Foresight Update 15
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A publication of the Foresight Institute
 VP
Gore on Nanotechnology
Sees Hope for Environmental Sustainability
Only days before he became a candidate for Vice President,
Senator Al Gore held hearings on "New Technologies for a
Sustainable World," including testimony by Foresight
president Eric Drexler. In an earlier issue we printed Dr. Drexler's
written testimony; the following is the oral testimony
followed by discussion with Senator Gore. (Ordering information
for the complete hearing transcript is included at the end of
this article.)
Dr. Drexler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity
to address this committee on a topic that I believe will one day
become a dominant concern in these halls. The focus of this
hearing is particularly appropriate because a concern with
long-term consequences of technology for human welfare and the
environment has guided my research for many years. Partly as a
result of that concern, the technology that I am about to discuss
does address issues of industrial ecology, including
decarbonization and dematerialization, as discussed by Dr.
Ausubel, and also addresses the wholesale transformation of the
technology base called for by Dr. Banks. I believe it does meet
the criteria for an environmentally critical technology.
In the decade since I first discussed molecular nanotechnology in
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
we have seen these ideas go from broad theoretical concepts to a
set of detailed designs, supported increasingly by computer
simulation using state-of-the-art tools and drawing from
chemistry, and to the beginnings of experimental demonstration of
the crucial principles.
Five years ago when I spoke on the subject, audiences would
reply, "You say that the basis of molecular nanotechnology
is putting molecular building blocks in precise places, but is
that really possible?" Today that question does not arise
because part of my talk is a slide showing 35 precisely placed
xenon atoms on the surface of a nickel crystal, spelling the
letters IBM, from work done by Don Eigler's group at IBM's
Almaden Research Center.
As chairman of the Foresight Institute, I have chaired the
Foresight conference series on molecular nanotechnology. The most
recent of these was cosponsored by Stanford University and the
University of Tokyo. There is strong interest in these topics in
Japan, as I think is shown by the recent commitment by MITI of
$185 million over the next 10 years to an effort that the journal
Nature describes as developing nanotechnology.
Momentum toward the development of this technology is building
around the world, and I would like to briefly describe the
results and studies of where these developments can lead.
The basis of this technology, as I said, is building with
molecular building blocks and precise positional control. This
molecule-by-molecule control can become the basis of a
manufacturing technology that is cleaner and more efficient than
anything we know today. It is a fundamentally different way of
processing matter to make products that people want.
In working with molecular building blocks, it resembles processes
we see in farms and in forests and, like those processes, rather
than consuming fossil fuels and emitting CO2, it can
take sunlight and CO2 and convert them into products,
acting as a net CO2 consumer.
This technology will clearly have broad applications. If you can
work with the basic building blocks of matter, you can make
virtually anything, producing a much wider range of products than
can be made by processes that lack this direct control of the
fundamental pieces.
Among the applications that have been identified are new
molecular instruments for science and medicine. One example of
that would be a device able to read DNA at the rate we see DNA
being read in the cell: a dividing cell performs operations that
are like those of sequencing a human genome, but does this in a
matter of hours rather than years, and does it in a microscopic
volume rather than in a large collection of laboratories.
Design studies indicate that one can build extremely compact and
energyefficient computers, decreasing both the volume and energy
consumption by factors of roughly 1 billion.
Stronger materials can be constructed, including materials that
can be used to make lighter, stronger, more efficient vehicles.
Another capability will be the manufacture of inexpensive solar
cells that are mechanically tough enough to be used as roofing
materials and paving materials. It would seem that this
combination of capabilities can address some of the basic
problems of the environmental crisis that faces us today.
Because this technology does not depend on new breakthroughs in
fundamental science--though it will surely require a vast amount
of applied science--it seems that the pace of development will
depend not on unpredictable breakthroughs but on the magnitude
and date of initiation of a strongly focused system development
effort, an effort aimed at developing pieces and putting them
together.
As I note in my written testimony, there are cultural problems in
the scientific community, which is aimed at the study of nature,
when the problem at hand is making pieces that fit together to
form systems. Pieces fitting together does not happen
spontaneously; it requires a degree of planning that is
unfamiliar in the molecular sciences today.
I would also note that development in these directions appears
likely to yield large scientific benefits long before it produces
results on a large enough physical scale to have environmental
consequences. So, it does seem that the developmental pathway
will deliver major rewards at an early date.
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Senator Gore:
What you are talking about when you use the phrase
molecular nanotechnology is really a brand new approach
to fabrication . . . |
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Today the U.S. research community has not yet reached a
consensus regarding the potential of this field. I believe this
is because it has not yet addressed the basic scientific issues
in a systematic way. This is an interdisciplinary topic. Putting
the pieces together in a single mind or in a single group takes
effort, and that effort has not yet been made.
