Nano, Info, Cogno, Roco and other 'hive' jive

Well, it is no wonder that the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative has been distancing itself these past few years from its key architect, Mihail C. (Mike) Roco. Take a look at some of the Mad Romanian's wacky ideas below.

I've retained the paranoid commentary contained within thepeoplesvoice.org's "Television and the Hive Mind" for comedic value, but the quotes from Roco's 2002 paper "Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance" are indeed accurate (although the writer makes reference to a "recent report." I suppose if you measure time by the long march toward world socialist domination, 2002 is "recent):

"A recent report co-sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Commerce Department calls for a broad-based research program to find ways to use nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive sciences, to achieve telepathy, machine-to-human communication, amplified sensory experience, enhanced intellectual capacity, and mass participation in a 'hive mind.'

Quoting the report: 'With knowledge no longer encapsulated in individuals, the distinction between individuals and the entirety of humanity would blur. Think Vulcan mind-meld. We would perhaps become more of a hive mind--an enormous, single, intelligent entity.'

There is no doubt that we have been brought closer to the 'hive mind' by the mass media. For, what is the shared experience of television but a type of 'Vulcan mind-meld'? (Note the terminology borrowed from Star Trek, no doubt to make the concept more familiar and palatable. If Spock does it, it must be okay.)

This government report would have us believe that the hive mind will be for our good--a wonderful leap in evolution. It is nothing of the kind. For one thing, if the government is behind it, you may rest assured it is not for our good. For another, common sense should tell us that blurring the line 'between individuals and the entirety of humanity' means mass conformity ..." and blah blah

Yeah, that does explain why we haven't heard much from Roco for a couple of years. As a nanotech goodwill ambassador, he makes the Drexlerians, cryonicists and space elevator true believers seem like a sober panel of Royal Society fellows.

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NanoBot's discard pile
NanoBot's Discard Pile, Part 2

The knowledge void: Here there be monsters

I've written before about the vaccine/autism debate as an illustration of how agenda-based pseudoscience might receive wide distribution and popularity among audiences predisposed to believing the information, yet the popularity of an opinion does not, of course, make it so.

The BBC brings us up to date on the (hopefully) now-discredited opinion that the "MMR vaccine causes autism." The result of this long-running controversy was not merely people believing in huckster science, but actively putting other children at risk by refusing to vaccinate their kids.

There are lessons to be learned here in other areas of science, like nanotechnology, where popular opinion is being manipulated by groups who step into the void of actual scientific evidence and gladly fill it with Gods or Monsters.

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Somewhere between scientist and consumer, the message is lost
The Asperger/Nano Connection
Playing God with Monsters
'Societal Concerns' vs. Scientific Accuracy

HP teaches us the 'n' word

Hey, kids. What are some of the things "n" is for? Well, "n" is for "nemployed" (without the "u," since we're talking about me), "n" is for "navel contemplation" and, of course, as Hewlett-Packard informs us in the entertaining video above, "'n' is for Nanotechnology."

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Jim Carrey and Conan talk quantum physics II
Government Created Killer NanoRobot Infection
Kids grill scientist dad (with ketchup and mustard)

One giant leap for nanotech engineer

South Korean nanotechnology engineer Yi So-yeon, left, proudly flies (with) her country's flag during zero-G training somewhere above Moscow on Monday.

"Nano"-Yi will not be taking that one small step for Korean-kind, since she will serve as a backup to the guy on the right, boxing medalist Ko San, who beat Yi to the punch as the first Korean civilian scheduled for a flight in space.

But the rocket ride to the International Space Station is not scheduled until April. And while I'm sure that Ko can certainly pack a KO punch, a lot can happen between now and then.

I mean, any little thing can go wrong in one of those space suits, forcing last-minute changes in personnel. Isn't that right, nanotech engineer Yi So-yeon? Any ... LITTLE ... thing?

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Classic Dave Barry on the space elevator
Google Earth gives 'space elevator' a lift
Space Elevator: The Music Video

The great little balls of Britain

Yes, yes, men. You are correct. Buckminsterfullerenes are strong, and so are you. But I hate to say this, guys, since you seem so ... um ... confident. But in real life, those buckyballs are really, really ... yeah, really ... tiny. Still, you blokes should go have a pint in celebration of your ... erection ... of the tip of the new Bristol (UK) Centre for Nanoscience and Quantum Information. Watch the whole Flickr here.

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A little story about drugs, bass and balls
Kroto kasts a spell
Nanotube jug band

Nano memory: 30,000 movies and nothing on

Reuters, reporting on IBM's recent breakthroughs in nanotech-enabled memory and storage, opens its story with this:

Imagine cramming 30,000 full-length movies into a gadget the size of an iPod. More here

I have said this before in different contexts, including a white paper I wrote for NanoMarkets a few years ago: "To think of molecular memory within the framework of existing applications is to severely limit the possibilities of this technology ..."

