[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE SOCIETAL IMPLICATIONS
OF NANOTECHNOLOGY
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 9, 2003
__________
Serial No. 108-13
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/science
86-340 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 2003
____________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpr.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800
Fax: (202) 512�092250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402�090001
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
HON. SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York, Chairman
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas RALPH M. HALL, Texas
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania BART GORDON, Tennessee
DANA ROHRABACHER, California JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
JOE BARTON, Texas EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
KEN CALVERT, California LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California
NICK SMITH, Michigan NICK LAMPSON, Texas
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan MARK UDALL, Colorado
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota DAVID WU, Oregon
GEORGE R. NETHERCUTT, JR., MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
Washington CHRIS BELL, Texas
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri ZOE LOFGREN, California
TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois BRAD SHERMAN, California
MELISSA A. HART, Pennsylvania BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma DENNIS MOORE, Kansas
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York
PHIL GINGREY, Georgia JIM MATHESON, Utah
ROB BISHOP, Utah DENNIS A. CARDOZA, California
MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas VACANCY
JO BONNER, Alabama
TOM FEENEY, Florida
VACANCY
C O N T E N T S
April 9, 2003
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Sherwood L. Boehlert, Chairman,
Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives............ 10
Written Statement............................................ 11
Statement by Representative Ralph M. Hall, Minority Ranking
Member, Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives.... 11
Written Statement............................................ 12
Prepared Statement of Representative Nick Smith, Member,
Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives............ 13
Prepared Statement of Representative Jerry F. Costello, Member,
Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives............ 14
Prepared Statement of Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson,
Member, Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives.... 14
Prepared Statement of Representative Michael M. Honda, Member,
Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives............ 15
Witnesses:
Mr. Raymond Kurzweil, Chairman and CEO, Kurzweil Technologies,
Inc.
Oral Statement............................................... 17
Written Statement............................................ 19
Biography.................................................... 47
Financial Disclosure......................................... 48
Dr. Vicki L. Colvin, Executive Director, Center for Biological
and Environmental Nanotechnology; Associate Professor of
Chemistry, Rice University
Oral Statement............................................... 49
Written Statement............................................ 50
Biography.................................................... 53
Financial Disclosure......................................... 54
Dr. Langdon Winner, Professor of Political Science, Department of
Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute
Oral Statement............................................... 55
Written Statement............................................ 57
Biography.................................................... 61
Financial Disclosure......................................... 62
Ms. Christine Peterson, President, Foresight Institute
Oral Statement............................................... 63
Written Statement............................................ 64
Biography.................................................... 67
Financial Disclosure......................................... 68
Discussion....................................................... 69
Appendix 1: Additional Material for the Record
H.R. 766, Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2003.... 96
THE SOCIETAL IMPLICATIONS OF NANOTECHNOLOGY
----------
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9, 2003
House of Representatives,
Committee on Science,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:15 a.m., in Room
2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Sherwood L.
Boehlert (Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
hearing charter
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
The Societal Implications
of Nanotechnology
wednesday, april 9, 2003
10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
2318 rayburn house office building
1. Purpose
On Wednesday April 9, 2003, the House Science Committee will hold a
hearing to examine the societal implications of nanotechnology and to
consider H.R. 766, The Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of
2003, in light of those implications.
2. WITNESSES
Mr. Ray Kurzweil is Founder, Chairman and CEO of Kurzweil Technologies,
Inc., a software development firm. A pioneer in artificial
intelligence, he is the author of The Age of Intelligent Machines
(1990) and The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999). He received the 1999
National Medal of Technology and in 2002 was inducted into the National
Inventors Hall of Fame, for his 1976 invention of the Kurzweil Reading
Machine, the first device to transform print into computer-spoken
words, enabling blind and visually impaired people to read printed
materials. Since 1973, he has founded nine companies.
Dr. Vicki Colvin is the Executive Director of the Center for Biological
and Environmental Nanotechnology and Associate Professor of Chemistry
at Rice University. Research underway at the center focuses on
nanomaterials' behavior in the environment and the body and considers
risk assessment and safety factors.
Dr. Langdon Winner is Professor of Political Science in the Department
of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
in Troy, New York where he serves as co-director of the newly founded
Center for Cultural Design. He is a political theorist who focuses on
social and political issues that surround modern technological change.
Ms. Christine Peterson is cofounder and President of Foresight
Institute. She focuses on making nanotechnology understandable, and on
clarifying the difference between near-term commercial advances and the
``Next Industrial Revolution'' arriving in the next few decades.
Foresight Institute has developed guidelines that include assumptions,
principles, and some specific recommendations intended to provide a
basis for responsible development of molecular nanotechnology.
3. OVERARCHING QUESTIONS
The hearing will address the following overarching questions:
1. What are the concerns about existing and potential
applications of nanotechnology?
2. How is it possible to anticipate the consequences of
technology development?
3. How can research and debate on societal and ethical
concerns be integrated into the research and development
process, especially into projects funded by the Federal
Government?
4. BRIEF OVERVIEW
Nanotechnology is the science of manipulating and
characterizing matter at the atomic and molecular level. It is
one of the most exciting fields of science today, involving a
multitude of science and engineering disciplines, with
widespread applications in electronics, advanced materials,
medicine, and information technology. The promise of
nanotechnology to accelerate technological change has prompted
some to advise caution about pursuing rapid innovation without
some understanding of where it might lead us.
In the April, 2000 issue of Wired magazine, Bill Joy,
Chief Scientist for Sun Microsystems, published an article
entitled Why the Future Doesn't Need Us which postulated that
``our most powerful 21st Century technologies--robotics,
genetic engineering, and nanotechnology--are threatening to
make humans an endangered species.'' Joy argued that the
convergence of information technology, biotechnology, and
nanotechnology could result in intelligent, self-replicating,
nanoscale robots with potentially destructive consequences.
Many experts have dismissed Joy's prognostications as better
suited to the realm of science fiction, but his article did
energize a debate on the potential impact of rapid technology
development.
In November, 2002, Michael Crichton published Prey, a
science fiction novel in which self-replicating, intelligent,
and rapidly evolving nanoscale robots pose a mortal threat to
humans and to the environment. Although fiction, Prey brought
Bill Joy's concerns to a wider public and reinvigorated the
debate over the possible negative consequences of future
developments in information technology, biotechnology, and
nanotechnology.
The National Academy of Sciences, in its recent
(2002) review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative,
recommended that the research on the societal implications of
nanotechnology be integrated into nanotechnology research and
development programs in general. The Academy noted that rapid
technology development will affect how we educate new
scientists and engineers, how we prepare our workforce, and how
we plan and manage research. Moreover, accelerated
nanotechnology developments could have broader social and
economic consequences that may afford an opportunity to develop
a greater understanding of how technical and social systems
affect one another.
One of the more salient concerns is the possible
environmental or health impact of nanotechnology materials.
Nanoscale particles, or nanoparticles, because of their small
size, may readily enter living systems with potentially toxic
results. While few comprehensive studies have been completed,
early research suggests that some common nanotechnology
materials may be biologically inert and thus pose little
threat. Nonetheless, new materials can interact with the
environment or with living systems in unexpected ways.
In March of 2001, the National Science Foundation
(NSF) convened a workshop on the societal implications of
nanotechnology. Workshop participants recommended that social
and economic research on nanotechnology be included in the
research conducted at NSF-sponsored nanotechnology centers.
Witnesses at the Science Committee's March 19 hearing
on H.R. 766, The Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of
2003, concurred with the recommendation of the NSF workshop
participants and testified that research on the societal
implications of nanotechnology should be an integral part of
the national nanotechnology research and development program.
H.R. 766 includes a provision that establishes a research
program to identify societal and ethical concerns related to
nanotechnology and requires that such research be integrated
into nanotechnology R&D programs insofar as possible.
5. BACKGROUND
In its recent review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, the
National Academy of Sciences noted that the social and economic
consequences of nanotechnology promise to be diverse, difficult to
anticipate, and sometimes disruptive. Some experts suggest that
nanotechnology will lead us to the next industrial revolution.
According to the Academy review panel:
. . .if the nanotechnology revolution lives up to the hype
comparing it to the industrial revolution, it will also
transform and perturb labor and the workplace, introduce new
worker safety issues, affect the distribution of wealth within
and between nations, and change a variety of social
institutions, including our medical system and the military.
While these kinds of transformations occurred with other
technological advances and were managed reasonably well, there
are reasons to believe the transformation propagated by a
nanotechnology revolution may be particularly challenging.
Nanotechnology is likely to affect and transform multiple
industries and affect significant numbers of workers and parts
of the economy. Technological acceleration, the increasing rate
of discovery in some disciplines, most notably biology, and the
synergy provided by improvements in information and computing
technologies, have the potential to compress the time from
discovery to full deployment for nanotechnology, thereby
shortening the time society has to adjust to these changes.
Speculation about unintended consequences of nanotechnology,
some of it informed, but a lot of it wildly uninformed, has
already captured the imagination and, to some extent, the fear
of the general public.
Some technologists, such as those in the nuclear power and
genetically modified foods industries, have ignored these kinds
of challenges and suffered the consequences. Others, most
notably those in the molecular biology community, have
attempted to address the issues and to use their understanding
to stimulate an informed and objective dialogue about the
choices that can be made and the directions taken.
The Academy review panel noted that nanotechnology provides a
unique opportunity to develop a better understanding of how technical
and social systems affect one another.
We currently do not have a comprehensive and well-established
knowledge base on how social and technical systems affect each
other in general, let alone for the specific case of
nanotechnology. This state of affairs is a byproduct of not
having a chance to examine these interactions until the systems
are well established and of simply not investing sufficient
resources in these activities. However, nanotechnology is still
in its infancy. Thus, a relatively small investment now in
examining societal implications has the potential for a big
payoff.
The Academy review panel further noted that while the National
Science Foundation explicitly included societal implications in its
solicitations for nanotechnology research during fiscal year (FY) 2001,
few proposals were submitted and none was funded. Within the
Foundation, none of the FY 2001 nanotechnology research funds were
allocated to the Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic
Sciences. According to the Academy review panel:
[The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences
(SBES) is] the most capable and logical directorate to lead
these efforts. As a consequence [of not allocating
nanotechnology funds to SBES], social science work on societal
implications could be funded [at NSF] in one of two ways: (1)
it could compete directly for funding with physical science and
engineering projects through a solicitation that was primarily
targeted at that audience or (2) it could be integrated with a
nanotechnology science and engineering center.
There are a number of reasons both funding strategies failed
to promote a strong response from the social science community.
First, given the differences in goals, knowledge bases, and
methodologies, it was probably very difficult for social
science group and individual proposals to compete with
nanotechnology science and engineering proposals submitted to
the physical science and engineering directorates. In addition,
while NSF nanotechnology proposals were required to include an
educational component and/or a component aimed at the
development of a skilled workforce or an informed public,
studies of societal implications was only one of six optional
activities (including international collaboration, shared
experimental facilities, systems-level focus, proof-of-concept
testbeds, and connection to design and development activities)
that individual proposals could include. Not surprisingly,
while essentially every proposal included an educational
component, and many included familiar practices like testbeds,
very few included a social science component. Finally, NSF's
review committees and site visit teams [to review center
proposals] did not include social scientists.
Thus, although NSF appears to have made a good faith effort to
include social science proposals in its agency-wide
solicitation, its internal funding strategy and the way the
solicitation was framed probably undermined its attempts to
support work in this area.
Since the release of the Academy study, new NSF solicitations
(FY03) require proposals for nanotechnology fabrication centers to
include a societal implications dimension and NSF's Directorate for
Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences will be involved in proposal
review.
NSF also supports a science and technology center--the Center for
Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology at Rice University--that
seeks to foster the development of nanotechnology through an integrated
set of research programs that aim to address the scientific,
technological, environmental, human resource, commercialization, and
societal barriers that hinder the transition from research to useful
technology.
6. WITNESS QUESTIONS
The witnesses were asked to address the following questions in
their testimony:
Questions for Mr. Ray Kurzweil
What are the concerns about existing and potential
applications of nanotechnology?
How is it possible to anticipate the consequences of
technology development?
To what extent and how should the policy makers
communicate with the public to facilitate a responsible debate
about the adoption of nanotechnology innovations into society?
What role should researchers in nanotechnology play? What role
should the private sector play?
How can research and debate on societal and ethical
concerns be integrated into the research and development
process?
Questions for Dr. Vicki Colvin
What are the concerns about existing and potential
applications of nanotechnology?
How is it possible to anticipate the consequences of
technology development?
To what extent and how should the policy makers
communicate with the public to facilitate a responsible debate
about the adoption of nanotechnology innovations into society?
What role should researchers in nanotechnology play? What role
should the private sector play?
How can research and debate on societal and ethical
concerns be integrated into the research and development
process?
How is the work of the Rice Center for Biological and
Environmental Nanotechnology integrated into the programs of
the National Nanotechnology Initiative?
Questions for Dr. Langdon Winner
What factors influence the successful adoption of new
technologies into society? What questions should be asked
during the research and development phase to help minimize the
potentially disruptive impact of transformational technology
developments?
What are the current concerns about existing and
potential applications of nanotechnology science and
engineering?
How can research on the societal and ethical concerns
relating to nanotechnology developments be integrated into the
research and development process?
Questions for Ms. Christine Peterson
What factors will influence the successful adoption
of nanotechnology applications into society? What questions
should be asked during the research and development phase to
encourage responsible integration of nanotechnology innovations
into society?
What is the status of the adoption of nanotechnology
applications? What policies might facilitate adoption of new
technologies? What are the potential roadblocks? For example,
will there be a workforce with appropriate technical skills?
What role will the private sector play in the debate
on societal and ethical concerns about existing and potential
applications of nanotechnology?
APPENDIX I
APPENDIX II
Section-by-Section Analysis of the Nanotechnology R&D Act of 2003
Sec. 1. Short Title
``Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2003.''
Sec. 2. Definitions
Defines terms used in the text.
Sec. 3. National Nanotechnology Research and Development Program
Establishes an interagency R&D program to promote and coordinate
federal nanotechnology research, development, demonstration, education,
technology transfer, and commercial application activities. The program
will provide sustained support for interdisciplinary nanotechnology R&D
through grants to researchers and through the establishment of
interdisciplinary research centers and advanced technology user
facilities.
Establishes a research program to identify societal and ethical
concerns related to nanotechnology and requires that such research be
integrated into nanotechnology R&D programs insofar as possible.
Establishes an interagency committee, chaired by the Director of
the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and composed of
representatives of participating federal agencies, as well as
representatives from the Office of Management and Budget, to oversee
the planning, management, and coordination of all federal
nanotechnology R&D activities. Requires the Interagency Committee to
establish goals and priorities, establish program component areas to
implement those goals and priorities, develop a strategic plan to be
updated annually, consult widely with stakeholders, and propose a
coordinated interagency budget for federal nanotechnology R&D.
Sec. 4. Annual Report
Requires the Office of Science and Technology Policy to submit an
annual report, at the time of the President's budget request to
Congress, describing federal nanotechnology budgets and activities for
the current fiscal year, and what is proposed for the next fiscal year,
by agency and by program component area. Requires that the report
include an analysis of the progress made toward achieving the goals and
priorities established for federal nanotechnology R&D, and the extent
to which the program incorporates the recommendations of the Advisory
Committee (established in Sec. 5).
Sec. 5. Advisory Committee
Establishes a Presidentially-appointed advisory committee,
consisting of non-federal experts, to conduct a broad assessment of
federal nanotechnology R&D activities and issue a biennial report.
Sec. 6. National Nanotechnology Coordination Office
Establishes a National Nanotechnology Coordination Office with
full-time staff to provide technical and administrative support to the
Interagency Committee and the Advisory Committee, to serve as a point
of contact for outside groups, and to conduct public outreach.
Sec. 7. Authorization of Appropriations
Authorizes appropriations for nanotechnology R&D programs at the
National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Institute of
Standards and Technology, and the Environmental Protection Agency (see
table below).
Sec. 8. External Review of the National Nanotechnology Research and
Development Program
Requires the Director of the Office of Science and Technology
Policy to contract with the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a
triennial review of federal nanotechnology R&D programs including
technical progress, managerial effectiveness, and adequacy in
addressing societal and ethical concerns.
Chairman Boehlert. We will come to order. A little
housekeeping first. The Chair will recognize the distinguished
Ranking Member, Mr. Hall of Texas, for the purpose of an
appointment.
Mr. Hall. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I ask unanimous consent
that my honored colleague from Texas, my neighbor in Texas, Ms.
Eddie Bernice Johnson, be elected to membership on the
Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics in order to fill an
existing democratic vacancy.
Chairman Boehlert. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Hall. Thank you.
Chairman Boehlert. Ms. Johnson, welcome. I want to welcome
everyone here this morning for this important hearing. It is
rare that Congress gets, or I should say takes, the opportunity
to take a step back and think about the consequences of
technological change even though they are driving--they are a
driving force in our society. So I am eager to have this
hearing.
I just wanted to say that we should approach today's
hearing with evenhandedness and humility. With evenhandedness,
because technology, like most human endeavors, inevitably leads
to both positive and negative consequences, but one thing we
can be sure of is that nanotechnology will be neither the
unallied boom predicted by technophiles nor the unmitigated
disaster portrayed by technophobes. The truth will be in
between, and it is worth probing. But how good are we at
probing it? Here is where the humility comes in. As Yogi Berra
is supposed to have said, ``It is always difficult to make
predictions, especially about the future.'' And certainly, I
might point out that he is one of the greats of the Yankees,
which occupy the lofty position of first place in the American
league.
And indeed, our record, when it comes to technology, is not
very good, but how good can we expect it to be? The social
consequences of technology, the most subtle and far-reaching
impacts, are the most difficult to predict and even more
difficult to forestall. But that is not a reason to do nothing.
We have to figure out as much as we can about the potential
impacts of technology and plan accordingly. The most tangible,
direct impacts, like harms to the environment or health, should
be susceptible to study, even if we don't get everything right,
right from the beginning.
So I hope we have a thorough, in-depth discussion this
morning that avoids easier answers and that makes distinctions
between different types of potential consequences: those that
are social, those that raise ethical questions, those that
involve purposeful misuse of technology, those that relate to
government, and so on, because each type of consequence raises
its own set of questions. I think those questions are worth
investigating, not just about nanotechnology, but about all
technologies. And I am pleased that H.R. 766, the
nanotechnology bill that I have introduced with Mr. Honda,
authorizes research grants on societal and ethical consequences
and requires that that research be integrated with the physical
science research. We will markup that bill on April 30, and I
expect it to be on the House Floor the following week.
[See Appendix 1: Additional Material for the Record for
H.R. 766.]
Chairman Boehlert. As many people here know, the most
extravagant fear about nanotechnology is that it will yield
nanobots that will turn the world into gray goo. That is not a
fear I share, but I do worry that the debate about
nanotechnology could turn into gray goo with its own
deleterious consequences. I am hopeful that today's hearing on
H.R. 766 will keep the debate solid. We know it will be lively.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Boehlert follows:]
Prepared Statement of Chairman Sherwood Boehlert
I want to welcome everyone here this morning for this important
hearing. It's rare that Congress gets--or, I should say, takes--the
opportunity to take a step back and think about the consequences of
technological change, even though they are a driving force in our
society. So I'm eager to get this hearing started.
I just want to say that we should approach today's hearing with
even-handedness and humility. With even-handedness because technology,
like most human endeavors, inevitably leads to both positive and
negative consequences. The one thing we can be sure of is that
nanotechnology will be neither the unalloyed boon predicted by
technophiles nor the unmitigated disaster portrayed by technophobes.
The truth will be in between, and it is worth probing.
But how good are we at probing it? Here's where the humility comes
in. As Yogi Berra is supposed to have said, ``It's always difficult to
make predictions, especially about the future.'' And indeed our record
when it comes to technology is not very good. But how good can we
expect to be? The social consequences of technology--the most subtle
and far-reaching impacts--are the most difficult to predict and even
more difficult to forestall.
But that's not a reason to do nothing. We ought to figure out as
much as we can about the potential impacts of technology and plan
accordingly. The most tangible, direct impacts--like harms to the
environment or health--should be susceptible to study even if we don't
get everything right, right from the beginning.
So I hope we have a thorough, in depth discussion this morning that
avoids easier answers and that makes distinctions between different
types of potential consequences--those that are social, those that
raise ethical questions, those that involve purposeful misuse of
technology, those that relate to the environment, and so on--because
each type of consequence raises its own set of questions.
I think those questions are worth investigating--not just about
nanotechnology--but about all technologies. And I'm pleased that H.R.
766, the nanotechnology bill that I've introduced with Mr. Honda,
authorizes research grants on societal and ethical consequences, and
requires that that research be integrated with the physical science
research. We will mark up that bill on April 30 and I expect it to be
on the House floor the following week.
As many people here know, the most extravagant fear about
nanotechnology is that it will yield nanobots that will turn the world
into ``gray goo.'' That's not a fear I share, but I do worry that the
debate about nanotechnology could turn into ``gray goo''--with its own
deleterious consequences. I'm hopeful that today's hearing and H.R. 766
will keep the debate solid and lively. Thank you.
Chairman Boehlert. And the Chair recognizes Mr. Hall.
Mr. Hall. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to join you in the
welcoming of these witnesses here today. At the previous
hearing, we reviewed the current Federal nanotechnology
research effort and received comments and advice on new
authorizing legislation, which the Committee will soon be
marking up. I think it is fair to say that the previous hearing
revealed strong support for the initiative and for the
legislation.
It is clear that nanotechnology has great promise that will
have enormous consequences for the information industry, for
manufacture, for medicine and health. Indeed, the scope of the
technology is so broad; it is to leave virtually no product
untouched. The fact that nanotechnology has such broad
potential argues for careful consideration and careful
attention to how it may affect society, and in particular,
attention to potential downsides of the technology.
