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In Nano Veritas

I will give a talk on nanotechnology at the In Nano Veritas conference of the THINK BIG - MEDEF Summer University, on August 28. I plan to focus on the mid / long term impact of nanotechnology and its migration from military and industrial megalabs to a grassroots social technology, as outlined in my article on Globalization and Open Source Nano Economy: ”Some of the problems of today’s globalized world could be eliminated or reduced by developing operational worldwide molecular design and manufacturing capabilities. Instead of shipping physical objects, their detailed design specification in a “Molecular Description Language” (MDL) will be transmitted over a global data grid evolved from today’s Internet and then physically “printed” by “nano printers” at remote sites. This would allow communities wishing to remain independent to retain their autonomy”.

I think matter compiling will have a huge importance, not only in scientific and technological terms, but also and especially in social and political terms. I will discuss current related developments in future consumer technology, things happening here and now that will take us closer to the diamond age of matter compiling.

One of the best online sources of information on nanotechnology is the website of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. On the CRN blog CRN analysts have often written about today’s poor man’s primitive baby steps toward matter compiling. Positive Expectations, one of their recent professional-quality scenarios of a near-future world, is a roadmap: ”2008: ¡Fabbers Libre! When the first “late beta” version of RepRap -the “replicating rapid-prototyper"- is released in early 2008, critics have a field day. It’s slow. It’s clumsy-looking. It can’t actually replicate itself without adding a few key commercial parts. But where critics see an ugly duckling, design students, DIY hackers, and open source enthusiasts see a swan-in-the-making. By the summer, dozens of novel fabber projects emerge (some forked from RepRap, but most based on original designs), and by the fall, some have actually produced devices that an adventurous home user could play with. Forward-looking strategists at mega-retailers and mass manufacturers feel a distinct chill run up their collective spine. The open fabber era had begun, and through the end of the decade, free and open source software hackers around the world turn their attention to hardware… By the time molecular manufacturing applications do mature at the nanoscale, Openfabs are a ubiquitous fact of global life. It’s not surprising, then, that the first atomically-precise devices are designed with Openfab-standard interconnects for integration into the existing open world standard for human-scale production infrastructures”.

Not Drexlerian replicant assemblers and molecular manufacturing yet, but just wait one or two decades.

Voire en Grand - Think Big

In Nano Veritas

August 28, 2008, 15h - 17.30

What if one of the solutions to see big lays in the infinitely small?
What is nanotechnology? Which areas, which applications? What costs? What risks?
Between science and fiction, where is our future?
Does Europe have the wish and the means to become a leader in this area?
In the quest for the Grail, are patents sufficient?
From the lab to the table, will nanotechnology invade the food industry?
What about cosmetics, computers, medicine, military?
Will nanotechnology wchange the economic rules?
Privilege of large enterprises or fertile ground for SMEs?
After the digital divide, the nanotechnology gap?
After the nuclear deterrence, the invention of nanotechnology deterrence?
Should we trivialize the use of nanotechnology? What about ethics?
How to manage the development of artificial intelligence?
Will synthetic brains ensure they survival of the human species?
Are we sorcerer’s apprentices?

Speakers:

Claude Birraux, deputy of Haute-Savoie, President of the Parliamentary Office for the evaluation of scientific and technological choices
Jean-Frederic Clerc, director of CEA-DPSE
Christian Colette, director of R & D of Arkéma
Benedict Croguennec, project manager at AFNOR
Alain Fontaine, director of the NEEL institute, director of research at CNRS Grenoble
Alain Grimfeld, president of the National Consultative Ethics Committee
Paul Jacquet, director general of INP France
Paul Lannoye, co-founder of Grappe ASBL
Jean-Claude Mialocq, researcher in molecular chemistry, CEA
Giulio Prisco, director of metafuturing SL

Moderator: Jacques Hebert, journalist and communications consultant.

Posted by on 08/08 at 05:34 PM

Giulio, I expect you know of this news already, but just in case you missed it…

$3 million grant awarded to build ‘digital matter’

Research in diamond mechanosynthesis (DMS)—building diamond nanostructures atom by atom using scanning probe microscopy—just received a major boost with a $3 million grant from the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, awarded to Professor Philip Moriarty at the University of Nottingham for a “Digital Matter” project, the Nanofactory Collaboration plans to announce Monday.

The Nottingham work grew out of continuing discussions since 2005 on DMS between Moriarty and Robert A. Freitas Jr., a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing (IMM).

“Diamond mechanosynthesis is the key technology that will let us fabricate atomically precise diamond products, including molecular computers, microbivores, and a host of other molecular machines,” said IMM Senior Fellow Ralph Merkle in an email interview. Merkle co-founded the Nanofactory Collaboration with Freitas in 2001 to pursue molecular manufacturing via DMS.

“There’s a body of theoretical work that says diamond mechanosynthesis is feasible, including specific computational chemistry analyses of specific reactions and specific reaction pathways. Now we have to make it happen in the lab, and Moriarty’s work is the first step along this path.”

In April 2008, Freitas and Merkle published the results of a comprehensive three-year project to computationally analyze a complete set of DMS reaction sequences and an associated minimal set of tooltips that could be used to build basic diamond and graphene (e.g., carbon nanotube) structures. These structures include all of the tools themselves, along with the necessary tool recharging reactions.

Moriarty is interested in testing the viability of positionally controlled atom-by-atom fabrication of diamondoid materials as described in the Freitas-Merkle minimal toolset theory paper. Moriarty’s efforts will be the first time that specific predictions made by sophisticated computational chemistry software in the area of mechanosynthesis will be rigorously tested by experiment.

His work also directly addresses the requirement for “proof of principle” mechanosynthesis experiments requested in the 2006 National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) review, in the 2007 Battelle/Foresight nanotechnology roadmap, and by EPSRC’s Strategic Advisor for Nanotechnology, Richard Jones (Physics, Sheffield University, U.K.).

Originally posted on Kurzweilai.net

http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=news_single.html?id=9180

Extropia DaSilva.

Posted by on 08/11 at 08:45 AM
Wow thanks! No, I had not seen this news. Heading to the sources to know more…

Posted by on 08/16 at 03:03 PM