Jim Gimzewski and Victoria Vesna
Abstract
In both the philosophical and visual sense, ‘seeing is
believing’ does not apply to nanotechnology, for there is nothing even remotely
visible to create proof of existence. On the atomic and molecular scale, data
is recorded by sensing and probing in a very abstract manner, which requires
complex and approximate interpretations. More than in any other science,
visualization and creation of a narrative becomes necessary to describe what is
sensed, not seen. Nevertheless, many of the images generated in science and
popular culture are not related to data at all, but come from visualizations
and animations frequently inspired or created directly from science
fiction. Likewise, much of this imagery
is based on industrial models and is very mechanistic in nature, even though
nanotechnology research is at a scale where cogs, gears, cables, levers and
assembly lines as functional components appear to be highly unlikely. However,
images of mechanistic nanobots proliferate in venture capital circles, popular
culture, and even in the scientific arena, and tend to dominate discourse
around the possibilities of nanotechnology. The authors put forward that this
new science is ultimately about a shift in our perception of reality from a
purely visual culture to one based on sensing and connectivity.
Micromegas, a far better
observer than his dwarf, could clearly see that the atoms were talking to one
another; he drew the attention of his companion, who, ashamed at being mistaken
in the matter of procreation, was now very reluctant to credit such a species
with the power to communicate. (Voltaire,
1729 pg. 24)
Introduction
Nanotechnology is more a new science than technology, and the industry
being constructed around it, predictably uses old ideas and imagery. During its
current rise to prominence, a strange propagandist “nanometer” has emerged in
our midst without being clearly realized by any of the participants. It is
layered with often highly unlikely ideas of nanotech products that range from
molecular sensors in underwear, smart washing machines that know how dirty the
clothes are, to artificial red blood cells and nanobots that repair our bodies,
all the way up to evil swarms of planet-devouring molecular machines.
Sensation-based media happily propagates this powerful and misleading cocktail
combining scientific data, graphically intense visualizations together with
science fiction artwork. In the past few years, mixed up nanomemes have
emerged, where the differences between science fiction novels, front cover
stories and images of reputable journals such as Science or Nature
are becoming differentiated by the proportion of fiction to fact rather than
straight factual content.
Venture
capitalists, the military, governments around the world as well as educational
institutions seduced by this syndrome are portraying nanotech as the savior of
our rapidly declining economies and outdated military systems. Dovetailing on
the recent frenzied exponential rise and fall of information technologies, and
also to a degree by biotechnology, the need for a new cure-all has been
identified.
Two terms
often used interdependently are nanoscience and nanotechnology. Surprisingly,
the term nanotechnology predates nanoscience. This is because the dreams of a
new technology were proposed before the actual scientific research specifically
aimed at producing the technology existed. The term nanotechnology, in its short
lifetime, has attracted a variety of interpretation, and there is little
agreement, even among those who are engaged in it, as to what it actually is. Typically, it is
described as a science that is concerned with control of matter at the scale of
atoms and molecules. Nano is Greek for dwarf and a nanometer (nm) is
one billionth of a meter, written in scientific notation as 1 x 10-9
m. Historically, the word nanotechnology was first proposed in the early
seventies by a Japanese engineer, Norio Taniguchi, implying a new technology
that went beyond controlling materials and engineering on the micrometer scale
that dominated the 20th Century. [1]
One thing
is certain however – as soon as we confront the scale that nanotechnology works
within, our minds short circuit. The scale becomes too abstract in relation to
human experience. Consequently, any intellectual connection to the nanoscale
becomes extremely difficult. Scientists have tried to explain this disparity by
comparing the nanometer to the thickness of a human hair: the average thickness
of a human hair is ~5 x 10-5m, which is (50,000) nm. Or, the little
fingernail: around 1 cm across, which is equal ten million nanometers.
Recently, Nobel Laureate Sir Harry Kroto described the nanometer by comparing the
size of a human head to that of the planet earth -- a nanometer would be the
size of a human head in relation to the size of the planet if the planet were
the size of the human head. [2] But, even that is difficult to intuitively
grasp or visualize. What type of perceptual shift in our minds has to take
place to comprehend the work that nano science is attempting and what would be
the repercussions of such a shift? And, how does working on this level
influence the way scientists think who engage this work? In our opinion, media
artists, nano-scientists and humanists need to join forces together and
envision such possibilities. [3]
On another
level, as a metric, the nanometer itself does not do justice in describing
nanotechnology, but is rather the starting point of understanding
complexity. Even the concept of precise
fabrication at the ultimate limits of matter does nanotechnology injustice
because it implies an industrial engineering model. When working on this kind
of scale, we immediately reach the limits of rational human experience, and the
imaginary takes over. Researchers, science fiction writers and Luddites alike
have gone into overdrive with the fantasies associated with the world driven by
nanotechnology. One prevalent fear is mind control, while the dream is, as always,
of immortality and power.