If we conduct idle debates on molecular nanotechnology, batting
words around in the press, while others are conducting active
research, we are going to find that others learn the answers to
our questions and are in a better position to exploit the
technology. I believe that it is time to assess the potential of
molecular nanotechnology and to choose a course of action. An
appropriate body for conducting a preliminary study might be the
Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. There may be other
options.
I think it is clear that if the potential is even half as great
as the evidence now indicates, then medical, economic, and
environmental concerns will favor vigorous development. The first
question is, Are the facts actually as they now appear?
This technology will not by itself solve our environmental
problems, but in the coming years, I believe that molecular
nanotechnology can become a basis for sustainable development,
raising the material standard of living worldwide, while
decreasing resource consumption and environmental impact. Thank
you.
Inserted at this point in the hearing transcript are the
written testimony and an illustration of the 3,557-atom planetary
gear.
Senator Gore. Well, that sure was interesting. I will tell
you right now, as I have just communicated to Mike Nelson here, I
will formally request an OTA report on these technologies. They
have already done a background paper, but I will request the
report that you suggest.
Just one brief question before I go to Mr. Weinberg.
You mentioned that MITI has dedicated $185 million to the
development of this technology. Do you have an estimate of the
comparable U.S. figure?
Dr. Drexler. Well, first, I would like to make a slight
sharpening of the point regarding MITI. When they speak of
nanotechnology, they are speaking of a certain range of
technologies that has a strong overlap but is not a one-to-one
correspondence with what I have described.
In terms of money being spent in the United States that is
earmarked for the development of complex molecular systems, a
molecular systems engineering effort that can lead toward
molecular nanotechnology, I am not a close observer of these
matters. Someone may well correct me and say, "Oh, look at
this budget item here," but I do not know of a major
investment. But there certainly is strongly relevant work being
done in many laboratories. I in no way would wish to slight the
importance of that.
Senator Gore. Nothing comparable is underway in the United
States.
Dr. Drexler. Nothing comparable.
Senator Gore. One other point: When you use the word
"nanotechnology," a lot of times these new concepts
come at us with words attached to them, and the words are used in
different ways by different people.
Just so I am clear in my own mind about this, the first part of
that word, nano, is really a measurement word that connotes
something that is real small, right? [Laughter.]
Dr. Drexler. Yes.
Senator Gore. All right. There seemed to me to be three
different ways in which the word has been used. Nanotechnology
has sometimes been used to describe very small etching operations
of the kind you see in the smallest computer chips; correct?
Dr. Drexler. Yes.
Senator Gore. That is not really what you are talking
about. There would be some overlap at the boundaries, but that is
not really what you are talking about.
Second, there has been an interesting discussion of what might be
called micromachines, and sometimes the word
"nanotechnology" has been used to describe that whole
effort. Correct?
Dr. Drexler. Yes.
Senator Gore. And that is not really what you are talking
about, either; although again there is some overlap at the
boundary.
What you are talking about when you use the phrase molecular
nanotechnology is really a brand new approach to fabrication, to
manufacturing, whereas the way we make things [today], we will
take some substance in bulk and then whittle down the bulk to the
size of the component we need, and then put different components
together and make something.
What you are describing with the phrase molecular nanotechnology
is a completely different approach, which rests on the principle
that your first building block is the molecule itself, and you
are saying we have all the basic research breakthroughs that we
need to build things one molecule at t time, all we need are the
applications of the research necessary to really do it.
You are saying that the advantages of taking a molecular approach
are really quite startling, and that as a result, you believe it
is advisable to really explore what it would take to develop
these new technologies.
The best evidence that the research breakthroughs and the
conceptual breakthroughs have long since occurred is that Dr.
Richard Feynman made a speech 33 years ago in which he
essentially outlined the whole field, and even the researchers at
the cutting edge today were sort of surprised when they went back
and read the speech, and found out that the basic concept has
been available for a long time.
Is that basically on target, or would you like to qualify it or
recast it?
Dr. Drexler. I would say that the set of distinctions that
you draw are correct and are very important to understanding the
field.
With respect to the terminology, so nearly as I can tell from
what I have seen in print, I coined the word
"nanotechnology" in the mid-1980's, and it has
subsequently become a buzzword. It is appropriate etymologically
to use "nanotechnology" to describe other small-scale
technologies, but, as you point out, those are fundamentally
different.
The degree of overlap between nanolithography and micromachines,
on the other hand, and molecular nanotechnology, on the other
hand, appears to be remarkably slight, even though those subjects
have commonly been confused in the popular press.
As I said, I think that we will need a lot of applied science
research in pursuing these goals, but you are correct in stating
that the basic science is in place. Richard Feynman did indeed
point in these directions, in a talk in December of 1959, and
that has been an inspiration to many people.
