Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
We'd like to welcome Bill Atkinson, author of _Nanocosm_, an overview of
the fascinating world of nanotechnology. As a science writer covering
various topics from astrophysics to chemistry, Bill says he "has got to
know less and less about more and more until today he knows nothing about
everything." This puts him, he says, "in contrast to doctoral candidates,
who have got to know more and more about less and less until they know
everything about nothing."

Bill's goal is (in his own modest way) to echo Jefferson, and make the
people the repository of power. He does this by increasing his fellow
citizens' understanding of the scientific and technical. Just as war is
too important to be left to the generals, science is too important to be
left to the scientists and politicians.

Leading the discussion is Betsy Schwartz, who describes herself as "a
self-replicating organism of 75 to 100 trillion molecular machines known
as cells, cells, 300 million of which are dying every minute, each cell
containing something on the order of five billion proteins and six billion
bits of programming information."

As a collective, the molecules live near Boston, work as a Unix System
Adminstrator and take a lively layperson's interest in Nanotechnology.
  

    
Betsy! Talk to me, babe! If in fact your N trillion cells can speak,
unlike certain federal administrations, with one voice. I'm getting a
vibe here, as we boomers used to say in the Woodstock Era - viz. that
The Well is a very funky place, where oh-so-formal communications are
the exception rather than the rule. In this spirit, I'm glad I wrote
Nanocosm in an offbeat, irreverent style. I hope my readers will see
behind the funk and realize my take on this science is actually very
serious. Your homework: Ask me about Humphrey Cobbler.
  

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Bill! Welcome!

I was going to start off by asking you to give a brief summary of
"What is the nanocosm and why it is going to turn our real world into
something stranger than fiction" but I'll bite:

Please, Bill, tell us about Humphrey Cobbler!
  

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Humphrey Cobbler is a character in Robertson Davies's first fiction
trilogy. He's a wooly-haired, slovenly musician, a cathedral organist
who's constantly outraging his straitlaced congregation. Finally the
Dean talks to Cobbler: "You must be serious. You have a wife and
children to support. That is serious, I suppose?" "Not really," Cobbler
replies. "What is serious then?" says the Dean, exasperated. "Music, I
suppose in a hilarious sort of way," Cobbler replies, ruffling his mop
of hair and grinning. 

I always thought that was a perfect description of how to look at the
world and, if you're a science writer, to report on it. All those
earnest tomes ["Our Friend, the Minke Whale"] that are morally
upstanding, deadly serious, and deadly dull; that put you to sleep in a
couple of sentences; that's not for me. I write to keep my readers
awake, even if it risks outraging them now and then. I want them to
realize with a small shock, when they've finished all the fun at book's
end, how much they've learned. If I had a patron saint, it would be
Humphrey Cobbler. He's my ghost writer all through Nanocosm.
  

    
Ah, so Humphrey would be that fellow chanting "K. Eric Drex, K. Eric
Drex, the man who dispensed with reality checks"

Do you have another little alter ego, one who read Michael Crichton's
"Prey" and who is quivering with fear in the back?  

One of the things that makes your book so readable is that you take us
to what's here and near and don't spend much time envisioning
scenarios of apocalyptic "grey goo" endings for the human race, or
nano-utopias free of disease, death, and stinky manufacuring. There's
so very much to explore in the middle...
  

    
Ah! that "sophomoric couplet," as the Publisher's Weekly reviewer
called it, fairly spluttering with wrath and indignation. An excellent
description, however, as that nanobot stuff I was trying to skewer is
indeed sophomoric - moros (unwisdom) posing as sophos (wisdom). You
see, Betsy, all the nanoboosters' incredibly involved calculations
really sum to one thing: their attempt to convince you, or me, or the
U.S. Supreme Court, or themselves, that the molecular assembler is
indeed possible. But their very use of rhetoric on this scale defeats
their own purpose. They don't have to convince anyone but Mother
Nature, and she's the sternest judge of all. The dialectic goes like
this. Thesis (Drexler et al.): "Molecular assemblers are inevitable."
Antithesis (WIA, Smalley and others): "Balls." Synthesis...What? Not
more fulminations from the nanoboosters, "They are too inevitable! Here
are the calcs!" No, indeed. The only viable synthesis, the single
permissible response, is to SHOW US A WORKING MODEL OF THE MOLECULAR
ASSEMBLER IN ACTION. Put up or shut up: Atkinson, he from Missouri:
Deeds not words. Nothing else will do. Until that happens (and it never
will), I will go on being skeptical. Nay, derisive. 
  

