Foresight Update 5
page 1
A publication of the Foresight Institute
 Government
Policy Affects Nanotechnology, Hypertext
by Chris Peterson
Government decisions being made now and over the next few
years will influence these critical points:
- Will nanotechnology be developed openly, or will it be
classified and developed secretly in government labs?
- Will individuals be permitted to publish freely on
hypertext publishing systems, or will the system owners
be forced to censor their writings?
A recent report addresses these questions without ever using
the terms "nanotechnology" and "hypertext
publishing." Surprisingly, the report is published not by a
private high-tech think tank, but by the US Congress's Office of Technology Assessment.
FI participants who care about these issues will want to order
this remarkable work. It's the best short introduction we've seen
to the new challenges to freedom of speech and the press, and to
how these challenges affect developing technologies.
Well-written, the report alternately horrifies and encourages the
reader with its review of past and possible future government
actions likely to affect nanotechnology and hypertext publishing.
Did you know, for instance, that the US government can classify
technical work done by independent, private researchers who take
no public money? Or that it can block a patent or any disclosure
by an inventor, even if the government has no right to the
invention in question? Although these powers might not withstand
a Supreme Court challenge, they appear to be current government
policy.
While the report does not take an advocacy role per se, it does
clearly present arguments against such restrictive policies, some
of which date back to the 1940s. Readers who pursue this topic
further will find that FI Advisor Arthur
Kantrowitz is a major proponent of a policy of openness.
(Surprisingly to some, Edward Teller--often termed "the
father of the H-bomb" by the media--also advocates
openness.) The basic argument is that an open society--in
addition to being more free--will progress faster technically,
and be better able to defend itself, than one which binds its
minds with over-classification. According to this theory, only
critical short-term military information, such as codes and troop
movements during a war, should be classifiable.
Although nanotechnology is still far too theoretical for
classification to be likely now, the issue will eventually arise.
We need to understand current policies and, if necessary, make
improvements before problems become acute.
The OTA report's section on electronic publishing gives a
remarkably clear view of such systems, which are described as the
future's "crucible of cultural change." While it misses
the basic concept of linked hypertext, other key features of
hypertext publishing are described: the system is seen as
decentralized, more as a "clearinghouse for exchange of news
and information than as a gatherer" itself, in which the
users themselves can be reporters and publishers. Information is
preprocessed or screened to each individual's taste, either by a
host computer sending the data or by the user's personal
computer, perhaps by an "artificially intelligent
front-end."
The report tackles the critical issue of how such a system will
be regulated. Legally, publishers are responsible for their
output and can be sued for libel or for publishing false,
damaging information. However, in an open hypertext publishing
system individuals will be free to publish their own material; it
will not be prescreened by the system's owner. But if regulators
or the courts regard the system's owner as the
"publisher," then the owner would be forced to verify
and police all information on the system--a crippling, impossible
task.
In contrast, under today's law "common carriers" such
as the phone system can't be held liable for what goes over their
lines, since they obviously have no control over it. Newspapers
also are exempt from liability for material they are legally
required to publish. Obviously hypertext publishing systems,
lacking control over what is published, should likewise be exempt
from liability. The report goes so far as to say that holding
electronic publishers liable may conflict with First Amendment
rights. As the report makes clear, whether a new system is
treated as a common carrier in this way is a political decision
rather than a technical one.
The report makes the obvious suggestion that in such a system the
actual publisher of each piece of information should be held
liable. It gets confused on this point, however, by implying that
for some information it may be impossible to identify a
responsible party. We would disagree: a system can be set up such
that every item it contains is linked to a responsible party,
typically whoever paid for its publication on the system.
Authorship could be kept anonymous in some cases, yet made
available by a court order when necessary.
|
It has been suggested that
security concerns would require database
subscriber lists to be turned over to the government
|
|
Again the national security issue is raised: it has been
suggested that security concerns would force the screening of
database entries for militarily-valuable information, or require
database subscriber lists to be turned over to the government.