If 30,000 movies is the best we can come up with, then we have a severe crisis of imagination. I don't blame the Reuters reporter. Like the overused and inaccurate "human hair" comparison, "30,000 movies" places the technology in a context the average reader can understand.

And it is often not the inventor who decides how and where to apply new technology. It's the entrepreneur, the investor and ultimately the consumer who supply the imagination.

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The business of imagination
Nantero sings a happy tune
Nanotube interconnects and hot Indian babes

Serious nanotox reporting, for a change

For those who are interested in the issues surrounding nanotechnology and toxicity, but would like to get beyond the bumper-sticker pseudoscience of the anti-sunscreen crowd, the relatively new journal of Nanotoxicology sounds like a worthwhile read. The publication just came out with its second issue.

Well, I can't actually, um, read it since I can't afford the $164.45 subscription rate (now, if it were only $164.42, then perhaps I could bust open the piggy bank for it), but I'm sure someone out there will fill me in. Although I'm sure this journal lacks the side-splitting humor of the recent Friends of the Earth anti-sunscreen manifesto (pdf), I'm sure Nanotoxicology makes up for it in serious scholarship.

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Truth is stranger than prediction
UK sets up a fragmented nanopolicy
Made-up science attacks makeup
Nano is a concept by which we measure our pain

The anti-idiot box

Where can you find hot new videos featuring Structural Evolution of the Protein Kinase–Like Superfamily? Why, at SciVee TV, of course. Careful, though. It's still in Alpha. It crashed my system twice. I guess you need a quantum supercomputer to run some of the videos. Still, a great idea that can be built upon.

My plural marriage with Utah students

My contribution to higher education for the coming semester: My rescue and reposting of a video clip of Jim Carrey and Conan O'Brien teaching drummer Max Weinberg a thing or two about quantum mechanics has made it onto the syllabus for Physics 3740: Introduction to special relativity and quantum mechanics at the University of Utah. Not bad for a former English and Journalism major.

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Government Created Killer NanoRobot Infection
Welcome, Rice University students
Einstein's dice and the nano Sopranos

My Brand X nanotech blog

X-OLOGY marks the spot for nano in Michigan, from the dendrimer wars to modeling DNA. But it could be a limited-time offer. The local tech/lifestyle magazine is trying out this blog thing for August to promote its special summer nanotech issue. My contributions (free registration required) can be found here and here.

Made-up science attacks makeup

The Angry Toxicologist says: "... don't eat your sunscreen. Good advice anytime."

Thank you, AT. At last, an answer from a pro to the "Friends of the Earth" use of made-up science to attack nanotech in sunscreen.

Backgrounder
FDA should put in more face time
Friends of the Earth releases nanotox report
Truth is stranger than prediction

Truth is stranger than prediction

This is why you should never post anything on a blog at 3:31 a.m., no matter how much sense you think you make at the time ...

So, government bans are bad, yet drive innovation, so they are good. A scientific opinion is fact if enough of the culture believes it to be so ... until the belief falls out of fashion or is dropped out of sheer boredom ... A police state is peace, British Petroleum is green, left and right each support fascism (left in Iraq, right in the U.S.), the environment can be cleaned up through bumper stickers and rock concerts, and we all lived with Fred Flintstone and Dino just a few thousand years ago, sunscreen is dangerous nanotech while molecular manufacturing is impossible, therefore safe ...

I mean, you just can't make this shit up. Stranger than fiction. Welcome to the future, my friends. More here

I love my responsible friends at the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. And friends don't let friends contemplate their own belly buttons for too long.

The truth is, most science fiction -- even in the "golden age" (a time period usually defined by whenever the reader was a lonely teenager with no friends holed up in his room reading SciFi to escape real life) becomes caricature over time, since the future is never really "one thing."

"Predictions" of early 21st century life from the vantage of the last century all appear to me to be cartoonish, since it is ridiculous that we should become "a society of ..." fill in the blank. Instead, life goes on much the same, as our toys become more sophisticated. Almost all pictured either a new fascism arising out of those who control the new technology, or some kind of dull "Star Trekkian" egalitarian society somehow free of bigotry, superstition, hate and humanness.

Even the oft-cited "1984" in the end seems cartoonish to me today, despite the fact that any form of government control or monitoring of anything at all turns "Orwellian" in the exaggerated pen of lazy writers who feel they can just use the catch-all "Big Brother" epithet to end all debate.

I would find the whole lament over lack of decent science fiction pretty funny, except there's a slight edge of truth to the claim that SciFi influences the direction the future will take. I'd go a step further and say that it influences the present, since all one has to do is bring up the specter of an exaggerated, imagined dystopia to get some segments of the public all riled up against any technology.

