Nano Technology

The general theory subscribed to by these futurists is that it will soon be possible to create nano machines, by which they mean very small robots that function on the atomic and molecular level, and that these machines could be programmed to be self replicating, and that they could be further programmed to perform any imaginable task. They could by shear force of numbers, created by geometric progression of self manufacture, accomplish any task, no matter how gargantuan.

This notion has a few problems, to say the least. All problems are not soluble by the use of many hands. Some problems require devoted effort for very long periods of time while others are insoluble. While it may be true that we can easily imagine robots working their way through a garbage dump seeking out and neutralizing radioactive atoms, (though barely), it isn't easily imaginable how the energy required to fuse atoms would be made available and controlled. I think BB supposes that these processes occurred in the middle of stars, where the necessary energy is readily at hand. It may be easier to conceive of these micro robots neutralizing carcinogens, but not much. It will still require energy, and raw materials from which to take the atoms necessary to force the unhappy chemical into a benign state.

This notion actually is best described as a recycled in modern dress version of the old, debunked, notion of the perpetual motion machine, dreamed up, no doubt, by the son of the conceiver of the fountain of youth.

Hope springs eternal in the breast of each human, but age eventually drives these dreams of glory away, along with the fears of malevolent monsters. I'm sure that the inventors of the industrial age had no idea of jet airplanes and TV's, but I am quite sure they also never dreamed of global warming and 10 billion souls crowding one another into the seas and space in a vain effort to find a comfortable place to call home.

To fully satisfy our need to dismiss this notion we must grasp the mechanics of cosmos building. We must be able to see that, the statement that every action must bring into being an equal and opposite reaction is not just a free floating concept, unconnected to anything else. It is a comprehensively true statement about the structure of our universe and one that cannot be altered, ever, because to do so would be to change the nature of being. By extrapolating the meaning of this statement, it should become clear that profit is impossible, except in the short term. That is to say it is only possible to borrow, not to create something that was not there before, as the definition of profit suggests. So, if a profit does occur, we are not fully comprehending the nature of our transaction unless we know the source of our excess over expenditure.

For our purposes we can say that profit is produced by manipulating matter with energy. We must pay for the manipulation, a product of energy, and the energy itself. The manipulation is generally produced by slaves of one sort or another, actual slaves, indentured servants, wage earners, robots, or nano robots. They require to be fully compensated for their efforts, or they will eventually die. After that, the matter to be altered must come from someplace, and taking it will alter the entity from which we took it, thereby altering our environment and making us and all other creatures less adapted. If this goes on for a sufficiently long time at a sufficiently large scale it will change our world into one we are not adapted to and thereby kill us.

Utilizing small mechanical robots has no effect on the nature of the transaction. They are still robots that require their pay and will die if they don't get it, and they are still manipulating our environment. To suppose that this scenario won't apply is to suppose that one could design a car whose exhaust pipe is routed into the carburetor, thereby eliminating the need to buy fuel. Even if we trapped the heat and saved it, we have still not fully accounted for our source of energy. We have left out the work accomplished by uncounted organisms that existed at one time and transformed their environment into oil, as we are doing at this moment. In so doing, we are transferring all of the components of that oil from their deeply buried and effective removal from the surface environment state, back into the surface environment, transforming it, perhaps, into one we are not adapted to survive in. So, the criticism by some that environmentalists are actually anti life, can reasonably be leveled at the technologists, too.

What Nano Technology magazine actually is, is a motivater attempting to create the future by making it sufficiently attractive to get votes among its audience, as is Star Trek, for example. In this sense it is no different than NOW whose main purpose is to make feminism (environmentalism) look sufficiently attractive to get votes among its audience. And there is but one audience, you and me. We were sufficiently attracted to technology in the past, and still are to give it the nod, but NOW is making inroads and must be expected to achieve success, as the price of technology continues to mount.