The Speculist

What Color is Your Nano Goo?

Howard Lovy is looking for someone to settle a little bet for him:

We're told that true molecular manufacturing is impossible. That's what eminent scientists have told Congress, anyway, and that's the focus of many spirited debates among the nanorati. The National Science Foundation can't seem to make up its mind, labeling large-scale self-replication "very speculative, more like science fiction," yet also part of its vision for the future.

Do you think it's time to settle the bet?

I think somebody will oblige you on that one, Howard, perhaps sooner than any of us expect. I just hope that when it does happen, it happens here in the US or elsewhere in the west. My understanding is that China is funding the daylights out of nano-research, and they are apparently quite confident that molecular manufacturing is possible.

I don't want to seem alarmist. Lovy offers an excellent assessment of alarmist views of nanotechnology:

From the anti-Jewish blood libels of the Old World to the modern mythology of tainted Halloween candy in the New, public hysteria usually begins with the idea that unseen forces are conspiring to poison us or kill our children.

I agree that that particular hysteria is misplaced. Nanotech out of control is mostly a bogeyman. Nanotech in the wrong hands is a very real threat. It's not gray goo I'm worried about. It's Red goo.