Customer Reviews

Nanotechnology: Molecular Speculations on Global Abundance

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Nanotechnology, The Premier Technology of the 21st Century, is about building things atom by atom like biology does.
About making extraordinary things from ordinary mater (see http://planet-hawaii.com/nanozine/WHATNANO.HTM).

After reading nanotechnology, Molecular Speculations on Global Abundance (The MIT Press), I found an ancient bottle washed ashore by the tide.
I popped the top and to my surprise, a Green Genie materialized before my eyes.
You have three wishes boomed the Arabian aberration.
Cool.
Ill have nanotechnology. And your other two wishes? And to his surprise I said, Pack up and join the ether. Who needs magic if you have atomic precision chemistry.
This attitude is amply backed up by the stream of authors and their thoughts presented in BC Crandalls latest work.

Prepare for anew wave of startling ideas written by a group of the Worlds foremost nanotechnologist.
Attention Nano Venture Capitalists.
This is the info you are looking for.
Read and profit.
Now a summery of the authors and their chapters:

1. Molecular engineering.
BC Crandall, the books editor, founder of Molecular Realities, Memetic Engineering and co-founder of Prime Arithmetics inc., starts the work with a thorough intro to the concept beginning with an explanation of the atom, the workings of chemistry and self assembling natural machines like DNA in a style comfortably accessible to the uninitiated layperson.
Then Crandall moves on to A Genealogy of Nanotechnology. How ideas and discoveries of the past, (the study of artificial life concepts, the invention of scanning tunneling microscopes, walking molecules) have transported science to the brink of this incredible power.
Excellent and mandatory background information.

2. In-Vivo Nanoscope and the Two-Week Revolution.

Ted Kaehler of Apple Computer, has a two part chapter that sheds a calibrating light on the time table and extreme complexity of developing nanotechnology through the eyes of a computer scientist (Carnegie-Mellon) with a physics background (Stanford).
Kaehler argues that a great deal of early nano (preassembler) devices must be developed and understood before moving on.
His example in part one of his chapter is an early nano-like multi-purpose bioprobe unobtrusively investigating the immune system in a living organism.
This device is connected to desk top computers in a normal lab scene.
This is early nanotechnology.
The bioprobe was extremely expensive to hand craft (no assemblers yet exist).
The information from the experiment is richly rewarding and will be added to a massive library of knowledge needed to make the sophisticated cell repair machines of a mature nanofuture.
Venture capitalist: There will be many steps to mature nanotechnology that need financing and because of the novel utility of these breakthroughs, such first on the block investments should produce fabulous returns.

Kaehler goes on to explain away the myth of the Two-Week Revolution, referring to the concept that very shortly after the building of the first self replicating assembler, every nanotechnology idea conceived and nanotech product would spread across the planet and into space like wild fire. Arguing from the experience of complex systems builders, Kaehler predicts that lots of debugging and product cycle improvement are inevitable.
The two-week revolution will not happen.
Two weeks after the first assembler works, it will be in the shop for repairs.
And not many of the things that it builds in those two weeks will work either.
The pervasive use of assemblers in our lives depends on the development of several new fields of study and entire new layers of infrastructures.
It will be a human endeavor operating at human speeds. It wont happen without thousands of cycles of experimental feedback, and it wont happen in the first two weeks.
Good news for society as we will have, mercifully, more time to adapt.
(Good sources tell me, he argues the other side as well, that while it won't be 2 weeks, it won't be all that long either, especially with good design ahead.)

3. Cosmetic Nanosurgery

Former senior editor at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories prestigious monthly, Energy and Technology Review , Richard Crawford blows the doors off the $18 + Billion Cosmetic industry, showing how even early nanotechnology can actually deliver on the bogus promises made today by copywriters for their big business Oil of Old Lady clients.
He shows relatively simple designs for early nanodevices that change hair color, texture and skin color (I would love a tan in the winter!).
No more bitter baldness for male and female. Cast off unwanted facial and body hair. Such would be converted into CO2, H2O and sulfur crystals at the source.<

>Enjoy wrinkle repair, full body tight skin well before the assembler.
Later, with cell repair machines working at the molecular level, full body makeover.
Look completely different every month. Shock your friends by morphing into a Klingon.

Alas, there is a bleak, dark side, the sleazy underbelly of this nanotechnology utilization: Inevitably, there will be people who dont know how to leave well enough alone.
Many who never liked their own youthful appearance will opt instead to copy some popular model or other sex symbol.
It could become very confusing, with dozens of pop-idol look-alikes crowding the parks and boulevards of our future metropolis.
Some may relish the prospect, but we may never see the last of the Elvis clones.
(Oh.. My... God..! What did I do in a past life to be sent to this Universe?)

4. Diamond Teeth

Famed nano D.D.S. Edward M. Reifman also has a B.S. in mechanical engineering, magna cum laude, and an M.S. in biomedical engineering. After graduation and before obtaining his D.D.S., Reifman went to work for Hughes Aircraft designing communications satellites. (Makes sense.)