    
OK, so, short of molecular assemblers, what do you think will be the
first things that we will see actually hit the market?

And , farther down, what do you think will be the first things that we
will see that will start to create perceptible ripples of change in
our lives? I mean, a 10-second pregnancy test and longer-lasting tires
are nice, but I don't think they'll create the sort of ripple that,
say, a 1cm-sized room air conditioner that runs on solar power
would. What will be the first things that start to change our health,
topple large corporations, build new pollution free
industries... or....? What things are actually on the drawing board,
as you put it, close to that  very last CAD/CAM stage before manufacturing? 
  

    
(small aside: offsite readers can join the conversation by sending their
questions or comments to    inkwell-hosts@well.com    )

(another aside: To see an excerpt from Bill's book, check out this URL:
    http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/nanobd.htm           )
  

    
First, don't discount the power of the apparently trivial. I always
think of Michael Faraday showing King George around his lab. "What use
is it?" asked the king. Faraday answered: "Your Majesty, of what use is
a baby?" 

So: consider Air-D-Fence, Harris Goldberg's air-impervious elastomer.
Mere passive nanotech, interesting materials science but nuttin' more
than longer-lasting tennis balls, right? But there's more. Same
substance inside your car tires, they weigh no more but now they can
run at 100 psi rather than 30 psi. They run cooler, they last longer,
they deborm less, they use less fuel, they have lower life-cycle costs
since a set can last you half again as long. Millions of gallons of gas
saved every year in the continental USA. 

Or those medical tests. No false positives or negatives, much faster
and simpler, more reliable, more affordable, insurance premiums
(premia?) drop steadily, health insurance becomes more affordable,
America's middle and lower-middle classes no longer have to live with
the spectre of a single health problem instantly wiping out their
savings, social unrest decreases...I tell you, it's a line of dominoes.
Just as nanotech can do big things with very small units, so small
nanotech-based inventions may have multiplying effects. We'll see.

More later on the stuff I really think is going to make waves.  
  

    
By "deborm" I of course mean "deform." Bor heaben's sake.
  

    
It seems like any new tech starts out with boosters who say it can do
anything (eventually), and it's a while before the limitations become
known.  What are fundamental limits on nanotech?  (I'd guess maybe
energy?)

Also, what are the best news sources to find out what's happening in
nanotech research?
  

    
Hi Brian,

You're right to be skeptical of any new discipline's initial claims.
The computer will free us from paper (1965); automatic factories will
end human work so that everyone can enjoy goods for free (1939); and so
on. I myself am suspicious, nay cynical, of any sci-fi claim that
nanotechnology will make us all immortal, illness-free, and able to
raise the family dog from the dead. Show me, I say. 

My enthusiasm for nanotech comes from my redefinition of it: viz. it
is, and must be, real. No highly embroidered visions (e.g. molecular
assemblers or nanobots) need apply. i've based my book's projections on
known research that I personally witnessed over the last year. If I
anticipate new materials that are neither metals nor ceramics, for
instance, I can cite the work of Dr Rizhi Wang (Princeton, UBC &c) who
has characterized nacre, the natural material that makes up bivalve
shell. Dr Wang has isolated the nanoscale design of nacre to the point
where he feels he can duplicate it in artificial materials - leading to
stuff as light and hard as ceramics, yet with metallic traits in
plastic deformation. I like to think the projections in my book are,
therefore, modest extrapolations rather than rory-eyed imaginings. Even
my intro (Joe III in 2015) is based on slight extension of current
scientific work.

As for fundamental limits: I don't think we know enough yet to say
what these may be. If they are energetic, so what? The energy
requirements in nanotech are tiny. When you're dealing with nanovolts,
you can produce all the power you need with one hand-squeeze of a
piezoelectric substance. In fact nanotech's main contribution to our
economy (you note this too, Becky) may well involve energy
conservation. Use water in evaporative air conditioning today, and you
waste water and energy both. Derive the water with a Sciperio
nanoengineered system, and you evaporate only the water you've already
culled out of the air at extremely low energy cost.

To find out what's being done today, just Google any of my
interviewees: not only Rizhi Wang but also Neil Branda, Masumi Asakawa,
&c. That's an excellent start. 
  

    
Thanks!

By limits, I also mean the sort of thing that prevents "gray goo" or
other, more realistic disasters.  Limits can be a good thing.
  