Why, even sunscreen can be a harbinger of an Orwellian future. "Friends of the Earth" (the group's own self-appointed designation), in its just released Anti-Nano-Sunscreen Manifesto (pdf), very correctly, and I might say responsibly, includes the fine print that the "jury is still out on how readily and how deeply nanoparticles penetrate skin." So far so good. Then it goes on to mention food packaging. Yes, good. Very real. Then, uh-oh ... we're off in Asimov-land:

"And the technology could potentially further affect our lives – from crippling our security and privacy with the creation of never-before-seen weapons and surveillance systems to altering the fabric of the clothes we wear and creating batteries from viruses constructed at the nano-scale. ..."

Heeelllpp!!! Run for the hills!!!! The nano-virus batteries in our suntan lotion and stain-free nanopants are altering my DNA and turning me into a DARPA robot!!!!

I love escapist science fiction. But. Nahh. We really don't need any more SciFi influencing current debates. Like I wrote at 3:31 a.m. to my friends at CRN. Just take a look at the bizarre events swirling around technology in real life.

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Irresponsible NanoHype

Bourne and Bourne again

     Bourne and Bourne

While a fictional Jason Bourne broods, shoots and stumbles his way onto the silver screen today, a book released almost simultaneously, Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Betrayalappears on the shelves. In this one, our favorite amnesiac gets some mind-altering nano ... um ... things implanted in his brain in the hopes it might shake his memories loose. Of course, something goes wrong. Horribly, Horribly wrong, with the nanobots in Bourne's brain.

Now, this new Bourne book is not to be confused with the other Bourne nano book scheduled to be shipped Aug. 18. In this action-packed thriller, nanotech analyst Marlene Bourne discusses the very real nanotech embedded into everyday products.

And, while I have been accused of writing fiction in the past, I can tell you with absolute authority that Marlene Bourne's “A Consumer’s Guide to MEMS and Nanotechnology” is nothing but the facts. I helped her review the manuscript as she was writing it.

So, nanotech fiction today, nanotech fact Aug. 18. Now, that's worth remembering.

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Nanotech analyst Marlene not Bourne yesterday
Straight-up info on nanotech regulation
QuoteBot: Wet Dreams and Nano-Hype

Nano analyst's quantum leap

How many nanotech analysts can dance on the head of a pin? God only knows. But it appears there are a limited number in the mortal world. John Roy going to Global Crown Capital essentially shuts down all nano analysis (PDF) at his old company, WR Hambrecht & Co.

Nanotube jug band

A model nanotube made from plastic jugs hangs above NT07: Eighth International Conference on the Science and Application of Nanotubes in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil at the end of June. Ralph has pictures.

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Nanotube interconnects and hot Indian babes
NanoTube: 'Infest Wisely'
Nanotubes and nanotox? Maybe not

What makes 'nano' technology?

I've had dendrimers on my mind lately, for a number of reasons that I'll reveal soon. But, first, I wanted to share the illustration above. It's not a new one, but you're going to see it used in the news more and more as Starpharma's dendrimer-based anti-HIV microbicide, VivaGel, goes through clinical trials. (They're still recruiting patients, by the way.)

I've been asked many times why I'm so bothered by the perception out there that any kind of nanoscale particle contained in a product makes the product "nanotechnology." No. It doesn't.

Who cares? What's the difference?

Well, the dendrimer pictured above is a simple, yet illustrative example of what is meant by “nanotechnology.” The dendrimer is not a passive nanoscale material just waiting to bump into its target. The dendrimer’s tendrils are engineered to seek out and neutralize specific areas of HIV, working in a coordinated attack at various points.

That's why Donald Tomalia's invention is finally proving itself, by performing much better than other microbicides undergoing clinical trials in the fight against HIV in the developing world.

I'll have much more to say on this in the future. Stay tuned.

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A fat Pfizer pushed away the pioneers
Nanomedicine story: The writer's cut
The Tao of Dow, revisited

Spock's (nano) Brain?

Hey, I was just joking when I wrote last month: "... it would be fun to speculate on whether it'd be ethical to program your nanobots to download an exact replica of your own brain into your neighbor's poodle ..."

Somebody took me so seriously, they done went and created a Webinar on it, scheduled for July 20: Downloading Human Minds into Bio-Nano Bodies (Couldn't resist the reference to "Spock's Brain" above.)

Now, the press release says the event will be subsequently archived for free public access. I wonder if the archive will include the digitized mind of Martine Rothblatt, himself (pictured here), who is scheduled to speak about "Using computing substrate for a human mind."

Makes you think, doesn't it? But not too much ...

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The ethics of creating 'nano ethics'

Spread some jelly on your quantum dots

"Jelly Dots:" They're shinier than regular ol' quantum dots, plus they're less toxic. (The following sentence is to be read aloud in the style of Homer Simpson) MMmmmmmmm ... shiiinyyy ... less toxic ... jelllyyyy dotttss ... yummmm ...

