Another Giant Leap for Man - Quareness Series (46th "Lecture").
The long march of human cultural evolution seems to have found us at this point standing at the edge of an ocean of information with the distinct prospect of the freeing of our organic life from the chrysalis of matter. We may be rapidly approaching what the eggheads call "escathain" (the "last" thing when everything becomes one) and/or the end of our adolescence (end of the process of coming together, of "becoming"). Some might say we're now within the shadow of the "End of Time" (getting ready to exit the "body world"). We are quite possibly at the end game of developmental processes on this planet and going on to the transcendental, to transformation, after all points are connected (www is a signal of such?) i.e. all parts of consciousness fully connected (with the process of connectivity speeded up). We now know that our Galaxy (for example) has a fractal resonance within the cell, that every atom is a data point in the time ward of novelty, and that everything in our neighbourhood organises itself fractally and spirally. Movement from the genetic to the epicentric (language, writing, etc.) appears to bring progressive acceleration which now seems to be reaching towards "combining" of our physical bodies with "machines" to enhance our capacity.
Time could indeed be speeding up as the Cosmos develops in complexity, with each platform reached being itself a platform for further complexity and so on. And as complexity increases things naturally get weirder, forcing people to study and discuss. There's "fire in the madhouse" at the end of time i.e. when we're getting ready to move on to a different dimension.
We may soon get to light the Babylon Candle and start on our return to stardust?
Could it be that we will not "belong" in the coming time because organic intelligence is a temporary aberration, a passing imperfection? Could the end state of matter be the machine? I prefer to think we will adapt retaining our positive ethical values, but it likely won't be an easy ride.
Human biological evolution, perhaps now best understood in cultural terms, forces upon humankind the consciousness that tools and machines are inseparable from evolving human nature. What is actually required of individuals may be that they become "machines", and this of course has many "downsides" for those of us disturbed by certain aspects of our societal arrangements e.g. hardline free market economics are clearly based on this assumption - liberate the individual from all restraint and pretence and s/he will act as predictably as a machine - indeed so to act is in this view seen as the only real ethical course since it is the only way in which society as a whole will be enriched!
Per the "Principle of Plenitude" (Epicurus) - no potentiality of being can remain unfulfilled - there is an inexhaustible source of being in nature. There are billions of stars in the Universe for each human. The working of the laws of physics intrinsically push matter in the direction of ever more complex forms - essentially matter inclines towards complexity. And an utterly different brain and perceptual apparatus may effectively mean an utterly different Universe.
The Near Term Future:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur C. Clarke. And the coming technological revolution may indeed seem like magic today...a small appliance (called a nanofactory), about the size of a washing machine, that is able to manufacture almost anything. Fed with simple chemical stocks, this amazing machine breaks down molecules and then reassembles them into any product you ask for. Packed with nanotechnology and robotics, weighing 200lbs and standing half as tall as a person, it can produce 2 tons per day of products. Control is simple with a touch screen selecting the type and number of products. It costs very little to operate...basically just the price of materials fed into it. In just 1 hour, say €20 worth of chemicals can be converted into 100 pairs of shoes, or 50 shovels, or 200 cell phones, or even a duplicate nanofactory!
The technology to create such a machine is speedily being developed at present and a nanofactory will likely be the end result of a convergence between nanotechnology (molecular scale engineering), rapid prototyping, and automated assembly (all present-day existing technologies). Of course none of them has yet reached its full potential, but each is advancing rapidly driven by powerful economic, social, and military forces. And the integration of the three technologies will inevitably be far more powerful than the sum of the parts (and once the first one is built, it can start making copies of itself).
