Foresight Update 15
page 3
A publication of the Foresight Institute
 Policy
Watch
Policy Watch tracks recent events and issues that affect
technological advancement and its economic, political and social
context.
The recent inauguration of Bill Clinton as US President brings to
the White House new ideas and agendas for technology and science.
In an interview last October with Science, Clinton called
for increases in both AIDS-specific and general biomedical
research. He pledged to reinvest every dollar cut from defense
R&D into civilian research and generic technology
development. In terms of "big science," Clinton
expressed support for the space station, the supercollider, and
research into shortcuts to map the human genome. Clinton also
noted that it only made sense for nations to share the costs of
the very large and costly science projects which ultimately
benefit all people and all nations. He said he'd keep the
appropriations of the NIH and NSF at least in pace with
inflation, and increase them as budgetary conditions permit.
Clinton said the US should have signed the Bio-Diversity, Earth
Charter, Agenda 21, the Forest Principles, and Climate Change
Conventions at the Rio Earth Summit. Furthermore, Clinton said
the Vice President Gore would have responsibility and authority
to coordinate overall technology, and by extension science,
policy across all government agencies. (Science, 256:385,493)
Among the expectations toward the Clinton White House regarding
technology are having Gore as the "technology czar";
more investment in "technology infrastructure"
including high-performance computing and networks; more
government centers for collaborative research with industry and
to commercialize government-funded technology; a greater focus on
manufacturing processes to do for high-technology industries what
agricultural extension centers have done for farming; and, a
broader interest in global science, both to collect information
and to harmonize policies. (Nature, 360:288)
South Korea's Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST)
announced last summer the first projects in a $6 billion effort
to catch up with the technology of Japan and leading Western
nations by the beginning of the next century. The Highly Advanced
National Project, also called the G-7 Project, is intended to
bring South Korea's technology up to a level competitive with the
G-7 nations (US, Japan, Canada, Germany, UK, France and Italy).
The projects will focus on new pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals,
new advanced materials and new functional biomaterials. Other
projects covering high-definition television, semiconductors,
integrated service and data networks, and computerized
manufacturing systems are anticipated as well. Along with these
efforts, the New Medicine Development Consortium and the Genetic
Engineering Research Consortium have also been established.
Companies such as Hyundai, Samsun, and Daewoo are backing
projects to develop advanced materials, such as ceramics, for use
in heavy industry, automobile manufacturing and the electronics
industry. (Nature, 358:613)
Civic leaders at the Japanese science city Tsukuba have led
similar leaders in the Osaka area to plan a science city of their
own. This development, Kansai Science City, will be of broader
scope and include organizations involved in researching culture,
economics, and the arts. Modeled on Princeton's Institute for
Advanced Study, Kansai's institute plans to have research
programs in the natural and social sciences and humanities. It is
known as the new International Institute for Advanced Studies
(IIAS) and is intended to be the 'brain' of the city. It will
have a changing population of 40 senior academics drawn from all
over the world, plus supporting administrative staff. Although
research in the life sciences will be a central focus, it will
also support work in philosophy and mathematics. Topics will be
chosen by its faculty as well as by outside contributors from
both industry and the government. It is supported by an endowment
of about $40 million from both public and private sources. Total
investment is expected to reach more than $30 billion over time.
The research and residential complex is scheduled for completion
in early 1993. (R&D Magazine, May 1992, p. 5; Nature,
356:647)
Japan's Ministry of International Trade & Industry (MITI)
is leading that nation's charge into the emerging field of
micromachines with a 10-year, $190 million that aims to develop
two prototypes. Twenty-seven companies and institutions,
including three foreign groups, have received funding to begin
research. MITI envisions building two micromachines, one for
medical use and the other for industrial maintenance. Motohide
Konaka, a MITI official involved in the project, says "this
project is focused on the actuator-type devices, the moving
parts. While most work up to now has focused on discrete devices,
to get the devices working together will require a total system
approach. MITI suggests that the interest among companies from
outside the semiconductor-related field is an indication of
long-term thinking regarding micromachines. (R&D
Magazine, June 1992, p. 24)
Calling for a $5 billion "civilian technology
corporation," the National Academy of Sciences recently
recommended that the US government match technical and
manufacturing advances in other countries by funding
"pre-commercial" research and development. Although the
Academy report acknowledges that the US high-technology industry
remains relatively health on such measures as productivity per
capita and trade balance, it points our such warning signs as a
decline in R&D spending and the sluggish transfer of
technology from government research labs to industry. The report
also calls for an "Industrial Extension Service" at the
US Department of Commerce, modeled after the venerable extension
programs of the US Department of Agriculture. The panel
recommended that a few of the 700 federal labs be converted into
facilities that would demonstrate federal technology to industry.
