But for a lot of economic applications the important part is not the atomic precision but the self-replication — or, with an acknowledgement of agriculture and PCR — self-replication which can occur in the field without being inhibited by superior replicators aka pests and predators. Working clanking replicators you could drop into the desert to make solar power plants bloom, or onto the Moon to make a massive industrial base, could be quite transformative even if they were the size of a bulldozer — though they might need something like nanotech chambers for disassembling raw materials and making precision components.

The idea that nanotech will allow us to do things we cannot do now is where the new industries and economic growth will come from. This puts us in the situation analogous to 1900-1920 when we got electricity, motor cars, indoor plumbing, and the first appliances (radio, some kitchen appliances). Even in this case, the nanotech part of the cost equation is still the capital cost part. So, at most, we are in for a transformation comparable to 1900-1920, which was far more significant than anything we have experienced since.

I agree with you that you are not a “nanotech booster” in the sense that I intended. I also think that when we do get the real nanotech, that it will be based on biology, will be soft and squishy, and will do things that soft and squishy self-replicating systems are good at doing.

I still think we will have houses and buildings that self-assemble from seeds and that, in terms of its effect on the industry, will be simply seen as the next technology version of manufactured houses (think of factories that make houses, but have no people working in them).

I certainly do not buy into this “singularity” stuff. On the other hand, industrialization and electricity can be thought of as the first singularity. Biotech and nanotech will be the second singularity.

Philip, you’re right to detect my ambivalence about the distinction between “nanoscience” and “nanotechnology”. I wrote here about this; I think it presupposes a linear model of innovation which isn’t really tenable any more. If we look at one of the most high-profile commercial outcomes from UK nanoscience, Cambridge Display Technology, this emerged not from a systematic attempt to apply a piece of already existing science; instead it came from a fortuitous discovery in a laboratory doing fairly basic solid-state physics. But … the mind set they had (as far as I know or remember it) was that they were trying to make devices of some kind, even if they had no particular thought that these devices would have any commercial application. Likewise, I would suggest that your interest in mechanically controlled chemistry isn’t motivated by any thought that you are instantly going to spin out a company on the basis of it, but because the project is essentially about trying to control the nanoworld, rather than simply to understand it, it does have an intrinsic chance that it will turn out to be useful. You’re also quite right to notice the significance of my job title, but I’ll have to tell you the story behind that in person.

As for quantum mechanics, you’re quite right to point out that at a deep level it isn’t understood at all (and by implication the criticism of the scientific community for allowing that situation to persist). What I simply wanted to point out was that the quantum mysticism one sometimes reads (i.e. because things are small they are governed by quantum mechanics, therefore they are intrinsically mysterious and unpredictable, therefore they might be dangerous) doesn’t hold water.

Kurt, I don’t really recognize myself as much of a nanotechnology booster, at least by the extravagant standards of that profession. But if nanotechnology does have a big impact, I don’t think it will be so much by allowing us to do the things we do now better or more cheaply (important though those things will be at the level of individual companies and industries) but in allowing us to do things that we cannot do at all at the moment.

Consider that 5% of the GDP in the U.S. and E.U. is manufacturing capital cost. Even if we get Eric Drexler’s “molecular manufacturing”, the impact of this would be to reduce the capital cost of manufacturing from this 5% down to near 0. This means that the most extreme vision of nanotech yields a 5% one-shot productivity boost in the economies of the developed countries. Now we know that the developing world, especially China, have a far greater percentage of their GDPs in capital manufacturing costs, say around 15-20%. This is for the most extreme version of nanotech (Drexlerian assembler nanotech).

If Drexler’s version of nanotech is not possible (which I think is likely), then the most plausible scenario of nanotech development is some kind of “wet” nanotech, probably synthetic biology. In this case, the economic impact will be even less than that above.

True, many industries will be transformed. Growing houses from synthetic biological seeds will radically transform the building industry. Then again, it might not. Seed-based nanotech grown houses strike me as symply being the next technology version of manufactured houses, and most housing is still stick-built.

If my above reasoning is correct, it is likely that the socio-economic impact of full-blown nanotech will be no greater than that of IT/internet in the late 90’s. A brief bubble, followed by a new norm.

The impact in the developing world will be somewhat more significant.

Feel free to correct me if you think I’m wrong here.

Richard —

Thanks for posting this excellent article. As you suggest, it’s a useful synopsis of some of the key ideas that have arisen on the Soft Machines blog and, as such, is yet another very useful resource on your site to which I can point A-level and undergraduate students interested in nanotechnology. However, it also makes some very thought-provoking assertions.

You state that the distinctive output of nanotechnology is the production and characterisation of some kind of device, rather than the kind of furthering of fundamental understanding that we would expect from a classical discipline such as physics or chemistry .

From this it appears that you draw a strong distinction between nanotechnology and nanoscience – am I correct in assuming this? Or is it rather that you are suggesting that fundamental nanoscience as a discipline doesn’t exist? You’ll see that I’ve hopped back on to my “fundamental vs applied science” soapbox (more on this in my other posts tonight!). However, given that EPSRC appointed a Strategic Advisor in Nanotechnology , this is perhaps more than a matter of simple semantics.