By some
mysterious juxtaposition of events, the beginning of the 21st
century is symbolized by the decoding of the genome, fears of distributed
terrorist cells and nanotechnology as the big promise of total control of
matter from the atom all the way up living systems. In the last ten years
alone, over 455 companies based on nanotechnology have been formed in Europe,
US and Japan, 271 major universities are involved in nanotech research and 95
investment companies are focusing on this new science. Over 4 billion dollars
has been invested globally in nanoscience in 2001 and the bar is being raised.
[4]. But, unlike infotech and to a degree, biotech, nanotech is very much in
its infancy of development and principally in the research phase. Perhaps this
is what makes it so attractive to such a varied audience – the field is wide
open for visionaries and opportunists alike, representing new uncharted
territory resembling the early stages of space exploration of the 20th
century and mission oriented approaches to science and technology. Indeed, NASA
foresees this potentially disruptive technology as being instrumental in
exploring space to answer such questions, as “Are we alone in this universe?”
[5]
Although
nanotechnology is used widely to refer to something very tiny, this new science
will eventually revolutionize and impact every single aspect of our lives. It
will do this on all scales all the way up from the atom to the planet earth and
beyond. The very modus operandi of science is already changing under its
influence. Nanoscience not only requires input from practically every
scientific discipline, but it also needs direct and intense collaboration with
the humanities and the arts. It is highly probable that this new technology
will turn the world, as we know it, upside down, from the bottom up.
Richard
Feynman is often credited as the person who initiated the conceptual
underpinnings of nano technology, before the term was coined. Although many physicists
who were working in the quantum realm arrived at perhaps similar conclusions,
his lecture, “There is Plenty of Room at the Bottom, ”in 1959, is used as a
historical marker for the conceptualization of nanoscience and technology.
Indeed, it is interesting to note that this was not an invention per se, but
more a shift of focus or attention generated by a flamboyant personality that
is interpreted to initiate the advent of nanotechnology. [6]
Much of
Feynman’s visions really took hold in the early eighties when nano science and
technology truly took off. In 1981, Heinrich Rohrer and Gerd Binning, at IBM
Zurich research laboratories, invented the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM),
which for the first time “looked” at the topography of atoms that cannot be
seen. (Binning) With this invention, the age of the immaterial was truly
inaugurated. Not much later, in 1984, a molecule was discovered by Sir Harry
Kroto, Richard Smalley and Robert Curl that truly got the ball rolling.
Buckminsterfullerene named after Buckminster Fuller, an architect, engineer,
philosopher whose dome structures employed geometries found in natural
structures. (Applewhite) Not coincidentally, the IBM PC was taking center stage
and causing a true revolution in arts and sciences alike. In a short period of
history, many new things appeared, creating a perfect environment for a natural
symbiosis between science, technology and art. Another decade would pass before
people occupying these creative worlds would expand their perceptual field to
include each other’s points of views. Indeed, the surge of this expansion
happened from a genuine need to embrace and cross-polinate research and
development between science, technology and art.
New Vision: the STM – a symbol
of the shift from visual to tactile perception
Up until the mid-nineteen
eighties, scientists viewed matter, atoms, molecules, and solids using various
types of microscopes or in abstract space (Fourier Space). The wide spread use of optical microscopes
had begun in the 17th Century, enabling people like Galileo to
investigate matter through magnification by factors of hundreds. These
microscopes relied on lenses and the properties of light as a wave. Waves were
manipulated by lenses to magnify and create an image in the viewer’s eye,
providing information on how light is reflected or transmitted through an
object. [7]
Typically,
human perception of a microscope is a tube-like structure through which one
looks and sees reality magnified. In a deeper philosophical sense, while being
strictly scientific, the concept of “seeing” is illusory. Nevertheless, when
one looks through a microscope at a butterfly’s wings, it is difficult to
separate ones’ conscious mind and its interpretation from the information
transmitted by ones’ eyes. The eye itself contains a small part of the brain
that already preprocesses the information received as light particles, or
waves. As the magnifying power of the
microscope increased, the average person looking through the lenses maintains
his or her illusion of seeing a reality, and interprets the image in terms of
common human experience related to the scale in which one normally observes the
world.
The
Scanning Tunneling Microscope [8] represents a paradigm shift from seeing,
in the sense of viewing, to tactile sensing -- recording shape by feeling, much
like a blind man reading Braille. The operation of a STM is based on a quantum
electron tunneling current, felt by a sharp tip in proximity to a surface at a
distance of approximately one nanometer. The tip is mounted on a three
dimensional actuator like a finger as shown schematically in Figure. 1. This
sensing is
Figure 1. Principle of a scanning
tunneling microscope uses a local probe: The gentle touch of a nanofinger is
shown in (a) where if the human finger was shrunk by about ten millions times
it would be able to feel atoms represented here by spheres 1 cm in diameter. If
the interaction between tip and sample decays sufficiently rapidly on the
atomic scale, only the two atoms that are closest to each other are able to
‘‘feel’’ each other as shown in (b) where the human finger is replaced by an
atomically sharp tip. Binnig and Rohrer (1999) inspired this explanation of the
STM.
recorded as the tip is
mechanically rastered across the surface producing contours of constant sensing
(in the case of STM this requires maintaining a constant tunneling current).