(Nature, 356:372)
A small California software company is proving that it is
possible to create innovative and profitable industrial research
consortia without massive government subsidies or cumbersome
bureaucracies. Biosym Technologies, a company based in San Diego
that specializes in molecular and chemical modeling software, has
started four consortia involving more than 100 industrial members
and put products on the market. Biosym has succeeded by sticking
to the basics and steering clear of its members' proprietary
secrets. By focusing on basic molecular modeling tools with broad
application the company has managed to find a 'generic' niche
that is still state-of-the-art. Another part of the formula for
success is to let its own employees--not researchers on loan from
its member companies--do the work.
Biosym's style of narrowly-focused, do-it-yourself consortia
appeals to companies grown wary of costly, government-subsidized
research collaborations with fuzzy research aims and power
struggles between members. Biosym's four consortia--polymers,
catalysts, potential energy functions and a materials
project--each have about 15 full-time programmers. The polymer
consortium charges each of its 51 industrial members about
$80,000 a year. In exchange, it gives them new software every
nine months and asks them to vote on the next project. The
members get one year of exclusive access to the software, after
which Biosym can sell it to anyone. Universities may join by
paying 15% of the commercial rate, but they have no vote in
setting the direction of research. Any company that joins late
must pay all back fees. (Nature, 356:371)
[Editor's note: Biosym has also sponsored the last two Foresight
nanotechnology conferences.]
Daniel Cohen, director of the Paris-based Centre d'Etude du
Polymorphisme Humain (CEPH) and the driving force behind the
Genethon, says he expects to be able to extend the map of the
human genome to cover 90% of the genome by the end of the year.
What has really caused a stir is the way that Cohen has collected
the data: instead of using scientists, he had technicians running
an array of automated gene machines that exist only as
prototypes. The Genethon demonstrates an almost blue-collar
approach to biology. More assembly line than ivory tower, the
laboratory exists mostly to produce genetic information that
other scientists will use. The news that an industrial-scale gene
mapping facility was not only up and running but also pumping out
data faster than virtually any other group has caused US
researchers to question their approach. The Genethon itself is
every bit as startling as its results. The $10 million central
facility is a large room ringed with 20 robots, surrounding a
central climate-controlled computer installation. The robots,
which automate the DNA fingerprinting process, were developed by
the French company Bertin as part of the European industrial
collaboration Eureka Labimap 2000. Each robot can perform
Southern blots--a technique to distinguish DNA fragments by the
characteristic bands they leave after gel electrophoresis.
Together, the machines have the potential to process more than
6,000 DNA samples a day. Yet the entire operation requires only
five technicians. Cohen describes this as "no-risk"
research that can be easily scaled upwards. Plus, he says that
the French genetics community did not try to stop him. His
success, he believes, lies in avoiding the kind of politics that
would probably sink such an effort in the US or Britain. (Nature,
357:525-527)
"There has been a steep decline in chemistry majors [in
the last decade]," says Sheila Tobias, a social scientist
whose books and articles on science education have urged many
college science teachers to take a critical look at their courses
and teaching methods. Reform-minded chemists and educators around
the country are trying out innovative curricula and courses in an
effort to ensure a supply of future chemists, or at least to
increase chemical literacy by attracting and educating more
students. And the American Chemical Society has set up a Task
Force on the General Chemistry Curriculum that aims to bring some
coherence to this reform movement by offering professors
guidelines and materials to help throttle up the pace of change
in introductory chemistry courses. The goal is to encourage
professors to teach fewer, more fundamental concepts while making
their presentation more lively, relevant, and exciting by
hitching each course module to a hot topic like the ozone hole or
drug design. New conceptual ingredients teach a handful of
far-reaching concepts such as atomic and molecular structure,
electronic orbitals, stereoisomerism, and acidity and basicity.
The teacher then helps students connect these fundamentals to
problems in drug design, materials science, and environmental
research. (Science, 257:872)
The Human Frontier Science Program (Frontier), a Japanese
initiative supporting international research on the brain and
molecular mechanisms of biological functions, has reached a
critical juncture. Funded largely by Japan, the program is now
attracting financial support from many countries. The purpose of
the program is to clarify the functions of living organisms by a
"molecular level" approach and by understanding brain
functions. Some participants and organizers of Frontier, unaware
of (or disagreeing with) this fundamental philosophy, have tried
to narrow its priority fields to conventional fields by claiming
that 'molecular' fields are too broad and that there are too many
research proposals to review. However, the basic approach of the
Frontier is to provide opportunities to examine the complex
functions of live via an all-out effort of science and
technology. Physics or engineering technologies (computers,
robotics, electronics, materials science and so on) should
provide powerful tools. Their contributions are not limited to
hardware: the mode of thinking in fields such as mathematics and
physics, information-science technology and engineering should
stimulate the creation of new concepts in biological research.