    
Probably the most effective limit against gray goo is the physical
impossibility of legions of self-replicating, universally omnivorous
molecular assemblers, or should we say molecular de-assemblers. Ain't
gonna happen. Software encoding, service maintenance, the stickiness of
atoms, Brownian motion, the sheer quantity of matter to be attacked --
any number of physical constraints make such inventions (and thus
their threatened effects) effectively impossible. 
  

    
Are you the same Bill Atkinson that worked with Dr Livingston
at UCSD in the 70's?
  

    
Bill,

where do you see the "Silicon Valley" of nanotechnology occuring?
  

    
Jeff: No, I'm not Stanley to Dr Livingston. But there seem to be a lot
of Bill Atkinsons around: nature photographer in Arizona, software
designer in California, and a character in Kingsley Amis's novel Lucky
Jim. Main reason I went to the full, portentous "William Illsey
Atkinson." Google that and there's no false positives. 

Airman: Silicon valley of nanotech will be (heck, already is) Silicon
Valley itself - at least in the states. It retains the personnel
(goofy, inventive) and mindset (entrepreneurial) from its silicon days.
Dallas and Boston/Cambridge are big, anchored by the big colleges, but
NoCal has it all. Outside the States, it's Switzerland
(bio-nano-pharmaceuticals, what a jawbreaking phrase) and Tsukuba,
Japan.
  

    

The title Nanocosm caught my eye since George Gilder published a similar
named book called Microcosm about ten or so years ago. Gilder's book
primarily looked at the silicon chip and it's effects which he defined
as the quantum revolution in technology and economics.

In Nanocosm most of the book spoke to the technology in a series of
documented interviews along with some interesting explainations of how
things work in the nanocosm. The Appendix is chalk full of a number of
predictions of technology. But in the spirit of Microcosm, could you
comment on the economic changes from the nanocosm?
  

    
Airman: As the preachers say in Appalachia, "It's in the book!" And
there I touch on the commercial fallout from these new techniques. But
here's a quick summary: Being an optimist (though  I hope a realistic
one) I'd see the primary economic changes as beneficial. They include:
reducing the world's dependence on oil (and the First World's
dependence on oil imports); creating new materials that first make
known objects safer and better and then let us create wholly new
products; and massively increasing medical accuracy while massively
reducing medical costs. I haven't done even back-of-envelope
calculations for benefit/cost analyses, but any one of these should
work out in the hundreds of billions of dollars yearly, worldwide. 
  

    



From ERIN, outside the WELL:


Hello Mr Atkinson, I have some questions regarding nanotechnology and your
book.

In the speculation about nanotech in the 2015 period, I was most interested
in the section you mentioned on "molding a capacitant device" into a material
structure, and strengthening/reinforcing the inter-molecular bonds. Is that
physically possible? If this could be done..then in theory...we could make
materials even stronger than diamondoids..and fullerenes...correct?

I was also very interested in the Nano Cellular Automata, I purchased and I
read Stephen Wolfram's crowning book on cellular automata, a New Kind of
Science, and it amazes me. This is a possible method to molecular assembly
systems of a sort. Tell us more about this please.

Erin
  

    
Hi Erin,

I doubt we could engineer an interatomic bond stronger than what now
occurs naturally, at least until nanotechnology gives way to
'picotechnology' [at 1000x finer scale than the nanocosm] or
'femtotechnology' [1000000x finer]. So for now at least, the
covalent-carbon bond will remain one of the strongest we know.
Interestingly, since the book went to press I came across another
nanotech startup, this time in Toronto. They are using forced-crystal
technology (cf. Sawatzky pp. 51-55) to induce metal atoms to
self-assemble into crystals of finer scale than found in nature. So
regular and perfect is this self-assembly that the normal inclusions,
dislocations, and other flaws found in today's best alloys simply
disappear. This yields metals far closer to theoretical strengths,
opening the door to skate blades that never need sharpening and
bulletproof armor no thicker than tinfoil.

The device Joe III mentions on p.24 comes from my imagination, but is
based on current research. It would give a bond no stronger than the
strongest natural bond, but offer engineers the option of attenuating
such a bond to a lower level. In aggregate, this would make a material
containing many such bonds more or less stiff, according to one's whim.

I agree with you on the power of cellular automata; I tried to make my
enthusiasm for this approach evident in the book. CA is a major piece
of a major puzzle: how we can best manage the nanocosm. The other
pieces are self-assembly and biomimicry, which CA math fits
hand-in-glove. Given this, the nanorobots imagined by Eric Drexler and
his associates become unnecessary, inelegant, and absurd -- even if
they are possible, which I strongly doubt. 