While some concerns have already been raised that seem more
to--in the realm of science fiction, there are also very real
issues with the potential health and environmental effects of
nanosized particles. Some examples will be brought out, I
think, in today's testimony. I believe it is important for the
successful development of nanotechnology that potential
problems be addressed from the beginning in a straightforward
and an open way. We know too well that negative public
perceptions about the safety of a technology can have serious
consequences for its acceptance and for its use. This has been
the case in such technologies as nuclear power, genetically
modified foods, and stem cell therapies.
Research is needed to provide understanding of potential
problems arising from nanotechnology applications in order to
allow informed judgments to be made about risk and cost benefit
tradeoffs for specific implementations of the technology. An
effort must be made by the research community to open lines of
communication with the public to make clear that potential
safety risks are being explored and not ignored. We can't
once--down again go down a path where the research community
simply issues a statement to the public, ``Trust us. It is
safe.'' The research plan for the National Nanotechnology
Initiative has identified the need for research and education
activities that address societal impacts of the technology, and
I hope that today's hearing will help identify the questions
that need to be asked, who should be involved, and the level of
resources needed. Excuse me.
I also ask our witnesses for any recommendations they may
have for improvements to the authorizing legislation that will
help strengthen the societal impact component of the
initiative. And I once again thank you, Mr. Chairman, for
calling this hearing. I appreciate the attendance of our
witnesses today. I realize they are important people. They have
important jobs. It takes time to prepare, time to come here,
time to give us this, and we are grateful to you. And we thank
you for it. Mr. Chairman, with that, I yield back my time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hall follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Ralph M. Hall
I am pleased to join the Chairman in welcoming our witnesses to the
Committee's second hearing on the National Nanotechnology Initiative.
At the previous hearing we reviewed the current federal
nanotechnology research effort and received comments and advice on new
authorizing legislation, which the Committee will soon be marking up. I
think it is fair to say that the previous hearing revealed strong
support for the initiative and the legislation.
It is clear that nanotechnology has great promise. It will have
enormous consequences for the information industry, for manufacturing,
and for medicine and health. Indeed, the scope of this technology is so
broad as to leave virtually no product untouched.
The fact that nanotechnology has such broad potential argues for
careful attention to how it may affect society, and in particular,
attention to potential downsides of the technology. While some concerns
have already been raised that seem more in the realm of science
fiction, there are also very real issues with the potential health and
environmental effects of nanosized particles. Some examples will be
brought out in today's testimony.
I believe it is important for the successful development of
nanotechnology that potential problems be addressed from the beginning
in a straightforward and open way. We know too well that negative
public perceptions about the safety of a technology can have serious
consequences for its acceptance and use. This has been the case with
such technologies as nuclear power, genetically modified foods, and
stem cell therapies.
Research is needed to provide understanding of potential problems
arising from nanotechnology applications in order to allow informed
judgments to be made about risk and cost/benefit tradeoffs for specific
implementations of the technology. And efforts must be made by the
research community to open lines of communication with the public to
make clear that potential safety risks are being explored and not
ignored.
We cannot once again go down the path where the research community
simply issues a statement to the public: Trust us, it's safe.
The research plan for the National Nanotechnology Initiative has
identified the need for research and education activities that address
societal impacts of the technology. I hope that today's hearing will
help identify the questions that need to be asked, who should be
involved, and the level of resources needed.
I also ask our witnesses for any recommendations they may have for
improvements to the authorizing legislation that will help strengthen
the societal impacts component of the initiative.
I want to thank the Chairman for calling a hearing on this
important aspect of the nanotechnology initiative. I appreciate the
attendance of our witnesses today, and I look forward to our
discussion.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Nick Smith
This morning we meet for our second hearing to review H.R. 766, The
Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2003. At the first
hearing we examined the state of nanotechnology, its short-term and
long-term potential, and the importance of establishing a government
coordination mechanism for federal support of the science. Today we
will examine the potential negative implications of nanotechnology on
society and the environment.
The first hearing provided a glimpse of the incredible promise that
nanotechnology holds to improve our lives, strengthen our economy, and
address a countless array of societal problems. When this promise comes
to fruition, I believe that nanotechnology and biotechnology will
become the most important technological advancement since the
information technology revolution of the 1990s.
While it is difficult to predict how long it may take for
nanotechnology research and development to lead to significant
breakthrough innovations, it is not difficult to understand that the
Federal Government can accelerate this development by providing strong,
coordinated support of fundamental nanotechnology research. This is the
vision set forth in H.R. 766, that many of us on the Committee have co-
sponsored.
One of the key components of the research effort authorized by H.R.
766, and the topic of our hearing today, is research into the societal
implications of nanotechnology. This research will help us to better
understand the very real societal and ethical concerns that will arise
in the wake of nanotech's inevitable impact on our lives. I strongly
support these provisions of H.R. 766 and I believe it is critical that
we address these issues so we can ensure that the general public can
take comfort in knowing the products have been thoroughly tested and
proved safe.
This effort will go a long way in limiting the effectiveness of
groups that seek to unfairly portray nanotechnology R&D as too
dangerous to press forward with. These organizations attempt to create
fear and paranoia by blurring the lines between legitimate societal
risks and imaginary science fiction. Some groups have even gone to the
extreme of calling for a complete moratorium on all nanotechnology
research and commercialization, unfairly framing nanotechnology as
``the next asbestos.''
Unfortunately, these scare-mongering tactics of widespread
misinformation campaigns can be very effective, and in fact often help
raise significant amounts of money for the organization, with which
they use to attack the science further. This same strategy has been
very successful in damaging the reputation of biotechnology--delaying
research, development, and adoption of several safe and beneficial
products, most notably pest resistant GM crops in Africa.
As a passionate supporter of science rather than emotion governing
the advancement of biotechnology, I believe it is important that safe
and beneficial nanotechnology innovations do not suffer the problems of
emotion and delay that hindered biotechnology applications before them.
This will require that we conduct research into areas of societal and
ethical concern, educate the public on the safety of these products,
and maintain a regulatory framework that keeps pace with the
development of new and unique nanotechnology products.
We must also recognize that the precautionary principle approach of
not adopting new technology unless ``zero risk'' has been established
is unrealistic. Instead, the question of moving ahead with new
nanotechnology applications should not be decided on whether or not a
risk might exist, but rather whether or not the benefits outweigh the
risks. This approach will help ensure that policy decisions are driven
by sound science, not unscientific alarmist rhetoric.
Perhaps these efforts would be aided if we called for
nanotechnology research based on regulatory scientific evaluation and
safeguards. It might be difficult to stop negative rhetoric , but until
committed skeptics of nanotechnology can provide sound scientific
evidence to support their gloom and doom forecasts, we should make
every effort to see their arguments are countered vigorously with
scientific information.
We have an esteemed panel of experts on these topics with us here
today, and I look forward to a productive discussion.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Costello follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Jerry F. Costello
Good morning. I want to thank the witnesses for appearing before
this committee to discuss the possible societal impacts and ethical
concerns related to nanotechnology research and applications.
Understanding the discoveries from nanotechnology will contribute to
improvements in medicine, manufacturing, high-performance materials,
information technology, and environmental technologies.
Nanotechnology can best be considered as a ``catch-all''
description of activities at the level of atoms and molecules that have
applications in the real world. A variety of nanotechnology products
are already in development or on the market, including stain-resistant,
wrinkle free pants and ultraviolet-light blocking sunscreens.
However, specific applications of nanotechnology can have
implications that cut two ways. For example, new nanoscale medical
detection devices allow the identification of an individual's genetic
predisposition to a disease. This raises issues of privacy and could
threaten the stability of health insurance, which is based on
uncertainty and spreading risk across the population. Further,
nanotechnology developments have produced and will continue to produce
rapid technological changes that can threaten the social structure,
economic stability, and spiritual beliefs and values.
I am interested to know what types of changes are needed to respond
or adapt to societal changes that nanotechnology developments may
bring. In addition, I am interested to learn more about public
education efforts about nanotechnology.
I thank the witnesses for appearing before our committee and look
forward to their testimony.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson
Thank you, Mr. Chairman for calling this meeting today. I welcome
our distinguished guests and would like to thank you for agreeing to
testify here today on the importance of the National Nanotechnology
Initiative.
The purpose of this hearing is to examine federal nanotechnology
research and development. Also today, we will consider H.R. 766, the
Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2003. I am a proud
original co-sponsor of this legislation.
Nanotechnology is the act of manipulating matter at the atomic
scale. Regardless of the diverse opinions on the rate at which
nanotechnology will be implemented, people who make it a habit to keep
up with technology agree on this: it is a technology in its infancy,
and it holds the potential to change everything.
Research in nanoscience is literally exploding, both because of the
intellectual allure of constructing matter and molecules one atom at a
time, and because the new technical capabilities permit creation of
materials and devices with significant societal impact. The rapid
evolution of this new science and the opportunities for its application
promise that nanotechnology will become one of the dominant
technologies of the 21st century. Nanotechnology represents a central
direction for the future of chemistry that is increasingly
interdisciplinary and ecumenical in application.
I agree with the assessment that nanotechnology is one of the most
promising and exciting fields of science today. I look forward to
working with this committee on its advancement.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Honda follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Michael M. Honda
Christine Peterson is co-founder and President of Foresight
Institute, a Silicon Valley based nonprofit that educates the public,
the technical community, and policy-makers on nanotechnology and its
long-term effects.
Christine focuses on making nanotechnology understandable, and on
clarifying the difference between near-term commercial advances and the
``Next Industrial Revolution'' arriving in the next few decades.
With Eric Drexler and Gayle Pergamit, she wrote Unbounding the
Future: the Nanotechnology Revolution, which sketches nanotechnology's
potential environmental and medical benefits as well as possible
abuses.
Christine tells me that her work is motivated by a desire to help
Earth's environment and traditional human communities avoid harm and
instead benefit from expected dramatic advances in technology.
I believe we have a unique opportunity to consider the possible
social, legal, ethical, and philosophical issues that might arise as
the nanotechnology industry matures before they occur, and it is our
duty to do so.
Similar opportunities were missed in the fields of molecular
genetics and the development of the Internet, and now we wrestle with
issues such as genetic screening, privacy, and intellectual property.
I hope that we develop an approach to dealing with the coming
challenges that allows us to achieve the vision of the future that
Christine has described, in which nanotechnology benefits both humans
and the natural environment.
I look forward to hearing her thoughts on how we can achieve this.
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Boehlert. Thank you very much, Mr. Hall. And we
have one panel of very distinguished people who are serving as
resources to this committee. And I very much appreciate it, and
it is a tradition of the Committee just to introduce witnesses
with their name and assume the whole world knows a lot about
them. And we take for granted our witnesses, quite frankly. I
have to confess that. These people that are witnesses are all
very distinguished people in their professions, and they are
part of the education of the Congress, so we deeply appreciate
your availability and your guidance to us as we try to shape
responsible public policy.
Our witnesses today consist of Mr. Ray Kurzweil, Founder,
Chairman, and CEO of Kurzweil Technologies, Inc., a software
development firm. A pioneer in artificial intelligence, he is
the author of ``The Age of Intelligent Machines'' and ``The Age
of Spiritual Machines.'' He received the 1999 National Medal of
Technology and in 2002, he was inducted into the National
Inventors Hall of Fame for his 1976 invention of the Kurzweil
Reading Machine, the first device to transform print into
computer spoken words, enabling blind and visually impaired
people to read printed materials. Since 1973, he has founded
nine companies. Mr. Kurzweil, I thank you for being with us.
Dr. Vicki Colvin is the Executive Director for the--for the
Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology and
Associate Professor of Chemistry at Rice University. Research
underway at the center focuses on nanomaterials' behavior in
the environment and the body and considers risk assessment and
safety factors. Dr. Colvin.
Dr. Langdon Winner is Professor of Political Science in the
Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute in Troy, the great Empire State of New
York. Pardon a little pride there. We just happen to have the
national basketball champions in New York and I attribute to
the Syracuse Orangemen. And we have the New York Yankees, which
are in first place, where they belong. But we also have a
wonderful resource.
Mr. Sherman. Mr. Chairman, who are the national champions
of basketball--of baseball?
Chairman Boehlert. The national champions? That was last
year.
Mr. Sherman. Well, that would be the most recent year.
Chairman Boehlert. Dr. Winner is a political theorist who
focuses on social and political issues that surround modern
technological change. And for the purpose of an introduction of
our final witness, I am pleased to call on my partner, the
distinguished gentleman from California, Mr. Honda.
Mr. Honda. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member. I--
before I start, I just want to make a personal comment of the
Chair that your comments and--your personal comments regarding
the panel is well founded. And I appreciate the time that you
take to make sure that the folks do know their background and
their contributions and that your mom would be real proud of
you.
It is my pleasure, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, to
introduce Christine Peterson is--she is a cofounder and
President of Foresight Institute, a Silicon Valley based non-
profit that educates the public, the technical community, and
the policy makers on nanotechnology and its long-term effects.
Christine focuses on making nanotechnology understandable and
on clarifying the difference between near-term commercial
advances and the ``Next Industrial Revolution'' arriving in the
next few decades. With Eric Drexler and Gayle Pergamit, she
wrote ``Unbounding the Future: The Nanotechnology Revolution'',
which sketches nanotechnology's potential environmental and
medical benefits as well as possible abuses.
Christine tells me that her work is motivated by a desire
to help Earth's environment and traditionally human communities
avoid harm, and instead benefit from expected dramatic advances
in technology.
I feel that we have a unique opportunity to consider the
possible social, legal, ethical, and philosophical issues that
might arise as the nanotechnology industry matures before they
occur. And it is our duty to do so. Similar opportunities were
missed in the fields of molecular genetics and the development
of the Internet. And now we wrestle with these issues such as
genetic engineering, genetic screening privacy, and
intellectual property. I hope that we develop an approach to
dealing with the coming challenges that allows us to achieve
the vision of the future that Christine has described in which
nanotechnology benefits both humans and the natural
environment.
I look forward to hearing her thoughts on how we can
achieve this. Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity.
Chairman Boehlert. Thank you very much. And now for the
panel, your record--your statement will appear in the record at
this juncture in its entirety. We would ask that you try to
summarize it, not because we want to have a brief session, but
because we want to allow ample opportunity for questions. We
will give you, as a guide, five or six or seven minutes. We are
not going to be arbitrary. It always boggles my mind that we
have experts like you come from afar to guide us and then we
say, ``Tell us everything we need to know in 300 seconds or
less.'' So we will be lenient with you. And to Mr. Honda, I
would say my mother would be proud, you are right, and
surprised as hell that I amounted to anything.
Mr. Kurzweil, you are up first.
STATEMENT OF MR. RAYMOND KURZWEIL, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, KURZWEIL
TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
Mr. Kurzweil. Thank you, Chairman Boehlert and
distinguished Members of the House Science Committee. I greatly
appreciate this opportunity to respond to this vital issue.
Chairman Boehlert, you just mentioned that the truth of
nanotechnology will be somewhere in between great benefit and
great danger. I would say that we will ultimately see both
great promise and some peril. I think with the right
strategies, we can manage the peril.
Our rapidly growing ability to manipulate matter and energy
at ever smaller scales promises to transform virtually every
sector of society, including health, medicine, manufacturing,
electronics and computers, energy, travel, and defense. There
will be increasing overlap between nanotechnology and other
technologies and increasing influence, such as biotech and
artificial intelligence. As with any other technological
transformation, we will be faced with deeply intertwined
promise and peril.
For the past two decades, I have been studying technology
trends. I have a team of researchers who assist me in gathering
critical measures of technology in different areas. I have been
developing mathematical models of how technology evolves.
Technologies, especially those related to information, develop
at an exponential pace, generally doubling in capability and
price performance every year. And this goes beyond just
computers or Moore's Law. It includes, really, any information-
based technology, and ultimately, nanotech will be like that.
It includes communication, DNA sequencing, brain scanning,
brain reverse engineering, the size and scope of human
knowledge, and of particular relevance, the size of technology
is inexorably shrinking.
According to my models, both electronic and mechanical
technologies are shrinking at a rate of 5.6 per linear
dimension per decade, so at this rate, most of technology will
be nanotechnology by the 2020's. The golden age of nanotech,
therefore, is a couple of decades away. And this era will bring
us the ability to essentially convert information into physical
products. We are already placing devices with narrow
intelligence into our bodies for diagnostic and therapeutic
purposes. With the advent of nanotechnology, we will be able to
keep our bodies and brains in a healthy optimal state more or
less indefinitely. We will have technologies to reverse
environmental pollution. Nanotechnology and related advanced
technologies of the 2020's will bring us the opportunity to
overcome age-old problems, including pollution, poverty,
disease, and aging.
We hear increasingly strident voices that object to the
intermingling of the so-called natural world with the products
of our technology. And this increasing intimacy of our human
lives with our technology is not a new story. Had it not been
for the technological advances of the past two centuries, most
of us here today wouldn't be here today. Human life expectancy
was 37 years in 1800. We are immeasurably better off as a
result of technology, but there is still a lot of suffering in
the world to overcome. We have a moral imperative, therefore,
to continue the pursuit of knowledge and advanced technologies,
such as nanotechnology.
There is also an economic imperative. Nanotechnology is not
a single field of study that we can simply relinquish as others
have suggested. Nanotechnology is advancing on hundreds of
fronts, and it is an extremely diverse activity. We can't
relinquish its pursuit without essentially relinquishing all of
technology.
But technology has always been a double-edged sword. That
will certainly be true of nanotechnology as you pointed out in
your opening statement. We see that duality today in
biotechnology. The same techniques that could save millions of
lives from cancer may also empower a bioterrorist.
A lot of attention has been paid to the problem of self-
replicating nanotechnology entities. You referred to it as
``gray goo.'' I discuss in my written testimony steps we can
take now and in the future to diminish these dangers, but the
primary point I would like to make is that we are going to have
no choice but to confront the challenge of guiding
nanotechnology in a constructive direction. Any broad attempt
to relinquish nanotechnology, as some have suggested, will only
push it underground, which would interfere with the benefits,
while actually making the dangers worse.
As a test case, let me bring up an example. We can take a
small measure of comfort from how we have dealt with one recent
technological challenge. There exists today a new form of fully
non-biological, self-replicating entity that didn't exist just
a few decades ago, the computer or software virus. When this
form of destructive intruder first appeared, strong concerns
were voiced that as they became more sophisticated, software
pathogens had the potential to destroy the computer network
medium they live in yet the immune system that has evolved in
response to this challenge has been largely effective. No one
would suggest we do away with the Internet because of software
viruses. Our response has been effective and successful,
although there remain, and always will remain a concern, the
danger remains at a nuisance level. Keep in mind, this success
is in an industry in which there is no regulation, no
certification for practitioners.
The near-term applications of nanotechnology, such as
nanoparticles, are far more limited in their benefits as well
as far more benign in their potential dangers. The voices that
are expressing concern about nanotechnology are the same voices
that have expressed undue levels of concern about genetically
modified organisms. The effects of anti-technology stance that
has been reflected in the GMO controversy will not be helpful
in constructively balancing the benefits and risks of
nanoparticle technology and nanotechnology in general as we
move forward.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kurzweil follows:]
Prepared Statement of Raymond Kurzweil
Summary of Testimony:
The size of technology is itself inexorably shrinking. According to
my models, both electronic and mechanical technologies are shrinking at
a rate of 5.6 per linear dimension per decade. At this rate, most of
technology will be ``nanotechnology'' by the 2020s.
We are immeasurably better off as a result of technology, but there
is still a lot of suffering in the world to overcome. We have a moral
imperative, therefore, to continue the pursuit of knowledge and
advanced technologies, such as nanotechnology, that can continue to
overcome human affliction. There is also an economic imperative to
continue due to the pervasive acceleration of technology, including
miniaturization, in the competitive economy.
Nanotechnology is not a separate field of study that we can simply
relinquish. We will have no choice but to confront the challenge of
guiding nanotechnology in a constructive direction. There are
strategies we can deploy, but there will need to be continual
development of defensive strategies.
We can take some level of comfort from our relative success in
dealing with one new form of fully non-biological, self-replicating
pathogen: the software virus.
The most immediate danger is not self-replicating nanotechnology,
but rather self-replicating biotechnology. We need to place a much
higher priority on developing vitally needed defensive technologies
such as antiviral medications. Keep in mind that a bioterrorist does
not need to put his ``innovations'' through the FDA.
Any broad attempt to relinquish nanotechnology will only push it
underground, which would interfere with the benefits while actually
making the dangers worse.
Existing regulations on the safety of foods, drugs, and other
materials in the environment are sufficient to deal with the near-term
applications of nanotechnology, such as nanoparticles.
Full Verbal Testimony:
In my brief verbal remarks, I only have time to summarize my
Chairman Boehlert, distinguished members of the U.S. House of
Representatives Committee on Science, and other distinguished guests, I
appreciate this opportunity to respond to your questions and concerns
on the vital issue of the societal implications of nanotechnology. Our
rapidly growing ability to manipulate matter and energy at ever smaller
scales promises to transform virtually every sector of society,
including health and medicine, manufacturing, electronics and
computers, energy, travel, and defense. There will be increasing
overlap between nanotechnology and other technologies of increasing
influence, such as biotechnology and artificial intelligence. As with
any other technological transformation, we will be faced with deeply
intertwined promise and peril.
In my brief verbal remarks, I only have time to summarize my
conclusions on this complex subject, and I am providing the Committee
with an expanded written response that attempts to explain the
reasoning behind my views.
Eric Drexler's 1986 thesis developed the concept of building
molecule-scale devices using molecular assemblers that would precisely
guide chemical reactions. Without going through the history of the
controversy surrounding feasibility, it is fair to say that the
consensus today is that nano-assembly is indeed feasible, although the
most dramatic capabilities are still a couple of decades away.