Already scientists have made chemical reactions happen by directly manipulating the individual atoms. They can draw lines of chemicals just 10 atoms wide...they can send electricity down molecular wires...they can attach propellers to molecular motors and analyse their performance...they can make functioning tweezers from DNA molecules. Soon it seems we will have the ability to build 3 dimensional, active, molecular constructions...a small and predictable step to building robots and chemical plants at the nanometer scale. We can imagine the possibilities (manufacturing almost anything - books, clothing, communication devices, tools, etc.) but also the problems (involving unregulated poisons, weapons, illicit products, etc.) and we can see there is a catch - how to effectively control it for safe and responsible use. If not administered properly, there is great risk of it being used badly either by the entity that first develops it or by groups that later gain access to it. Development or control of such technology by any special interest group might lead to military or economic oppression (and God knows we have too much of that already), or maybe an unstable arms race. Uncontrolled release might make the full power of the technology available to irresponsible users of many hues. In the circumstances the safest course might be to create a world wide internationally agreed fast moving, fully funded, highly focused monitoring agency located where it can be closely watched by all interested parties. The agreed aim would have to be to make this new hugely powerful technology as safe as possible. And of course trying to do so can itself seem to present us with huge fundamental problems e.g. how to educate people at all levels about the dangers of nanotechnology and the possible solutions to those dangers, or to ensure that unwise regulation does not impede the new opportunities for reducing the gap between the haves and have-nots.
A technology this powerful has implications in the areas of international security, commercial rights, human rights, global environment, cultural stability, or indeed for counteracting the naturally corrupting impact of access to too much "internal" power in too few hands. And to my way of thinking any acceptable and effective regulatory environment would need to be a fully transparent one. The aim has to be for a world in which this massively powerful new technology is widely used for productive and beneficial purposes, and where malicious uses are limited by effective administration.
The Meaning of Nanotechnology:
When K. Eric Drexler popularised the word 'nanotechnology' in the 1980's, he was talking about building machines on the scale of molecules, a few nanometers wide - motors, robot arms, and even whole computers, far smaller than a cell. Drexler spent the next ten years describing and analysing these incredible devices, and responding to accusations of science fiction. Meanwhile, mundane technology was developing the ability to build simple structures on a molecular scale. However, as nanotechnology became an accepted concept, the meaning of the word shifted to encompass the simpler kinds of nanometer-scale technology, so much so that the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative now includes in its definition anything smaller than 100 nanometers with novel properties.
Much of the work being done today that carries the label is not nanotechnology in the original meaning of the word which meant building things from the bottom up, with atomic precision. This theoretical capability was envisioned as early as1959... "I want to build a billion tiny factories, models of each other, which are manufacturing simultaneously. . . The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom. It is not an attempt to violate any laws; it is something, in principle, that can be done; but in practice, it has not been done because we are too big" (Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winner in physics 1959).
Based on Feynman's vision of miniature factories using nanomachines to build complex products, advanced nanotechnology (sometimes referred to as molecular manufacturing) will make use of positionally-controlled mechanochemistry guided by molecular machine systems. And shortly after this envisioned molecular machinery is created, it will result in a manufacturing revolution, probably causing severe disruption.
Mihail (Mike) Roco of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative has described four generations of nanotechnology development. The first is that of passive nanostructures, materials designed to perform one task. The second phase introduces active nanostructures for multitasking e.g. actuators, drug delivery devices, and sensors. The third generation is expected to feature nanosystems with thousands of interacting components. And the fourth phase sees the development of the first integrated nanosystems, functioning (according to Roco) much like a mammalian cell with hierarchical systems within systems.
The control and restructuring of matter at the nanoscale would appear to be a necessary element in nanotechnology i.e. "engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale" is what nanotech is really all about.
A "General Purpose" Technology:
Nanotechnology is sometimes referred to as a general-purpose technology. That's because its advanced form will entail a significant impact on almost all industries and all areas of society. It's likely to offer better built, longer lasting, cleaner, safer, and smarter products for the home, for communications, for medicine, for transportation, for agriculture and for industry in general e.g. a medical device that travels through the human body to seek out and destroy small clusters of cancerous cells before they can spread, or a box no larger than a sugar cube that contains the entire contents of the Library of Congress, or materials much lighter than steel that possess ten times as much strength.
