IT, WE LIKED IT.
Re:Various books (Score:2)
He was asking about the social implications of nanotech. Any social implications are theoretical at this point, or in other words, fiction.
In science fiction there is a long standing tradition of speculative extrapolation of the implications (including social implications) of various scenarios, mostly technological.
In any case, my post clearly stated that my reading suggestions were a suplement to 'serious' books, not a replacement.
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Re:Various books (Score:1)
Materialistic Cultural Implications (Score:1)
Good Fiction (Score:1)
You might find this offtopic... (Score:2)
Your paper should be your own work, and yes, that includes searching libraries and internet for papers that are relevant for the topic. The ability to read books and research journals, and to utilize the important and interesting ones is one of the factors colleges look for when reading your paper. Leveraging hundreds or thousands of people to do your research for you is ridiculous and immoral.
Why I think this is wrong. (Score:1)
How hard is highschool? He isn't doing a doctorial thesis.
I don't know where this kid is or where you went to highschool, but they don't expect THAT much from grade 12. If he "re-presents" simple information, its a C+. If he "adopts" an original idea, he gets an B+. Highschool papers are not something amazing insightful. Read one if you have access.
Suppose he is really honest about asking slashdot. Some other kid out there reading this will see the shear number of people helping and the next time he has to write a paper...
Research (Score:1)
Try Fiction (Score:2)
Look back to the invention of flight. Back at the time that they were theorizing about whether heavier-than-air craft were feasible, I am quite certain that they were not successfully predicting today's "hub and spoke" airline economy. And they wouldn't have predicted the "cramming of passengers into microscopic seats" nor the most recent trend towards expanding legroom.
In short, any theories at this point are likely to be as fictional as the predictions back in the 1950s that everyone would be flying "jet cars" and helicopters to work.
This has the attractive result that you can be quite creative about the results you look for, with no one to gainsay your claims.
You could bias towards the "cyberpunk" approach that Neal Stephenson's "Diamond Age" suggests, or to the "artistic" approach of Greg Bear's "Blood Music."
These, and other, works can represent useful inspiration for your own Science Fiction story, which is effectively what any theorizing about the effects of nanotech represent.
I'd suggest considering several sides to it, in terms of actions and reactions in:
A useful exercise would be to take each of the areas of society that you plan to examine, and apply McLuhan's Laws of Media [sv.uio.no] to generate some relevant Tetrads.
That is, look at how nanotech affects the given system component in four ways:
Play the "Tetrad Game" a dozen times, and render those tetrads into a systematic "story," and you should get an interesting result.
Hedonism!!! (Score:1)
You had better ... (Score:1)
Have you asked very many of your colleagues in class to give you some info on this? No? Well why is that different from asking slashdot?
Slashdot is not a search engine that prowls geek's minds. Slashdot is not a forum for doing people's homework.
If you had broached this subject with a little more thought, perhaps I wouldn't have been so irritated (not that it matters to you). You should have just brought up a topic for general discussion, and used that discussion for enlightenment.
I certainly am most impressed that you are writing an 18-plus-page paper. Or maybe that is Slashdot writing it?
--Scott
Re:KNOCK IT OFF SLASHDOT (Score:1)
As somebody pointed out a few days ago, shouldn't they be learning valuable research skills by going out and finding these sources on their own?
In this day and age? Opening Google.Com (or your favorite search engine/software) and typing in "nanotech" isn't "valuable research skills". Those skills require a different situation to acquire than writing a paper, surely.
Heck, do libraries still even exist? I haven't been out of my basement for three months (quite literally... almost) to check.
Re:Research (Score:1)
I would say to them "do your own research".
I've done that with my brother and I think he is better off for it.
>He/she is just using the full extent of their resources.
I know people who have cheated and used this excuse.
>I don't think they're are relying fully on this post either.
But maybe they are. And how about the next person?
Not pleasant thing (Score:1)
The feed, the seed, and then the post-human era.. (Score:5)
Good and Bad (Score:1)
On libraries and nanotech... (Score:1)
Has it occured to you people that maybe he doesn't have a good library to go to? Libraries tend to be pretty poorly funded in the US, and and pretty likely to suffer a serious dearth of information on theoretical sciences like nanotechnology. There aren't many good books on it to begin with, and they would likely be considered to obscure by library purchasers who feel the push to keep the shelves well stocked with numerous copies of old Stephen King novels for people too cheap to go blow five bucks on a paperback as opposed to providing people with an environment for scientific research.
Also be sure to think about the quality of search tools in puplic libraries. It is most likely that subjects like nanotech would be best researched in scientific magizines and journals that are not likely well categorized in the kind of search databases public libraries use, which are often terribly generic and designed more for use by young children who only need to know which set of encylcopedias to look in.