Backgroun-Doh!
Taking toxicity out of quantum dots
The Springfield Syndrome

Nanotech Stocks: Newton's Third Law Edition

Followup to this post (same fine print applies).

This ain't a stock chart. Around these Midwestern parts this summer, you have to be at least 52 inches tall to ride and it's called (appropriately enough) the Maverick.

Attention investors: Raise your arms, let out a yell and try to smile for the camera on the way down!

Stray thought on Digg

I wonder if the children running Digg.com understand that truth and popularity rarely have much to do with one another.

Wilson Center's nano numbers racket

Nanoarchitecture.net continues a line of questioning I've been hammering away at for a while, and that is the Wilson Center's list of more than 450 nanotech-enabled "products."

They really should change it to "nanotech-claimed" products, since the center apparently simply reads the labels and takes nanotech claims at face value. The 450-500 products number is increasingly being cited by the mainstream media as absolute fact.

I'm not certain why the Wilson Center continues its unquestioning nanocount. But it is important to remember that its Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies exists as a self-appointed watchdog for environmental and health risks. The more nanotech products it can claim, the higher the public alarm. The higher the alarm, the more the media and citizens are going to come to the Wilson Center for "answers."

This is especially true if the center reinforces "the unknowns" about the health and environmental impacts of nanoparticles. When it comes to public perception, it doesn't even matter if you take whatever unknown percentage of the Wilson Center list that actually does contain nanoparticles and check to see whether they have, in fact, been studied.

The point is to not confuse the public with facts, but to lead it toward the "obvious" conclusions based on the limited information contained within the loaded question.

In my mind, the exaggerated claims by the Wilson Center are no different than the manipulation of information put out by some green organizations or get-rich-quick investment gurus.

Backgrounder
QuoteBot: Nano 'snake-oil'
Dear Boston Globe: A 'mashup' is not a survey
Ex-FDA official concludes FDA needs more dough
Nanotech hocus group
Indigestible nanotech claim
Guaranteeeeed, Jen - U - Wiiiiine Nano!

Russian Nanotocracy

Sounds like Russia is handling nanotech in a typically Russian fashion. Set up a single nanotech government bureaucracy to dole out billions to researchers who can figure out how to make their pet projects sound "nano-ish." Wait a minute. Isn't that how the ol' U.S. of A. is doing it, too?

In any case, here's a skeptical look from the Russian media:

Nano Corporation: investments in future or money laundering?:

"However, there is an opinion that the corporation will also serve as a money laundering machine due to its size and undefined tasks. It is to control all nanotech projects implemented in Russia and set out priorities. It is expected that the government will allot about 200 billion rubles (approximately US$7.75 billion) for a three-year period to finance the corporation activities, which is incredibly much for unsettled tasks. For this reason many are afraid that this money can be used improperly or simply stolen.

There is a problem that worries even scientists – the corporation is to form a monopoly in the nanotech field, which respectively limits opportunities of the free market to select the most competitive ideas. Today the Russian research centres work mostly on nano-materials, while such prospective and promising spheres as nano-biotechnologies and new nano-projects in the energy-producing industry are undersold." More here

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Putin' nanotech in Russia
Fearless Leader Putin invented nanotech
Sakharov on Freedom

Sakharov on Freedom

"... intellectual freedom is essential to human society — freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such a trinity of freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship. Freedom of thought is the only guarantee of the feasibility of a scientific democratic approach to politics, economics and culture."

-- Andrei Sakharov

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'Freedom [is] the first-born daughter of science.' -- Thomas Jefferson
Feynman on freedom

A hill of coffee beans in this crazy world

There's a great deal of nanotech in the news these days, leaving me lots of blogortunities to rant and rave. But nanny no-shows, freelance work and the job hunt have forced me to temporarily neglect this blog.

Sorry about that, folks. But I am working on a couple of exciting nanotech related freelance stories that I'll reveal when they appear in print.

Meanwhile, I'm back to working out of libraries and coffee shops, including The Coffee Beanery on Woodward Avenue in Berkley, Mich., where apparently the media elite hang out.

In just a few hours here, in walked world famous "momtini" blogger Melissa Summers, who clacked away on her laptop for a while.

Then, just when I was about to get on the phone to interview a world famous nanotech scientist/entrepreneur (whom I will reveal when the story runs), I noticed some talk about MEMS a couple of tables down. It was my old colleague Patti Glaza, who downsized me from Small Times almost exactly three years ago.

She was engaged in a conversation with a gentleman regarding MEMS, and apparently did not see or recognize me. Probably just as well.

Well, that's all the Z-List celebrity-spotting news I have for today. Thanks for staying with me. We're living in interesting nano times, and I'll have some more interesting nano news.

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Luddites at the Beanery