Accelerating Future

For the second time, my subscribers show they are 1337.

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Perhaps you’ve heard of MEMS, microelectromechanical systems, a field being invested in heavily by governments and corporations. In MEMS, the components are usually between 10 and 100 microns in size. Using MEMS, you can build gear systems smaller than a dust mite. The military is looking into MEMS to build spy-bots the size of the smallest bugs.

Beyond MEMS there is NEMS, nanoelectromechanical systems, an area scientists and engineers are just beginning to investigate. NEMS are about a 1000 times smaller than MEMS, with components between 10 and 100 nanometers in size. With NEMS, you could build a complex machine the size of a red blood cell or smaller. Transhumanists hope to use NEMS to improve our health and expand our sensory and motor capabilities.

The Holy Grail of nanotechnology is designing a NEMS that can build other NEMS. This goal has been called molecular nanotechnology (MNT), and it is a topic of controversy within the nanotechnology community. Some futurists and scientists believe MNT is impossible, while others consider it very likely.

Here are some feasibility arguments for molecular nanotechnology:

1) We already have working examples of molecular nanotechnology: living things. Every organism depends on nanoscale assemblers called ribosomes to synthesize all their parts, including copies of the ribosomes themselves. Specialized organelles, like the Golgi apparatus, may process these proteins further. This is similar to an assembly line in a factory, where a series of tools perform different collaborative functions to achieve a predetermined outcome. Nanotechnologists seek to duplicate this scheme in an inorganic medium.

2) Positional placement of individual atoms has already been demonstrated numerous times. In 1999, researchers at Cornell University synthesized single molecules of iron carbonyl (FeCO) from iron and CO₂ precursors using an exceptionally precise STM. What is lacking here is not a proof of principle, but the need to miniaturize the manipulation apparatus and make it more reliable. This is primarily an engineering challenge, albeit a difficult one.

3) At the nanoscale, proteins tend to be floppy, while an inorganic material like diamond can be relatively rigid. In the 1992 book Nanosystems, nanotechnologist Eric Drexler offers numerous designs for a broad range of diamondoid nanoscale machine components, including motors, generators, pistons, rods, interlocking structures, gears, bearings, belt-and-roller systems, rachets, clutches, sorters, and many others. Drexler shows how these systems are physically feasible and could work at acceptable speeds without overheating. In the 16 years since its publication, no one has yet found a mathematical error in Nanosystems.

4) Mechanosynthesis — the synthesis of chemicals through mechanical action alone — is a desired capability for a “dry” molecular nanotechnology system that uses NEMS to build NEMS. As mentioned above, researchers have already been able to synthesize individual molecules from atomic constituents. What is needed next is to extend these techniques to carbon. In the next decade, nanotechnologists hope to demonstrate diamondoid mechanosynthesis — the mechanical synthesis of complex carbon structures. Many thousands of hours of computing time has already been spent simulating diamondoid mechanosynthesis, and experimental work is just beginning.

5) Many rudimentary molecular machines and components have already been built. These include Nadrian Seeman’s DNA walker robot (2004) and other nanomechanical devices, the Rice University nanocar (2005), molecular logic gates, and more. Some nanomachine components, like the bacterial flagellar motor, already come pre-built from nature. Many nanotechnologists see inspiration from biology as key. Obviously, there is no lack of available nanoscale machines — the challenge is putting them together into reliable and reprogrammable systems.

As we can see, we are much closer to the goal of molecular nanotechnology than we were only 10 years ago. Going back further, to 20 years ago, very few scientists could have even imagined what we’d be achieving now. Our goal for the future should be to push the envelope of nanotechnology research, devoting more money to research in molecular nanotechnology, while carefully studying the potential benefits and risks that could arise from a major breakthrough in the area.

See also: Six challenges for molecular nanotechnology, by EPSRC Senior Strategic Advisor Richard Jones.

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There will be no sex in the future.

Or maybe there will be. I just like saying the above phrase to troll people.

It exposes a fallacy in futurist thinking — that “The Future” is this foreign entity that forces everyone to be a certain way, even if we hate it. This is nonsense.