The concept of nanotechnology today has been expanded to include
essentially any technology where the key features are measured in a
modest number of nanometers (under 100 by some definitions). By this
standard, contemporary electronics has already passed this threshold.
For the past two decades, I have studied technology trends, along
with a team of researchers who have assisted me in gathering critical
measures of technology in different areas, and I have been developing
mathematical models of how technology evolves. Several conclusions from
this study have a direct bearing on the issues before this hearing.
Technologies, particularly those related to information, develop at an
exponential pace, generally doubling in capability and price-
performance every year. This observation includes the power of
computation, communication--both wired and wireless, DNA sequencing,
brain scanning, brain reverse engineering, and the size and scope of
human knowledge in general. Of particular relevance to this hearing,
the size of technology is itself inexorably shrinking. According to my
models, both electronic and mechanical technologies are shrinking at a
rate of 5.6 per linear dimension per decade. At this rate, most of
technology will be ``nanotechnology'' by the 2020s.
The golden age of nanotechnology is, therefore, a couple of decades
away. This era will bring us the ability to essentially convert
software, i.e., information, directly into physical products. We will
be able to produce virtually any product for pennies per pound.
Computers will have greater computational capacity than the human
brain, and we will be completing the reverse engineering of the human
brain to reveal the software design of human intelligence. We are
already placing devices with narrow intelligence in our bodies for
diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. With the advent of nanotechnology,
we will be able to keep our bodies and brains in a healthy, optimal
state indefinitely. We will have technologies to reverse environmental
pollution. Nanotechnology and related advanced technologies of the
2020s will bring us the opportunity to overcome age-old problems,
including pollution, poverty, disease, and aging.
We hear increasingly strident voices that object to the
intermingling of the so-called natural world with the products of our
technology. The increasing intimacy of our human lives with our
technology is not a new story, and I would remind the committee that
had it not been for the technological advances of the past two
centuries, most of us here today would not be here today. Human life
expectancy was 37 years in 1800. Most humans at that time lived lives
dominated by poverty, intense labor, disease, and misfortune. We are
immeasurably better off as a result of technology, but there is still a
lot of suffering in the world to overcome. We have a moral imperative,
therefore, to continue the pursuit of knowledge and of advanced
technologies that can continue to overcome human affliction.
There is also an economic imperative to continue. Nanotechnology is
not a single field of study that we can simply relinquish, as suggested
by Bill Joy's essay, ``Why the Future Doesn't Need Us.'' Nanotechnology
is advancing on hundreds of fronts, and is an extremely diverse
activity. We cannot relinquish its pursuit without essentially
relinquishing all of technology, which would require a Brave New World
totalitarian scenario, which is inconsistent with the values of our
society.
Technology has always been a double-edged sword, and that is
certainly true of nanotechnology. The same technology that promises to
advance human health and wealth also has the potential for destructive
applications. We can see that duality today in biotechnology. The same
techniques that could save millions of lives from cancer and disease
may also empower a bioterrorist to create a bioengineered pathogen.
A lot of attention has been paid to the problem of self-replicating
nanotechnology entities that could essentially form a nonbiological
cancer that would threaten the planet. I discuss in my written
testimony steps we can take now and in the future to ameliorate these
dangers. However, the primary point I would like to make is that we
will have no choice but to confront the challenge of guiding
nanotechnology in a constructive direction. Any broad attempt to
relinquish nanotechnology will only push it underground, which would
interfere with the benefits while actually making the dangers worse.
As a test case, we can take a small measure of comfort from how we
have dealt with one recent technological challenge. There exists today
a new form of fully nonbiological self-replicating entity that didn't
exist just a few decades ago: the computer virus. When this form of
destructive intruder first appeared, strong concerns were voiced that
as they became more sophisticated, software pathogens had the potential
to destroy the computer network medium they live in. Yet the ``immune
system'' that has evolved in response to this challenge has been
largely effective. Although destructive self-replicating software
entities do cause damage from time to time, the injury is but a small
fraction of the benefit we receive from the computers and communication
links that harbor them. No one would suggest we do away with computers,
local area networks, and the Internet because of software viruses.
One might counter that computer viruses do not have the lethal
potential of biological viruses or of destructive nanotechnology. This
is not always the case: we rely on software to monitor patients in
critical care units, to fly and land airplanes, to guide intelligent
weapons in our current campaign in Iraq, and other ``mission critical''
tasks. To the extent that this is true, however, this observation only
strengthens my argument. The fact that computer viruses are not usually
deadly to humans only means that more people are willing to create and
release them. It also means that our response to the danger is that
much less intense. Conversely, when it comes to self-replicating
entities that are potentially lethal on a large scale, our response on
all levels will be vastly more serious, as we have seen since 9-11.
I would describe our response to software pathogens as effective
and successful. Although they remain (and always will remain) a
concern, the danger remains at a nuisance level. Keep in mind that this
success is in an industry in which there is no regulation, and no
certification for practitioners. This largely unregulated industry is
also enormously productive. One could argue that it has contributed
more to our technological and economic progress than any other
enterprise in human history.
Some of the concerns that have been raised, such as Bill Joy's
article, are effective because they paint a picture of future dangers
as if they were released on today's unprepared world. The reality is
that the sophistication and power of our defensive technologies and
knowledge will grow along with the dangers.
The challenge most immediately in front of us is not self-
replicating nanotechnology, but rather self-replicating biotechnology.
The next two decades will be the golden age of biotechnology, whereas
the comparable era for nanotechnology will follow in the 2020s and
beyond. We are now in the early stages of a transforming technology
based on the intersection of biology and information science. We are
learning the ``software'' methods of life and disease processes. By
reprogramming the information processes that lead to and encourage
disease and aging, we will have the ability to overcome these
afflictions. However, the same knowledge can also empower a terrorist
to create a bioengineered pathogen.
As we compare the success we have had in controlling engineered
software viruses to the coming challenge of controlling engineered
biological viruses, we are struck with one salient difference. As I
noted, the software industry is almost completely unregulated. The same
is obviously not the case for biotechnology. A bioterrorist does not
need to put his ``innovations'' through the FDA. However, we do require
the scientists developing the defensive technologies to follow the
existing regulations, which slow down the innovation process at every
step. Moreover, it is impossible, under existing regulations and
ethical standards, to test defenses to bioterrorist agents on humans.
There is already extensive discussion to modify these regulations to
allow for animal models and simulations to replace infeasible human
trials. This will be necessary, but I believe we will need to go beyond
these steps to accelerate the development of vitally needed defensive
technologies.
With the human genome project, 3 to 5 percent of the budgets were
devoted to the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of the
technology. A similar commitment for nanotechnology would be
appropriate and constructive.
Near-term applications of nanotechnology are far more limited in
their benefits as well as more benign in their potential dangers. These
include developments in the materials area involving the addition of
particles with multi-nanometer features to plastics, textiles, and
other products. These have perhaps the greatest potential in the area
of pharmaceutical development by allowing new strategies for highly
targeted drugs that perform their intended function and reach the
appropriate tissues, while minimizing side effects. This development is
not qualitatively different than what we have been doing for decades in
that many new materials involve constituent particles that are novel
and of a similar physical scale. The emerging nanoparticle technology
provides more precise control, but the idea of introducing new
nonbiological materials into the environment is hardly a new
phenomenon. We cannot say a priori that all nanoengineered particles
are safe, nor would it be appropriate to deem them necessarily unsafe.
Environmental tests thus far have not shown reasons for undue concern,
and it is my view that existing regulations on the safety of foods,
drugs, and other materials in the environment are sufficient to deal
with these near-term applications.
The voices that are expressing concern about nanotechnology are the
same voices that have expressed undue levels of concern about
genetically modified organisms. As with nanoparticles, GMOs are neither
inherently safe nor unsafe, and reasonable levels of regulation for
safety are appropriate. However, none of the dire warnings about GMOs
have come to pass. Already, African nations, such as Zambia and
Zimbabwe, have rejected vitally needed food aid under pressure from
European anti-GMO activists. The reflexive anti-technology stance that
has been reflected in the GMO controversy will not be helpful in
balancing the benefits and risks of nanoparticle technology.
In summary, I believe that existing regulatory mechanisms are
sufficient to handle near-term applications of nanotechnology. As for
the long-term, we need to appreciate that a myriad of nanoscale
technologies are inevitable. The current examinations and dialogues on
achieving the promise while ameliorating the peril are appropriate and
will deserve sharply increased attention as we get closer to realizing
these revolutionary technologies.
Written Testimony
I am pleased to provide a more detailed written response to the
issues raised by the Committee. In this written portion of my response,
I address the following issues:
Models of Technology Trends: A discussion of why
nanotechnology and related advanced technologies are
inevitable. The underlying technologies are deeply integrated
into our society and are advancing on many diverse fronts.
A Small Sample of Examples of True Nanotechnology: A
few of the implications of nanotechnology two to three decades
from now.
The Economic Imperatives of the Law of Accelerating
Returns: The exponential advance of technology, including the
accelerating miniaturization of technology, is driven by
economic imperative, and, in turn, has a pervasive impact on
the economy.
The Deeply Intertwined Promise and Peril of
Nanotechnology and Related Advanced Technologies: Technology is
inherently a doubled-edged sword, and we will need to adopt
strategies to encourage the benefits while ameliorating the
risks. Relinquishing broad areas of technology, as has been
proposed, is not feasible and attempts to do so will only drive
technology development underground, which will exacerbate the
dangers.
Models of Technology Trends
A diverse technology such as nanotechnology progresses on many
fronts and is comprised of hundreds of small steps forward, each benign
in itself. An examination of these trends shows that technology in
which the key features are measured in a small number of nanometers is
inevitable. I hereby provide some examples of my study of technology
trends.
The motivation for this study came from my interest in inventing.
As an inventor in the 1970s, I came to realize that my inventions
needed to make sense in terms of the enabling technologies and market
forces that would exist when the invention was introduced, which would
represent a very different world than when it was conceived. I began to
develop models of how distinct technologies--electronics,
communications, computer processors, memory, magnetic storage, and the
size of technology--developed and how these changes rippled through
markets and ultimately our social institutions. I realized that most
inventions fail not because they never work, but because their timing
is wrong. Inventing is a lot like surfing, you have to anticipate and
catch the wave at just the right moment.
In the 1980s, my interest in technology trends and implications
took on a life of its own, and I began to use my models of technology
trends to project and anticipate the technologies of future times, such
as the year 2000, 2010, 2020, and beyond. This enabled me to invent
with the capabilities of the future. In the late 1980s, I wrote my
first book, The Age of Intelligent Machines, which ended with the
specter of machine intelligence becoming indistinguishable from its
human progenitors. This book included hundreds of predictions about the
1990s and early 2000 years, and my track record of prediction has held
up well.
During the 1990s I gathered empirical data on the apparent
acceleration of all information-related technologies and sought to
refine the mathematical models underlying these observations. In The
Age of Spiritual Machines (ASM), which I wrote in 1998, I introduced
refined models of technology, and a theory I called ``the law of
accelerating returns,'' which explained why technology evolves in an
exponential fashion.
The Intuitive Linear View Versus the Historical Exponential View
The future is widely misunderstood. Our forebears expected the
future to be pretty much like their present, which had been pretty much
like their past. Although exponential trends did exist a thousand years
ago, they were at that very early stage where an exponential trend is
so flat and so slow that it looks like no trend at all. So their lack
of expectations was largely fulfilled. Today, in accordance with the
common wisdom, everyone expects continuous technological progress and
the social repercussions that follow. But the future will nonetheless
be far more surprising than most observers realize because few have
truly internalized the implications of the fact that the rate of change
itself is accelerating.
Most long-range forecasts of technical feasibility in future time
periods dramatically underestimate the power of future developments
because they are based on what I call the ``intuitive linear'' view of
history rather than the ``historical exponential view.'' To express
this another way, it is not the case that we will experience a hundred
years of progress in the twenty-first century; rather we will witness
on the order of twenty thousand years of progress (at today's rate of
progress, that is).
When people think of a future period, they intuitively assume that
the current rate of progress will continue for future periods. Even for
those who have been around long enough to experience how the pace
increases over time, an unexamined intuition nonetheless provides the
impression that progress changes at the rate that we have experienced
recently. From the mathematician's perspective, a primary reason for
this is that an exponential curve approximates a straight line when
viewed for a brief duration. It is typical, therefore, that even
sophisticated commentators, when considering the future, extrapolate
the current pace of change over the next 10 years or 100 years to
determine their expectations. This is why I call this way of looking at
the future the ``intuitive linear'' view.
But a serious assessment of the history of technology shows that
technological change is exponential. In exponential growth, we find
that a key measurement such as computational power is multiplied by a
constant factor for each unit of time (e.g., doubling every year)
rather than just being added to incrementally. Exponential growth is a
feature of any evolutionary process, of which technology is a primary
example. One can examine the data in different ways, on different time
scales, and for a wide variety of technologies ranging from electronic
to biological, as well as social implications ranging from the size of
the economy to human life span, and the acceleration of progress and
growth applies. Indeed, we find not just simple exponential growth, but
``double'' exponential growth, meaning that the rate of exponential
growth is itself growing exponentially. These observations do not rely
merely on an assumption of the continuation of Moore's law (i.e., the
exponential shrinking of transistor sizes on an integrated circuit),
but is based on a rich model of diverse technological processes. What
it clearly shows is that technology, particularly the pace of
technological change, advances (at least) exponentially, not linearly,
and has been doing so since the advent of technology, indeed since the
advent of evolution on Earth.
Many scientists and engineers have what my colleague Lucas Hendrich
calls ``engineer's pessimism.'' Often an engineer or scientist who is
so immersed in the difficulties and intricate details of a contemporary
challenge fails to appreciate the ultimate long-term implications of
their own work, and, in particular, the larger field of work that they
operate in. Consider the biochemists in 1985 who were skeptical of the
announcement of the goal of transcribing the entire genome in a mere 15
years. These scientists had just spent an entire year transcribing a
mere one ten-thousandth of the genome, so even with reasonable
anticipated advances, it seemed to them like it would be hundreds of
years, if not longer, before the entire genome could be sequenced. Or
consider the skepticism expressed in the mid 1980s that the Internet
would ever be a significant phenomenon, given that it included only
tens of thousands of nodes. The fact that the number of nodes was
doubling every year and there were, therefore, likely to be tens of
millions of nodes ten years later was not appreciated by those who
struggled with ``state-of-the-art'' technology in 1985, which permitted
adding only a few thousand nodes throughout the world in a year.
I emphasize this point because it is the most important failure
that would-be prognosticators make in considering future trends. The
vast majority of technology forecasts and forecasters ignore altogether
this ``historical exponential view'' of technological progress. Indeed,
almost everyone I meet has a linear view of the future. That is why
people tend to over estimate what can be achieved in the short-term
(because we tend to leave out necessary details), but underestimate
what can be achieved in the long-term (because the exponential growth
is ignored).
The Law of Accelerating Returns
The ongoing acceleration of technology is the implication and
inevitable result of what I call the ``law of accelerating returns,''
which describes the acceleration of the pace and the exponential growth
of the products of an evolutionary process. This includes technology,
particularly information-bearing technologies, such as computation.
More specifically, the law of accelerating returns states the
following:
Evolution applies positive feedback in that the more
capable methods resulting from one stage of evolutionary
progress are used to create the next stage. As a result, the
rate of progress of an evolutionary process increases
exponentially over time. Over time, the ``order'' of the
information embedded in the evolutionary process (i.e., the
measure of how well the information fits a purpose, which in
evolution is survival) increases.
A correlate of the above observation is that the
``returns'' of an evolutionary process (e.g., the speed, cost-
effectiveness, or overall ``power'' of a process) increase
exponentially over time.
In another positive feedback loop, as a particular
evolutionary process (e.g., computation) becomes more effective
(e.g., cost effective), greater resources are deployed towards
the further progress of that process. This results in a second
level of exponential growth (i.e., the rate of exponential
growth itself grows exponentially).
Biological evolution is one such evolutionary
process.
Technological evolution is another such evolutionary
process. Indeed, the emergence of the first technology-creating
species resulted in the new evolutionary process of technology.
Therefore, technological evolution is an out growth of--and a
continuation of--biological evolution.
A specific paradigm (a method or approach to solving
a problem, e.g., shrinking transistors on an integrated circuit
as an approach to making more powerful computers) provides
exponential growth until the method exhausts its potential.
When this happens, a paradigm shift (a fundamental change in
the approach) occurs, which enables exponential growth to
continue.
Each paradigm follows an ``S-curve,'' which consists
of slow growth (the early phase of exponential growth),
followed by rapid growth (the late, explosive phase of
exponential growth), followed by a leveling off as the
particular paradigm matures.
During this third or maturing phase in the life cycle
of a paradigm, pressure builds for the next paradigm shift.
When the paradigm shift occurs, the process begins a
new S-curve.
Thus the acceleration of the overall evolutionary
process proceeds as a sequence of S-curves, and the overall
exponential growth consists of this cascade of S-curves.
The resources underlying the exponential growth of an
evolutionary process are relatively unbounded.
One resource is the (ever-growing) order of the
evolutionary process itself. Each stage of evolution provides
more powerful tools for the next. In biological evolution, the
advent of DNA allowed more powerful and faster evolutionary
``experiments.'' Later, setting the ``designs'' of animal body
plans during the Cambrian explosion allowed rapid evolutionary
development of other body organs, such as the brain. Or to take
a more recent example, the advent of computer-assisted design
tools allows rapid development of the next generation of
computers.
The other required resource is the ``chaos'' of the
environment in which the evolutionary process takes place and
which provides the options for further diversity. In biological
evolution, diversity enters the process in the form of
mutations and ever-changing environmental conditions, including
cosmological disasters (e.g., asteroids hitting the Earth). In
technological evolution, human ingenuity combined with ever
changing market conditions keep the process of innovation
going.
If we apply these principles at the highest level of evolution on
Earth, the first step, the creation of cells, introduced the paradigm
of biology. The subsequent emergence of DNA provided a digital method
to record the results of evolutionary experiments. Then, the evolution
of a species that combined rational thought with an opposable appendage
(the thumb) caused a fundamental paradigm shift from biology to
technology. The upcoming primary paradigm shift will be from biological
thinking to a hybrid combining biological and nonbiological thinking.
This hybrid will include ``biologically inspired'' processes resulting
from the reverse engineering of biological brains.
If we examine the timing of these steps, we see that the process
has continuously accelerated. The evolution of life forms required
billions of years for the first steps (e.g., primitive cells); later on
progress accelerated. During the Cambrian explosion, major paradigm
shifts took only tens of millions of years. Later on, Humanoids
developed over a period of millions of years, and Homo sapiens over a
period of only hundreds of thousands of years.
With the advent of a technology-creating species, the exponential
pace became too fast for evolution through DNA-guided protein synthesis
and moved on to human-created technology. Technology goes beyond mere
tool making; it is a process of creating ever more powerful technology
using the tools from the previous round of innovation, and is, thereby,
an evolutionary process. The first technological steps--sharp edges,
fire, the wheel--took tens of thousands of years. For people living in
this era, there was little noticeable technological change in even a
thousand years. By 1000 AD, progress was much faster and a paradigm
shift required only a century or two. In the nineteenth century, we saw
more technological change than in the nine centuries preceding it. Then
in the first twenty years of the twentieth century, we saw more
advancement than in all of the nineteenth century. Now, paradigm shifts
occur in only a few years time. The World Wide Web did not exist in
anything like its present form just a few years ago; it didn't exist at
all a decade ago.
The paradigm shift rate (i.e., the overall rate of technical
progress) is currently doubling (approximately) every decade; that is,
paradigm shift times are halving every decade (and the rate of
acceleration is itself growing exponentially). So, the technological
progress in the twenty-first century will be equivalent to what would
require (in the linear view) on the order of 200 centuries. In
contrast, the twentieth century saw only about 20 years of progress
(again at today's rate of progress) since we have been speeding up to
current rates. So the twenty-first century will see about a thousand
times greater technological change than its predecessor.
Moore's Law and Beyond
There is a wide range of technologies that are subject to the law
of accelerating returns. The exponential trend that has gained the
greatest public recognition has become known as ``Moore's Law.'' Gordon
Moore, one of the inventors of integrated circuits, and then Chairman
of Intel, noted in the mid-1970s that we could squeeze twice as many
transistors on an integrated circuit every 24 months. Given that the
electrons have less distance to travel, the circuits also run twice as
fast, providing an overall quadrupling of computational power.
However, the exponential growth of computing is much broader than
Moore's Law.
If we plot the speed (in instructions per second) per $1000 (in
constant dollars) of 49 famous calculators and computers spanning the
entire twentieth century, we note that there were four completely
different paradigms that provided exponential growth in the price-
performance of computing before the integrated circuits were invented.
Therefore, Moore's Law was not the first, but the fifth paradigm to
exponentially grow the power of computation. And it won't be the last.
When Moore's Law reaches the end of its S-curve, now expected before
2020, the exponential growth will continue with three-dimensional
molecular computing, a prime example of the application of
nanotechnology, which will constitute the sixth paradigm.
When I suggested in my book The Age of Spiritual Machines,
published in 1999, that three-dimensional molecular computing,
particularly an approach based on using carbon nanotubes, would become
the dominant computing hardware technology in the teen years of this
century, that was considered a radical notion. There has been so much
progress in the past four years, with literally dozens of major
milestones having been achieved, that this expectation is now a
mainstream view.
The exponential growth of computing is a marvelous quantitative
example of the exponentially growing returns from an evolutionary
process. We can express the exponential growth of computing in terms of
an accelerating pace: it took 90 years to achieve the first MIPS
(million instructions per second) per thousand dollars; now we add one
MIPS per thousand dollars every day.
