Foresight Update 6
page 5
A publication of the Foresight Institute
 Books
of Note
Books are listed in order of specialization and level of
reading challenge. Your suggestions are welcome. And remember, if
a book's price looks too high, your library should be able to get
it through interlibrary loans.--Editor
In Pursuit, by Charles Murray, Simon and
Schuster, 1988, cloth, $19.95. Looks at the question of what
constitutes human happiness, an increasingly important issue as
our technological capabilities increase. Raises policy questions
which are disturbing regardless of the reader's politics.
Technology and War, by Martin Van Creveld,
Free Press (Macmillan), 1989, cloth, $22.95. Those who don't know
history are apt to repeat more of its mistakes than is perhaps
entirely necessary. This book is a historical analysis of the
relationship between technology and warfare over the past 4000
years. It will give those concerned about military applications
of technology a better basis for working on the problem.
Nontechnical.
Principles of Colloid and Surface Chemistry,
by Paul C. Hiemenz, Marcel Dekker, 2nd edition, 1986, cloth,
$39.75. The properties of surfaces and particles of nanometer to
micrometer scale (colloids) are critical to nanotechnology's
enabling technologies, such as design of proteins and the
self-assembling molecular systems. They will continue to be
important to the understanding and design of advanced
nanomechanisms. Highly technical.
Media
Coverage
Nanotechnology continues to receive considerable coverage in
the media. Perhaps the most exciting media development since the
last issue is the funding and taping of a one-hour British
television documentary on nanotechnology. The work is being
produced and directed by David Kennard and Karl Sabbagh (who
between them have similar credits in Connections, The
Ascent of Man, Cosmos, and The Body in
Question) and is scheduled to be shown on Britain's
Channel 4 as part of the Equinox series early this fall. It may
air as a Nova show in the U.S. later; we will attempt to notify
you in advance.
"The Mike Malone Show," a public television program on
technology originating in Silicon Valley, interviewed Gordon Bell
and Eric Drexler on topics including nanocomputers and
nanotechnology. This was shown in various U.S. cities.
Both Discover and Popular Science ran
articles in March on micromachines which included discussion of
nanotechnology. Byte covered nanotechnology in May
and The Stanford Daily did so in a March 15 article.
Two newsmagazines, Time and L'Espresso
(Italy) have conducted interviews, publication date unknown as
yet. Other publications also have articles pending: American
Scientist, Longevity, and PC Computing.
Watch for a brief mention in the Wall Street Journal,
and in Germany keep an eye on PM Magazin. We have
just been interviewed by the San Francisco Examiner
and the LA Weekly.
John Murray recently sent us a nanotechnology article from the
British magazine Spaceflight dated March 1988 which
we had missed; please keep sending in these articles, especially
from outside the U.S.
FI continues to provide guests for radio interview shows; these
are usually handled by Eric Drexler, Jim Bennett, Ralph Merkle,
and Chris Peterson.
Meeting
News
In February an unusual regional weekend meeting of about 80
attendees was held by the Seattle Nanotechnology Study Group.
Speakers were drawn from two categories: (1)
scientists/technologists from academia included Gregory Benford
(U. Calif.), John
Cramer (U. Wash.), Eric
Drexler (Stanford), Bruce Robinson (U. Wash.), Nadrian
Seeman (NYU); and from industry G. Louis Roberts (Boeing),
Marc Stiegler (Xanadu), Mike Thomas (Boeing). (2) Science fiction
writers including Greg Bear,
as well as Dr. Benford and Dr. Cramer listed above. The event was
mostly nontechnical. A transcribed version of the proceedings is
available for $15 from Nanocon, Box 40176, Bellevue, WA.
(Washington residents please add 7.6% sales tax.)
Two nanotechnology talks were given this spring at
Hewlett-Packard: one to the Board of Directors on (March 16) and
a more general technical talk (March 30). Other nanotechnology
lectures included: Xerox PARC (March 10), the pharmaceutical
company Syntex (March 22), the Austin computer consortium MCC
(April 11), the Human Genome Conference (April 24), Argonne
National Laboratory (April 26), Union Carbide Corporate Fellows
(May 4), a retreat meeting of the Stanford Center for Integrated
Systems (May 22), and a Stanford Medical Center Immunology
Seminar (June 14).
A nanotechnology policy-oriented retreat meeting organized by Chip Morningstar
was held in the Sierra south of Lake Tahoe over a June weekend;
we hope to include a description of the event in our next issue.
Nanotechnology
Conference
The First
Foresight Conference on Nanotechnology, to be held this fall,
will be an invitational meeting of scientists and technologists
working in fields leading to nanotechnology. It is sponsored by
the Foresight Institute and Global Business Network, and is
hosted by the Stanford University Department of Computer Science.