For reasearch on nanotech, the web is quite likely the best reference out there, and shame on you for attacking someone for trying to take advantage of an incredible tool like
Hows about Kurzweil? (Score:1)
Re:Resources for Nanotechnology--yeah right (Score:1)
Feeding the trolls - here's a cookie for ya! (Score:1)
What I want to know is (from your perspective), why?
Why waste the time posting such a thing? Just to see if people like me will respond? I am just curious at the thought processes of such AC's. I mean, I could say something crass, like "Take some lithium, and chill" - but it is obvious that such a posting would have little or no effect, and might actually excaberate the problem. Plus, I don't think posting such a thing would be proper, anyhow - because I don't think you actually need lithium - you have some other reason for the outburst.
So please, you - or another AC - tell me what that reason is, ok?
ask slashdot: do my research (Score:1)
If slashdot begins to discriminate against questions starting with, "I'm doing acedemic research in foo," students can probably just lie and say, "Reading slashdot has peaked my interest in foo, and I was wondering..."
Besides, having a collection of messages containing mostly links and opinions is hardly having your work done for you. (Asking /. may require more work, after you filter the signal from the noise.)
If a question promotes interesting discussion, I have no problem with someone using it as a stepping stone for other work.
I wish I could remember who said, "Stealing the work of one person is plagerism, stealing the work of many people is research."
Nanotechnology (Score:1)
According to what I've read below... (Score:1)
Yes, Indeed, Do Your Own Research (Score:2)
However, I certainly agree that the tendancy for students to try to get "the Internet" to do their research for them is extremely annoying.
- The newsgroup comp.lang.lisp [lang.lisp] tends to get hit hard by this; there's an almost-weekly attempt for students to get answers to what are obviously homework assignments that they have put off.
- I get a few emails a month that show that students are trying to satisfy research requirements by reading my web page on relational databases, [hex.net] and then figure that I am the obvious "consulting resource" to answer their assignments for them.
- There was one entertaining occasion when a considerable chunk of a class of accounting students asked my opinion on what Linux-based software package Corel [corel.com] should adopt, and why.
My reaction to many of these things is to tell the would-be non-researcher that their mission, if they choose to accept it, is to Go To The Library.I learned my research skills, which have mapped not too badly onto new media such as the web, by virtue of spending many hours in university libraries tenaciously searching for books and papers and references between them.
If I use "my powers of research" to help the new students too very much, they won't bother learning those sorts of skills, and the next time media changes, they may not develop the tenaciousness to be able to fight their way through to grasping the next new thing.
I'm happy to suggest some references, particularly those that are a little unusual so as to promote a wider array of insights. Thus, Marshall and Eric McLuhan's "Laws of Media" represent a probably-unexpected useful way of grappling with analyzing effects of changing technology, and I'm happy to cite that as an approach.
But to write peoples' research reports for them is quite another thing. It is not merely immoral for them, as students.
It is also immoral for those that do the writing, as they discourage students from becoming competent researchers. And in an increasingly information-oriented economy, that is a horrible way to handicap them.
Students should be able to ask.. (Score:1)
Let me give you a push... (Score:1)
Well, my personal take on the social implications that come with the advancement of technology, in this case nanotechnology, is that as oppossed to (Oh, I dunno..) religion which attempts to explain and "lock" the definition of what it means to be human, technology allows us to expose and whittle away that definition until we have realized that there is no clear definition between human and non-human on a physical level, but rather on a meta-physical level.
Now, if you want additional information for your report; I would suggest checking out Bill Joy's article [wired.com] which appeared in the Febuary (I think) issue of Wired and the sci.nanotech usenet group.
As a general note, I think that many of the posters on /. would have been more receptive to your question if they had perceived an attitude of "Hey, I have a genuine interest in the social implications of nanotech, whats your guys take on it?" as oppossed to an attitude of "Aww crap, I gotta write this big report so that some college will think im tha bomb. Quick, tell me everything you know about the social implications of nanotech".
Angelo Torres
Why libraries are useless... (Score:1)
I think asking
What Nanotech means to me..... (Score:2)
When the information age comes, this will change because it will allow anything to be created as long as you have 1)Some matter (like dirt) 2)Some energy and 3)The information on how to make it. Since 1) and 2) will be essentially free, only 3) has any real value. And it's pure labor - no "resources" are involved.*
How will this happen? Nanotechnology. Once you can arrange matter, on the molecular scale, you can create anything you want from the ground up. And making one is no more expensive than making 1,000,000, so therefore, people will have the ability to make things as they need them.