Moore's Law narrowly refers to the number of transistors on an
integrated circuit of fixed size, and sometimes has been expressed even
more narrowly in terms of transistor feature size. But rather than
feature size (which is only one contributing factor), or even number of
transistors, I think the most appropriate measure to track is
computational speed per unit cost. This takes into account many levels
of ``cleverness'' (i.e., innovation, which is to say, technological
evolution). In addition to all of the innovation in integrated
circuits, there are multiple layers of innovation in computer design,
e.g., pipelining, parallel processing, instruction look-ahead,
instruction and memory caching, and many others.
The human brain uses a very inefficient electrochemical digital-
controlled analog computational process. The bulk of the calculations
are done in the interneuronal connections at a speed of only about 200
calculations per second (in each connection), which is about ten
million times slower than contemporary electronic circuits. But the
brain gains its prodigious powers from its extremely parallel
organization in three dimensions. There are many technologies in the
wings that build circuitry in three dimensions. Nanotubes, an example
of nanotechnology, which is already working in laboratories, build
circuits from pentagonal arrays of carbon atoms. One cubic inch of
nanotube circuitry would be a million times more powerful than the
human brain. There are more than enough new computing technologies now
being researched, including three-dimensional silicon chips, optical
and silicon spin computing, crystalline computing, DNA computing, and
quantum computing, to keep the law of accelerating returns as applied
to computation going for a long time.
As I discussed above, it is important to distinguish between the
``S'' curve (an ``S'' stretched to the right, comprising very slow,
virtually unnoticeable growth--followed by very rapid growth--followed
by a flattening out as the process approaches an asymptote) that is
characteristic of any specific technological paradigm and the
continuing exponential growth that is characteristic of the ongoing
evolutionary process of technology. Specific paradigms, such as Moore's
Law, do ultimately reach levels at which exponential growth is no
longer feasible. That is why Moore's Law is an S-curve. But the growth
of computation is an ongoing exponential (at least until we
``saturate'' the Universe with the intelligence of our human-machine
civilization, but that will not be a limit in this coming century). In
accordance with the law of accelerating returns, paradigm shift, also
called innovation, turns the S-curve of any specific paradigm into a
continuing exponential. A new paradigm (e.g., three-dimensional
circuits) takes over when the old paradigm approaches its natural
limit, which has already happened at least four times in the history of
computation. This difference also distinguishes the tool making of non-
human species, in which the mastery of a tool-making (or using) skill
by each animal is characterized by an abruptly ending S shaped learning
curve, versus human-created technology, which has followed an
exponential pattern of growth and acceleration since its inception.
DNA Sequencing, Memory, Communications, the Internet, and
Miniaturization
This ``law of accelerating returns'' applies to all of technology,
indeed to any true evolutionary process, and can be measured with
remarkable precision in information-based technologies. There are a
great many examples of the exponential growth implied by the law of
accelerating returns in technologies, as varied as DNA sequencing,
communication speeds, brain scanning, electronics of all kinds, and
even in the rapidly shrinking size of technology, which is directly
relevant to the discussion at this hearing. The future nanotechnology
age results not from the exponential explosion of computation alone,
but rather from the interplay and myriad synergies that will result
from manifold intertwined technological revolutions. Also, keep in mind
that every point on the exponential growth curves underlying these
panoply of technologies (see the graphs below) represents an intense
human drama of innovation and competition. It is remarkable therefore
that these chaotic processes result in such smooth and predictable
exponential trends.
As I noted above, when the human genome scan started fourteen years
ago, critics pointed out that given the speed with which the genome
could then be scanned, it would take thousands of years to finish the
project. Yet the fifteen year project was nonetheless completed
slightly ahead of schedule.
Of course, we expect to see exponential growth in electronic
memories such as RAM.
However, growth in magnetic memory is not primarily a matter of
Moore's law, but includes advances in mechanical and electromagnetic
systems.
Exponential growth in communications technology has been even more
explosive than in computation and is no less significant in its
implications. Again, this progression involves far more than just
shrinking transistors on an integrated circuit, but includes
accelerating advances in fiber optics, optical switching,
electromagnetic technologies, and others.
Note that in the above chart we can actually see the progression of
``S'' curves: the acceleration fostered by a new paradigm, followed by
a leveling off as the paradigm runs out of steam, followed by renewed
acceleration through paradigm shift.
The following two charts show the overall growth of the Internet
based on the number of hosts (server computers). These two charts plot
the same data, but one is on an exponential axis and the other is
linear. As I pointed out earlier, whereas technology progresses in the
exponential domain, we experience it in the linear domain. So from the
perspective of most observers, nothing was happening until the mid
1990s when seemingly out of nowhere, the World Wide Web and e-mail
exploded into view. But the emergence of the Internet into a worldwide
phenomenon was readily predictable much earlier by examining the
exponential trend data.
The most relevant trend to this hearing, and one that will have
profound implications for the twenty-first century is the pervasive
trend towards making things smaller, i.e., miniaturization. The salient
implementation sizes of a broad range of technologies, both electronic
and mechanical, are shrinking, also at a double-exponential rate. At
present, we are shrinking technology by a factor of approximately 5.6
per linear dimension per decade.
A Small Sample of Examples of True Nanotechnology
Ubiquitous nanotechnology is two to three decades away. A prime
example of its application will be to deploy billions of ``nanobots'':
small robots the size of human blood cells that can travel inside the
human bloodstream. This notion is not as futuristic as it may sound in
that there have already been successful animal experiments using this
concept. There are already four major conferences on ``BioMEMS''
(Biological Micro Electronic Mechanical Systems) covering devices in
the human blood stream.
Consider several examples of nanobot technology, which, based on
miniaturization and cost reduction trends, will be feasible within 30
years. In addition to scanning the human brain to facilitate human
brain reverse engineering, these nanobots will be able to perform a
broad variety of diagnostic and therapeutic functions inside the
bloodstream and human body. Robert Freitas, for example, has designed
robotic replacements for human blood cells that perform hundreds or
thousands of times more effectively than their biological counterparts.
With Freitas' ``respirocytes,'' (robotic red blood cells), you could do
an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath. His robotic
macrophages will be far more effective than our white blood cells at
combating pathogens. His DNA repair robot would be able to repair DNA
transcription errors, and even implement needed DNA changes. Although
Freitas' conceptual designs are two or three decades away, there has
already been substantial progress on bloodstream-based devices. For
example, one scientist has cured type I Diabetes in rats with a
nanoengineered device that incorporates pancreatic Islet cells. The
device has seven-nanometer pores that let insulin out, but block the
antibodies which destroy these cells. There are many innovative
projects of this type already under way.
Clearly, nanobot technology has profound military applications, and
any expectation that such uses will be ``relinquished'' are highly
unrealistic. Already, DOD is developing ``smart dust,'' which are tiny
robots the size of insects or even smaller. Although not quite
nanotechnology, millions of these devices can be dropped into enemy
territory to provide highly detailed surveillance. The potential
application for even smaller, nanotechnology-based devices is even
greater. Want to find Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden? Need to locate
hidden weapons of mass destruction? Billions of essentially invisible
spies could monitor every square inch of enemy territory, identify
every person and every weapon, and even carry out missions to destroy
enemy targets. The only way for an enemy to counteract such a force is,
of course, with their own nanotechnology. The point is that
nanotechnology-based weapons will obsolete weapons of larger size.
In addition, nanobots will also be able to expand our experiences
and our capabilities. Nanobot technology will provide fully immersive,
totally convincing virtual reality in the following way. The nanobots
take up positions in close physical proximity to every interneuronal
connection coming from all of our senses (e.g., eyes, ears, skin). We
already have the technology for electronic devices to communicate with
neurons in both directions that requires no direct physical contact
with the neurons. For example, scientists at the Max Planck Institute
have developed ``neuron transistors'' that can detect the firing of a
nearby neuron, or alternatively, can cause a nearby neuron to fire, or
suppress it from firing. This amounts to two-way communication between
neurons and the electronic-based neuron transistors. The Institute
scientists demonstrated their invention by controlling the movement of
a living leech from their computer. Again, the primary aspect of
nanobot-based virtual reality that is not yet feasible is size and
cost.
When we want to experience real reality, the nanobots just stay in
position (in the capillaries) and do nothing. If we want to enter
virtual reality, they suppress all of the inputs coming from the real
senses, and replace them with the signals that would be appropriate for
the virtual environment. You (i.e., your brain) could decide to cause
your muscles and limbs to move as you normally would, but the nanobots
again intercept these interneuronal signals, suppress your real limbs
from moving, and instead cause your virtual limbs to move and provide
the appropriate movement and reorientation in the virtual environment.
The Web will provide a panoply of virtual environments to explore.
Some will be recreations of real places, others will be fanciful
environments that have no ``real'' counterpart. Some indeed would be
impossible in the physical world (perhaps, because they violate the
laws of physics). We will be able to ``go'' to these virtual
environments by ourselves, or we will meet other people there, both
real people and simulated people. Of course, ultimately there won't be
a clear distinction between the two.
By 2030, going to a web site will mean entering a full-immersion
virtual-reality environment. In addition to encompassing all of the
senses, these shared environments can include emotional overlays as the
nanobots will be capable of triggering the neurological correlates of
emotions, sexual pleasure, and other derivatives of our sensory
experience and mental reactions.
In the same way that people today beam their lives from web cams in
their bedrooms, ``experience beamers'' circa 2030 will beam their
entire flow of sensory experiences, and if so desired, their emotions
and other secondary reactions. We'll be able to plug in (by going to
the appropriate web site) and experience other people's lives as in the
plot concept of `Being John Malkovich.' Particularly interesting
experiences can be archived and relived at any time.
We won't need to wait until 2030 to experience shared virtual-
reality environments, at least for the visual and auditory senses.
Full-immersion visual-auditory environments will be available by the
end of this decade, with images written directly onto our retinas by
our eyeglasses and contact lenses. All of the electronics for the
computation, image reconstruction, and very high bandwidth wireless
connection to the Internet will be embedded in our glasses and woven
into our clothing, so computers as distinct objects will disappear.
In my view, the most significant implication of the development of
nanotechnology and related advanced technologies of the 21st century
will be the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence. First,
it is important to point out that well before the end of the twenty-
first century, thinking on nonbiological substrates will dominate.
Biological thinking is stuck at 1026 calculations per second
(for all biological human brains), and that figure will not appreciably
change, even with bioengineering changes to our genome. Nonbiological
intelligence, on the other hand, is growing at a double-exponential
rate and will vastly exceed biological intelligence well before the
middle of this century. However, in my view, this nonbiological
intelligence should still be considered human as it is fully derivative
of the human-machine civilization. The merger of these two worlds of
intelligence is not merely a merger of biological and nonbiological
thinking mediums, but more importantly one of method and organization
of thinking.
One of the key ways in which the two worlds can interact will be
through nanobots. Nanobot technology will be able to expand our minds
in virtually any imaginable way. Our brains today are relatively fixed
in design. Although we do add patterns of interneuronal connections and
neurotransmitter concentrations as a normal part of the learning
process, the current overall capacity of the human brain is highly
constrained, restricted to a mere hundred trillion connections. Brain
implants based on massively distributed intelligent nanobots will
ultimately expand our memories a trillion fold, and otherwise vastly
improve all of our sensory, pattern recognition, and cognitive
abilities. Since the nanobots are communicating with each other over a
wireless local area network, they can create any set of new neural
connections, can break existing connections (by suppressing neural
firing), can create new hybrid biological-nonbiological networks, as
well as add vast new nonbiological networks.
Using nanobots as brain extenders is a significant improvement over
the idea of surgically installed neural implants, which are beginning
to be used today (e.g., ventral posterior nucleus, subthalmic nucleus,
and ventral lateral thalamus neural implants to counteract Parkinson's
Disease and tremors from other neurological disorders, cochlear
implants, and others). Nanobots will be introduced without surgery,
essentially just by injecting or even swallowing them. They can all be
directed to leave, so the process is easily reversible. They are
programmable, in that they can provide virtual reality one minute, and
a variety of brain extensions the next. They can change their
configuration, and clearly can alter their software. Perhaps most
importantly, they are massively distributed and therefore can take up
billions or trillions of positions throughout the brain, whereas a
surgically introduced neural implant can only be placed in one or at
most a few locations.
The Economic Imperatives of the Law of Accelerating Returns
It is the economic imperative of a competitive marketplace that is
driving technology forward and fueling the law of accelerating returns.
In turn, the law of accelerating returns is transforming economic
relationships.
The primary force driving technology is economic imperative. We are
moving towards nanoscale machines, as well as more intelligent
machines, as the result of a myriad of small advances, each with their
own particular economic justification.
To use one small example of many from my own experience at one of
my companies (Kurzweil Applied Intelligence), whenever we came up with
a slightly more intelligent version of speech recognition, the new
version invariably had greater value than the earlier generation and,
as a result, sales increased. It is interesting to note that in the
example of speech recognition software, the three primary surviving
competitors stayed very close to each other in the intelligence of
their software. A few other companies that failed to do so (e.g.,
Speech Systems) went out of business. At any point in time, we would be
able to sell the version prior to the latest version for perhaps a
quarter of the price of the current version. As for versions of our
technology that were two generations old, we couldn't even give those
away.
There is a vital economic imperative to create smaller and more
intelligent technology. Machines that can more precisely carry out
their missions have enormous value. That is why they are being built.
There are tens of thousands of projects that are advancing the various
aspects of the law of accelerating returns in diverse incremental ways.
Regardless of near-term business cycles, the support for ``high tech''
in the business community, and in particular for software advancement,
has grown enormously. When I started my optical character recognition
(OCR) and speech synthesis company (Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc.)
in 1974, high-tech venture deals totaled approximately $10 million.
Even during today's high tech recession, the figure is 100 times
greater. We would have to repeal capitalism and every visage of
economic competition to stop this progression.
The economy (viewed either in total or per capita) has been growing
exponentially throughout this century:
Note that the underlying exponential growth in the economy is a far
more powerful force than periodic recessions. Even the ``Great
Depression'' represents only a minor blip compared to the underlying
pattern of growth. Most importantly, recessions, including the
depression, represent only temporary deviations from the underlying
curve. In each case, the economy ends up exactly where it would have
been had the recession/depression never occurred.
Productivity (economic output per worker) has also been growing
exponentially. Even these statistics are greatly understated because
they do not fully reflect significant improvements in the quality and
features of products and services. It is not the case that ``a car is a
car;'' there have been significant improvements in safety, reliability,
and features. Certainly, $1000 of computation today is immeasurably
more powerful than $1000 of computation ten years ago (by a factor of
more than 1000). There are a myriad of such examples. Pharmaceutical
drugs are increasingly effective. Products ordered in five minutes on
the web and delivered to your door are worth more than products that
you have to fetch yourself. Clothes custom-manufactured for your unique
body scan are worth more than clothes you happen to find left on a
store rack. These sorts of improvements are true for most product
categories, and none of them are reflected in the productivity
statistics.
The statistical methods underlying the productivity measurements
tend to factor out gains by essentially concluding that we still only
get one dollar of products and services for a dollar despite the fact
that we get much more for a dollar (e.g., compare a $1,000 computer
today to one ten years ago). University of Chicago Professor Pete
Klenow and University of Rochester Professor Mark Bils estimate that
the value of existing goods has been increasing at 1.5 percent per year
for the past 20 years because of qualitative improvements. This still
does not account for the introduction of entirely new products and
product categories (e.g., cell phones, pagers, pocket computers). The
Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is responsible for the inflation
statistics, uses a model that incorporates an estimate of quality
growth at only 0.5 percent per year, reflecting a systematic
underestimate of quality improvement and a resulting overestimate of
inflation by at least 1 percent per year.
Despite these weaknesses in the productivity statistical methods,
the gains in productivity are now reaching the steep part of the
exponential curve. Labor productivity grew at 1.6 percent per year
until 1994, then rose at 2.4 percent per year, and is now growing even
more rapidly. In the quarter ending July 30, 2000, labor productivity
grew at 5.3 percent. Manufacturing productivity grew at 4.4 percent
annually from 1995 to 1999, durables manufacturing at 6.5 percent per
year.
The 1990s have seen the most powerful deflationary forces in
history. This is why we are not seeing inflation. Yes, it's true that
low unemployment, high asset values, economic growth, and other such
factors are inflationary, but these factors are offset by the double-
exponential trends in the price-performance of all information-based
technologies: computation, memory, communications, biotechnology,
miniaturization, and even the overall rate of technical progress. These
technologies deeply affect all industries. We are also undergoing
massive disintermediation in the channels of distribution through the
Web and other new communication technologies, as well as escalating
efficiencies in operations and administration.
All of the technology trend charts above represent massive
deflation. There are many examples of the impact of these escalating
efficiencies. BP Amoco's cost for finding oil is now less than $1 per
barrel, down from nearly $10 in 1991. Processing an Internet
transaction costs a bank one penny, compared to over $1 using a teller
ten years ago. A Roland Berger/Deutsche Bank study estimates a cost
savings of $1200 per North American car over the next five years. A
more optimistic Morgan Stanley study estimates that Internet-based
procurement will save Ford, GM, and DaimlerChrysler about $2700 per
vehicle.
It is important to point out that a key implication of
nanotechnology is that it will bring the economics of software to
hardware, i.e., to physical products. Software prices are deflating
even more quickly than hardware.
Current economic policy is based on outdated models that include
energy prices, commodity prices, and capital investment in plant and
equipment as key driving factors, but do not adequately model the size
of technology, bandwidth, MIPs, megabytes, intellectual property,
knowledge, and other increasingly vital (and increasingly increasing)
constituents that are driving the economy.
Another indication of the law of accelerating returns in the
exponential growth of human knowledge, including intellectual property.
If we look at the development of intellectual property within the
nanotechnology field, we see even more rapid growth.
None of this means that cycles of recession will disappear
immediately. Indeed there is a current economic slowdown and a
technology-sector recession. The economy still has some of the
underlying dynamics that historically have caused cycles of recession,
specifically excessive commitments such as over-investment, excessive
capital intensive projects and the overstocking of inventories.
However, the rapid dissemination of information, sophisticated forms of
online procurement, and increasingly transparent markets in all
industries have diminished the impact of this cycle. So ``recessions''
are likely to have less direct impact on our standard of living. The
underlying long-term growth rate will continue at a double exponential
rate.
Moreover, innovation and the rate of paradigm shift are not
noticeably affected by the minor deviations caused by economic cycles.
All of the technologies exhibiting exponential growth shown in the
above charts are continuing without losing a beat through this economic
slowdown.
The overall growth of the economy reflects completely new forms and
layers of wealth and value that did not previously exist, or least that
did not previously constitute a significant portion of the economy (but
do now): new forms of nanoparticle-based materials, genetic
information, intellectual property, communication portals, web sites,
bandwidth, software, data bases, and many other new technology-based
categories.
Another implication of the law of accelerating returns is
exponential growth in education and learning. Over the past 120 years,
we have increased our investment in K-12 education (per student and in
constant dollars) by a factor of ten. We have a one hundred fold
increase in the number of college students. Automation started by
amplifying the power of our muscles, and in recent times has been
amplifying the power of our minds. Thus, for the past two centuries,
automation has been eliminating jobs at the bottom of the skill ladder
while creating new (and better paying) jobs at the top of the skill
ladder. So the ladder has been moving up, and thus we have been
exponentially increasing investments in education at all levels.
The Deeply Intertwined Promise and Peril of Nanotechnology and Related
Advanced Technologies
Technology has always been a double-edged sword, bringing us longer
and healthier life spans, freedom from physical and mental drudgery,
and many new creative possibilities on the one hand, while introducing
new and salient dangers on the other. Technology empowers both our
creative and destructive natures. Stalin's tanks and Hitler's trains
used technology. We still live today with sufficient nuclear weapons
(not all of which appear to be well accounted for) to end all mammalian
life on the planet. Bioengineering is in the early stages of enormous
strides in reversing disease and aging processes. However, the means
and knowledge will soon exist in a routine college bioengineering lab
(and already exists in more sophisticated labs) to create unfriendly
pathogens more dangerous than nuclear weapons. As technology
accelerates towards the full realization of biotechnology,
nanotechnology and ``strong'' AI (artificial intelligence at human
levels and beyond), we will see the same intertwined potentials: a
feast of creativity resulting from human intelligence expanded many-
fold combined with many grave new dangers.
Consider unrestrained nanobot replication. Nanobot technology
requires billions or trillions of such intelligent devices to be
useful. The most cost-effective way to scale up to such levels is
through self-replication, essentially the same approach used in the
biological world. And in the same way that biological self-replication
gone awry (i.e., cancer) results in biological destruction, a defect in
the mechanism curtailing nanobot self-replication would endanger all
physical entities, biological or otherwise. I address below steps we
can take to address this grave risk, but we cannot have complete
assurance in any strategy that we devise today.
Other primary concerns include ``who is controlling the nanobots?''
and ``who are the nanobots talking to?'' Organizations (e.g.,
governments, extremist groups) or just a clever individual could put
trillions of undetectable nanobots in the water or food supply of an
individual or of an entire population. These ``spy'' nanobots could
then monitor, influence, and even control our thoughts and actions. In
addition to introducing physical spy nanobots, existing nanobots could
be influenced through software viruses and other software ``hacking''
techniques. When there is software running in our brains, issues of
privacy and security will take on a new urgency.
My own expectation is that the creative and constructive
applications of this technology will dominate, as I believe they do
today. However, I believe we need to invest more heavily in developing
specific defensive technologies. As I address further below, we are at
this stage today for biotechnology, and will reach the stage where we
need to directly implement defensive technologies for nanotechnology
during the late teen years of this century.
If we imagine describing the dangers that exist today to people who
lived a couple of hundred years ago, they would think it mad to take
such risks. On the other hand, how many people in the year 2000 would
really want to go back to the short, brutish, disease-filled, poverty-
stricken, disaster-prone lives that 99 percent of the human race
struggled through a couple of centuries ago? We may romanticize the
past, but up until fairly recently, most of humanity lived extremely
fragile lives where one all-too-common misfortune could spell disaster.