The resulting information acquired is then displayed as an image of the surface
topography. [fig. 2] Through images constructed from feeling atoms with an STM,
an unconscious connection to the atomic world quickly becomes automatic to
researchers who spend long periods of time in front of their STMs. This
inescapable reaction is much like driving a car – hand, foot, eye, and machine
coordination becomes automated. Similarly, the tactile sensing instrument soon
became a tool to manipulate the atomic world by purposefully moving around
atoms and molecules and recording the effect which itself enabled exploration
of interesting new physical and chemical processes on an molecule –by- molecule
basis. [9] [figure 3]
In
science, commonly agreed human perceptions are constantly in question. Indeed,
as the power of the 20th Century microscopes increased, the images
recorded progressively reflected not only patterns of waves determined by
physical object form, but also how the light waves scatter and interfere with
each other. The butterfly's blue wings no longer have color -- one finds the
color to be an illusion - a beautiful illusion – where form, shape and periodic
patterns on the nanoscale manipulate light waves to provide us with the
illusion of seeing blue. (Ghiradella) As the magnification increases, we can no
longer rely on our common human perception.
Rather we see how, in this case, nature has carefully duped us -- how
through some magnificent evolutionary process, she has generated what is called
nanophotonics. (Yablonovitch) Nanophotonics is a way to manipulate light
through shapes, not mirrors. Indeed, by just changing the physical structure of
matter on the nanoscale, we can produce a mirror, a mirror that is perfect; a mirror
that some time in the future, through voice command, will switch to become a
window. As we increase magnification into the truly invisible realm, we change
our perception to view the world around us as an abstraction, a pattern of
light waves. We apply mathematical principles based on fundamental rules for
the way light intensifies with itself and object form. From this analysis comes
an interpretation, perhaps as a mathematical reconstruction of reality.
Figure 2. The STM records images
of surfaces and molecules as a two dimensional data set of heights. Here an
ordered array of molecules called hexa-butyl decacyclene, each around 1
nanometer is size were recorded by the STM. The resulting data were then
plotted as a gray scale image representing the apparent height of the
molecules. Each molecule is represented as six lobes in a distinct hexagonal
pattern with a dark central portion. Interestingly this height maps does not
represent the real height of the atoms but rather the probability of parts of
the molecule to convey electrons by quantum tunneling to the tip. The casual
observer tends to see the pattern as representing the shape of the molecule.
(Gimzewski et al; unpublished data)
Both
nanotechnology and media arts, by their very nature, have a common ground in
addressing the issues of manipulation, particularly sensory perception,
questioning our reaction, changing the way we think. They are complementary,
and the issues that are raised start to spill over into fundamental problems of
the limits of psychology, anthropology, biology and so on. It is as if the
doors of perception have suddenly opened and the microscope’s imperfection of
truly representing object form forces us to question our traditional (Western)
values of reality.
Magnification – On the edge of reality
Scientists progressively turned up
the magnification, but no matter how good the glass lenses were, how precise
the brass tubes and screws were, at around x10, 000, the image goes fuzzier
until, at x100, 000, the image is basically blank. This is called “the Raleigh
limit”, which says you cannot see anything with using a wave that is smaller
than half the size of the wave. In other words, this light wave has a size just
like an ocean wave has the distance between its crests. The length of the wave
is the feature that limits what we “see” which has a limit when we use regular
light of two hundred nanometers. It is already twice the size of a wire in a
Pentium IV, or a few hundred times thinner than a hair -- it is back to the
metric. To get higher magnification, scientists used shorter waves and even the
wave properties of electrons. Nevertheless, despite the progress, the high
energies and conditions required to make these higher resolution images started
to destroy the very objects they wanted to “see”. In effect, they ended up
looking at matter using something like a focused blowtorch in a vacuum.
Figure 3. View of a Scanning
Tunneling Microscope (STM) at the PICO lab of one of the authors (Gimzewski) at
UCLA.
During the
early eighties, a dramatic moment happened in microscopy that has led to the
rapid growth of nanoscience. It was a simple idea that put the whole concept of
lenses into disarray. An IBM team, Henrich Rohrer, Gerd Binning, Christoph
Gerber and Eddie Weibel were working on finding pinhole defects in nanometer
thin oxide layers that acted as barriers for quantum tunneling for what was
known as the Josephson project. Pinholes as tiny as a nanometer shorted out the
tunneling process. These were difficult to characterize using traditional
microscopes, and the researchers used a tiny needle to contact the oxide layer
to probe the electrical properties of the film.
Figure 4. Floating in an aliquot of laboratory test fluid,
these hypothetical early medical nanorobots are testing their ability to find and
grasp passing virus particles. Courtesy of Jeff Johnson, 2001. Copyright
2003 Hybrid Medical Animation.
Necessity
as the mother of invention promulgated the researchers to build a machine where
the little needle could be moved across the surface of the oxide film and
thereby seek out the pinholes. Thinking about how the new invention worked, led
to an important realization scribbled on a lab book. By using electron tunneling as a probe, they realized that mainly
the last atom on the needle (the closest on the surface) really sensed the
local properties. The needle moving across the surface created a topographic
representation, and a few back-of-the-envelope calculations indicated even
single atoms could be resolved. What
they realized was a major paradigm shift -- rather than using lenses and waves,
they were recording by feeling. By 2003, a whole range of microscopes based on
tactile sensing had been developed, and many companies were established to
manufacture machines that are used by microelectronics and data storage
industries. Worldwide sales of these machines are in the range of a billion
dollars.