Senator Gore. All right. Thank you very much. We will come
back to this as time permits.
The following are excerpts from discussions later in the
hearing. An ellipsis (. . .) indicates some discussion has been
omitted.
Senator Gore. There are at least three generic problems
here. No. 1: This discussion cannot take place without reference
to the larger macroeconomic signals that stifle the introduction
of new technologies if consumers of technology are getting a
misleading signal from the marketplace.
You talked about how cheap fossil fuel prices were back then.
They are cheaper now than they were then. . . . Consequently, we
are getting inaccurate and misleading signals from the
marketplace, because the national security cost is not calculated
in the price, the environmental cost is treated as an
externality, which is absurd but there it is. Consequently, we
are getting the inaccurate market signal.
The second generic problem is that when a new technology is
developed in a Government program, it sometimes remains
unattached to the stream of incentives that we rely on to pull
new developments into the stream of commerce. That is not an
unsolvable problem, but it is one that needs to be recognized
clearly and precisely in the construction of any new technology
development program.
The third generic problem is, in my view, by all odds the most
serious. That is, inertia. When an existing suite of technologies
and patterns gain currency, the ability of an organization, let
alone a society, to introduce a totally new, in some ways
incongruent, technology into that pattern is extremely difficult,
and can often only be accomplished if there is a focused effort
to address the overall context within which the new technology
has to be introduced.
We are now at a major turning point in the history of
civilization in which a large number of new technologies have to
be introduced on a broad scale simultaneously. The inertia we
confront, in trying to think through how to accomplish that, is
really almost overpowering. Indeed, it has been up until now,
overpowering, and it cannot remain so.
I am wondering if any of you have any comments on those three
generic problems, or any of them.
Dr. Drexler. In connection with your earlier remarks
regarding the advantages of developing technologies that are
simultaneously more productive and cleaner, I think that to the
extent that people see benefits on many different sides from a
technology, they are more likely to adopt it. On the other hand,
when something is different enough from the existing technology
base that it changes many assumptions simultaneously, it becomes
hard for people to think about it, as it is hard for people to
imagine the consequences of large scale climate change. I think
that has been a major factor in people not coming to grips with
such issues. One sees this pattern in many areas: not just in the
marketplace, but also in the intellectual world where people have
an accumulation of intellectual capital and concerns with its
obsolescence.
Senator Gore. Yes. Ironically, as some have noted in the
past, one of the reasons why Japan was able to move more quickly
to the introduction of those technologies considered new in the
1950's and 1960's was that they encountered less inertia due to
the level of destruction following the war there as compared to
here.
Any other comments before I move on to the next?
Dr. Drexler, the technology you described in your testimony is
actually referred to, is it not, Dr. Banks, in your report on
critical technologies. How would you evaluate the relative
significance of this technology?
Dr. Banks (Director, Program on Technology and the
Environment, World Resources Institute). Well, it certainly is in
our list. What I think is also significant is that our
researchers looked at comparable lists on environmentally
critical technologies and found this technology as a prominent
item in the lists of other nations surveyed.
For the reasons that Dr. Drexler mentioned, this technology is
now at a stage that we call a precompetitive stage where it still
can benefit from further development which would have a wide
scale of applications to an array of industrial uses, it is quite
promising. It certainly meets the bill that we have talked about
throughout our discussion. . . .
Senator Gore. How far off is this stuff, Dr. Drexler?
Suppose that molecular nanotechnology got the kind of Federal and
private support that biotechnology got over the last 10 years,
what kind of advances would you expect to see by the year 2010,
for example?
Dr. Drexler. That kind of question is one of the hardest
to answer in this area. I know how to do calculations of the
behavior of molecular machinery, but I do not know how to do
calculations of the rate of progress of a research program, where
there is a whole series of challenges to be surmounted.
In answer to that, what I have recently said is that I think we
are 1 to 2 years away from a fundamental advance in capabilities
in this area; namely, the ability to position individual
molecules accurately, to get positional control of chemical
synthesis, finally giving chemists the equivalent of a hand with
which to put parts in place.
That will be a fundamental change. Organic synthesis has been
going on for over a century now, without that kind of tool. With
it, I expect to see much more rapid progress.
Senator Gore. What would that hand consist of? How do you
actually move molecules?
Dr. Drexler. In laboratories today, there is an instrument
called the atomic force microscope, which is sold commercially by
a number of companies. It can position a tip near a surface to an
accuracy of less than a 10th of an atomic diameter.
What is needed to turn that into a molecular manipulator, into
something that can use molecules as building blocks--very far
from large-scale environmental applications but a key step on the
development pathway--is some kind of a gripper, a device with the
function of a hand attached to that tip. Certain protein
molecules can serve that function. What the instrument would look
like is a $100,000 AFM, perhaps from Digital Instruments in Santa
Barbara, with some molecular modifications on the tip.