Substantial portions of our species still live in this precarious way,
which is at least one reason to continue technological progress and the
economic enhancement that accompanies it.
People often go through three stages in examining the impact of
future technology: awe and wonderment at its potential to overcome age
old problems; then a sense of dread at a new set of grave dangers that
accompany these new technologies; followed, finally and hopefully, by
the realization that the only viable and responsible path is to set a
careful course that can realize the promise while managing the peril.
This congressional hearing was party inspired by Bill Joy's cover
story for Wired magazine, Why The Future Doesn't Need Us. Bill Joy, co-
founder of Sun Microsystems and principal developer of the Java
programming language, has recently taken up a personal mission to warn
us of the impending dangers from the emergence of self-replicating
technologies in the fields of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics,
which he aggregates under the label ``GNR.'' Although his warnings are
not entirely new, they have attracted considerable attention because of
Joy's credibility as one of our leading technologists. It is
reminiscent of the attention that George Soros, the currency arbitrager
and arch capitalist, received when he made vaguely critical comments
about the excesses of unrestrained capitalism.
Joy's concerns include genetically altered designer pathogens,
followed by self-replicating entities created through nanotechnology.
And if we manage to survive these first two perils, we will encounter
robots whose intelligence will rival and ultimately exceed our own.
Such robots may make great assistants, but who's to say that we can
count on them to remain reliably friendly to mere humans?
Although I am often cast as the technology optimist who counters
Joy's pessimism, I do share his concerns regarding self-replicating
technologies; indeed, I played a role in bringing these dangers to
Bill's attention. In many of the dialogues and forums in which I have
participated on this subject, I end up defending Joy's position with
regard to the feasibility of these technologies and scenarios when they
come under attack by commentators who I believe are being quite
shortsighted in their skepticism. Even so, I do find fault with Joy's
prescription: halting the advance of technology and the pursuit of
knowledge in broad fields such as nanotechnology.
In his essay, Bill Joy eloquently described the plagues of
centuries past and how new self-replicating technologies, such as
mutant bioengineered pathogens and ``nanobots'' run amok, may bring
back long-forgotten pestilence. Indeed these are real dangers. It is
also the case, which Joy acknowledges, that it has been technological
advances, such as antibiotics and improved sanitation, which have freed
us from the prevalence of such plagues. Suffering in the world
continues and demands our steadfast attention. Should we tell the
millions of people afflicted with cancer and other devastating
conditions that we are canceling the development of all bioengineered
treatments because there is a risk that these same technologies may
someday be used for malevolent purposes? Having asked the rhetorical
question, I realize that there is a movement to do exactly that, but I
think most people would agree that such broad-based relinquishment is
not the answer.
The continued opportunity to alleviate human distress is one
important motivation for continuing technological advancement. Also
compelling are the already apparent economic gains I discussed above
that will continue to hasten in the decades ahead. The continued
acceleration of many intertwined technologies are roads paved with gold
(I use the plural here because technology is clearly not a single
path). In a competitive environment, it is an economic imperative to go
down these roads. Relinquishing technological advancement would be
economic suicide for individuals, companies, and nations.
The Relinquishment Issue
This brings us to the issue of relinquishment, which is Bill Joy's
most controversial recommendation and personal commitment. I do feel
that relinquishment at the right level is part of a responsible and
constructive response to these genuine perils. The issue, however, is
exactly this: at what level are we to relinquish technology?
Ted Kaczynski would have us renounce all of it. This, in my view,
is neither desirable nor feasible, and the futility of such a position
is only underscored by the senselessness of Kaczynski's deplorable
tactics. There are other voices, less reckless than Kaczynski, who are
nonetheless arguing for broad-based relinquishment of technology. Bill
McKibben, the environmentalist who was one of the first to warn against
global warming, takes the position that ``environmentalists must now
grapple squarely with the idea of a world that has enough wealth and
enough technological capability, and should not pursue more.'' In my
view, this position ignores the extensive suffering that remains in the
human world, which we will be in a position to alleviate through
continued technological progress.
Another level would be to forego certain fields--nanotechnology,
for example--that might be regarded as too dangerous. But such sweeping
strokes of relinquishment are equally untenable. As I pointed out
above, nanotechnology is simply the inevitable end result of the
persistent trend towards miniaturization that pervades all of
technology. It is far from a single centralized effort, but is being
pursued by a myriad of projects with many diverse goals.
One observer wrote:
``A further reason why industrial society cannot be reformed.
. .is that modern technology is a unified system in which all
parts are dependent on one another. You can't get rid of the
``bad'' parts of technology and retain only the ``good'' parts.
Take modern medicine, for example. Progress in medical science
depends on progress in chemistry, physics, biology, computer
science and other fields. Advanced medical treatments require
expensive, high-tech equipment that can be made available only
by a technologically progressive, economically rich society.
Clearly you can't have much progress in medicine without the
whole technological system and everything that goes with it.''
The observer I am quoting is, again, Ted Kaczynski. Although one
will properly resist Kaczynski as an authority, I believe he is correct
on the deeply entangled nature of the benefits and risks. However,
Kaczynski and I clearly part company on our overall assessment on the
relative balance between the two. Bill Joy and I have dialogued on this
issue both publicly and privately, and we both believe that technology
will and should progress, and that we need to be actively concerned
with the dark side. If Bill and I disagree, it's on the granularity of
relinquishment that is both feasible and desirable.
Abandonment of broad areas of technology will only push them
underground where development would continue unimpeded by ethics and
regulation. In such a situation, it would be the less-stable, less-
responsible practitioners (e.g., terrorists) who would have all the
expertise.
I do think that relinquishment at the right level needs to be part
of our ethical response to the dangers of 21st century technologies.
One constructive example of this is the proposed ethical guideline by
the Foresight Institute, founded by nanotechnology pioneer Eric
Drexler, that nanotechnologists agree to relinquish the development of
physical entities that can self-replicate in a natural environment.
Another is a ban on self-replicating physical entities that contain
their own codes for self-replication. In what nanotechnologist Ralph
Merkle calls the ``broadcast architecture,'' such entities would have
to obtain such codes from a centralized secure server, which would
guard against undesirable replication. I discuss these guidelines
further below.
The broadcast architecture is impossible in the biological world,
which represents at least one way in which nanotechnology can be made
safer than biotechnology. In other ways, nanotech is potentially more
dangerous because nanobots can be physically stronger than protein-
based entities and more intelligent. It will eventually be possible to
combine the two by having nanotechnology provide the codes within
biological entities (replacing DNA), in which case biological entities
can use the much safer broadcast architecture. I comment further on the
strengths and weaknesses of the broadcast architecture below.
As responsible technologies, our ethics should include such ``fine-
grained'' relinquishment, among other professional ethical guidelines.
Other protections will need to include oversight by regulatory bodies,
the development of technology-specific ``immune'' responses, as well as
computer assisted surveillance by law enforcement organizations. Many
people are not aware that our intelligence agencies already use
advanced technologies such as automated word spotting to monitor a
substantial flow of telephone conversations. As we go forward,
balancing our cherished rights of privacy with our need to be protected
from the malicious use of powerful 21st century technologies will be
one of many profound challenges. This is one reason that such issues as
an encryption ``trap door'' (in which law enforcement authorities would
have access to otherwise secure information) and the FBI ``Carnivore''
email-snooping system have been controversial, although these
controversies have abated since 9-11-2001.
As a test case, we can take a small measure of comfort from how we
have dealt with one recent technological challenge. There exists today
a new form of fully nonbiological self replicating entity that didn't
exist just a few decades ago: the computer virus. When this form of
destructive intruder first appeared, strong concerns were voiced that
as they became more sophisticated, software pathogens had the potential
to destroy the computer network medium they live in. Yet the ``immune
system'' that has evolved in response to this challenge has been
largely effective. Although destructive self-replicating software
entities do cause damage from time to time, the injury is but a small
fraction of the benefit we receive from the computers and communication
links that harbor them. No one would suggest we do away with computers,
local area networks, and the Internet because of software viruses.
One might counter that computer viruses do not have the lethal
potential of biological viruses or of destructive nanotechnology. This
is not always the case; we rely on software to monitor patients in
critical care units, to fly and land airplanes, to guide intelligent
weapons in our current campaign in Iraq, and other ``mission-critical''
tasks. To the extent that this is true, however, this observation only
strengthens my argument. The fact that computer viruses are not usually
deadly to humans only means that more people are willing to create and
release them. It also means that our response to the danger is that
much less intense. Conversely, when it comes to self- replicating
entities that are potentially lethal on a large scale, our response on
all levels will be vastly more serious, as we have seen since 9-11.
I would describe our response to software pathogens as effective
and successful. Although they remain (and always will remain) a
concern, the danger remains at a nuisance level. Keep in mind that this
success is in an industry in which there is no regulation, and no
certification for practitioners. This largely unregulated industry is
also enormously productive. One could argue that it has contributed
more to our technological and economic progress than any other
enterprise in human history. I discuss the issue of regulation further
below.
Development of Defensive Technologies and the Impact of Regulation
Joy's treatise is effective because he paints a picture of future
dangers as if they were released on today's unprepared world. The
reality is that the sophistication and power of our defensive
technologies and knowledge will grow along with the dangers. When we
have ``gray goo'' (unrestrained nanobot replication), we will also have
``blue goo'' (``police'' nanobots that combat the ``bad'' nanobots).
The story of the 21st century has not yet been written, so we cannot
say with assurance that we will successfully avoid all misuse. But the
surest way to prevent the development of the defensive technologies
would be to relinquish the pursuit of knowledge in broad areas. We have
been able to largely control harmful software virus replication because
the requisite knowledge is widely available to responsible
practitioners. Attempts to restrict this knowledge would have created a
far less stable situation. Responses to new challenges would have been
far slower, and it is likely that the balance would have shifted
towards the more destructive applications (e.g., software viruses).
The challenge most immediately in front of us is not self-
replicating nanotechnology, but rather self-replicating biotechnology.
The next two decades will be the golden age of biotechnology, whereas
the comparable era for nanotechnology will follow in the 2020s and
beyond. We are now in the early stages of a transforming technology
based on the intersection of biology and information science. We are
learning the ``software'' methods of life and disease processes. By
reprogramming the information processes that lead to and encourage
disease and aging, we will have the ability to overcome these
afflictions. However, the same knowledge can also empower a terrorist
to create a bioengineered pathogen.
As we compare the success we have had in controlling engineered
software viruses to the coming challenge of controlling engineered
biological viruses, we are struck with one salient difference. As I
noted above, the software industry is almost completely unregulated.
The same is obviously not the case for biotechnology. A bioterrorist
does not need to put his ``innovations'' through the FDA. However, we
do require the scientists developing the defensive technologies to
follow the existing regulations, which slow down the innovation process
at every step. Moreover, it is impossible, under existing regulations
and ethical standards, to test defenses to bioterrorist agents. There
is already extensive discussion to modify these regulations to allow
for animal models and simulations to replace infeasible human trials.
This will be necessary, but I believe we will need to go beyond these
steps to accelerate the development of vitally needed defensive
technologies.
For reasons I have articulated above, stopping these technologies
is not feasible, and pursuit of such broad forms of relinquishment will
only distract us from the vital task in front of us. In terms of public
policy, the task at hand is to rapidly develop the defensive steps
needed, which include ethical standards, legal standards, and defensive
technologies. It is quite clearly a race. As I noted, in the software
field, the defensive technologies have remained a step ahead of the
offensive ones. With the extensive regulation in the medical field
slowing down innovation at each stage, we cannot have the same
confidence with regard to the abuse of biotechnology.
In the current environment, when one person dies in gene therapy
trials, there are congressional investigations and all gene therapy
research comes to a temporary halt. There is a legitimate need to make
biomedical research as safe as possible, but our balancing of risks is
completely off. The millions of people who desperately need the
advances to be made available by gene therapy and other breakthrough
biotechnology advances appear to carry little political weight against
a handful of well-publicized casualties from the inevitable risks of
progress.
This equation will become even more stark when we consider the
emerging dangers of bioengineered pathogens. What is needed is a change
in public attitude in terms of tolerance for needed risk.
Hastening defensive technologies is absolutely vital to our
security. We need to streamline regulatory procedures to achieve this.
However, we also need to greatly increase our investment explicitly in
the defensive technologies. In the biotechnology field, this means the
rapid development of antiviral medications. We will not have time to
develop specific countermeasures for each new challenge that comes
along. We are close to developing more generalized antiviral
technologies, and these need to be accelerated.
I have addressed here the issue of biotechnology because that is
the threshold and challenge that we now face. The comparable situation
will exist for nanotechnology once replication of nano-engineered
entities has been achieved. As that threshold comes closer, we will
then need to invest specifically in the development of defensive
technologies, including the creation of a nanotechnology-based immune
system. Bill Joy and other observers have pointed out that such an
immune system would itself be a danger because of the potential of
``autoimmune'' reactions (i.e., the immune system using its powers to
attack the world it is supposed to be defending).
However, this observation is not a compelling reason to avoid the
creation of an immune system. No one would argue that humans would be
better off without an immune system because of the possibility of auto
immune diseases. Although the immune system can itself be a danger,
humans would not last more than a few weeks (barring extraordinary
efforts at isolation) without one. The development of a technological
immune system for nanotechnology will happen even without explicit
efforts to create one. We have effectively done this with regard to
software viruses. We created a software virus immune system not through
a formal grand design project, but rather through our incremental
responses to each new challenge. We can expect the same thing will
happen as challenges from nanotechnology based dangers emerge. The
point for public policy will be to specifically invest in these
defensive technologies.
It is premature today to develop specific defensive
nanotechnologies since we can only have a general idea of what we are
trying to defend against. It would be similar to the engineering world
creating defenses against software viruses before the first one had
been created. However, there is already fruitful dialogue and
discussion on anticipating this issue, and significantly expanded
investment in these efforts is to be encouraged.
As I mentioned above, the Foresight Institute, for example, has
devised a set of ethical standards and strategies for assuring the
development of safe nanotechnology. These guidelines include:
``Artificial replicators must not be capable of
replication in a natural, uncontrolled environment.''
``Evolution within the context of a self-replicating
manufacturing system is discouraged.''
``MNT (molecular nanotechnology) designs should
specifically limit proliferation and provide traceability of
any replicating systems.''
``Distribution of molecular manufacturing development
capability should be restricted whenever possible, to
responsible actors that have agreed to the guidelines. No such
restriction need apply to end products of the development
process.''
Other strategies that the Foresight Institute has proposed include:
Replication should require materials not found in the
natural environment.
Manufacturing (replication) should be separated from
the functionality of end products. Manufacturing devices can
create end products, but cannot replicate themselves, and end
products should have no replication capabilities.
Replication should require replication codes that are
encrypted, and time limited. The broadcast architecture
mentioned earlier is an example of this recommendation.
These guidelines and strategies are likely to be effective with
regarding to preventing accidental release of dangerous self-
replicating nanotechnology entities. The situation with regard to
intentional design and release of such entities is more complex and
more challenging. We can anticipate approaches that would have the
potential to defeat each of these layers of protections by a
sufficiently determined and destructive opponent.
Take, for example, the broadcast architecture. When properly
designed, each entity is unable to replicate without first obtaining
replication codes. These codes are not passed on from one replication
generation to the next. However, a modification to such a design could
bypass the destruction of the replication codes and thereby pass them
on to the next generation. To overcome that possibility, it has been
recommended that the memory for the replication codes be limited to
only a subset of the full replication code so that there is
insufficient memory to pass the codes along. However, this guideline
could be defeated by expanding the size of the replication code memory
to incorporate the entire code. Another protection that has been
suggested is to encrypt the codes and to build in protections such as
time expiration limitations in the decryption systems. However, we can
see the ease with which protections against unauthorized replications
of intellectual property such as music files has been defeated. Once
replication codes and protective layers are stripped away, the
information can be replicated without these restrictions.
My point is not that protection is impossible. Rather, we need to
realize that any level of protection will only work to a certain level
of sophistication. The ``meta'' lesson here is that we will need to
continue to advance the defensive technologies, and keep them one or
more steps ahead of the destructive technologies. We have seen
analogies to this in many areas, including technologies for national
defense, as well as our largely successful efforts to combat software
viruses, that I alluded to above.
What we can do today with regard to the critical challenge of self-
replication in nanotechnology is to continue the type of effective
study that the Foresight Institute has initiated. With the human genome
project, three to five percent of the budgets were devoted to the
ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of the technology. A
similar commitment for nanotechnology would be appropriate and
constructive.
Technology will remain a double-edged sword, and the story of the
21st century has not yet been written. It represents vast power to be
used for all humankind's purposes. We have no choice but to work hard
to apply these quickening technologies to advance our human values,
despite what often appears to be a lack of consensus on what those
values should be.
Biography for Raymond Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil was the principal developer of the first omni-font
optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading
machine for the blind, the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first text-
to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of
recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the
first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition. Ray
has successfully founded and developed nine businesses in OCR, music
synthesis, speech recognition, reading technology, virtual reality,
financial investment, medical simulation, and cybernetic art. A11 of
these technologies continue today as market leaders. Ray's web site,
KurzweilAI.net, is a leading resource on artificial intelligence.
Ray Kurzweil was inducted in 2002 into the National Inventors Hall
of Fame, established by the U.S. Patent Office. He received the
$500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize (view the video), the Nation's largest
award in invention and innovation. He also received the 1999 National
Medal of Technology, the Nation's highest honor in technology, from
President Clinton in a White House ceremony. He has also received
scores of other national and international awards, including the 1994
Dickson Prize (Carnegie Mellon University's top science prize),
Engineer of the Year from Design News, Inventor of the Year from MIT,
and the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing
Machinery. He has received eleven honorary Doctorates and honors from
three U.S. presidents.
He has received seven national and international film awards. His
book, The Age of Intelligent Machines, was named Best Computer Science
Book of 1990. His current best-selling book, The Age of Spiritual
Machines, When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, has been published
in nine languages and achieved the #1 best selling book on Amazon.com
in the categories of ``Science'' and ``Artificial Intelligence.''
Chairman Boehlert. Thank you very much, Dr. Kurzweil. Dr.
Colvin.
STATEMENT OF DR. VICKI L. COLVIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTER
FOR BIOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL NANOTECHNOLOGY, ASSOCIATE
PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY, RICE UNIVERSITY
Dr. Colvin. Good morning, Chairman Boehlert, Ranking Member
Hall, and Members of the House Science Committee. I will
highlight the essential points of my written testimony with a
modified structure. It is briefer in this oral statement.
The novel ``Prey'' describes a chilling scenario in which
nanorobots begin preying on living creatures and reproducing.
This is science fiction, not science fact. However, the public
relations nightmare it could spawn is just as frightening to
me, a nanotechnology researcher, as nanobots might be to some
lay people. The good news is that it is not too late to ensure
that nanotechnology develops responsibly and with strong public
support.
New developments in technology, as you pointed out in your
opening statement, usually start out with potential benefits to
the economy, human health and quality of life being touted. In
our center, we refer to that as the ``wow index''. At present,
nanotechnology has a very high wow index. Whether it is smart
clothing with computers woven into its fabric or drug delivery
pumps you can turn on with a flashlight, nanotechnology is
wowing everyone. However, every new technology brings with it a
set of concerns that, if handled poorly, can turn ``wow'' into
``yuck'' and ultimately into bankrupt as the genetically
modified foods industry discovered.
This fate is not inevitable. The founders of the Human
Genome Project, instead of bearing potential controversies,
have embraced them. They have committed at least three percent
of their annual research budget to societal implications. I
think it is because of the substantial debate this research has
sparked that public opposition to this work has been minimal.
These examples teach us that early and open exploration of the
unintended impacts of new technology can derail the wow-to-yuck
trajectory.
What are the societal and ethical issues for
nanotechnology? No one has a crystal ball to predict the
future. In spite of this, nanotechnology's yuck factor is
rising due in part to the fiction of invisible nanorobots.
Nanobots distract us from the less exciting but more real
issues that are likely to rise in the area of environmental
impact.
As a chemist, I know all too well how unforeseen
consequences can destroy industries. From asbestos to DDT,
society has paid a high price for not evaluating human health
and ecosystem impacts before industries develop. The real
losers are the businesses that enthusiastically embrace these
new materials only to face expensive liability and clean-up
claims later.
It may seem premature to consider these issues now for
nanotechnology, however if you have used a sunscreen in the
last year, your skin probably came into contact with nanoscale
ceramics. Is this a cause for concern? No one knows. Nanoscale
solids can interact with biological systems in unexpected ways.
For example, you could wear a silver bracelet with no ill
effects, however, if you actually eat nanoscale silver, which I
wouldn't advise but some people do, you will turn yourself
quite blue. Unintended exposure to nanoscale solids could have
even more dire consequences, we just don't know very much about
this problem. If we fail to answer these questions early,
public acceptance of nanotechnology could be in jeopardy and
the entire industry derailed.
It is critical to consider environmental impact as an
essential component, especially for nanotechnology in the broad
category of societal impact. At the center I direct, we
consider the environmental consequences of engineered
nanomaterials, but we can't do this alone. We need partners.
Despite their rhetoric, there is little money and interest in
societal impact research. Your help here is essential. You can
use this legislation to strongly highlight the value that you,
the policy makers, place on societal impact research. This
value is not instinctively shared by researchers or their
funding agencies. We justify our financial support to both you
and the public by stressing the wow of what we do. Research
that uncovers problems or postulates negative consequences is
not widely pursued or rewarded.
Also, the NNI bill should recognize that societal impact
research is very hard to do. It requires teams that predict the
future and then decide what those futures might mean. The first
step, technology forecasting, must be done by nanotechnologists
that are closely involved with applications development. The
second step requires both social and environmental scientists
to evaluate the consequences. Only when both of these people--
pieces come together can societal impact work have a meaningful
impact on nanotechnology development. Such a large and complex
collaborative effort is best managed, I believe, in a center
environment.