The new
tactile techniques opened up a radically new approach to microscopy enabling
real local properties to be imaged and mapped. For instance, ultra
high-resolution images of local magnetism like bits of north and south directed
domains could be obtained with magnetic tips.
If friction was an issue, images of local friction as it scanned the
surface could be mapped. This opened up a new world, a world never really seen
before on those terms – the nanoworld. Even bigger consequences of “touching”
rather than looking were also realized.
The
environment in which once could image at really high resolving power, with the wave
microscopes was limited to a vacuum so that biological objects were dead and
perturbed from their natural state. This was a major drawback that limited the
interpretation of microscope images of biological samples. The new tactile
microscopes were not subject to such limitations. Consequently, it was possible
to image in vivo what is under physiological conditions on live specimens. It was possible to image the electrodes of
batteries as they worked in their acidic environment. Our windows on the
nanoworld looked not at parts of systems, but really at operating fully
functional systems, allowing their complexity to be “seen” and measured all the
way up from the nanoscale of individual atoms and molecules.
Through
the paradigm shift in microscopy, the tactile probes which were now being
called scanned probe microscopies (SPM) opened up yet one more feature, which
had been the “Holy Grail” of a mad dream. The idea to manipulate and move
single atoms and molecules in a controlled manner, up until the mid nineteen
eighties, was something outside of general scientific plausibility. In fact, the
famous scientist Erwin Schrödinger wrote that we would never experiment with
just one electron, atom, or molecule. (1952, pg. 233) This view, like concepts
of statistical mechanics which viewed matter as a collective property of atoms
and molecules, required a rebel to question its almost religious doctrine.
Eight years later, Richard P. Feynman told us that there are no physical
limitations to arranging atoms the way we want, but he was pretty alone when he
said it (1960, pg. 22).
The Mechanist View: Molecular Nanobots
He was living like an engineer in a
mechanical world. No wonder he had become dry as a stone.
- Simone de Beauvoir, The
Mandarins
The invention of clocks is
commonly accepted as the beginning of our move away from natural cycles. The Benedictine
monks invented the clock to regulate the time of devotional prayers, and it was
not long before it was incorporated in the town hall to be used by shops and
merchants. But the mechanical age does not take full hold on the Western
tradition until the mid 1600s, with the Industrial revolution. Thomas Hobbes in
1651 reduced the body to mere mechanical parts, followed by Descartes who
placed humans outside of nature, and firmly established the dualism that is
still very strong in our society and in the world of science in p`articular. To
Descartes, the universe functioned as a giant machine, according to
mathematical laws that can be unraveled and controlled. Everything external to
the human is there for the human to use and manipulate. This philosophical
stance was put to action in science by Newton who extended the machine analogy
to all laws of nature. Newtonian physics describes everything from the motion
of stars to atomic particles as part of the mechanical structure. Newtonians
held that by discovering these laws, men prove their superiority and affirm
their natural right to dominate all of matter in nature. During this same time,
an English philosopher and statesman Roger Bacon, argued (in support of
science) that the purpose of the mechanical arts was to yield profit and
societies were formed that funded scientific ventures focused on solving
navigational and military problems. There is much more that could be said about
the political and economic climate of Europe at this time and how this story
has led us to the world we face today, but for the purpose of this paper we
will only allude to this connection. Suffice it to say that the clock speeds of
computers and the magnification levels of microscopy today far exceed the
capabilities of the human biological system, and that clearly we have reached
the limit of the mechanical age. This has led some to believe that machines are
superior to humans, and that robots would take over the world.
The term robot, as is well known, was first used
in a science fiction book entitled Valka s Mloky (War with the
Newts), and a play, titled R.U.R (Rozuma Univerzalni Roboti) [rozum means
wisdom] (Rozum's Universal Robots), written by Karel Capek in 1920. Capek coined the word robot from a Czech
word, robota, meaning drudgery, or compulsory labor. This idea of the robot was assimilated into the science world and
developed to the point where robots rove the terrain of Mars and vacuum homes.
Perhaps the most controversial persona in the robotic sciences is Hans Moravec,
whose visions no doubt compete with science fictions writers. Moravec, a
professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, envisions a
not-too-distant future in which robots of superhuman intelligence, independent
of their human creators, colonize the planets in outer space. He
projects that in the next 40 years of robot development, there will be a rise
of super-intelligent, creative, emotionally complex cyber-beings, and the end
of human labor. He predicts an absolutely mechanistic future trajectory in
which robot corporations will reside in outer space and imagines planet-size
robots that cruise the solar system looking for smaller bots to assimilate.
Eventually every atom in the entire galaxy would be transformed into robotic
space, with a full-scale simulation of human civilization running as a
subroutine as depicted in the 1999 movie – the Matrix.