I think that I broadly agree with you in terms of Drexler’s contributions to nanotechnology. The quote from Eigler is very interesting (I hadn’t seen it before) and I think mirrors the opinions of a number of nanoscientists to whom I’ve spoken about Drexlerian nanotechnology. On the other hand, there are also a considerable number of nanoscientists in the physical sciences who, in my experience, have not given Drexler’s work a second thought and certainly have not read Nanosystems . The issue in many cases is not so much antipathy towards Drexler but apathy…

Nevertheless, in addition to giving Drexler credit for “deriving” an existence proof for nanotech based on cell biology, I think that he also deserves kudos for the idea at the core of his vision: atom-by-atom mechanochemistry. This is not to say that I’m “retracting” the many criticisms of molecular manufacturing I’ve put forward in the past on this blog (!) but, with the correct choice of materials system, there’s a lot of extremely interesting science to be done using mechanical force-driven chemistry at the atomic scale.

Finally, and on a minor point, I’d quibble with the suggestion that quantum mechanics is “very well understood” ! We can certainly do the mathematics, but as Lee Smolin points out in his controversial – but, I thought, excellent – “The Trouble with Physics” book, we’ve abandoned tricky philosophical questions related to the interpretation of quantum mechanics in favour of “going through the motions” of the mathematics/computations.

Phillip —

Our e-mail exchanges last year and earlier this year prompted me to collaborate with some colleagues in Ireland on DFT modelling of boron-doped diamondoid clusters. This yielded some very interesting, albeit preliminary, results. We need to repeat quite a lot of the work at higher levels of theory but when we write up the work for publication I’ll send you a preprint. Now if only we could do the accompanying experiment any time soon…

Martin —

I’m about to post some comments on the issue of “public interest” under this post . Thanks again for your offer of hosting a blog – it’s much appreciated. I’ve got a couple of grant proposals and papers to sort out over the next few months but perhaps after those are out of the way I might take you up on your offer!

Best wishes,

Philip

Thanks for posting this excellent article. As you suggest, it’s a useful synopsis of some of the key ideas that have arisen on the Soft Machines blog and, as such, is yet another very useful resource on your site to which I can point A-level and undergraduate students interested in nanotechnology. However, it also makes some very thought-provoking assertions.

You state that the distinctive output of nanotechnology is the production and characterisation of some kind of device, rather than the kind of furthering of fundamental understanding that we would expect from a classical discipline such as physics or chemistry .

From this it appears that you draw a strong distinction between nanotechnology and nanoscience – am I correct in assuming this? Or is it rather that you are suggesting that fundamental nanoscience as a discipline doesn’t exist? You’ll see that I’ve hopped back on to my “fundamental vs applied science” soapbox (more on this in my other posts tonight!). However, given that EPSRC appointed a Strategic Advisor in Nanotechnology , this is perhaps more than a matter of simple semantics.

I think that I broadly agree with you in terms of Drexler’s contributions to nanotechnology. The quote from Eigler is very interesting (I hadn’t seen it before) and I think mirrors the opinions of a number of nanoscientists to whom I’ve spoken about Drexlerian nanotechnology. On the other hand, there are also a considerable number of nanoscientists in the physical sciences who, in my experience, have not given Drexler’s work a second thought and certainly have not read Nanosystems . The issue in many cases is not so much antipathy towards Drexler but apathy…

Nevertheless, in addition to giving Drexler credit for “deriving” an existence proof for nanotech based on cell biology, I think that he also deserves kudos for the idea at the core of his vision: atom-by-atom mechanochemistry. This is not to say that I’m “retracting” the many criticisms of molecular manufacturing I’ve put forward in the past on this blog (!) but, with the correct choice of materials system, there’s a lot of extremely interesting science to be done using mechanical force-driven chemistry at the atomic scale.

Finally, and on a minor point, I’d quibble with the suggestion that quantum mechanics is “very well understood” ! We can certainly do the mathematics, but as Lee Smolin points out in his controversial – but, I thought, excellent – “The Trouble with Physics” book, we’ve abandoned tricky philosophical questions related to the interpretation of quantum mechanics in favour of “going through the motions” of the mathematics/computations.

Phillip —

Our e-mail exchanges last year and earlier this year prompted me to collaborate with some colleagues in Ireland on DFT modelling of boron-doped diamondoid clusters. This yielded some very interesting, albeit preliminary, results. We need to repeat quite a lot of the work at higher levels of theory but when we write up the work for publication I’ll send you a preprint. Now if only we could do the accompanying experiment any time soon…

Martin —

I’m about to post some comments on the issue of “public interest” under this post . Thanks again for your offer of hosting a blog – it’s much appreciated. I’ve got a couple of grant proposals and papers to sort out over the next few months but perhaps after those are out of the way I might take you up on your offer!

Best wishes,

Philip

Every time I here the MNT-meme I’ll mention the need for a DFT simulation of a Boron moeity deposited on diamond, in addition to the obvious need (ever since the STM was invented in 1981 and the AFM in 1991) for a proof-of-principle carbon moeity deposition on diamond.