Like electricity or computers before it, nanotech is set to offer greatly improved efficiency in almost every facet of life. But as a general-purpose technology, it will also likely be dual-use i.e. it will have many commercial uses and it also will have many military uses like making far more powerful weapons and tools of surveillance. Thus it represents not only wonderful benefits for humanity but also grave risks.
A key understanding of nanotechnology is that it offers the prospect of not just better products, but a vastly improved manufacturing process. Just as a computer can make copies of data files, essentially as many copies as you want at little or no cost, it may be only a matter of time until the building of products generally becomes as cheap as the copying of files. Perhaps this is why nanotechnology is sometimes seen as "the next industrial revolution".
The power of nanotechnology can be encapsulated in an apparently simple device called a personal nanofactory that may sit on your countertop or desktop. Packed with miniature chemical processors, computing and robotics, it will produce a wide range of items quickly, cleanly and inexpensively, building products directly from blueprints. We're already seeing early versions of something like this with the rapid growth of 3D printing.
Maybe even more revolutionary is the notion that nanotechnology not only will allow making many high quality products at very low cost, but it will allow making new nanofactories at the same low cost and at the same rapid speed. This unique (outside of biology) ability to reproduce its own means of production is why nanotech is seen as an exponential technology representing a manufacturing system that will be able to make more manufacturing systems (factories that can build factories) rapidly, cheaply and cleanly. The means of production will be able to reproduce exponentially, so that in just a few weeks a few nanofactories conceivably could become billions. It is a revolutionary, transformative, powerful and potentially dangerous or beneficial technology. Rapid progress toward enabling technologies such as optics, nanolithography, mechanochemistry and 3D prototyping suggest that this "magical" technology may arrive a lot sooner than we think and we may not be adequately prepared....and the consequences could be severe.
Molecular manufacturing represents power - political, military and financial power. Who controls that power and how widelly and how democratically it is distributed will make all the difference when the technology is developed. Decisions we make before that time will determine whether our world becomes safer or more dangerous, more just or less just, more free or more oppressive. Only by taking a long view and openly sharing information between networked communities can we meet the test of creating wise, comprehensive and balanced plans for an effective global response to this transformative, disruptive technology (another reason why Mr.Snowden's appearance on the world stage is timely indeed).
Nanotech involves engineering fantastically small materials and is the next logical step in miniaturisation. At the nano level (there are 25,400,000 nanometers in an inch), materials have far larger surface areas relative to volume, meaning more surface is available for interaction with other materials around them. Properly engineered, these interactions can produce unusual properties that differ greatly from those produced by the same material in bulk e.g. although gold at the bulk level is an excellent conductor of heat and electricity but not of light, properly structured gold nanoparticles start to absorb light and that light can be turned into heat - in fact enough heat to act like miniature thermal scalpels that can kill unwanted cells such as cancer in the human body. Inasmuch as it will affect so many things, nanotechnology is set to be a revolutionary new science that applies to virtually all industries.
Moore's Law:
Back in 1965 when there were approximately 60 devices on a computer chip, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore stated..."The number of transistors and resistors on a chip will double every 18 months". At the time this sounded almost insane but four decades later Intel placed 1.7 billion transistors on a single chip. As for the transistors themselves, prior to their Nobel Prize winning discovery by Bill Shockley, every television and radio was built using vacuum tubes. If it weren't for his solid-state alternative to glass vacuum tubes, the electronics on a modern jet would be too large and heavy for the plane to even take off. And as for consumer electronics, everything that has been miniaturised to now fit in a cell phone would have previously required a small warehouse.
Prior to the emergence of nanotechnology, experts expected the limitations of Moore's Law to be reached by 2017. But at the nano scale, classical gives way to quantum physics and new doors are opened. Akin to the splitting of the first atom which brought us into the Atomic Age, the ability to manipulate and engineer particles just three atoms wide has launched an explosive new era of technological development.