The former would render the system uneconomic; the latter
violates the right to privacy. Those wishing to pursue the issues
raised by electronic publishing will want to see Ithiel de Sola
Pool's excellent book, Technologies of Freedom,
which is quoted in the report.
But for those desiring a compact introduction to these critical
issues, we suggest ordering a copy of the report: "Science,
Technology, and the First Amendment," GPO stock number
052-003-01090-9. It can be obtained by mail from the Superintendent of
Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC
20402-9325, or by calling 202-783-3238. Checks in US currency,
Visa, Mastercard, and Choice cards are accepted. The cost is
$3.50 within the US, $4.40 outside.
Will
the BioArchive Work?
by David Brin
David
Brin and Eric
Drexler discuss here the challenge of using
nanotechnology to restore species from preserved tissue samples,
for species where habitat protection and captive breeding have
failed. Dr. Brin holds a doctorate in astrophysics, works as a
consultant to NASA and the California Space Institute, and
teaches graduate-level physics and writing. He also writes
award-winning science fiction.
Dr. Brin leads off:
I have one minor cavil with the notion of gene banks being
sufficient to preserve the information inherent in the gene pools
of species. Certainly I use this concept extensively in my own
latest novel (titled Earth, it includes brief
mentions of nanotech). But we should not be so blithe in assuming
the Gene Library contains all. There is also Process
Implementation: getting the initial genetic mix to initiate and
maintain the processes leading to a complete organism.
Take the mitochondria and other purported "guest"
genomes within eukaryotic cells. These symbionts are different in
each species. They must be included. Then take the nurturing
environment of the womb/egg. These are programmed in, all
right--but at the other end of the library, where the
shelves read "this is how the be a mother," not
"this is how to be an embryo." This becomes incredibly
complicated in placental mammals, in which certain genes are
apparently turned on or off depending on whether they were
delivered by the sperm or by the egg.
|
Webmaster's Note:
For information on cell biology and the mitochondrion,
see:
The fact that certain genes are turned on or off
depending upon which parent provided that gene copy is
called "genetic imprinting." For more
information, see:
|
|
So the concept of recreating lost species from their recorded
information, while worthy and desirable, is not going to be any
trivial undertaking. Even when the day comes that we can
"read" an entire genome of, say, a blue whale, that'll
be a far cry from making one--even with nanomachines.
The last fly in the ointment is the apparent language of
development, in which one gene doesn't express directly into one
macroscopic trait. Rather, it's the pull and tug of a thousand
enzyme secretion sites, all playing against each other, that
results in a cell here deciding to become a neuron and
another over there deciding to become a bit of alveoli.
Each enzyme site may take part in hundreds of cuing operations
simultaneously.
Indeed, it may turn out simpler just to disassemble a blue whale,
cell type by cell type, and store that information, using
nanomachines to build an adult from scratch!
Eric Drexler responds:
Some thoughts on restoring species, given frozen tissue
samples and advanced nanotechnology: It is indeed important to
save more than just nuclear genes, especially in the minimal
sequence-of-bases sense. There are also mitochondrial genes,
patterns of DNA methylation, obscurely-encoded states of genetic
activation, and who knows what. Freezing entire tissue samples
(and, for insects, entire organisms) answers several of these
concerns, because it saves numerous cell types with essentially
full information. For plants, which can typically regenerate from
any meristematic cell, samples will clearly be adequate.
Restoring animal species will be more challenging. Setting aside
several separate problems (such as genetic diversity, habitat
restoration, and lost "cultural" information), it would
be adequate to reconstruct fertilized eggs, and to raise the
organisms to adulthood. Starting with only somatic cells and a
thorough knowledge of a hypothetical martian biology, this might
be impossible. But we will enjoy the advantage (one hopes!) of
having closely related species available. To restore a beetle
species, for example, one would incorporate genetic (and other)
information gathered from frozen cells into an egg having a
general structure derived from one or more related species of
beetle. This would be done after studying the relationship
between somatic cell information and egg structure for a number
of existing, normally-reproducing species; note that early
embryology is terribly conservative, in an evolutionary sense.