Conceptually, the beautiful thing about CA is that we can't entirely
predict its outcome. The mechanistic imaginings of Mr Drexler, where
all of nature is utterly under our command, give way to something far
more beautiful and powerful. The triad of CA, self-assembly, and
imitation of nature will lead us to structures, processes, and products
of immense elegance. I consider Dr Wolfram to have appeared in
precisely the right place and time. 
  

    
Is there a down side? Perhaps something like the situation described by 
Michael Crichton in his novel, _Prey_?
  

    
"Prey" is interesting sci-fi, but as sober caution it's drivel -- just
like "Jurassic Park." I mean, how many humans have recently died from
velociraptor bites? In every aspect, from introduction to body copy to
bibliography, "Prey" is predicated on the impossible: i.e. a world
where Drexlerian nanobots exist, self-replicate, evolve intelligence,
and feast on human beings. Ain't gonna happen. 

Certainly, legitimate nanotech may have dangers -- not terrorism so
much as counter-terrorism: Big Brother hovering in a nearby dustmote,
logging your every eyeblink,phone call, and sneeze. And if synthetic
catalysis becomes a reality,then certain chemical reactions will be
possible that are not in humanity's best interests to carry on
indefinitely. In the book I suggest a nanocatalyst might steadily
increase the prevalence of covalent bonds, making life impossible.
Other, subtler reactions could include interdiction of specific
enzymatic activity in the eukaryotic cell. This would simulate
inherited, debilitative genetic diseases. 

But these more realistic scenarios do not differ greatly from the
presence of any poison in our midst, from the prions (bollixed
proteins) behind mad-cow disease to the nanoparticles of carbon that
cause black lung in miners. Existing DOE and FDA laws, if enforced, are
quite sufficient to address these.

Note that the nanoboosters -- as I call the coterie of zealots who
have an unshakeable faith in their wonky universe of nanobots,
molecular assemblers, and other sci-fi devices -- are caught in a trap
here. For years they have hinted darkly that Nanotech Will Give Us
Awesome Powers For Good Or Ill. Now they've spooked legislators to the
point that serious suggestions are being made to shut down nanotech
research altogether. Oops! Victims of their own success! So now you
have people like Eric Drexler saying out of the one side of his mouth,
It's Real! It's Scary! and out of the other (New Scientist on-line
interview, late April 2003) We Must Not Curtail This Important
Research! Odd crew, these boosters. Don't look for consistency here.
  

    
Drexler takes a real drubbing in your book along with Ralph Merkle, a
respected scientist from Xerox.

In Nanocosm it seems you took the safe way out by siding with Smalley's
criticisms in the Scientific American counterpoint to Drexler's position

However, it would seem that the researchers are approaching the same
goals from different directions. Smalley is taking a top down approach
using chemical methods and leaning toward biomimicry while Drexler took
a bottoms up approach echoing the Feynman view.

While Drexler may appear as a bottom feeding huckster, in strategic
planning terms he is exploring the bottoms up methodology which is
mostly a mind exercise. Notably, he also majored in biology and
chemistry so he is well aware of the other methods. Drexler isn't
someone you can invest in directly since his efforts are mostly
associated with the Foresight Institute so the drubbing you give him
seems ill suited to advising investors (except in Canada perhaps).

Merkle on the other hand has joined Zyvex, a seriously funded effort
that is focused on nanotechnology. While the Drexler-Merkle association
has been a major attraction at the Foresight Institute, Merkle continues
to publish with peer review as to the exhuberant promotion of Drexler.

I found the ad hominem attacks on these individuals whether right or
wrong distracting from the true purpose of the book. I expect that from
a high school sophmore or gossip at a convention, or perhaps even a
documented confrontation as you had in one case, but to continue to
simple rant about Drexler's approach as being bad is tantamount to
trying to prove a negative. In my opinion you would have been more
effective if you documented the one incident and moved on.


That leaves Zyvex...unless I missed something there was a major hole in
not looking at Zyvex more closely. Merkle is there so perhaps it doesn't
fit your investment criteria (what is your investment criteria?) but
there are other respected sicentists and individuals there as well.

One particular case worth noting is the Freitas multivolume series
entitled Nanomedicine.

Now there are a few other companies that might be worth investing in,
but most of the companies associated with your list in the Appendix I
have been aware for at least four years with the exception of Canadian
companies. Was this book simply to make the VC community aware of a few
Canadian companies?