These
mechanistic ideas are not in the realm of the physical only, but have equally
been distributed by the cyber realm in the version of a robot. ‘Bot’, an
abbreviation for robot, came into use with the development of autonomous
software programs that typically run in the background on the Internet. The
first popular version of bots was used in MUDs and MOOs, online social spaces
where fact and fiction commonly blur. [10] Many different types of bots
emerged, depending on the focus of the program – adbot, knowbot, pokerbot,
searchbot, smartbot, spambot, to name a few. It is this train of thought from
which the idea of a ‘nanobot’ emerged -- commonly visualized as derivatives of robots on a nanoscale.
In the
introduction to Engines of Creation (1986), Drexler turns to a
dictionary definition of a machine as “any system, usually of rigid bodies,
formed and connected to alter, transmit, and direct applied forces in
predetermined manner to accomplish a specific objective, such as the
performance of useful work,” and asserts that molecular machines fit this
definition quite well. Throughout the book, natural systems are interpreted as
machines operating to Newtonian principles, and the nanomeme is firmly
established in an mechanical engineering world-view. Proteins, Ribosomes, RNA,
DNA and viruses are all part of a grand machine. In 1992, Drexler, who is an
engineer by degree, went beyond predicting a general emergence of
nanotechnology, wrote another book- Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery,
Manufacturing and Computation- detailing
technical particulars. Drexler's drawings of nanothings tend to resemble
molecule-sized versions of mechanical counterpoints that have been around since
the Industrial Revolution: gears, cogs, levers, and pistons. (Gao) If these
versions of nanomachines will some day materialize, his engineer's
calculations, which hold true in the world most people comprehend, will
probably not be of much use in the molecular realm. However, futurist vision includes self-assembled armies of tiny
robots that build greater armies of tinier robots, ad infinitum.
The
creation of this nanomeme that is currently in circulation has certainly been
promulgated by Drexler’s work and later by the Foresight Institute Inc., a
futurist organization based in Palo Alto. The concept of nanotechnology in the
general public stems in part, from the media’s habitual reliance on the
promotions and prognostications of Drexler and his Foresight Institute. The
mechanistic nanomeme has taken on the sheen of authority, as one press clipping
breeds another. Indeed, the nanomeme is similar the self-replication of the
nanobots themselves. Many articles have an inspired tableaux of molecule-sized
robots "grabbing atoms one by one" and then replicating armies of
themselves. The Foresight Institute website asserts a lot of things, such as-
within the foreseeable future, there will be a “nanobox” that manufactures
items such as cell phones from a "toner" composed of
"electrically conductive molecules"- and so on. In the long run, we
will turn dirt into food, ending world hunger, which is another theme that
propagated around some nanotechnology enthusiasts who believe it will give
humans the power of telepathy. [11]
During the 1950’s and 60’s strategic thinking using
“systems analysis” emerged, pioneered by the RAND corporation, a military
research and development institution. This was happening at the same time that
the greatest discovery in biology occurred—the physical structure of the DNA.
Watson and Crick explicitly described DNA in computer terms as the genetic
“code,” comparing the egg cell to a computer tape. This school of thought perpetuated in even more extreme terms by
proponents of Artificial Life such as Chris Langton, who spoke of separating
the “informational content” of life from its “material substrate.” (Langton,
1989) As Richard Coyne noted:
“Information is thought to be the essence of life, as in the DNA code. To record
and break the code is to have mastery over life.” (Coyne, 1995. pg. 80)
In 1995, the Rand Corp. published
a study on the potential of nanotechnology. (Anton) The Rand paper relied
heavily on the writings of Drexler and the Foresight Institute. The authors
concluded that nanotechnology would best be used to take advantage of
indigenous resources found on asteroids, comets, or planets for mining;
defending Earth against impacts; or tools to assist extensive colonization of
the solar system on a reasonable time scale. Interestingly, ending wars, hunger
or solving the energy crisis gets no mention at all.
Weaving Fact and Fiction into Blur
If you want to think of it that way,
a human being is actually a giant swarm. Or more precisely, it’s a swarm of
swarms, because each organ – blood, liver, and kidneys – is a separate swarm.
What we refer to as “body” is really a combination of all these organ swarms.
We think of our bodies as solid, but that’s only because we can’t see what is
going on at the cellular level. If you could enlarge the human body, blow it up
to a vast size, you would see that it is literally nothing but a swirling mass
of cells and atoms, clustered together into smaller cells and atoms.
(Chrichton, pg. 260)
Michael Crichton’s recent novel, Prey, provides an excellent
example of contemporary science fiction that is based on current science. As an acclaimed author of best-selling
novels that are almost always converted into blockbuster movies, there is no
doubt that he influences the collective imaginary. Prey was almost immediately
on the New York Times top five best seller list, and remained there for weeks.
