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Nanotech Scenario Series
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Results of Our Ongoing Research
These pages, marked with
GREEN headings, are published for
comment and criticism. These
are not our final findings; some of these opinions will probably change.
LOG OF UPDATES
CRN Research: Overview of Current Findings
The Need for Immediate, Well-Planned Action
Overview:
Molecular
manufacturing will arrive suddenly, perhaps within
the next ten years, and almost certainly within the next twenty. If it takes the
world by surprise, we will not have systems in place that can deal with it
effectively. No
single organization or mindset can create a full and appropriate policy—and
inappropriate policy will only make things worse. A combination of separate
policy efforts will get in each other's way, and the risks will slip through the
cracks. By the time this technological capability arrives, we must have accomplished several things
that each will take significant time. First, we must understand the
risks. Second,
make policy. Third, design
institutions. Fourth, create the institutions—at all
levels including international levels, where things move slowly. This could
easily take twenty years. If advanced
nanotechnology could arrive in ten or fifteen years,
then we'd better get to work.
| A lot must be done before MNT
arrives. |
As described on our
Timeline
page, we expect
molecular manufacturing to arrive less than twenty years
from now—possibly less than ten. This is not much time to prepare, given
the amount of work to be done. First, the risks have to be understood. Then we need to work out a series of plans for dealing with each risk—a
task made much harder by the fact that measures to reduce one risk may
increase another. Then all this information has to be delivered,
convincingly, to the people who make the policy. There are a lot of them,
in many different organizations. Then organizations have to be designed to
administer the policy. Then the organizations have to be created. Each of
these steps will take time. And this isn't a complete list. Technological
measures will have to be carefully invented and developed. Public opinion,
and then public support, will be necessary at several stages. Nations must
learn to cooperate in ways that have not yet been tried. Ten years, or even
twenty years, is not a long time in which to accomplish all this. |
| Good solutions can't evolve
by accident. |
As explained on our
No Simple
Solutions page, we do not see any way that simplistic regulation can
work. A regulation may make a dent in one risk, but will increase others,
doing more harm than good overall. An accretion of simplistic regulations
will also do more harm than good. If solutions are not developed until
problems are staring us in the face, we will not have time to make good
decisions. Some of the risks are severe enough, or scary enough, to cause
people and governments to panic. Panic and time pressure will tend to
produce a patchwork of simple, knee-jerk solutions. It is extremely
unlikely that a good set of solutions will evolve under these circumstances,
and it is also unlikely that bad solutions will be able to prevent bad
consequences. |
| Problems, solutions, and
organizations come in several flavors. |
Problems come in several different flavors. There are
zero-sum problems, as when two children fight over who gets the bigger piece
of cake, or two countries fight over who gets a single piece of ground. There are positive-sum problems, as when a seller tries to figure out how
much to charge for a product to maximize profits. And there are
unlimited-sum problems, where a resource can be used without using it up,
and the problem is how to maximize the benefit that people obtain from it. (Economists call a resource that can't be used up a "non-rivalrous good.")
Naturally, these problems require different styles of solutions. In fact,
at least three very different
systems of ethics have evolved to deal
with these three kinds of problems. Jane Jacobs identified two of them in
Systems of Survival. CRN has extended this, identifying a third
recently evolved system and applying the three
systems to MNT
in this paper. The point here is that if problems come in diverse
flavors, solutions must also come in diverse flavors. Any single
organization, with a single code of ethics, will have a limited outlook and
will be fundamentally unable to solve all the problems of anything as big as
MNT. |
| Policy-making will require
finesse. |
MNT creates about a dozen separate
risks, many of which are paradoxical. If products are too cheap,
economies will collapse. If they are too expensive, people will starve
needlessly—and rebel. Lack of restrictions will allow all sorts of abuses,
but overly harsh restrictions are an abuse. Any attempt to solve any
of these risks must consider the consequences of the chosen policy in
relation to the other risks. Extreme policies will almost certainly do more
harm than good—and an extreme policy can't be fixed by adding more
policies—and once enacted, extreme policies tend to be very hard to get rid
of. Policy-making will require much finesse. It will also require
cooperation from quite a few flavors of organizations that don't even
understand each other very well. Otherwise, risks will slip through the
cracks left open by competing policies. |
| Policy must encompass
humanitarian, economic, and security concerns. |
Failing to take advantage of MNT would allow massive
humanitarian and environmental catastrophe. Molecular manufacturing is
inherently unlimited-sum: capital costs and manufacturing costs are
essentially zero. In several ways, the current Western industrial lifestyle
is not ecologically sustainable: we burn fossil fuel, consume groundwater,
dump toxic chemicals, and strip the oceans of life. In other parts of the
world, millions of people die each year of preventable causes like
malnutrition and malaria, or live in grinding poverty due to lack of an
industrial base—all of which would be correctable with widespread use of
molecular manufacturing. If MNT is not used freely to alleviate these
problems, they may grow until they destabilize the globe.