Fractals:
Some say that fractals (which are basically patterns that build upon themselves by repeating those same patterns to achieve higher complexity) are actually the best way to describe reality. And some now believe that the physical 3D universe, time, multidimensionality, and consciousness can all be defined (or at least accurately described) by applying "fractal geometry".
So how are such things fractal? The factors involved are that of scale and an observational and discerning perspective (provided by our consciousness) which infers the varying physical scales relatively to one another.
The physical universe, from the microcosm to the macrocosm, can be described as one pattern repeated on a wide-ranging scale. Given what we’ve been able to observe of our surroundings, both here on Earth and beyond, what we’ve learned so far points to the repetition of matter and energy along with an accompanying transfer of complexity from one state to another. The sub-atomic realms lead to atomic structure and then to the molecules and chemicals which make physical matter. That in turn comprises planets, stars, galaxies, galactic clusters, the entire physical universe, multiverse and whatever lies beyond.
Similar to the 3D universe, time can also be looked upon as a fractal i.e. layer upon layer of cycles of duration. The factors of scale and observation are likewise crucial in defining these cycles as fractal. The motion of objects at varying physical scales gives rise to individual timescales, and then each level can be experienced accordingly by whatever consciousness resides there. We experience localised individual consciousnesses and are only beginning to comprehend what a group (or higher still, a planetary consciousness) might experience. So perhaps each fractal level of space-scale has its own time-scale. Civilisations on the brink of achieving global consciousness would also be on the verge of a new time?
And then there is the higher dimensionality aspect. M-Theory which unifies previous string theories and supposedly defines the entire multidimensional nature of the universe is based on 11 dimensions. But for the universe, multiverse, or existence to be dimensionally fractal, there would have to be endless dimensional realms, endless parallel worlds, and perhaps even infinite timelines.
Intimately linked to all the above is consciousness (the observant state of being or "data-pool housing information and intent"). Without consciousness the varying levels of the fractal would serve no purpose and there would be no driving force continually seeking out complexity in the dying universe. Consciousness seems to defy the second law of thermodynamics in that the path to entropy is reversed where there is in fact a gathering of information which itself is approaching infinity as opposed to the physical universe cooling and dispersing towards absolute zero. Perhaps consciousness is an all-purveying rather than an isolated system and cannot therefore be compared to the physical universe? Whatever, consciousness must also exist at varying levels which are all built up from the previous.
When space, time, all dimensions and consciousness are combined, you then more than likely get an undefinable macro-fractal structure (something like the Mandelbulb). Either this continues forever in both directions of scale to the unimaginably big and the unimaginably small, or maybe it "loops around" meaning that once you reach the top of the size scale you find yourself peeping back into the deep sub-atomic realms (like travelling around the world only to end up back where you started). So instead of being limited to the physical realm, perhaps this looping happens in space, time, parallel dimensions and consciousness?
An Emergent New Balance of Power:
Because globalisation tends toward decentralisation of authority over production and distribution, it has led to a way of unifying individuals across nations. And this would now seem to be pointing more and more to a reduction of sovereignty and legitimacy for both national governments and any international government. On the political front the coming battles are set to revolve around a growing realisation that anything which concentrates power at the top is a threat to liberty.
It's now rather ironic to recall that the Internet was developed by the US Army in order to decentralise communications because of the perceived threat of an atomic attack. It was the expansion of the military that made possible the development of the technological infrastructure which now poses a threat to every Establishment in the world...this development which has enabled the members of fringe groups to communicate with each other, and to get out the message of incompetence and malevolence on the part of the Establishment. And it doesn't matter which Establishment we are talking about...there is now an unorganised but orderly audience dedicated to its overthrow and apparently reflecting the fractal cyclic nature of reality.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
September, 2014.
Note: Babylon = confused spirituality.