The meeting will be limited to about 150 attendees.
The conference will enable researchers to review achievements on
the frontiers of molecular and microscale systems and to explore
their potential interconnections. Attendees will also briefly
examine and critique possible applications of this work,
including the long-term promise of techniques for thorough and
inexpensive control of the structure of matter.
Scientists and technologists working in relevant fields who would
like to be considered for participation should send a bio, c.v.,
or resume, along with a brief position statement, to FI for
forwarding to the technical selection committee for
consideration. Emphasize your connection, if any, to the
meeting's four areas of focus: (1) protein and other biomolecule
engineering, (2) molecular self-assembly; biomimetic,
supramolecular, and host-guest chemistry, (3) atomic imaging and
positioning (i.e. scanning probe microscopy), and (4)
molecular modeling. If you have published in one of these areas,
feel free to send only a reprint and a couple of sentences
describing your current position. (Please do not contact the FI
office regarding these invitations; the committee will contact
you directly if you are selected.)
This is the first in a series
of conferences on nanotechnology to be sponsored by the
Foresight Institute; we anticipate that later meetings will be
larger and able to accommodate a broader range of attendees.
Errata
The summary
of Dr. Jeff MacGillivray's talk for the MIT Nanotechnology
Symposium in our last issue is in need of clarification: he does
not regard conventional quantities of resources (e.g.,
kilograms or tons of rare metals) as being of substantial
enduring value, although matter and energy on a sufficiently
large scale surely will be. Also, the description of
the LBJ School Project in our last issue omitted the key role
played by David Armistead, founder of Futuretrends, in initiating
the project and chairing (along with Roger Duncan) the
Futuretrends project committee. The talk in Seattle
was given at the University of Washington, not the University of
Seattle.
Letters
to FI
The Foresight Institute receives hundreds of letters
requesting information and sending ideas. Herewith excerpts:
Having read Engines of
Creation, I am very interested in nanotechnology and
agree wholeheartedly that it is critical to begin investigating
our future with this technology now. Even without the advent of
nanotechnology, the formation of groups (and 'metagroups') to
help us investigate and plan for the future (or merely cope)
would be urgently necessary, as the pace and scope of
technological change picks up.
Adam Feuer
Cerritos, CA
Thank you for sending the reprints on nanotechnology that I
requested. I must admit that while I still have reservations
about the practicality of atomic-scale machinery [i.e.
molecular machinery--editor] I find the concepts most
provocative. Although I am sure you have dealt with the argument
many times before, as a biochemical geneticist I feel impelled to
mention that the somewhat higher organizational level of
supramolecular complexes--such as multienzyme aggregates,
mulifunctional enzymes, ribosomes, RNA splicing complexes, and of
course the bacterial flagellar "motor"--offers certain
advantages. One assumes that there is a reason why enzymes are
large relative to their active centers and a plausible answer is
that they gain thermal stability and the possibility of fine
control over reaction rates and specificity. Nanomachines may
need to be similarly embedded in or mounted on larger, mostly
inert matrices...
Rather than emulating the structural rigidity of pre-Twentieth
century mechanical engineering, the inherent flexibility of
larger molecules could be exploited as they are in enzymes. I
suspect that nanomachines will in general not be simple copies of
macromachines on a very reduced scale.
Anyway, I'm convincible. The mechanical models are a logical
starting point conceptually and will probably play an
indispensable role as the actual working parts of nanomachines.
John H. Chalmers
Berkeley, CA
Thanks
We appreciate receiving copies of articles of interest from:
Bill Ammells, Donald J. Fears, W.C. Gaines, Stan and Kiyomi
Hutchings, Wallace McClure, John Murray, Billy Shilling, Barry
Silverstein, and Daniel Wiener. Thanks also to Tom McKendree for
a book recommendation which we plan to cover in the next issue.
Ongoing thanks go to Fred Stitt (and his staff including Marty
Barrett and Ed Gadsden) of Guidelines and Ed Niehaus of Niehaus
Public Relations for their continuing pro bono work on FI
publications and press relations, respectively.
FI
Wish List
FI is in need of the following assistance and equipment:
- Chemists willing to run energy minimizations on chemical
structures relevant to molecular machinery.
- A software engineer who could port a database system (in
Double Helix) to a faster, more compact Macintosh
database.
- Apple computer equipment: a Laserwriter and a Mac SE or
Mac II.
- CPK molecular models, including cyclopropane and other
small rings.
Let us know if you can help.
From Foresight Update 6, originally
published 1 August 1989.
Foresight thanks Dave Kilbridge for converting Update 6 to
html for this web page.
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