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On the other hand, completely free and unrestricted use of
MNT creates other problems. For one thing, it would destroy the current
economic model, and a sudden economic disruption would destabilize other
aspects of society. Capitalism is a very useful system, perhaps the best
possible system for solving positive-sum problems. We should not throw it
away until we have something to replace it. It will not be easy to decide
what should be freely available and what should be subject to billing or
royalties. Even the simple suggestion that under some circumstances
personal nanofactories should be usable without paying their designers will surely
meet with furious opposition. A separate problem is how to collect the
royalties where royalties are appropriate. Unrestricted molecular
manufacturing would allow duplication of designs or even direct copying of
blueprint files. The entertainment industry in the United States is
currently struggling with these issues, and is not doing a very effective or
elegant job. Some bad laws have already been passed, and the conflict shows
no signs of resolution. This conflict between the competing ethics of
Commerce and Information must be resolved before MNT arrives. |
| |
For several reasons, it is important to balance security
with humanitarian, environmental, and economic issues. First, completely
unrestricted molecular manufacturing makes the whole world insecure. Second, as long as nations exist, they will feel a need to defend themselves
from attack—and sometimes to attack others. MNT could be destabilizing
unless it's handled carefully. It will take a lot of work to design and
create a system that is more useful for developing defenses than sneak
attacks—and even more work to create a system that mutual enemies can use
and trust. |
| Creating organizations will
require time and finesse. |
It's too early yet to say what institutional designs will
be required, but we can make some guesses. They have to be
international, or at least coordinated
internationally. They have to have enforcement powers. They have to allow
and promote the use of MNT in several different ways, without allowing any
of the major risks to occur. This implies the need for several flavors of
institutions cooperating. Nations must be able to research and prepare
defenses and deterrents, without being able to deploy the most dangerous
weapons that could be globally destabilizing. Commerce should continue,
though it may find itself competing with non-monetary systems for some
purposes. Humanitarian relief must be given as soon as the means become
available. MNT weaponry non-proliferation measures must be implemented. Each of these functions probably requires a separate institution, but the
institutions must work together smoothly. Once designed, the institutions
must be funded, created, and staffed. |
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It is vital that such
administration of MNT be widely
supported. Many powerful groups exist, capable of sabotaging or corrupting
the process if they do not like it. MNT will provide great abundance,
enough to satisfy everyone's long-term interests—but short-sighted greed
could make the whole process fall apart. Small-minded ideology could also
cause problems: a "not invented here" syndrome could lead a group to exclude
itself from the process. Expert diplomacy will be absolutely necessary. Clear understanding of the stakes and issues will also be necessary—there
are places where compromise is possible, and other places where compromise
past a certain point would invite disaster. It will take time to achieve
buy-in from all the necessary groups. |
| Education will take
significant time. |
Before any international process can begin, the people
involved must be educated. This will be a long process in itself. People
who have not studied molecular nanotechnology generally will not have a
clear understanding of how quickly it can arrive, and how much difference it
can make. CRN is working to create technical materials to clarify the
issues, and popular explanations for education. But it may take years to
create these materials. More years to get a foot in the door at high levels
of policy-making. Still more years for policy-makers to comprehend the new
ideas—probably calling for independent three-year studies along the way. After that, the diplomacy can begin. When the diplomacy is done, the
necessary institutions can finally start organizing themselves, which will
take another year or two. Even if MNT is twenty years away, we don't know
if there will be enough time. If it's ten years away—well, we'd better
hope we have some smart, flexible people running the show. |
DEVIL'S ADVOCATE —
Submit your criticism, please!
Aah, you're just a bunch of Chicken Littles.
Next question?
Even if you think up something that could work, how will
you get everyone to agree to it?
We don't have to get everyone to agree with us. If enough
people adopt the same solutions, and know why their own self-interest requires
global agreement, they will find ways to make sure that the rest fall in line.
That sounds ominous.
We know. And we aren't very comfortable with the idea of a
supreme global administration, even with checks and balances, accountability,
democracy, and everything else that can protect people from powerful
governments. But we're even less comfortable with the idea of nano-anarchy.
This is the best alternative we could come up with. Please, if you can think
of something better, we'll listen.
Contact us.
Next Page:
A Solution
that Balances Many Interests
Previous Page:
The Need for
International Control
Title Page:
Overview of Current Findings
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