In order to monitor the progress of societal impact
research, especially in light of some of the barriers it faces,
it would be essential to quantify its funding and its outputs.
The advisory panel proposed in this legislation will be
instrumental here in classifying which of the many NNI research
efforts address truly societal impact. They can distinguish,
for example, between projects aimed at developing new
environmental applications from those aimed at evaluating
environmental implications. Ultimately, how nanotechnology
develops will depend on how its research monies are allocated.
Do for nanotechnology what the Human Genome Project founders
have done for sequencing genes. Invest five percent of the
total research dollars in nanotechnology toward societal,
ethical, and environmental impact studies. This is a small
price to pay to ensure that nanotechnology develops responsibly
and with strong public support.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I will be happy to
answer questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Colvin follows:]
Prepared Statement of Vicki L. Colvin
Good morning Chairman Boehlert, Ranking Member Hall, and Members of
the House Science Committee. Thank you for holding this important
hearing to consider the societal and ethical impacts of nanotechnology.
Michael Crichton's novel Prey describes a chilling scenario in
which swarms of nano-robots--equipped with memory, solar power
generators, and powerful software--begin preying on living creatures
and reproducing. This may be gripping science fiction; it is not
science fact. It does, however, highlight a reaction that could bring
the growing nanotechnology industry to its knees: fear. The perception
that nanotechnology will cause environmental devastation or human
disease could itself turn the dream of a trillion-dollar industry into
a nightmare of public backlash. This negative response is possible even
if the environmental and health threats never materialize. To
nanotechnology researchers like myself, that prospect is all too real,
and just as frightening as anything a sci-fi writer can imagine.
The good news is that its not too late to ensure that
nanotechnology develops responsibly and with strong public support. The
Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology at Rice
University is working toward that goal, and we believe that legislation
such as the Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2003 is
central in avoiding this nightmare scenario.
The Wow Index
New developments in technology usually start out with strong public
support, as the potential benefits to the economy, human health or
quality of life are touted. At our center we call this the ``wow
index.'' Genetic engineering promised a revolution in medical care,
including the ability to cure or prevent diseases with a genetic basis
such as Huntington's disease, hemophilia, cystic fibrosis and some
breast cancers. Manipulation of the genome also promised a revolution
in how food is produced, by engineering crops with increased yields and
longer shelf-lives.
At present, nanotechnology has a very high wow index. For the past
decade, nanotechnologists have basked in the glow of positive public
opinion. We've wowed the public with our ability to manipulate matter
at the atomic level and with grand visions of how we might use this
ability. All this ``good news'' has created a growing perception among
business and government leaders that nanotechnology is a powerful
platform for 21st century technologies. The good news has given
nanotechnology a strong start with extraordinary levels of focused
government funding, which is starting to reap tangible benefits to
society.
The Yuck Index
However, every new technology brings with it a set of societal and
ethical concerns that can rapidly turn ``wow'' into ``yuck.'' The
genetic manipulation of crops grown for human consumption spawned a
host of ethical concerns about the advisability of tinkering with the
natural order. The public backlash against genetically modified
organisms (GMOs), which detractors labeled ``Frankenfoods,'' crippled
the industry and ultimately cost billions in lost future revenues.
The campaign against GMOs was successful despite the lack of sound
scientific data demonstrating a threat to society. In fact, I argue
that the lack of sufficient public scientific data on GMOs, whether
positive or negative, was a controlling factor in the industry's fall
from favor. The failure of the industry to produce and share
information with public stakeholders left it ill-equipped to respond to
GMO detractors. This industry went, in essence, from ``wow'' to
``yuck'' to ``bankrupt.'' There is a powerful lesson here for
nanotechnology.
In contrast, the Human Genome Project provides a good model for how
an emerging technology can defuse potential controversy by addressing
it in the public sphere. Mapping of the human genome carries with it
many of the same potential concerns as do other fields of genetic
research. The increased availability of genetic information raises the
potential for loss of privacy, misuse by the police and insurance
companies, and discrimination by employers. The founders of the Human
Genome Project did not try to bury these legitimate concerns by
limiting public discourse to the benefits of this new knowledge.
Instead, they wisely welcomed and actively encouraged the debate from
the outset by setting aside five percent of the annual budget for a
program to define and address the ethical, legal and other societal
implications of the project.
I sincerely hope that we can learn from this example: early and
open discussions of the societal and ethical impacts of new
technologies improve their staying power, save taxpayers money, and
benefit our society. In effect, early research into unintended
consequences redirects the wow-to-yuck trajectory.
Societal, Ethical and Environmental Issues in Nanotechnology
I'd now like to turn to the question of what `societal and ethical'
issues mean within the specific context of nanotechnology. No one has a
crystal ball to predict exactly how nanotechnology will change our
lives. Unfortunately, due to in part to unrealistic scenarios like the
one in Prey, nanotechnology's yuck index is rising as people take as
fact the fiction of `invisible nanorobots;' this issue is a distraction
from the real and perhaps more mundane issues that this new technology
area is facing, particularly in the area of environmental impact.
Nanotechnologies in their diverse forms all share one feature:
their reliance on nanoscale materials. In short, nanotechnologies
require `stuff.' This stuff may be a familiar material such as silicon
or gold that exhibits unique and very valuable properties when it is
``nanosized.'' Like any material, whether polymers or silicon chips,
nanomaterials require energy to manufacture and generate waste to
dispose of. It will prove to be expensive to ignore these issues until
a mature industry is developed; for example, a growing fraction of the
cost of a Pentium chip is not in the raw materials but in the energy
and waste disposal costs. Ultimately the industry and society will
benefit if we plan now to create a nanomanufacturing industry that
minimizes waste production and energy use.
Nanomaterials themselves may also have unintended environmental
consequences. As a chemist I know all too well how unforeseen health
effects can destroy industries based on complex materials. From
asbestos to DDT we have, as a society, paid an enormous price for not
evaluating toxicological and ecosystem impacts before industries
develop. The real losers here are not environmentalists; instead they
are the businesses who enthusiastically embrace new materials, only to
face a decade later debilitating liability claims from employees,
consumers and governments. And in the case of nanotechnology, the
ultimate losers may be the American taxpayers who invested over one
billion dollars in nanomaterials research without any hard data on
their toxicological and environmental effects.
This might seem like a distant issue with no effects on you or your
constituents. However, if you have used a sunscreen in the last year it
is possible that your skin came in contact with nanoscale ceramics. Is
this a cause for concern? No one knows. It is remarkable that I must
answer this way for a field with the funding levels and cachet of
nanotechnology. Still, there are some general principles which help us
think through the issue. Nanomaterials are valuable in many
technologies because they interact quite differently with the body than
larger materials. For example, you can wear a silver bracelet with no
ill effects but if you eat too much nanoscale silver, as some people
have in the belief it has various health benefits, you will turn
yourself blue. Finely divided solids have access to areas of the body
and interact with biological systems in completely unexpected ways,
which is exactly why they are so powerful in medical applications. The
converse of this is that unintended exposures--of research workers,
factory workers, and the general public--to nanoscale solids could have
more dire consequences than turning skin blue. Or they could turn out
to be benign. We just don't know. If we fail to answer these questions
early, public acceptance of nanotechnologies could be in jeopardy, and
the entire industry derailed.
Avoiding the Wow-to-Yuck Trajectory for Nanotechnology
As one of six Nanoscale Science and Engineering Centers funded by
the National Science Foundation, CBEN has a mandate to clear major
roadblocks to nanotechnology commercialization. We have identified
public acceptance as one of these possible roadblocks, and believe that
we must look beyond the good news about nanotechnology and precisely
characterize the unintended consequences of nanotechnology. We seek to
avoid the path traveled by the GMO industry by encouraging the industry
to answer the tough questions about societal and environmental impacts
while it is still developing.
We need partners in this endeavor. Based on the recent National
Research Council report and our own experience, there is little money
and interest in the societal, ethical and environmental impact of
nanotechnology, despite the rhetoric. Your help here is essential.
The central problem is simply one of human nature: people will
instinctively focus on the positive `wow' potential of nanotechnology.
It is a belief in these positive outcomes that motivates researchers,
students and most importantly funding agencies. It is not surprising
that there has been little interest from nanotechnologists in studying
negative implications. At EPA last year, for example, their call for
proposals on nanotechnology applications received over a hundred
responses while the nanotechnology environmental impact requests, which
had much smaller project awards, received only a handful. There is also
little incentive for funding agencies to expend their precious
resources on this area. For example, when asked to appear before
committees like this to justify their existence, I would doubt that
federal agencies choose to highlight their research into the possible
downsides of the technologies they develop.
There are concrete steps you can take to counteract this inevitable
bias. Through legislation such as this, the National Nanotechnology
Initiative can make impact studies a priority and, most critically,
articulate the arguments for this focus. Policy-makers such as
yourselves can look past the `Wow' messages from funding agencies and
continually emphasize the need for technical progress to be placed in a
social context. Additionally, we must turn to our educational process
as well. At CBEN we have found the `wow-to-yuck' message very
successful at conveying to students and researchers alike how ignorance
of the long-term costs of nanotechnology could cripple the field.
Societal, ethical and environmental impact studies are also hard
because they must envision a future technological reality. How can the
social scientists and environmental engineers best equipped to complete
this research choose which possible futuristic nanotechnology or
nanomaterial to study? They could look to concrete data, such as the
grand challenges of the NNI, to evaluate what specific technological
goals have been articulated. Even better, they could partner with
subject-matter experts early on. In this way they could study in real-
time an evolving technology, and provide feedback to the researchers
and students responsible for its development. For societal impact
studies to be credible and effective, we must demand the active
participation of nanotechnologists in the work. This would be best
achieved by affiliating social scientists with major national
nanotechnology centers, so as to provide investigators with a broad
array of people and research to choose from.
While words can go a long ways, ultimately how nanotechnology
develops will be critically sensitive to how its research monies are
allocated. I agree with the National Research Council report that
suggested that societal, environmental and ethical studies of
nanotechnology are underfunded. For example, EPA's investment in
nanotechnology, five million dollars per year, has been focused on
nanotechnologies for environmental applications; only last year was
$500,000 set aside for environmental impact work. NSF also funds basic
research in nanoscale environmental issues, but CBEN's limited efforts
are the only example I am aware of that consider specifically the
environmental impact of engineered nanoparticles. If I had to guess, I
would estimate that of the nearly one billion dollars slated to go to
nanotechnology this year not even one percent is directed specifically
towards studying the societal, ethical and environmental impact of
nanotechnology. A tangible symbol of your commitment to this kind of
research would be to set a target research funding for the area; the
three to five percent rule used by the Department of Energy in the
Human Genome Project would be a good starting point.
As a young nanotechnologist, in twenty or thirty years I want to
see nanotechnology changing people's lives, all for the better. I
believe that this can only come to pass by honest, early and sincere
exploration of all the risks and benefits of this transformative new
area. We have a unique opportunity to guide a nascent industry in the
right direction from the outset. The time is now.
Thank you for bringing this issue into the spotlight. I welcome
questions regarding my testimony.
Biography for Vicki L. Colvin
Dr. Vicki Colvin has been on the faculty at Rice since the fall of
1996. As a physical chemist interested in complex materials problems,
her group includes a diverse range of synthetic chemists, physical
chemists and applied physicists. Specific research areas include
template chemistry, meso- and macroporous solids, nanocrystalline
oxides, photonic band gap materials and confined glasses.
Prior to her start at Rice, she was a member of the technical staff
at Bell Labs where she developed new materials for holographic data
storage. She received her Ph.D. in 1994 at U.C.-Berkeley under the
direction of Dr. Paul Alivisatos. Her undergraduate degree, a B.S. in
chemistry and physics, was completed in 1988 at Stanford University.
This year she has been named an Alfred P. Sloan research fellow and
a Beckman Young Investigator. Previous awards include a Research
Innovation Award (Research Corporation), Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize,
NSF-YI award, a Dreyfus New Faculty Award and the ACS Victor K. LaMer
Prize. She is the author of over 25 refereed publications, 3 patents
and one book chapter.
Chairman Boehlert. Thank you very much, Dr. Colvin. I would
appreciate, on behalf of the Committee, when you return to
Rice, that great institution, if you extend our best wishes to
Dr. Neil Lane----
Dr. Colvin. I sure will.
Chairman Boehlert [continuing]. The immediate past director
of the National Science Foundation and a very distinguished
American. And now from the great Empire State, home of the
Syracuse Orangemen, national basketball champions, I bring
you--well, I have to do it, you know. I bring you Dr. Langdon
Winner. Dr. Winner.
STATEMENT OF DR. LANGDON WINNER, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL
SCIENCE, DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES,
RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE
Dr. Winner. Mr. Chairman, distinguished Members, I want to
thank you for inviting me to testify this morning. Is this
working? There we go. Thanks.
It is clear that nanotechnology is an emerging field of
research with an enormous power to alter our way of life in
decades to come. If one looks at previous episodes of
technological transformation, it becomes clear how crucial it
is to ask who gets to define what the transformation will
involve. Typically what happens is the promoters of the new
technology, those with the most to gain in the short run, are
the ones who speak first and most loudly. The boosters predict
a wide range of practical benefits, new products, services,
efficiencies, improvements of all kinds. Later, as people in
society at large take notice, they ponder predictions of a
world transformed and begin to raise questions about the
benefits and drawbacks, the range of social, economic,
political, and environmental outcomes involved. And eventually,
this constituency may ask for a voice in making decisions about
where, how, and to what extent the emerging technology will be
applied.
Now enthusiasts like to think that their technologies will
enter the world rather smoothly. Emerson's famous dictum,
``Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to
your door,'' is one that many technologists still prefer. What
actually happens, however, is far more messy and complicated.
The acceptance of any technology requires the building of a
broad, social coalition that agrees to support its introduction
and use. So the test of whether or not a technology is
acceptable is ultimately whether enough people agree that
``yes, these new methods make sense.''
Alas, too often those who try to shepherd new technologies
into being adopt strategies that cripple processes through
which consensus, coalition, and balanced choices might arise.
This strategy can backfire, producing unhappy surprises at the
end of the development process. Instead of building a broad
national and international base that supports one's innovation,
one finds distrust and resistance.
An example of technological backfire is evident in the
crisis that now surrounds biotechnology. Here, the social
coalitions of support, neglected or even scorned as biotech
development moved forward, have now evaporated in key areas of
application. For reasons they find entirely sensible, for
example, nations in the European Union now refuse to buy
genetically modified foods from the United States. What this
suggests is the failure to provide open, thorough, honest
attention to the broader social, political, and cultural
contexts that influence acceptance or rejection of emerging
technologies can lead to disaster. Late in the process, it does
little good to tell those who are unwilling that they are
simply being irrational. To paraphrase yet again, Mr. Chairman,
the great American philosopher, Yogi Berra: If people don't
want to adopt your better mousetrap, nobody is going to stop
them.
I will move quickly over the kinds of concerns that are
often raised these days about nanotechnology. I will have to
admit that I know too little to judge the likelihood of the
various scenarios, both the optimistic and pessimistic ones.
And indeed, I doubt that anyone at present has the required
knowledge to judge these matters. That makes it all the more
urgent to face the final question that the Committee posed to
me in the Chairman's letter: How can research on the societal
and ethical concerns be integrated into the research and
development process? Clearly, there is a need to initiate
systematic studies of the social and ethical dimensions of
nanotechnology. We need broad-ranging, detailed, intellectually
rigorous inquiries conducted by persons who have no financial
or institutional stake that might skew the questions asked or
the answers proposed.
Studies of this kind could be launched in a number of ways
including funding truly cross-disciplinary programs in
universities and research centers, asking them to scope out the
issues and policy alternatives. But I would not advise you
simply to pass the Nanoethicist Full Employment Act, sponsoring
the creation of a new profession. For it seems to me that
something more is needed. Over many decades, there has been the
tendency in government-funded research to exclude the
participation of those who are the ultimate stakeholders, the
general public. Citizens pay the bills for the work unfolding.
They, their children, and grandchildren will be the ones to
experience the ultimate outcomes, good or bad. Why not include
the public in deliberations about nanotechnology early on in
the process rather than after the products reach the market?
In that light, I believe Congress should seek to create
ways in which small panels of ordinary, disinterested citizens,
selected in much the same way that we now choose juries in
cases of law, be assembled to examine important societal issues
about nanotechnology. These panels should study relevant
documents, hear expert testimony from those doing the research,
listen to arguments about technical applications and
consequences from a variety of standpoints, deliberate on what
they have been hearing, write reports offering policy advice.
There is now, in fact, in the National Science Foundation,
a research program that funds experimental citizens panels of
the sort I have described. I would suggest that Congress build
upon these very fruitful experiments and specify, perhaps in
the current legislation, citizens panels as one additional way
to inform public debate about the societal and ethical
dimensions of nanotechnology.
Mr. Chairman, these days we often hear how important it is
to be innovative in emerging technical fields. Here is a way
that Congress could be truly innovative, creating new ways for
citizen stakeholders to join in the study and evaluation of new
technologies.
Thank you for considering these ideas and suggestions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Winner follows:]
Prepared Statement of Langdon Winner
I want to thank the Committee on Science for inviting me to testify
this morning. I will do my best to respond directly to the specific
issues you have asked me to consider.
``What factors influence the successful adoption of new
technologies into society? What questions should be asked
during the research and development phase to help minimize the
potentially disruptive impact of transformational technology
developments?''
Nanotechnology is an emerging technology with enormous potential to
alter our way of life in decades ahead. It is by no means the first
emerging technology to generate sweeping changes in society and the
environment, nor will it be the last.
If one looks at previous episodes of technological transformation,
it becomes clear how crucial it is to ask: Who gets to define what the
transformation will involve? Typically, what happens is that the
promoters of a new technology, those with the most to gain in the short
run, are the ones who speak first and most loudly. The boosters predict
a wide range of practical benefits--new products, services,
efficiencies, improvements of all kinds. Indeed, they usually proclaim
that there is a revolution just around the corner, one that will alter
society for the better, making us wealthier, wiser, more democratic,
and stronger in community bonds.
Often the promoters try a clever ploy, announcing that the changes
on the horizon are ``inevitable,'' beyond anyone's power to guide or
significantly alter. In advertisements, World's Fairs exhibitions, and
public relations campaigns, proclamations of inevitability have long
been standard themes.
In contrast, those who have concerns about how the technology may
develop and what its ultimate outcomes will be tend to speak later and
more hesitantly. As people in society at large take notice, they ponder
predictions of a world transformed and begin to raise questions about
the benefits and drawbacks, the range of social, economic, political,
and environmental consequences involved. Eventually, this broader
constituency may ask for a voice in making decisions about where, how
and to what extent the emerging technology will be applied.
It is fairly common for those who voice concerns about the social,
economic, and environmental consequences of technological change to be
denounced as irrational, unscientific and even anti-technology. Thus,
Rachel Carson's modest report in The Silent Spring about the
environmental destruction caused by the use of chemical pesticides
brought heated denials from the chemical industry and attacks on Ms.
Carson's scientific credentials (even though she was a noted scientist)
and flagrant efforts to destroy her reputation. Of course, we now think
of Rachel Carson as a hero, one able to focus our society's awareness
of environmental problems and solutions. But as she raised her voice,
calling our attention to the consequences of spreading poisons through
the environment, she was derided as ill-informed, an enemy of progress.
Recurring episodes of this kind show why it is important to open
the study and discussion about emerging technologies to the light of
day, and to do this sooner, rather than later, in the process of
planning, development and application.
The claim that a particular development is ``inevitable'' is
particularly unhelpful in this regard. It suggests that people who have
recently become aware of potentially significant changes to their way
of life have no legitimate role in the negotiations. After all, who
would be so foolish as to make suggestions when faced with the
``inevitable''? As the motto of the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago
informed visitors, ``Science Finds--Industry Applies--Man Conforms.''
But, in fact, technological change is never foreordained, the
future never foreclosed. Real choices need to be identified, studied,
and acted upon despite recurring efforts to say, ``Sorry, you're too
late. Your participation won't be needed, thanks.''
Indeed, it seems increasingly clear that open deliberations about
technological choices are crucial to the eventual acceptance or
rejection of emerging technologies. The boosters like to think that
their technologies will enter the world rather smoothly. Emerson's
famous dictum, ``Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a
path to your door,'' is an idea many technologists still prefer. What
actually happens, however, is far more messy and complicated. The
acceptance of any technology requires the building of a broad social
coalition that agrees to support its introduction and use. Often there
are alternative devices and systems, new ones and older ones, jockeying
for this support. The test of whether or not a technology is acceptable
is ultimately whether enough people agree that ``yes, the new methods
make sense.''
Alas, all too often those who try to shepherd new technologies into
being adopt strategies that cripple the processes through which
consensus, coalition, and balanced choices might arise. This strategy
can backfire, producing unhappy surprises at the end of the development
process. Instead of building a broad national and international base
that supports one's innovation, one finds distrust and stiff
resistance.
This was certainly the case in the development of nuclear power in
the United States. For many years plans were made by talented but
inward-looking elites in government, business and the military who
thought they knew best what the public would want. They regaled the
populace with lovely propaganda about ``the friendly atom'' and
``electricity too cheap to meter,'' but avoided going public about
serious problems that the insiders knew about--the real costs of the
plant, safety issues involved in their design, and the problem of
nuclear waste disposal.
When these deeper problems finally did surface powerfully in the
1970s and 1980s, the social coalition that proponents of nuclear power
hoped would support them suddenly collapsed. The building of nuclear
power plants in the U.S. was halted, possibly forever.