There are almost seven billion people on this planet, and in principle, they could each react in a different way to any given scientific advance or social movement. They all have the human cognitive architecture in common, and it’s important not to underestimate the boundaries this places on our behavioral flexibility, but there is plenty of room for variation within that space.

When a futurist says something about the future — “robots will become smarter than humans in 2030″, for instance — the listener may take this as a threat, or unquestioningly assume that the futurist is saying something they want to happen rather than just a prediction. They see the futurist as a force trying to push the world in that direction, rather than merely an unbiased educated guesser.

Related point: when futurists take checks for companies for their futurism, think carefully before trusting them. Are they just producing scenarios to interest the people writing them checks? We should take note of the opinions of unbiased guessers, while being skeptical of corporate puppets or people just out to entertain and make money.

Humanity will not embrace transhumanist technologies unless they actually want them. For example, I doubt the first round of cybernetics technologies will be adopted widely, because they will make people look like robots. Future rounds of cybernetics will mimic human appearance perfectly and seamlessly integrate with our biology. When this happens, I predict adoption will be near-universal.

That’s just a prediction! I don’t want to force adoption to be near-universal. I won’t cry if it isn’t. I’ll just enjoy my cybernetic modifications and coexist with those who lack them. I will ask for the respect from non-modified humans that they grant to other non-modified humans. The equality cuts both ways. And the universe is big enough to hold quadrillions of both modified and unmodified humans.

Ultimately, the future is not about the technical issues facing scientists and engineers, but the impact of enhancements, implants, and new technologies when they intersect with everyday life. Transhumanism today is relatively technical and scientific merely because that is the form these enhancements take before they hit the everyday world. Shortly, transhumanism will be more about everyday life and less about cutting edge work in labs. This is already happening.

Sometimes people form a caricature about futurists or transhumanists that all we care about is obsessing over the future. This, too, is nonsense. Transhumanists are normal people with diverse interests — music, history, art, and science. I am fascinated by Classical settings, Italian cooking, the evolution of plants, and tetrapod paleontology. I, and many other transhumanists only devote the bulk of our time to writing about transhumanism online because we consider it uniquely relevant. Not all-consuming, just unique and important.

It’s necessary to realize these points, and when delving through futurist jargon, realize there are normal human beings with normal motivations and dreams behind it.

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I have given six interviews in the last year. All are audio except for the most recent.

Changesurfer Radio - May 5, 2007
Existential risks, AI, genetic engineering and space exploration

The RU Sirius Show - May 6, 2007
Immortality or Oblivion?
Give me immortality or give me death!

Podcasting the Singularity - September 18, 2007
A conversation with Michael Anissimov

The Future and You - March 5, 2008
March 5 episode: Michael Anissimov

FastForward Radio - March 16, 2008
Conversation with Michael Anissimov

Future Blogger - March 24, 2008
Interview: Michael Anissimov

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Read Eliezer Yudkowsky’s posts on rationality at Overcoming Bias. Our very own Tom McCabe has made a master list here.

Photo by Renee Blodgett.

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My interview from yesterday with Future Blogger is here. A shorter summary of some issues in the interview and my highlights for the next ten years are here. First question:

V: What do you do and how is that related to the future?

MA: I am a blogger, fundraising director for the Lifeboat Foundation (LF), a director of the World Transhumanist Association (WTA) and a science/tech writer. All of these are related to futurism – my blog discusses futurist issues, the LF looks at future risks, and the WTA represents the futurist philosophy of transhumanism. As a science/tech writer, I do some writing about the latest technologies and materials, like carbon nanofoam or hypersonic flight, but equally enjoy writing about the frontiers of the sciences like paleontology, astronomy, and biology. Not everything I do relates to futurism, but much of it does.

Continue.

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Surprise twist! Now we create a list of anti-transhumanist blogs, so we can evaluate the other side of the story.

Here are four to start us off:

Amor Mundi by Dale Carrico
Infeasible by HP LaLancette
Secondhand Smoke by Wesley J. Smith
The Human Future by Jennifer Lahl

Organizations:

Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity
Center for Genetics and Society

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