Rights for a movie were bought by twentieth Century Fox before the book was
completed and in
September 2002, the author signed an partnership agreement with SEGA to develop
a game scheduled to be released in 2004. Crichton takes four separate fields,
distributed processing for networked computing, nanotechnology or, molecular
manufacturing, biotechnology and the behavioral science of socially organized
insect communities, such as bees and ants. By tying in the evolution process,
he comes up with a very plausible scenario and some possible "Particle
Swarm Organization" applications. As he says in his foreword:
"Sometime in the twenty-first century, our self-deluded recklessness will
collide with our growing technological power."
Crichton includes in his novel many
references to current histories and skillfully weaves them into the story,
blurring fact and fiction. For instance, the main character who narrates the
story describes how scientists (Don Eigler and co-workers) at IBM repositioned
Xenon atoms with an STM tip to form the letters of the company logo. (Eigler,
1990) In his narrative, he also comments that this was more of a stunt than anything
else, and that it would take much more to create new technology. The
description of the building molecular assemblers in the book is directly
inspired by Drexler’s visions of nanobots. After laying down a
foundation based on
actual events, the author proceeds to tell the story of a company that succeeds
in building molecular assemblers that eventually go out of control.
After referencing events, people and
companies many of us are familiar with, we are taken on a horror ride that
instills a real fear of nanotechnology. This and many other works of
science fiction that have appeared in the movies, on TV programs, books and PC
games reflect the concept of nanotechnology as “more” than science or hard
technology. It has actually evolved
into a culture and art form in its own right. Even more than cyborgs, AI or
robots, nanotechnology truly traverses science and art as the dream of the
future. This novel will first be read by millions, then will be watched in
movies and played in games, until it finally becomes another part of the
collective nano-consciousness.
It is also notable that scientists
have honored Crichton by actually naming a new species of dinosaur after him.
Scientists at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleo-anthropology, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
named a
new ankylosaurus species “Crichtonsaurus bohlini” in honor of Crichton and
Birger Bohlin, a Swedish paleontologist. The three-yard-long fossil of an
armor-plated vegetarian, discovered in northeast Liaoning Province, is
estimated to date from 90 million to 100 million years ago. (Chrichton, 2002)
Dark Visions
In 1739, Voltaire wrote a
diminutive science fiction about microbes, men and beings from outer space. The
story was entitled Micromegas (from the Greek small/great) was written while he
was living at a humanist retreat dedicated to the science of Newton and the
philosophy of Locke. The philosophers are visited by aliens who are introduced
to a world that is hugely affected by the new discovery of microscopy. The
microscope in Voltaire’s book, similar to the STM today, challenged accepted
reasoning and belief systems. Amazingly, in this story, we have also fiction
based on the science of its day, but, set in a time plagued by wars. Specifically, during the writing of
Micromegas, the Russo/Austrian – Turkish war was underway (1736-39), and the
aliens are told that these new discoveries about matter will be used for evil,
for that is what men do: “We have more than enough matter to do plenty of evil,
if evil comes from matter; and too much of evil, if evil comes from the spirit.
For instance, do you realize that as I speak a hundred thousand lunatics of our
species, wearing helmets, are busy killing and being killed by a hundred
thousand other animals in turbans, and that everywhere on Earth this is how we
have carried on since time immemorial?” (Voltaire, pg. 30)
Public
conceptions of nanotechnology and the blurring of fact and fiction seem to go
hand-in-hand more than in any other science.
As nanoscience is being established, it is clear that the imagination is
there to roam the many dark visions connected to the military’s interest in
nanotech, and soon we are also in the midst of a new type of “war” that will
not only require new tactics, but also new technologies. Almost immediately
after the 9/11 World Trade Center attack, there were numerous scares of the use
of anthrax, with many news reports speculating on the use of biological
weapons.
Anticipating
such a scenario, the US Army is also collaborating
with MIT, having recently promised the university $50 million for a new
Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN). The aim is to improve soldiers'
protection and their ability to survive using
new tiny technologies to detect threats, and automatically treat some medical
conditions. The Army isn't the only branch of the military actively developing
smart textiles. The US Navy funded a project in 1996 that eventually turned
into the Smart Shirt, a product commercialized by SensaTex Inc. in Atlanta,
with technology from Georgia Tech Research Corp. The T-shirt functions like a
computer, with optical and conductive fibers integrated into the garment. It
can monitor vital signs, such as heart rate and breathing of wearers, and will
most likely be first put to use by law enforcement officers and military personnel. (Kary)
From Nanobots to Nanobods
Wisdom
requires a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle,
the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful. (Schumacher, 1973. pg. 27.)
Does it really make sense to
extend the idea of a mechanical robot to software program bots and apply a
Newtonian/ industrial-age approach to work on the molecular level? More and
more researchers working on this scale are looking closely at natural
biological systems for clues and inspiration. In this vision of bio-inspired
nanotechnology, the body and mind shift to another paradigm and certainly
appear much more appropriate to the new century we have just entered.