As a warm up for early, then sophisticated nanotechnology, the Dr. offers some really advanced dental tech like a CAD-CAM system with a fiber optic wand to quickly take 3D measurements of a tooth to be capped and a portable milling machine to make perfect caps on the spot.
On to early nano and a hand held (Tricorder like) PET scanner that not only sees in 3D, but detects abnormal bone and gum densities, all vessels, and specific sites where further tooth or jawbone loss will likely occur. Then early nanites are introduced to rebuild problem areas.

Nanotechnology will deliver the holy grail of dentistry: long-lasting, cavity-free teeth. Advanced nanotechnology will deliver another coup: arresting or neutralizing the genetics behind a degenerating, aging jawline.
We could eventually see the replacement of the entire jaw and teeth with diamondoid matrix.
But why stop there? We can expand this approach to improve or replace the bodys entire skeletal structure.

5. Early Applications

Harry Chesley is a senior software architect at Macromedia, formally with Apple Computer and SRI International.
He has designed code for 25 years. Chesley presents a nuts and bolts presentation on building nanomachines.
Scale, shape, and energy needs are included.
You can get a real physical grasp of how these hypothetical mechanical marvels come together. Like all machines, they are built from components. Each machine needs storage and computing facilities. It seems that it will be possible to build a 1,000 MIPS (million instructions per second) molecular computer that fits inside a cube 0.4 microns (millionths of a meter) on a side.
This is roughly 1,000 times the computing power of todays personal computers.

But now on to the fun stuff. In his An Opening Selection, Chesley offers a long delightful list of early applications, some of which I present for your enjoyment:

-Board games with billions of moving parts, allowing economic, logistical, and military games with incredible depth of simulation.
-Full-wall speakers for people

The opening chapter, written by editor Crandall, is a good, necessarily cursory, summation of nanotechnology at the time of publication. The inclusion of a long list of web sites with up-to-date information is a welcome way to keep the material fresh.

If you're looking to get serious and read a discussion of recent research, look elsewhere. The remaining chapters fall into the realm of pure speculation, where futurists practice the fine art of making guesses to which no one will hold them.

Ultimately, it is exactly this light-heartedness and high-level thought experimentation that makes the book a good weekend's read. Enjoy it the way you would enjoy a work of science fiction with its technology premise solidly rooted in today's understanding of the universe.

If you enjoy this kind of reading, I would strongly encourage you to read _The Diamond Age_ by Neal Stephenson.

Most nanotechnolgy books and articles start out with lots of hype to excite the reader, and then follow it up with a meandering discussion of how this might really be possible. This book was no exception. It did a good job of building up themes and exploring them in detail. The treatment of "utility fog" was extremely well done, as was the discussion of a "holodeck" type image technology.

The language and style is easily accessible to those with a basic science education, and it was refreshing that this book avoided the doomsday predictions of nanotechnology and kept the unbounded prediction for when this will all happen to a minimum.

Published in 1996, the content of this book is a good introduction, but is in danger of becoming dated due to the fast moving nature of this field. This might be the first nanotechnology book to read, but not the last for a true fan of the topic. This book might not be for you, if you've been able to read Nanosystems by K. Eric Drexler, but if you want an entertaining walk through visions of future technology, check this one out.

Crandall presents ten essays out of which to construct your nanoUtopian dream. Another example of a genre called fictional science where the reader must supply the plot, characters and action. What is all this talk of nanobots and utility fog? Is man not already constructed from nanomachines? One might already ask if molecules of nicotine, aspirin, heroin or cocaine are nanomachines since they control the flow of neurotransmitters. Is molecular engineering merely the search for molecular shapes that will fit together like lego blocks-just like the search for new drugs?

Many are enamored by the way the cells and bacteria of the body construct our reality. They would like to copy these processes and rename them nanotechnology. Viewing cells and proteins as nanomachines is not new. Evolution, itself, could be viewed as a way of encapsulating cooperating cells into human shaped terrariums. Crandall quotes Richard Preston on the flesh eating Ebola Zaire virus: "seven mysterious proteins that ...work as a relentless machine, a molecular shark, and they consume the body as the virus makes copies of itself."

These writers suggest ways man could profit by controlling the design of these cellular machines. Richard Crawford's contribution suggests man designed molecules could be injected into the blood steam in order to do the bidding of cosmetic surgeons. He sees big cash to be made. Edward Reifman proposes diamond teeth but would this put dentists in the unemployment line? Brian Wowk manipulates phase array optics to enable the reader to construct a STAR TREK holodeck. J. Storrs Hall envisions filling one's environment with utility fog, placing one within a kind of pixel coated TV screen where objects in your personal space can be moved as easily as pictures on that screen. Tom McKendree worries that nanosized assemblers will make goods so plentiful that nothing will be of any value. Crandall, himself, suggests that when room runs out on earth we might repackage man into geodesic spheres, floating ecospheres, in stationary orbit high above the planet. All pretty good fictional science but why not read Greg Bear where you also get the plot, characters and action.

Ok so the title (of the review) is kida corny, but dont worry,i did read the book and il have to say its a good book and has a few good ideas, so all in all its a good book.