Another episode of technological backfire, one perhaps more
relevant to the rise of nanotechnology, is evident in the crisis that
now surrounds biotechnology. Once again, the social coalition of
support, neglected or even scorned as biotech development moved ahead,
has now evaporated in key areas of application. For reasons they find
entirely sensible, nations in the European Union now refuse to buy
genetically modified foods from the U.S. In a similar way, faced with
severe famine, Zambia has refused to accept GMO corn, even as a
charitable gift.
What this suggests is that the failure to provide open, thorough
and honest attention to the broader social, political and cultural
contexts that influence the acceptance or rejection of emerging
technologies can lead to disaster. Late in the process, it does little
good to tell those who are unwilling that they're being irrational or
that there is something woefully defective in their culture (not ours).
To paraphrase the great American philosopher, Yogi Berra: If people
don't want to adopt your better mousetrap, nobody's going to stop them.
I hope that the legislation you are considering, especially its
provisions that support research on social and ethical implications of
nanotechnology, will help create new practices and institutions in
which all the important questions will be rigorously explored. I cannot
predict whether or not broadly based, effective social coalitions will
form around nanotech projects. I do know that it is increasingly risky
to ignore or exclude the great multiplicity of groups and interests
that would like to have a voice in defining what these technologies are
and what they mean. In fact, wise policy would try to stimulate
understanding of the implications of the technology on a broad scale,
fostering widespread study and discussion open to everyone.
The Committee has asked, ``What are the current concerns about
existing and potential applications of nanotechnology science
and engineering?''
Nearly two decades after the publication of Eric Drexler's Engines
of Creation, a number of concerns about nanotechnology are finally
attracting wide attention.
Some observers predict that particular materials produced by
molecular nanotechnology (MNT) will turn out to be environmentally
destructive.
Some worry that products of MNT could, in some configuration of
events, prove hazardous to human health.
A recurring nightmare is that promised inventions in self-
replicating systems might escape the boundaries originally established
for them and begin to wreak havoc. As novelist Michael Crichton
recently commented, ``Imagine a mass of tiny computers, each smaller
than a speck of dust, programmed to fly in a cloud over a country like
Iraq and send back pictures. Imagine the computers begin to evolve and
the aggregate cloud becomes a death dealing swarm that threatens
mankind--a mechanical plague.''
Others hear about ambitious proposals to employ nanotechnology and
other ``convergent'' technologies to create (decades from now) a race
of posthumans. Those not yet persuaded that this is ``inevitable''
wonder whether it's a good idea to seek to divide the human species in
this manner and whether public funds should be spent on such ghoulish
research.
Another persistent concern is that the rise of this field will not,
as promised, be of general social benefit, but will simply amplify
trends long under way--the concentration of wealth and power in the
hands of the few and a widening gap between haves and have-nots in the
U.S. and around the globe. Historically speaking, predictions the
latest and greatest technology will equalize wealth and opportunity
have usually proven false, a fact that never deters boosters of the
``next big thing'' from promising that this time (!) the economic and
social developments will be universally shared.
Faced with the various possibilities described in writings about
this new field of research, I must admit that I know too little to
judge the likelihood of various scenarios, both optimistic and
pessimistic. Indeed, I doubt that anyone has this knowledge at present.
Rather than play Cassandra (or Norman Vincent Peale), I would simply
note three overriding questions that ought to be considered as our
society decides which proposals for nanotechnology research are worth
sponsoring.
(1) Should we continue long-standing efforts to conquer and
dominate nature rather than seek harmony with natural
structures and processes?
During the past two centuries, the desire to conquer nature has
often seemed synonymous with progress. Dam the rivers, drain the
swamps, harvest the forests, and bring all plants and animals under
human control--such counsel seemed eminently sensible. More recently,
however, as some unhappy consequences of this ham-fisted approach have
surfaced, many scientists, engineers, designers, and entrepreneurs have
affirmed that seeking harmony with nature is a more promising
technological and economic approach.
Unfortunately, this recognition seems to have escaped the
enthusiasts of nanotechnology for whom the prospect of conquering
nature right down to the last molecule and atom seems positively
invigorating. It appears that God's creation is, alas, not all that it
should be. Fortunately, it can now be refashioned by a new generation
of godlike spirits who live in Cambridge, Palo Alto, the Research
Triangle, and other concentrations of high tech brilliance. Thus, the
peculiar values of the American middle class, so exquisitely realized
in Happy Meals, SUVs, $200 Nike sneakers, and botox wrinkle treatments,
will now be read into the smallest crevasses of the material universe.
This is something to look forward to.
All of it occurs at a time in which it should be clear that
strategies for dominating nature through brute force have failed
repeatedly. For example, the creation of larger, technically more
sophisticated fishing boats with better and better ways to track and
catch fish has brought astonishing returns. Although it was a difficult
battle and took many years to complete, we have finally conquered the
Atlantic cod. The poor creature has not raised the white flag. It is
simply disappearing from the nets and from the nation's supply of
healthy protein.
I understand the obsession with dominating nature and the desire
for power and wealth it reflects. These tendencies are a dreary, but
recurring presence in modern life. Nevertheless, it is still worth
inquiring: Why should American taxpayers be asked to subsidize ever
more systematic assaults on natural realm? If they knew the kinds of
projects sometimes proposed in this domain, how would they feel about
them?
At present we see a wide range of scientific and technological
strategies that try to work closely with nature rather than impose
imperial dominance. It is interesting that these programs--ones that
stress ``natural capitalism,'' ``green design'' ``biomimicry,'' and
``sustainable economy''--point to a new industrial revolution, but one
quite different from the revolution described by proponents of
nanotechnology. Is it possible that the rush to nanotech will come into
conflict effort to create a socially harmonious, ecological sustainable
future? That prospect seems entirely likely.
(2) Should we actively promote a path development in which
technical means become the driving force that shapes social
ends?
The unfolding of nanotechnology may become yet another instance of
a familiar phenomenon in which powerful techniques emerge from the lab
and then go looking for uses. This pattern defies common sense
understandings of the proper relationship between human ends and
technical means.
In the common sense sequence, one begins by asking: What are our
needs? What fundamental purposes define our inquiries? After the basic
social ends have been clarified, compared, debated, and evaluated, we
then move on to make choices among existing means, including newly
developed technical devices.
As one reads reports coming from scientists and policy makers
interested in nanotechnology and converging technologies in several
areas of scientific and technological development, one does not see the
common sense ends/means thinking at work. In writings on
nanotechnology, there seems little willingness to ask: What are
society's basic needs at present? What basic goals define our sense of
well-being going forward?
What we find instead is a kind of opportunistic means-to-ends
logic. Researchers and institutions interested in doing molecular and
atomic scale engineering scan the horizon to see what opportunities
might be identified as justifications for public funding and private
investment.
Thus, enterprising nanotechnologists notice applications that might
deliver medical doses tailored to specific cells.
Looking at the sheer size of the Department of Defense budget,
nanotech promoters begin imagining ways in which the technology might
provide new weapons and other devices to the military. Yes, there's
always a lot of money in that.
Others catch on to this lucrative game and say, well, perhaps
research on a range of nanotech applications could help the elderly or
people with disabilities.
In sum, what we see here are tools that evolve quickly in response
to a variety of internal research priorities and then go
opportunistically looking for things to do. And, of course, one can
always find something.
I am pleased that Congress is prepared to offer support for study
of the societal and ethical dimensions of an important new field of
scientific and technical research. But I fear that the manner in which
the work is done will reproduce the kind of backwards logic that has
shaped far too much of American technological development in recent
decades. It is a logic that justifies the creation of a wide range of
flashy new gadgets but cannot be bothered to examine the most urgent
facts about the human condition in our time.
(3) Is it wise to experiment with technological applications
likely to produce irreversible effects?
As a general matter, technologies should be judged superior if the
consequences of their use are reversible. Some common projections about
the outcomes of nanotechnology point to effects that could never be
recalled from the environment or from the species with which nano-
systems interact. As we scope out the possibilities here, we need to
ask: Would particular paths of research and development risk opening
Pandora's box? If so, how can present policies help eliminate that
menace?
The final question the Committee has asked me to address is
probably the one most important for the specifics of the
legislation. ``How can research on the societal and ethical
concerns relating to nanotechnology be integrated into the
research and development process?''
A growing number of scientists, scholars, university
administrators, and social activists express a vital interest in this
topic. Clearly, there is need to initiate systematic studies of the
social and ethical dimensions of nanotechnology. We need broad-ranging,
detailed, intellectually rigorous inquiries conducted by persons who
have no financial or institutional stake that might skew the questions
raised or constrain the answers proposed.
Studies of this kind could be launched in a number of ways,
including funding truly cross-disciplinary programs in universities to
scope out key issues and policy alternatives. But I would not advise
you to pass a Nanoethicist Full Employment Act, sponsoring the creation
of a new profession. Although the new academic research in this area
would be of some value, there is also a tendency for those who conduct
research about the ethical dimensions of emerging technology to
gravitate toward the more comfortable, even trivial questions involved,
avoiding issues that might become a focus of conflict. The professional
field of bioethics, for example, (which might become, alas, a model for
nanoethics) has a great deal to say about many fascinating things, but
people in this profession rarely say ``no.''
Indeed, there is a tendency for career-conscious social scientists
and humanists to become a little too cozy with researchers in science
and engineering, telling them exactly what they want to hear (or what
scholars think the scientists want to hear). Evidence of this trait
appears in what are often trivial exercises in which potentially
momentous social upheavals are greeted with arcane, highly scholastic
rationalizations. How many theorists of ``intellectual property'' can
dance on the head of a pin?
One way to avoid the drift toward moral and political triviality is
to encourage social scientists and philosophers to present their
findings in forums in which people from business, the laboratories,
environmental organizations, churches, and other groups can join the
discussion. It is time to reject the idea there are only a few
designated stakeholders that are qualified to evaluate possibilities,
manage the risks, and guide technology toward beneficial outcomes.
Examples of technology policy steered by narrowly interested
technical elites can be found in America's systems of medicine. For
several decades, research and development have produced ever more
exotic, high tech treatments that help propel costs of health care to
dizzying levels. Following this path, according to the Word Health
Organization, the U.S. ranks only 24th the quality of medical care
actually delivered to its populace.
For many decades, there has been a tendency in government funded
research and development to exclude the participation of those who are
the ultimate stakeholders--the general public. Citizens pay the bills
for the work unfolding; they and their children and grandchildren will
be the ones to experience the ultimate outcomes, good or bad.
Why not include the public in deliberations about nanotechnology
early on in the process rather than after the products reach the
market?
In that light, I believe Congress should seek to create ways in
which small panels of ordinary, disinterested citizens, selected in
much the way that we now choose juries in cases of law, be assembled to
examine important societal issues about nanotechnology. The panels
would study relevant documents, hear expert testimony from those doing
the research, listen to arguments about technical applications and
consequences presented by various sides, deliberate on their findings,
and write reports offering policy advice.
It is possible that the news media would find these citizens panels
a fascinating topic to cover. The active engagement of everyday folks
in the shaping of public understanding of emerging issues and
controversies in this area could make extremely valuable contributions
to the articulation of issues, problems and possible solutions.
To begin, one might ask citizens panels to explore two highly
relevant questions.
Will proposed paths for the military application of nanotechnology
make us safer or not?
Would projected uses of nanotechnology in industry tend to create
jobs or eliminate them?
There is now a lively research program within the National Science
Foundation--Social Dimensions of Engineering, Science, & Technology--
that funds experimental citizens panels of the sort I am describing. I
would suggest that Congress build upon these fruitful experiments and
specify (perhaps in the present legislation) citizens panels as one way
to inform public debate about the societal and ethical dimensions of
nanotechnology.
These days we often hear how important it is to be innovative in
emerging technical fields. Here is a way that Congress could be truly
innovative--creating ways for citizen stakeholders to join in the study
and evaluation of new technologies.
Thank you for considering these ideas and suggestions.
Biography for Langdon Winner
Langdon Winner is a political theorist who focuses upon social and
political issues that surround modern technological change. He is the
author of Autonomous Technology, a study of the idea of ``technology-
out-of-control'' in modern social thought, The Whale and The Reactor: A
Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology, and editor of Democracy
in a Technological Society.
Praised by The Wall Street Journal as ``The leading academic on the
politics of technology,'' Mr. Winner was born and raised in San Luis
Obispo, California. He received his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in political
science from the University of California at Berkeley. He is Professor
of Political Science in the Department of Science and Technology
Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. He has
also taught at The New School for Social Research, M.I.T., College of
the Atlantic, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and the
University of Leiden in the Netherlands, and has lectured widely
throughout the United States and Europe. In 1991-1992 he was visiting
research fellow at the Center for Technology and Culture at the
University of Oslo, Norway. During the spring semester of 2001, he will
be Hixon-Riggs Visiting Professor of Science, Technology and Society at
Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California.
Mr. Winner is past president of the Society for Philosophy and
Technology. A sometime rock critic, he was contributing editor at
Rolling Stone in the late 1960s and early 1970s and has contributed
articles on rock and roll to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians and The Encyclopaedia Britannica. At present he is doing
research and writing on a book about the politics of design in the
contexts of engineering, architecture and political theory. Another
book, a collection of essays on technology and human experience, is
also underway.
Mr. Winner's views on social, political and environmental issues
appear regularly in Tech Knowledge Revue, published in the on-line
journal ``NetFuture.''
Chairman Boehlert. Thank you, Dr. Winner. Ms. Peterson.
STATEMENT OF MS. CHRISTINE PETERSON, PRESIDENT, FORESIGHT
INSTITUTE
Ms. Peterson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the
entire Committee for taking on this very challenging topic.
There is a lot of confusion about nanotechnology. The term
is used in two main--two different ways, primarily. The first
is almost any technology a lot smaller than microtechnology.
This is--this would include nanoparticles. This is happening
today. There are issues here, and these are the issues that,
for example, Dr. Colvin addresses. The second is a longer-term
application. Nanotechnology is the ability to work at the
molecular level to create large structures with fundamentally
new molecular organization. This is more the type of
nanotechnology that Mr. Kurzweil was addressing. Number one
should be studied. Dr. Colvin's group and many others are
available to do that, but the impact compared to number two
will be--in comparison, will be relatively modest.
I am focusing now on the advanced nanotechnology. This is--
it is basically a new way of thinking about physical matter.
Today, you can have atomic precision at the molecular level.
That is chemistry. Or you can have large complex structures.
You can't have both at the same time. The goal is to get both
at the same time so that you can have products of any size
designed down to the atomic level.
How do you get there? First, this is an extremely ambitious
goal. This is, as Mr. Kurzweil said, we are looking, perhaps, a
couple decades out. You do it using systems of molecular
machines. This is how living systems work. This new way of
doing technology is inspired by living systems. You can picture
how these systems would work as something like factories
operating at the nanometer level including, for example,
nanoscale conveyor belts and robotic arms bringing molecular
parts together precisely, bonding them to form products with
every atom in a precise design location. Again, very difficult,
very challenging, tremendous momentum in this direction.
I am about to show you a couple of pictures. These are not
artist conceptions. These are actual designs, which we believe
either could be built as designed or something very like them.
[Diagram.]
This is a cutaway view. You are seeing the inside as well
of a differential gear. You have differential gears in your
cars, I am told, but this one is at the molecular level. You
can see the individual atoms. Again, a design. We can't build
this now, but we believe someday it could be done.
[Diagram.]
Another design, this is the tip of a robotic arm, a
positioning device operating at the nanoscale.
What are the benefits of this level of technology? Mr.
Kurzweil pointed at them. Medical; tremendous benefits here:
being able to rearrange, restructure tissue at the molecular
level could restore health regardless of a disease's cause. At
the environmental--in the environmental area, which is the one
that excites me, being able to build products with zero
chemical pollution and being able to do environmental
restoration at the molecular level is very exciting. The--we
should be able to raise sustainable living standards, because
this form of manufacturing is, in principle, very inexpensive,
as living systems show us. And finally, the strong, lightweight
materials that could be made this way may give us much lower
cost access to space and space resources.
Is there a downside? There definitely is a downside. There
is a potential for accidents with any powerful technology.
Already, because there has been so much attention to this, and
our organization certainly has been looking at this for 15
years or so, we already have safety rules drafted. They are on
the Web. They are ready for critiquing. There is a private
sector role here in cooperating and developing these safety
rules.
This is a disruptive technology. There could be economic
impacts, job transitions. We are going to need some education
to help people make the change. There will be problems with
lack of access to this technology, conceivably. These basic
parts, gears, bearings, very simple--perhaps very simple
motors, it is not clear you want these patented. Think of them
as being the alphabet that you build on rather than something
that you want to tie up, perhaps, in patents. Something to
consider and look at.
The most challenging problem would be deliberate abuse and
terrorism with this. One way around that would be rather than
developing it in a secret program, would be open international
R&D with broad participation and a parallel arms control
effort. Some would argue that perhaps we shouldn't develop this
technology. I don't think it is optional. It is clearly coming.
Many countries and companies are on the pathway. To me, this
looks inexorable.
What do we do about this? This is still controversial.
Molecular manufacturing is controversial. The technical
community has not yet done a serious feasibility study of this.
We urgently need a basic feasibility review in which proponents
and critics of the technology can make their technical case to
a group of unbiased physicists. And that would be my one
suggestion is to add something like that to the legislation.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Peterson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Christine Peterson
First, I'd like to thank the Committee on Science for taking on the
task of addressing the societal implications of nanotechnology. This
challenging topic may emerge as the most difficult issue facing policy-
makers over the coming decades.
Humanity's drive to improve our control of the physical world is
intrinsic to our species and has been in progress for millennia. A vast
international economic and military momentum pushes us toward the
ultimate goal of nanotechnology: complete control of the physical
structure of matter, all the way down to the atomic level.
Confusion about nanotechnology
Before attempting to address societal issues, we need to clarify
which stage of nanotechnology is being examined. Today the word is used
in two very different ways:
Near-term nanotechnology: Industry today uses the
term to cover almost any technology significantly smaller than
microtechnology, e.g., nanoparticles. These new products will
have positive and negative health and environmental effects
which should be studied, but their societal effects--both
positive and negative--will be modest compared to later stages
of the technology.
Advanced nanotechnology: Technology enabling broad
control at the level of individual atoms: ``The essence of
nanotechnology is the ability to work at the molecular level. .
.to create large structures with fundamentally new molecular
organization.'' (ref 1) It is this stage of nanotechnology
which will have major societal impact, and the remainder of
this testimony will focus here.
Molecular manufacturing: the long-term goal
Advanced nanotechnology, known as molecular manufacturing, will
give the ability to construct a wide range of large objects
inexpensively and with atomic precision. It will take us beyond
materials and devices to complex systems of molecular machines,
inspired by--but in some ways superior to--those found in nature.
Molecular manufacturing systems can be envisioned as factories
operating at the nanometer level, including nanoscale conveyor belts
and robotic arms bringing molecular parts together precisely, bonding
them to form products with every atom in a precise, designed location
(ref 2).
It is important not to minimize the technical challenge of such a
complex systems engineering project. Indeed, new tools must be
developed before beginning a direct attack on the problem. Nonetheless,
ongoing research is building the needed technology base, and will
eventually place enormous payoffs within reach.
These prospects have been known since the first technical
publication on the topic in 1981 (ref 3), and substantial thought has
been devoted to potential societal implications of molecular
manufacturing. Foresight Institute was founded in 1986 to maximize the
societal benefits and minimize the problems expected from advanced
nanotechnology.
Potential benefits of molecular manufacturing
Gaining molecular-level control over the structure of matter will
bring a wide variety of positive applications (ref 4):
Medical uses: Molecular machine systems will be able
to sense and rearrange patterns of molecules in the human body,
providing the tools needed to bring about a state of health,
regardless of a disease's cause (ref 5).
Environmental applications: Using molecular
manufacturing techniques, it will be possible to construct our
products with zero chemical pollution, recycling leftover
molecules. Environmental restoration could be carried out at
the molecular level, detecting and inactivating unwanted
chemicals (ref 6).
Raising sustainable living standards: Molecular
manufacturing will be able to cleanly and inexpensively produce
high-quality products using common materials (especially
carbon, which is in excess in the atmosphere in the form of
carbon dioxide) and solar energy (ref 6).
Low cost to access to space: The strong, lightweight
materials enabled by molecular manufacturing will greatly lower
the cost of access to space and space resources, making their
active use affordable for the first time.
These benefits should be attainable though the combined results of
(1) a well-funded R&D program, (2) private sector efforts to bring down
costs, and (3) public policy aimed at addressing the issues listed
below.
Potential negative effects of molecular manufacturing
Powerful technologies bring problems as well as benefits, and
advanced nanotechnologies are expected to bring problems of several
sorts:
Accidents: Any powerful technology--from fire to
biotech--must be controlled to avoid accidents. In the case of
molecular manufacturing, rearranging matter at the molecular
level can either improve or destroy a system. Molecular machine
systems able to build complex objects could build copies of
themselves, possibly overdoing this activity from a human point
of view, as bacteria do.
An approach to the problem: This issue has been examined and
a set of safety rules has been drafted for review; these are
expected to evolve as we gain more knowledge about safety
issues (ref 7). Implementation will require the cooperation of
the private sector, and early endorsement of safety guidelines
could ease public concerns about the technology.
Economic disruption: Technological change continually
disrupts employment patterns, but molecular manufacturing is
expected to accelerate this significantly: once certain
specific points of development in this technology are reached,
very rapid change can take place.
An approach to the problem: Increase workforce flexibility
through education and training.
Lack of access: Excessive or incorrect patenting of
fundamental machine parts at the nanoscale may reduce
commercial competition and make molecular manufacturing
products too expensive for many to benefit.
An approach to the problem: Increase private sector
competition by discouraging patenting of basic molecular
machine parts needed by all companies doing molecular
manufacturing. Consider using ``open source''-style
intellectual property protection for publicly-funded R&D so
that this work is available to all (ref 8).