Schumacher, an economist, in Small
is Beautiful, maintains that the prevalent pursuit of profit and progress,
which promotes giant organizations and increased specialization, has in fact
resulted in gross economic inefficiency, environmental pollution, and inhumane
working conditions. With the emphasis on “person not product”, he points the
way to a world in which capital serves people instead of people serving
capital. Around the same time, Buckminster Fuller, an engineer, moved away from
the mechanistic view, by studying carefully natural systems (that also appeared
on the molecular scale with the later discovery of the c60 molecule). (Fuller,
1975) Recently, Smalley, one of the Nobel Laureates who discovered
buckminsterfullerene, responded to the well-established nanomenes by pointing
out that the main problem with the world at the moment needs to be addressed is
the energy crisis. He stopped short of connecting nanotech to this problem, but
certainly has made a significant
attempt to shift the discourse of the current hype. [12]
With the increasing
computing power, research of the invisible realm increased at an accelerated
pace at the end of the 20th Century. In addition to the decoding of
the human genome and the discovery of a new form of carbon, new type of life is also being found.
One such recently discovered creature does not fit into any previous category
of life was found in an undersea vent north of Iceland. These creatures,
formally known as Nanoarchaeum equitans, may represent an entirely new grouping
within Archaea, the most mysterious of life's three domains. Thy are small spheres attached
to other organisms and are so genetically strange and so tiny--smaller than a
grain of sand and about the width of four human hairs--that they were invisible
to traditional ecological survey methods. Even the ultimate molecular ecology
methods could not detect these new microbes because they are so different from
everything known so far. Karl Stetter, a professor of microbiology at the
University of Regensburg in Germany who led the discovery team, and his
colleagues detected the creatures only after growing them in hot, oxygen-free
and high-pressure conditions to simulate their natural hostile environments.
The DNA of the "nano-sized hyperthermophilic archaeon" is interesting
because it is so minimal -- containing just 500 kilobases. The genome is among
the smallest known to date. There are 6 million kilobases for humans and 9
million for corn. (The others are eukaryotes--organisms with nucleated cells
like people, plants and fungi--and bacteria.) (Huber, 2002. pg. 63)
We should take a closer look at
ourselves as magnificent nano-beings, connected and part of an entire living
body of this Earth and beyond for inspiration, not to machines of the past.
DNA, proteins, and cells of all sorts already function at nanoscale in animals
and plants, and they work at normal temperatures. In our view, the nanobots of the past with their mechanical
structures, batteries, motors and so on are evolving into ‘nanobods’ – a closer
reflection of our human condition in which living nanoscale chemical-mechanical
elements are connected in ever increasing complexity along the principle of
cells, the smallest general unit of life capable of autonomous replication.
Conclusion -- nano fact &
fiction: being in between
Nanotechnology works at a scale where biotech,
chemistry, physics, electrical and mechanical engineering converge, and thus has real
potential to impact every aspect of our lives. We will see an
impact on everything from our social systems to buildings, furniture, clothes,
medicine, bodies and minds. But most of all, where we believe it will make a
fundamental shift is in our conscious and unconscious minds.
As the
perception of reality shifts to the collective level, we will find ourselves in
an entirely new world, with very different values and motivations.
However, we do acknowledge that any radical
proposition, with such enormous and global implications, will
undoubtedly have to face
fierce opposition from those who have so much invested in the old,
mechanistic, world-view. We have witnessed, in the 20th century, many great
innovations have been squashed by corporate, industrial and national interests –
transportation and energy being at the top of the list. It appears to us that
resistance to a technology that will change fundamentally the way humans think, may be much greater, given
the usual time period of 20-50 years it takes for technology to
penetrate into
the general society. We are about to
witness some great ideological struggles, much greater than what we have seen
in past centuries. Indeed, the stage has already been set for this new era with
the basic moral and rights to own one’s genetic code, exemplified by the
patenting of genes and the cloning of human beings.
In nanotechnology, the
blurring of fact and fiction is very much part of the developing narrative in
the construction of a new science and industry. This blurring
is not necessarily negative and has a potential to connect media arts,
literature and science in many new and interesting ways. Art, literature and science
working together is certainly a powerful combination that should be nurtured in
education on all levels. As common technologies are being used in arts,
sciences and practically all disciplines, borders are becoming
increasingly indiscernible, and we have to be more conscious than ever of the metaphors
being generated. The barriers between disciplines and
people in them are more or less psychological. Currently, the
vast
majority of stories and imagery being circulated in the public realm are based
on 20th century thinking that is largely centered on
machines.
Nanoscale science and media art are powerful synergies that can promulgate the
21st
century emergence of a new 3rd culture, embracing
biologically
inspired shifts, new aesthetics and definitions.
Notes
[1] Norio Taniguchi of Tokyo
science University first defined nanotechnology in 1974 (N. Taniguchi, "On
the Basic Concept of 'NanoTechnology'," Proc. Intl. Conf. Prod. Eng.
Tokyo, Part II, Japan Society of Precision Engineering, 1974).
[2] Kroto, H. Nanoeterscale Architecture. IN The proceedings of The Second International Symposium on
Nanoarchitectonics Using Suprainterationcs (NASI2), (2002) 26-28, March.
University of California, Los Angeles.