Senator Gore. What we have seen now with that famous
picture of the letters spelled with molecules, that is
accomplished by using the tip to just sort of nudge them to where
you want them? Is that basically it?
Dr. Drexler. Yes.
Senator Gore. What you are talking about is a quantum
advance, when you can actually take hold of them, and place them
more precisely in less time.
Dr. Drexler. Yes. The instrument used for the IBM work was
actually a scanning tunneling microscope working at very low
temperatures. There are a number of differences, but it was
essentially a nudging process. This would be essentially a
gripping and placing process.
Senator Gore. All right.
Dr. Drexler. To answer the question regarding timespan, it
seems that a 5-year development cycle with that instrument could
get you to another plateau of capability; another 5-year
development from that could get you a long way. I commonly answer
that 15 years would not be surprising for major, large-scale
applications.
Senator Gore. That is very interesting. I know we will be
hearing a lot more about it. . . . Can the effort [in technology
development] in Japan and Germany help them become even more
competitive? Is this as serious as I think it is? Are we really
missing a beat by not keeping up with this?. . .
Dr. Drexler. Yes. With respect to a comparison of interest
and directions in the United States and in Japan, I was struck by
some material in the "Backs to the Future" report here.
If I look at the OSTP's list of critical technologies, the one
that jumps out at me as being most nearly a description of the
directions I think are important is micro-and nano-fabrication. .
. . Combining micro and nano in this entry suggests that the
primary focus is on the etching-based lithographic technologies
that you so properly distinguished earlier.
Looking at the Council on Competitiveness list, the main one that
jumps out at me is chemical synthesis, but that is extremely
broad and, again, has been underway for a century.
On the MITI list, there are a whole set of points, each of which
strikes me, just reading the words, as a better description of
something that is an enabling technology.
They include: molecular functioning materials, biomimicking
materials, protein alignment technology, precision molecular
alignment technology, and atomic level precision manipulation
technology. The last one hits the nail right on the head.
Senator Gore. So, there is just a higher level of clarity
even in the basic description of what they are doing, and that is
obvious to you just looking at the list?
Dr. Drexler. Yes.
Dr. Banks. And it is reflected, again, when one looks at
the degree of effort and the sustained support and the
seriousness. We have seen that throughout.
Senator Gore. Dr. Heaton, do you want to add something?
Dr. Heaton. Yes. There is also a much higher level of
consensus on the issue in Japan. I was just in Japan in May and
talked to about 40 or 50 people on this general issue, and one of
the amazing things when you talk to 40 and 50 people in Japan is
you get the same answer 40 or 50 times.
It is absolutely clear that the Japanese nation as a whole
believes in the environmental imperative. Indeed, over the next
century, the Japanese have a 100-year plan, which sounds almost
ludicrous to us, but they also have a 2-year plan, and there is
some consistency between the two.
I think it is also important to note, as someone has already,
that MITI has very much taken over this initiative, not exactly
taken it away from the Environment Agency, because indeed there
are still very strong regulations, but the consistency between
the environment and economic competitiveness is reflected in the
fact that MITI has become the lead agency. So, I think that is an
important consensus.
Senator Gore. I cannot remember a panel that I have found
more interesting and I cannot remember a time when I have had a
bigger stack of questions that I really want to ask and hear you
respond to but, as usual, we have a limit on the amount of time
that is available, and we have another panel to go after this
one. . . .
I really think this has been one of the most interesting hearings
that I have been able to participate in a long time, and I am
grateful to all the witnesses who have appeared here today. They
have provided a lot of useful information.
I look forward to working with you in the future as we move
forward in this area. Again, very soon we will be introducing
this legislation based on the hearing.
I want to thank our witnesses for being here today. This has been
a very exciting, interesting hearing--one that gives us hope that
with a concerted effort we can find and apply new technologies to
solve many of the environmental problems we face.
In the past year, I have chaired more than 10 hearings on global
environmental problems, and quite frankly, the picture can look
pretty bleak. Carbon dioxide concentrations keep going up and up;
stratospheric ozone levels keep dropping to historic lows. Our
oceans, particularly near-shore are becoming more and more
polluted. Millions of species are going extinct as we destroy
their habitat. The news is not good.
What we have heard today is that there may be new technologies
that can alleviate some of these problems--if we find the
resources and political will to make the long-term investment
needed to develop them and if we work together nationally and
internationally to deploy them.
The complete hearing transcript (ISBN 0-16-039898-3) can be
ordered from the U.S. Government Printing Office at 202-783-3238,
or by sending $3 to Foresight Institute, PO Box 61058, Palo Alto,
CA 94306, USA.
From Foresight Update 15, originally
published 15 February 1993.
Foresight thanks Dave Kilbridge for converting Update 15 to
html for this web page.
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