This approach sees biology as having entered a new phase in which
it can develop with highly sophisticated methodologies, and its
progress can be quickly accelerated by a balanced perspective
which views science and technology as one entity. (Nature,
357:356)
Dr. Jamie Dinkelacker serves on the Foresight Board of
Advisors.
Nanotechnology
and "Nanotechnology"
In 1989, Science News stated "Sooner or
later, the Age of Nanotechnology--in which scientists will use
molecule-sized machinery to control the structure of matter even
at atomic levels--will arrive," reporting on the first
Foresight technical conference under the headline
"Nonexistent Technology Gets a Hearing." This article
surveyed the enormous anticipated challenges and opportunities of
the anticipated nanotechnology revolution. By 1992, a Science
News headline could announce "Nanotechnology yields
transparent magnet." Does nanotechnology now exist? Has the
revolution arrived?
If so, then the nanotechnology revolution seems to be a dud.
Where are the molecular machines? Where are the desktop
manufacturing systems? Where are the nanocomputers, the cell
repair machines, the era of abundance? Few in the newly-mustered
army of nanotechnology researchers even aim at such goals. It
would seem that there has been a profound miscalculation--unless,
that is, there has been a more prosaic modification in the use of
words.
We seem to have difficulty focusing on the future: the clamor and
claims of today press heavily on our senses and our minds, and
the fragile human ability to reason about the possibilities of
tomorrow is easily crushed. As a part of this process, words that
describe grand goals commonly are redefined and used to market
something that already exists. Artificial intelligence (meaning
machines able to learn and to solve a wide range of difficult
problems) promises a revolution, but we already have
"artificial intelligence" (meaning expert systems able
use canned knowledge to solve a narrow range of problems), and it
has had only a modest impact. And so it is with nanotechnology
and "nanotechnology": the term has become attached to
what is already here, making it difficult to discuss what is
coming.
The "nanotechnology" that yielded the magnetic
particles described in Science News works by
oxidizing iron that has been loaded into an ion exchange resin
used commercially in water softeners. This is, literally,
nanotechnology because the resulting iron oxide particles are
only 2 to 10 nanometers across, containing mere thousands of
atoms. Of course, producing cigarette smoke would also be
nanotechnology, by this criterion of submicron size, if it
produced a more interesting product. In the last several years,
chemistry has been termed nanochemistry, fine-grained materials
have been termed nanostructured materials, submicron lithography
has been termed nanolithography. These topics have been covered
by a conference hosted by Nature and by a special
issue of Science, all under the banner of
"nanotechnology"--a buzzword whose time has come. Two
new companies making fine-grained materials are "Nanophase
Technologies" and "Nanodyne." Longevity
magazine carries ads for "NANO shampoo and NANO
conditioner," containing a derivative of the anti-baldness
agent minoxidil.
What is missing in this ferment? Engines of Creation
introduced the term nanotechnology in 1986 to describe a
technology based on mechanical assembly of molecules to build
complex structures, that is, the use of molecular machinery to
perform mechanosynthesis for molecular manufacturing.
Nanotechnology in the broader sense of nanoscale
technology covers a diverse collection of activities, with
varying relevance to this goal. To refer to the future
developments that made nanotechnology a buzzword in the first
place, one must now speak of "molecular manufacturing,"
or of "molecular nanotechnology, based on molecular
manufacturing." With luck, these terms will prove bulky and
awkward enough to retain a distinct meaning.
The popularity of the word nanotechnology in the new, vaguer
sense may be confusing, yet it is a sign of progress. Researchers
(in chemistry, molecular biology, materials science, and so
forth) have worked at the nanoscale for many years; the advent of
a new, unifying term may aid in the emergence of a new, unified
perspective, and with it an understanding of longer-term goals
for the field.
Scientists have already achieved the highest possible resolution
in building material structures: chemists routinely make
molecules with every atom in its place. The natural goal for
research in nanotechnology, then, is to extend this precise
control to a wider range of structures and to larger sizes.
Molecular manufacturing is a key goal for nanotechnology because
it can extend atomically-precise structural control to the
fabrication of diverse materials, devices, and systems, and
because it can work on scales ranging from nanometers to meters.
In the decade or more since this goal was articulated, no
comparable alternative has been proposed. Many of the research
efforts organized around nanoscale fabrication and measurement
can contribute to the goal of molecular manufacturing. As the
broader field of nanotechnology takes shape, ever-larger parts of
the field will be organized first around the goal of achieving
molecular manufacturing, and then around the use of molecular
manufacturing to build advanced nanosystems. Unless, of course,
someone discovers a better approach.
Nanotechnology
definition
The term nanotechnology is here used to refer to an
anticipated technology giving thorough control of the structure
of matter at the molecular level. This involves molecular
manufacturing, in which materials and products are
fabricated by the precise positioning of molecules in accord with
explicit engineering design.
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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