[3] To address this need, together with
Katherine Hayles, the authors have joined forces and created SINAPSE, a
non-center that is devoted to promoting collaborations of creative thinkers in
arts, sciences and humanities. In November, 2002, together with UC DARNET
(Digital Arts Research Network), SINAPSE co-sponsored a conference entitled
“From Networks to Nanosystems” that was attended by media artists connected to
the CAiiA-STAR programme and scientists from UCLA. See: http://sinapse.arts.ucla.edu; Martin,
S. (2002) Towards a Collaborative
Culture. UCLA Arts, 6, pp. 3-5.
[4] Taylor, J.M. (2002) New Dimensions
for Manufacturing: A UK Strategy for Nanotechnology Department of Trade and
Industry, London.; Bainbridge, M.C.
Roco ,W.S. ed (2002) Converging Technologies for Improving Human
Performances: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and
Cognitive Science. NSF/DOC sponsored report, Arlington, VA., June.; Tolles,
W.M. (1994) Nanoscience and
Nanotechnology in Europe. Navel Research Laboratory, NRL/FR1003-94-9755,
30, December.; Holister, P. Harper, T.E. (2002) The Nanotechnology Opportunity
Report. CMP Cientificia, No. 1
and 2, March.
[5] NASA Ames' have advanced computational molecular nanotechnology
capabilities to design and computationally test atomically precise electronic,
mechanical and other components and work
with experimentalists to advance physical capabilities see: http://www.nas.nasa.gov/
Groups/SciTech/nano/index.html
[5] UCLA and NASA have partnered to
combine the latest advances in biology and engineering at the Institute for
Cell Mimetic Space Exploration (CMISE). CMISE
will identify, develop, promote, and commercialize nano-, bio-, and
information technologies for sensing, control, and integration of complex multilevel
natural and artificial systems. http://www.cmise.ucla.edu/
[6] Feynman was known to challenge
authority and caused consternation in his years with the Manhattan Project,
which developed the atomic bomb, by figuring out in his spare time how to pick
the locks on filing cabinets that contained classified information. Without
removing anything, he left taunting notes to let officials know that their
security system had been breached. In 1965, Feynman was awarded the Nobel
Prize, along with Shinichero Tomonaga of Japan and Julian Schwinger of Harvard
University. The three had worked independently on problems in the theory of
quantum electrodynamics, which describes how atoms produce radiation. He
reconstructed almost the whole of quantum mechanics and electrodynamics,
deriving a way to analyze atomic interactions through pictorial diagrams, a
method that is still used widely.
[7] For more information on the history
of microscopy, see: S. Bradbury (1968), The Microscope Past and Present,
London: Pergamon Press; E. Hunter (1993), Practical Electron Microscopy: a
Beginner’s Illustrated Guide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; P.D.
Brown, D. McMullan, T. Mulvey and K.C.A. Smith (1996), ‘On the origins of the
first commercial transmission and scanning electron microscopes in the UK’, Prc.
Royal Microscopical Society, 21/32 (1996), p. 161.
[8] For
more information on the STM see: Besenbacher, F. 1996) Scanning tunneling microscopy studies of
metal surfaces. Rep. Prog. Phys., 59, pp. 1737-1802; Stroscio,
J.A., Kaiser, M.J., ed (1993) Scanning
Tunneling Microspectroscopy. 27, San Diego, Academic Press, Inc.
[9] For more information on the
molecular manipulation using the STM, see: Crommie, M.F. Lutz, C.P. Eigler, D.M
(1993) Imaging Standing Waves in a two-dimentional electron gas. Nature,
363, p. 524.; Eigler, D.M. Schweizer, E.K.
(1990) Positioning Single Atoms with a Scanning Tunneling Microscope. Nature 344, p.524.; Eigler, D.M.
Lutz, C.P. Rudge, W.E. (1991) An Atomic Switch Realized with the
Scanning Tunneling Microscope. Nature 352, p.600. ; Gimzewski, J.
Joachim, C. (1999) Nanoscale Science of Single
Molecules Using Local Probes. Science 283(5408), 1683-1688.; Gimzewski,
J. (1997) Atoms Get a Big Push, or is That a Pull? Physic
World, November, pp. 27-28.; Cuberes, M.T. Schlittler, R.R. Gimzewski, J.K.
(1996) Room–Temperature Repositioning of Individual C60 Molecules at Cu
Steps: Operation of a Molecular Counting Device. Appl. Phys. Lett. 69(20), pp.
3016-3018.
[10] A MUD or a ‘Multi-User Dungeon’ is an
inventively structured social experience on the Internet, managed by a computer
program and often involving a loosely organized context or theme, such as a
rambling old castle with many rooms or a period in national history. MUDs
existed prior to the World Wide Web, accessible through telnet to a computer
that hosted the MUD. A MOO is an Object Oriented MUD, ie the programming
language allows you to create “objects” and follows the same principle. Today,
many MUDs and MOOs can be accessed through a Web site and are better known as
"3-D worlds.
[11] See: http://www.foresight.org/
[12] Professor Richard E. Smalley made
this statement at the 16th ANNUAL GLENN T. SEABORG SYMPOSIUM October 26,
2002 in a lecture, “Bandgap
Fluorescence from Buckytubes”
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