Once that happens, we will truly be in the Information Age, and frankly, I have no idea what will happen. It could be Utopia. More likely, it will mean the death of the individual, and individual rights, because any individual with this power could easily, and accidentally, destroy the entire world. Bill Joy wasn't overblown, he just concentrated on the wrong technologies - AI and Bio-science aren't nearly as scary as self-replicating nanites with absolutely no natural, or unnatural, "predators". So, to prevent such accidents, individuals will have to give up all privacy to the public.
*I say dirt and energy are free because, while I can imagine a dirt-utility bill, I just don't find it likely, and energy would almost certainly come from solar power from tiny machines that live in the upper atmosphere and deliver energy into our network constantly. Or some such solution.
offtopic (Score:1)
That's all.
Slashdot provides Cocktail Party Conversation (Score:1)
I think Cliff is doing us a service when he posts questions like this. I am personally interested in fields like nanotechnology, but I don't have the time to wade through present day journals to find relevant information on things well outside my field. Some of you work in this field. You can provide me with a general understanding far more easily than wading through three years worth of Deutchland Medical Journal of Collected Nanotechnology Research and other such BS so that I can be "enlightened".
This is really the beauty of Slashdot. It brings together people who know an awful lot about neat fields and people who would like to dabble in said neat fields, but don't know where to start. Hopefully you can provide me with information about nanotech and unidentified planets in galaxies far away, and I will be able to provide you with insight on my field, organic chemistry. By Morficflux asking these questions, I get an opportunity to learn cocktail party information about things that I would otherwise, not be able to discuss. The title of Slashdot is "News for Nerds", but it is also "Stuff that Matters".
My two cents. Up my score or flame on.
Try This (Score:1)
Nanotech? Not soon (Score:1)
Cosmetics and Industrial cutting tools. Both are using fine grained "Nano powders" to get some interesting physical properties (One for UV blocking, one for increased wear properties when sintered into a block)
First we'll see increased use of nanopowders etc for better material science (the forgotten science) to make stronger, better materials. THIS has some near term prospects
As for the stuff you see in SciFi, that's a LONG way off, if ever. The problem with mechanical "things" that are less than 100 uM in at least one axis is:
Energy density - How do you get POWER into it, or store power in it? Add in friction forces (remember, it doesn't scale proportionately), and we're talking centuries
Here's a Paper I wrote... (Score:1)
I wrote a paper for history class 10 years ago called Technology and It's Effect on Society [xnet.com] on some of these same topics. It ranges quite far afield, from nanotech to AI and MUDs.
I'd probably structure it a lot differently today, but I'm still interested in many of the same issues.
Later,
James
Re:Nanotech would mean bad news for Enviro-wackos. (Score:1)
Re:#insert (Score:1)
Re:Just a warning. (Score:1)
Re:you know.. (Score:1)
Stephenson's vision of Nanotech (Score:1)
Re:What exactly do you mean when you say "nanotech (Score:2)
1. If the elite so badly want to crush the populace, they can probably do so right now. Of course it's one more way for them to wreak havoc on society if they so choose. Paranoia isn't such a huge deterrent to technology, though. Because it hasn't been since the Industrial revolution.
2. Perhaps the elite SHOULD have control over everything, to prevent that lone deranged person from ever getting his hands on the controls. Open source nanotechnology sounds like an Open source nuclear warhead to me.
Re:Can't students do their own research anymore? (Score:1)
Re:Nanotech would mean bad news for Enviro-wackos. (Score:1)
Re:Roswell material was nanotech technology? hmm (Score:2)
-B
The Stanford Nanofabrication Facility (Score:2)
(I don't work there, just listened to a lecture from someone who does)
Stanford Nanofabrication Facility [stanford.edu]
Technological Singularity... Nothing will be... (Score:2)
William Gibson co opted this phrase from Vernor Vinge - a technological singularity - to use in his recent trilogy. It's a point where some form of technology is so transformative that we cannot imagine beyond it - literally like falling into a black hole.
There was some complaint about the way Gibson ends his recent trilogy, but it's spot on. It's an admission - faced with this technology - there can be no more imagining, only intuition.
Because if the technology ever becomes viable to produce any substance or product endlessly, it changes every rule and boundary our society and culture is based on today. Stephenson had to cheat and force societal constraints on his world in order to discuss nanotech in The Diamond Age.
The truth is, the basic governing element of our species has been the procurement and transformation of resources, since we rose out of a lake in Africa. Remove that, and what do we become?
The implications are that there can be no accurate speculation. Those who live post nanotech live in a different universe than we do.
Re:What exactly do you mean when you say "nanotech (Score:2)
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