The resulting first generation might nonetheless have a somewhat
atypical phenotype, but one would expect the offspring of that
generation to be typical members of the original species. Mammals
require more than just fertilized eggs, but embryos from
endangered species have already been brought to term by host
mothers of related species, even where the relationship between
the species is not terribly close.
By the way, I agree with your evaluation of the relative
difficulty of (1) projecting an adult organism from its genes
(etc.) and (2) constructing tissues or organisms from scratch
after a molecule-by-molecule study of the original. The first
involves a recipe, the second a blueprint; only blueprints
describe products and leave a choice of implementation
strategies.
by James C. Bennett
Looking over Stewart Brand's bio, the verb that jumps out
at one is "founded": he founded the Whole
Earth Catalog, Point Foundation,
Coevolution Quarterly (now the Whole
Earth Review), the
WELL (a regional computer teleconferencing system),
and co-founded the Global
Business Network. He also has taught at U. Cal.
Berkeley and the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute, serves on
the Board of Trustees of the Santa Fe Institute,
been a Visiting Scientist at MIT's Media Lab,
and written books including The Media Lab: Inventing
the Future at MIT. The following is a discussion
between Stewart and Jim Bennett, cofounder and Vice President of
the American Rocket Company. Jim serves on FI's Board of
Directors and will be profiled in a
later issue.--Editor
FI: Foresight's ambition is to begin the debate about
nanotechnology on a more reasonable, less polarized basis than
previous debates about technology, such as that about nuclear
power. How reasonable do you think this ambition is?
SB: I don't know; it will be interesting experiment. The
only previous attempt at anything like this that I can think of
is the Asilomar conference on genetic engineering, where they got
a lot of professionals together and tried to predict what the
negative consequences of recombinant DNA experiments might be,
and what measures would be reasonable to take to prevent such
consequences. It's not clear how beneficial that conference was.
A lot of opponents of genetic engineering took the statements
made there, and, in effect, said "See, even the scientists
had some doubts about this, so we should really be
worried."
FI: There you had a situation where a number of people
were already polarized, so they essentially took advantage of the
situation?
SB: Yes, but now that I think of it, that was a first
attempt. The second attempt at anything is usually quite
different from the first time around.
FI: If you were going give us "Stewart Brand's Rules
for Productive Debate," what would they be?
SB: Don't know yet. What's important is to get very smart
people, who have ears as well as mouths. Some very smart people
can't listen.
FI: So one thing to do would be to be selective as to who
to invite?
SB: Word gets around as to who's good at conferences. Most
people who are high up in science and technology spend a lot of
time in conferences, and it's fairly easy to tell who are
listeners as well as talkers. You can also tell a lot by how
people talk on the telephone: some people just preach at you.
FI: To what extent is it useful to get people who don't
have scientific and technical backgrounds involved in the debate,
and at what point is it useful to do that?
SB: I think it's worth having people who are politically
active involved at all stages of the process. You want to have
both people who are astute technically and who are sophisticated
politically. Some who are competent in science also have a
practical knowledge of politics. Especially in fields like
conservation biology, you need to have a comprehensive view of
things so that the Costa Rican farmer doesn't get left out of the
campaign, for example. You need to get people who know what it
takes to negotiate agreement. And to negotiate disagreement, by
the way.
FI: I can see a lot of cases where you're not going to get
to quick agreement among people. You are at least going to have
the disagreements be productive rather than destructive.
SB: You need to have people come in and say, "Yeah,
we agree on 80% of this stuff" and then identify the items
they disagree on, so that as further evidence or information
becomes available those items can be resolved.
FI: I think that the open-minded people you're describing
here are the sort of people who would be interested in seeing the
new information come in to resolve such points, rather than
fearing being proven wrong by it...
SB: Yes. Edward O.
Wilson, the sociobiologist, is an example. When he first came
out with his theories on sociobiology, based on his work on
insect behavior, a lot of the liberals attacked him, because he
contradicted their current beliefs. And he was willing to change
and modify his views on the basis of argument and new
information. A Noam Chomsky,
on the other hand, tends to be more overbearing and hurt his
field of linguistics with heavy-handedness. In the sociobiology
instance, by the way, the liberals were probably as much wrong as
right, not that they're likely to admit it.
FI: Speaking of trying to bring in new information, to
what extent do you think that new information technology such as
hypertext, or other things such as you describe in The
Media Lab, can improve the quality of debate?
SB: It would be interesting to do an article on what is
sometimes called "grey literature"--papers informally
passed among scientists--discussing how that's progressed over
the years. First it was just the exchange of letters among
scientists, eventually formalized by the Royal Society, then it
took a jump in the level of traffic with the arrival of the
typewriter and carbon paper. The arrival of Xerox copying caused
another major jump in traffic. Computer networks, starting with
the ARPANET, caused another major jump. Maybe we're at a virtual
hypertext level now.
FI: I think the difference between what we have now and
what hypermedia is intended to be is the ability to screen the
material. With the mass of material we are now beginning to have,
there has to be some way of indicating which material is
worthwhile.
SB: A lot of that'll be automatable, and I also expect
that there will be a lot more humans editing material. A library
is far more useful with a good librarian.
FI: There has been some material on nanotechnology printed
in Whole Earth Review. What kind of interest have
you noticed from the WER readers?
SB: The two populations which have shown interest are
computer enthusiasts and the major corporations. I have spent
some time in the past few years among major corporations, and
they have a lot of interest in what the future has in store for
them. Computer enthusiasts have a strong interest in it as wish
fulfillment, while the corporate person is asking "what will
this mean to my company?"
FI: What about the people primarily interested in
environmental issues?
SB: They've been blind, deaf and dumb on the issue, as far
as I can see.
FI: When you look at the degree to which an
anti-technological viewpoint is entrenched in some people, I
don't see this as going away quickly.
SB: I'm not sure you want it to go away quickly.
Nanotechnology is the sort of thing which could take off
exponentially, and could result in a lot of change happening very
rapidly, things changing more rapidly than people can adapt. The
no-sayers can help flatten that curve, make it arithmetical
rather than exponential; of course, they want to see it stopped
altogether. No-sayers have their place. I wouldn't want to see
them go away.
The Alaska pipeline is an example--the first proposal was
strongly criticized by environmentalists; they said that it would
wipe out the caribou, and so on. They were right in that it was a
lousy pipeline design. But it was a bad pipeline design that was
improved by delay, and by the pressure to go back and re-think
the proposal. It's useful to have no-sayers, to slow up the
process. But at the end you did have a pipeline, and it didn't do
the terrible things they thought it would. So no-sayers have a
role, even if they aren't always reasonable. Sometimes it's
useful to have unreasonable people.
Also remember that a good many environmentalists are highly
reasonable, and can be extremely astute on technical issues.
Beware of characterizing comments; they invite reply in kind,
such as that all nanotechnologists are unreasonable Mensoid
nerds. Anyway, both reason and unreason have value in the big
picture.
FI. Doesn't that depend on whether you have a political
and social system that can take people who are hard-over nos and
have the result be a compromise, rather than giving them a veto
over things?
SB: There's a danger of change increasing exponentially. I
don't think it's a matter of vetoes; I think that they end up
just acting as a kind of brake.
As far as how the U.S. political system works, I think it's worth
reading Jerome Weisner's article in the January Scientific
American. Look at what's happened with the Science
Advisory Council, which was set up by Eisenhower as a response to
Sputnik, and gave good advice to him and to Kennedy, but was
reduced to ineffectiveness under Nixon and since then. The
Challenger accident showed that correct technical information was
not filtering up through the Cabinet agencies to the President.
Perhaps if the Science Adviser's office been functioning
properly, that information might have gotten through.
FI: In fact there NASA has been waging a very strong and
usually successful war against any other independent source of
thinking on space in the Executive Branch. That's what's happened
to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, for
example.
SB: Yes, but they couldn't control what was being said or
done in the Soviet Union, or Europe, or elsewhere.
FI: Or even in the American private sector.
SB: Or even there.
From Foresight Update 5, originally
published 1 March 1989.
Foresight thanks Dave Kilbridge for converting Update 5 to
html for this web page.
|