Deliberate abuse/terrorism: Of the potential problems
molecular manufacturing may bring, this is regarded as the most
serious and most challenging to address. Three main areas of
concern have been identified: (1) very rapid construction of
conventional weapons, making traditional arms control more
difficult, (2) totalitarian control of civilian populations by
surveillance using nanoscale sensors, and (3) new weapons made
possible by the technology, which can be thought of as
``smart'' chemical weapons.
An approach to the problem: Encourage an open, international
R&D program with broad cooperation by the democracies,
including a parallel arms control verification project (ref 6).
Improve today's chemical weapons arms control procedures.
Reducing risks from molecular manufacturing
Individuals and organizations with legitimate concerns regarding
advanced nanotechnology have suggested delays in development, even
moratoria or bans. While these reactions are understandable, this
approach was examined over a decade ago and rejected as infeasible (ref
4). Today, both public and private spending on nanotechnology is
broadly international. Expected economic and military advantages are
driving a technology race already underway. If law-abiding nations
choose to delay nanotechnology development, they will relinquish the
lead to others.
Non-U.S. locations have at least three advantages in the
nanotechnology race: (1) labor costs for scientists and technologists
are usually lower, (2) intellectual property rules are sometimes
ignored, and (3) the former ``brain drain'' of technical talent to the
U.S. is slowing and in some cases reversing. The U.S. and other
democracies have no natural monopoly in developing this technology, and
failure to develop it would amount to unilateral disarmament.
In developing a powerful technology, delay may seem to add safety,
but the opposite could be the case for molecular manufacturing. A
targeted R&D project today aimed at this goal would need to be large
and, therefore, visible and relatively easy to monitor. As time passes,
the nanoscale infrastructure improves worldwide, enabling faster
development everywhere, including places that are hard to monitor. The
safest course may be to create a fast-moving, well-funded, highly-
focused project located where it can be closely watched by all
interested parties. Estimates are that such a project could reach its
goal in 10-15 years.
Specific ethical considerations
A study of ethical implications of advanced nanotechnology would
need to address at least these factors:
The different kinds of nanotechnology and their
likely windows of impact.
A wide spectrum of different scenarios, including
ones in which a significant molecular manufacturing R&D project
is already in progress elsewhere.
The potential consequences of ``saying no'' to the
technology, as well as those of saying yes. These may be
unevenly distributed; for example, those in poor countries
might be hurt more by a delay--especially of environmental
applications--than those in the U.S.
In most cases, society does not ``say no'' or ``yes''
to a technology, but instead moves forward with appropriate
controls. Ethical issues arise in defining the dimensions and
consequences of such controls.
To date the dialog around nanotechnology has been
polarized, with only one viewpoint--near-term nanotechnology--
being included in policy-making. A meaningful discussion of
ethics and consequences requires us to ensure that a wide
variety of opinions are represented in any downstream policy
body or Presidential Commission on nanotechnology.
Bottleneck: Lack of feasibility review
While the basics of molecular manufacturing have been in the
literature for over a decade, controversy still continues about the
technical feasibility of this goal.
We urgently need a basic feasibility review in which molecular
manufacturing's proponents and critics can present their technical
cases to a group of unbiased physicists for analysis.
If we are in fact on the pathway to building molecular machine
systems, with all the benefits and problems that implies, policy-makers
need to know now in order to respond appropriately as this opportunity
approaches.
The United States has a history of technological success in large
systems engineering projects--it has been one of our primary strengths.
But nanotechnology research is already worldwide, and there is no
guarantee that the U.S., an ally, or other democracy will be the first
to reach molecular manufacturing, and failure to do so would be
militarily disastrous.
Such an ambitious R&D project requires, first, a decision to pursue
the goal, and then substantial funding. Both of these are currently
blocked by the lack of consensus on the technical feasibility of
molecular manufacturing. Until this issue has been put to rest, neither
a funded molecular manufacturing R&D project nor effective study of
societal implications can be carried out.
References:
1. ``National Nanotechnology Initiative: The Initiative and its
Implementation Plan'' http://www.nsf.gov/home/crssprgm/nano/nni2.htm
2. Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation by
K. Eric Drexler (Wiley, 1992).
3. ``Molecular engineering: An approach to the development of general
capabilities for molecular manipulation,'' K.E. Drexler (1981), PNAS
78:5275-5278. http://www.imm.org/PNAS.html
4. Engines of Creation by K. Eric Drexler (Anchor Press/Doubleday,
1986), http://www.foresight.org/EOC
5. Nanomedicine, Volume 1: Basic Capabilities by Robert Freitas
(Landes Bioscience, 1999), http://www.nanomedicine.com/NMI.htm
6. Unbounding the Future: The Nanotechnology Revolution by K. Eric
Drexler and Chris Peterson with Gayle Pergamit (Morrow, 1992), http://
www.foresight.org/UTF/Unbound-LBW
7. ``Foresight Guidelines on Molecular Nanotechnology,'' http://
www.foresight.org/guidelines/current.html
8. ``Open Sourcing Nanotechnology Research and Development: Issues and
Opportunities'' Bryan Bruns (2001), Nanotechnology 12(3):198-201,
http://stacks.iop.org/0957-4484/12/198. Updated version: http://
www.foresight.org/Conferences/MNT8/Papers/Bruns
Biography for Christine Peterson
Christine Peterson writes, lectures, and briefs the media on coming
powerful technologies, especially nanotechnology. She is co-founder and
President of Foresight Institute, a nonprofit which educates the
public, technical community, and policy-makers on nanotechnology and
its long-term effects.
She directs the Foresight Conferences on Molecular Nanotechnology,
organizes the Foresight Institute Feynman Prizes, and chairs the
Foresight Gatherings.
She lectures on nanotechnology to a wide variety of audiences,
focusing on making this complex field understandable, and on clarifying
the difference between near-term commercial advances and the ``Next
Industrial Revolution'' arriving in the next few decades.
Her work is motivated by a desire to help Earth's environment and
traditional human communities avoid harm and instead benefit from
expected dramatic advances in technology. This goal of spreading
benefits led to an interest in new varieties of intellectual property
including open source software, a term she is credited with
originating.
With Eric Drexler and Gayle Pergamit, she wrote Unbounding the
Future: the Nanotechnology Revolution (Morrow, 1991), which sketches
nanotechnology's potential environmental and medical benefits as well
as possible abuses.
Christine holds a Bachelor's degree in chemistry from MIT.
Discussion
Chairman Boehlert. Thank you very much. Thank all of you.
Let me ask the entire panel. We will go in the order of your
presentation. What do each of you think is the most serious,
legitimate concern about nanotechnology? Keep in mind, we are a
society where there are some people who still think putting
fluoride in water is a plot to undermine the youth of America.
But what do you think is the most serious, legitimate concern
about nanotechnology, and how would you construct a research
program to investigate it? Mr. Kurzweil.
Mr. Kurzweil. Christine Peterson mentioned that there is a
near-term and a long-term. They are really two different
fields, and the era we are on now is nanoparticles. These are a
bit more limited in their benefits but still will be measured
in billions of dollars. They are more benign in their dangers.
They do reflect a new type of safety concern in that these
particles are small enough to get inside our tissues, cross the
blood/brain barrier. Of course, it is not the first time that
new materials, even at that scale, can get inside the human
body.
I think we need some strengthening of existing regulation
to look at this new concept. But I would say the existing
scheme of regulation we have on environment and health should
be sufficient, but it does need to deal with these new types of
materials that we will be coming into contact with.
The real controversy in nanotechnology has to do with self-
replication. I mean, self-replication is the source of the
greatest danger in the world. Atomic weapons have to do with
self-replication. Disease is self-replicating pathogens. Cancer
is self-replicating cells, and the biggest concern we--and
biotechnology, we are concerned with bioengineered pathogens.
That actually is the biggest concern in near-term technology,
although it is outside the view we are talking about. And the
biggest, most controversial concern about nanotechnology is
when we have the advent of self-replication.
Now why would we have self-replication? It is really
necessary in order to scale up from these tiny, atomic sized
devices to something that is physically large. You are going to
need some self-replication to get the scale to make this
technology viable. Well, self-replication gone awry is a
cancer, and if you get a cancer of non-biological materials, it
could be very threatening. I proposed here, in my written
testimony, some ways that we can deal with that. Christine
Peterson's organization, the Foresight Institute, has spent
over a decade developing ethical standards that I think will
be--and also technological strategies that will be effective at
preventing accidental release of self-replicating
nanotechnology.
The concern with intentional abuse is much more serious,
and there I would point us to the success we have had in
software viruses, which is another self-replicating pathogen.
And there is really no single strategy. Come up with a strategy
and then someone can defeat it, and then we have to defeat the
new, more sophisticated offense. We have to stay a step ahead.
I would say the biggest advice--the most important advice I
would give is we--society needs to put far greater resources
into actually developing the defensive technologies and--
because we are not on--right now on the threshold of self-
replicating nanotechnology. We are on the threshold of self-
replicating biotechnology.
Chairman Boehlert. Okay.
Mr. Kurzweil. And a terrorist, a bioterrorist does not need
to put his innovation through the FDA, whereas the scientists
we are relying on to defend us are--do have--are slowed down by
the regulatory process at every step. And it is hard to even
imagine how you could put a biodefense through the FDA, because
it would be unethical to test these on humans. I think how we
deal with bioengineering actually will be a good test case for
nanoengineering.
Chairman Boehlert. Dr. Colvin, do you have some thoughts on
that?
Dr. Colvin. Yeah, I am glad you asked that question.
Clearly from my testimony, I believe that when you think about
societal impact, you are going to have to play a game of
technology forecasting. I believe that if we had infinite
resources in this body, perhaps we could do everything, but we
need to make some very tough choices about where we focus
societal impact, what kind of term you look at. I believe that
the near-term issues with environmental health and safety are
significant. The knowledge base is not there, and if those are
not handled well, we will call into question the ability of
these longer-term goals to survive. We all know in
biotechnology how problems in one area can taint the entire
discipline. So I believe these near-term effects are
significant, and I disagree that substantial resources are
going into the issue--the question, so I see that as the issue.
And just--on the self-replicating machines, the technology
forecasting is essential here. How do you know what
nanotechnology will do? I look to the guidelines of the
National Nanotechnology Initiative, which set forth very
specific technological challenges, not one of which includes
self-replicating robots or machines. It is a very controversial
topic. The majority of academic nanotechnology researchers feel
that there are substantial problems with that particular future
being envisioned. I would never say nothing is ever possible,
but in light of the very near-term consequences that we are
currently looking at, it makes more sense to focus the research
dollars on those topics at this point.
Chairman Boehlert. Thank you very much. Dr. Winner.
Dr. Winner. Yes, I would point to a general issue that
covers a number of problems that people have talked about,
which is the possibility of irreversible harm. As a general
matter, I think technology should be Judge Superior if the
consequences of their use are reversible. And this suggests we
need a kind of research strategy here that would enable us to
do the kinds of applications and experiments in a controlled,
bounded way rather than simply releasing them into the world
and then see what happens.
In that regard, I would object to Mr. Kurzweil's comparison
analogy between computer viruses and, let us say, self-
replicating machines in the environment. The computer viruses
exist within certain kinds of systems, but we are proposing to
take the new materials and new processes of nanotechnology and
release them in ways that would ultimately enter our bodies and
the biosphere. So I think we are going to need some very clever
and careful ways of testing on a limited scale the way these
things work, to try them out in a way that if problems arise,
then you won't be stuck with a Pandora's box.
Chairman Boehlert. Thank you very much. Ms. Peterson.
Ms. Peterson. First, I would like to say, excuse me, I
agree with Dr. Colvin that more funding is needed for these
near-term effects of current nanotechnology. I don't--I would
certainly not argue that enough is going there, so let us try
to get that up.
Chairman Boehlert. Well, just let me observe. You know, the
National Academy of Science pointed out that the National
Science Foundation explicitly included societal implications in
its solicitations for nanotechnology research during fiscal
year 2001. Few proposals were submitted and none were funded.
And one of the things you are suggesting is that we fence off a
certain amount of money, maybe five percent, and mandate that
that go for this type of study.
Dr. Colvin. Yes, I think that you have hit on an essential
issue.
Chairman Boehlert. All right. Thank you. I know the red
light is there, but I want the panel to have the opportunity to
answer this one question, and then I will go to Mr. Honda.
Would you finish, Ms. Peterson?
Ms. Peterson. Yes, so--and I would also agree with Dr.
Colvin that the molecular manufacturing scenario is highly
controversial. However, I can tell you that I have been
tracking this for over 20 years, and I--there has not been any
substantive technical argument against this. Believe me, I am
looking. If I ever find one, I could go do something else,
okay. So I would reemphasize, I think we need to do a
feasibility study of the type that I suggested. And the reason
is that the fear and the hope regarding this long-term
nanotechnology is spilling over onto the near-term
nanotechnology, and that is going to be a problem for near-term
possibilities. So if we can allay those fears, the near-term
nanotechnology will also benefit.
Thank you.
Chairman Boehlert. Thank you very much. Mr. Honda.
Mr. Honda. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I think that this--
the line of questioning discussion is very important, and I
would support something like setting aside funding for--
specific to that activity.
You mentioned--we are talking about advisory committees and
external and internal advisory committees. Could you share with
us how you think we can make the input of an advisory committee
stick or make it important? I mean, a lot of times we get input
and it gets lost in the wash. Would you share with us some of
the ideas you may have? Dr.--Ms. Peterson, you have thought
about this for some time. Maybe you have some ideas, and then
we will hear the rest of the panel.
Ms. Peterson. In this area, I think nanotechnology is an--
is basically an engineering field. The goal is to achieve
certain technical results. And I think one thing that has been
missing, perhaps, in the way we have been coming at it as a
nation has been a focus on engineering teamwork and putting
together specific projects with very clear technical goals. And
I know the NNI is moving in that direction, but I think we need
to move much more. So I think if there could be an advisory
committee that puts together very clear technical goals that
could be fed somehow into the legislation, that might be
helpful.
Dr. Winner. I would be careful to place these questions
solely in the hands of scientific and engineering elites. We
did that with nuclear power where the essential questions took
decades to surface, questions about the cost of the plants,
questions about the safety of the plants, questions about
nuclear waste disposal. When these questions erupted powerfully
in the 1970's and 1980's, the social coalition of support for
nuclear power collapsed. And what I fear is that if we say,
well, the main voices that matter here are the scientists, the
engineers, the entrepreneurs and so forth, we are not going to
include society as a whole. We are not going to include the
public in the process and which eventually ordinary folks are
going to have to decide whether this is a technology--or these
are technologies they can support or not. I would say open up
the process more broadly and early on.
Dr. Colvin. As far as the question about the advisory
panel, I believe that in the particular case of societal impact
is--the point I tried to make is that you are swimming upstream
in many ways to get both scientists and engineers and even
social scientists and funding agencies engaged. So I believe
the advisory panel will serve an important role in looking over
how that research is going. I would suggest that they be
charged, certainly, with the process of classifying research
projects.
It can be a little tricky to decide if somebody is looking
at a brand new way of desalinating water, if that is an
application or an environmental implication. In my mind, that
is a technology development, not a health and safety issue. So
those kinds of issues, I think, are something an advisory panel
can do. I agree completely that we need to broaden the base.
Advisory panels must include social and environmental
scientists, but they absolutely also must include science and
technologists.
I believe that in the area, scientists and engineers have
changed a lot since the '70's. This is really a great moment to
train, especially our younger generation of scientists and
engineers, to think much more broadly about applications. And I
think that they are ready to do that. They are ready to
recognize they have to engage the public and a much broader
context for their work. And I believe the advisory panel will
be a snapshot of a group of people with diverse backgrounds.
And hopefully those are the types of profiles we will see also
when the research grant is funded.
Mr. Kurzweil. I agree with Dr. Colvin that you need to have
both ethicists and representatives of the public interest as
well as scientists. Representatives of the public really can't
deal with the issues unless the scientific implications are
understood, and these generally involve difficult scientific
and engineering issues. I think it would be reasonable to have
any proposal be required to address potential dangers,
environmental impacts, impacts on health, as we sometimes do
with environmental impact, but to specifically address these
emerging safety issues as these technologies get more powerful.
And just to respond to something that Dr. Winner said
earlier, it is nobody's proposal to release into the natural
environment self-replicating entities that are not biological.
I mean, that is specifically the sort of cornerstone of the
ethical guidelines that the industry has come up with. And a
lot of the specific technical strategies are designed to
prevent that from happening.
Chairman Boehlert. Thank you very much. The gentleman's
time has expired. The distinguished Chairman of the
Subcommittee on Research, Mr. Smith of Michigan.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I am glad
to see many of the panelists sort of relate some of the
problems that we have had in biotechnology and the slowdown of
that research because of rhetoric that may be more based on
emotion than scientific fact. And certainly, Mr. Winner, we
want to bring in a broader evaluation to make sure that we
don't stall the good research that can be accomplished through
nanotechnology. And we still have that problem hanging out
there with biotechnology that, in many areas, we have slowed
down.
Help me understand a little bit some of what you see just
sort of in your vision of some of the potential for
nanotechnology, and just go down the role. And what are some of
the possibilities out there, starting with you, Mr. Kurzweil?
Mr. Kurzweil. Well, probably the most exciting is to build
small devices that can go inside the human body, actually
travel inside the bloodstream and perform therapeutic and
diagnostic functions. Now that might sound futuristic, but we
are actually doing that today. There are four major conferences
on something called BioMEMS, Biological Microelectronic
Mechanical Systems, and that is not quite nanotechnology, but
these are tiny devices that go inside the bloodstream. One
scientist actually cured type I diabetes with a nanoengineered
device that has seven nanometer pores that lets insulin out,
blocks antibodies, and actually cured type I diabetes in rats.
And this same mechanism--there is no reason to believe this
same mechanism wouldn't work in humans.
Ultimately, when we can design devices that are very small,
we can go and scout out pathogens, destroy cancer. One
scientist, Rob Freitas, has designed replacements for portions
of our bloodstream that would overcome blood diseases and
greatly extend human health and longevity.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Well, save some for Dr. Colvin.
Dr. Colvin. Did you mean by possibilities our--the
wonderful things that can happen or kind of a more of a
discussion of some of the negative, you know, the implications
that are----
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Well, I think that is important,
too.
Dr. Colvin. Yeah.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. And Mr. Chairman, you know, maybe we
need some of--skeptics along with the scientific----
Dr. Colvin. Okay. All right. I will add what----
Mr. Smith of Michigan. I don't want you to take the role of
a total----
Dr. Colvin. Right, because I--much of what we do in my
center is actually biomedical research using nanoparticles. And
I would echo the previous comment and that already are small
particles actually made from the bottom up now are multi-
functional, can hunt down cancer cells and kill them if you
shine light on them from the outside. That is something that
Dr. Jennifer West, in our center, has pioneered. So it is
really amazing what small particles can do inside of our
bodies. They can--because of their extremely small size, they
are much, much smaller than a red blood cell, their access to
biological environments is amazing. And we can leverage that in
generating entirely new ways for treating disease. And that is
actually already happening.
The flip side of that is that because of their rather
unfettered access all over our body, the body can interact with
them in unusual ways, and that is already becoming part and
parcel of our medical research. So what that means to me is
that we are in a situation, especially when we find the wide
use of nanoscale particles, particularly in cosmetic
applications, in a situation where consumers are exposed to
them unintentionally every day. And that is a situation where
we have to, I think, step back and say, ``Are the benefits of a
cosmetic application necessarily worth, perhaps, some of the
issues we may face with their access to the body and long-term
effects?''
Unfortunately, very little is known. The societal impact
research from NSF is limited to only social scientists. No
environmental impact research, with the exception of the small
amount of--that we do, comes from societal impact. So my
warning to you is with societal impact, that will be
interpreted as social science, so if the environmental part is
something you want to stress, you are going to need to say
that.
Dr. Winner. Yeah, Mr. Smith, one thing that interests me
about the way this research is being justified is that we have,
in my view, powerful tools that are going out looking for uses.
So you have a list of all of the things that nanotech might do.
I think, perhaps, a more fruitful approach for a national
budget would be to say, ``What are the Nation's greatest needs?
What are our greatest problems? How might research address
those issues?'' Nanotechnology, right now, is, I guess, in the
hundreds of millions of dollars in research. One can see this
being ramped up, you know, powerfully in decades to come.
And we have this, what I would call a kind of opportunistic
logic of technical choice. ``Let us try this. Let us try that.
Let us do what these entrepreneurs want or these researchers
want.'' One thing that bothers me about this is the kind of
opportunistic logic that reverses what we normally expect is
the relationship between ends and means, where we first clarify
our ends, saying, ``These are our basic priorities. Here is
what American society needs.'' And then we go out looking for
means that might satisfy those ends. In nanotechnology, as I
hear it consistently defined, what we have is a process in
which the tools go out looking opportunistically for things to
do. That bothers me. I think it should bother you.
Ms. Peterson. Regarding the potential benefits, we have
covered the medical ones. I will just touch on three more.
Environmental benefits, the potential of being able to make our
products with zero chemical pollution and do environmental
restoration all the way down to the molecular level. The second
one would be how are we going to bring living standards up in
the poor countries without having environmental difficulties?
And that has been a tension for a long time. The goal here
would be if we can make our products cleanly and inexpensively,
we might be able to accomplish that difficult goal. And third,
we have seen not too long ago the disastrous consequences of
materials problems in our space program. With nanotechnology,
we should have much stronger, lightweight materials and perhaps
finally make space resources and space activities affordable
and safe.
Chairman Boehlert. Thank you very much. The gentleman's
time has expired. Mr. Miller.
Mr. Miller. Thank you. We had an earlier hearing on
nanotechnology. And the gist of it was that we were not really
ahead, perhaps behind several other nations that were involved
in nanotechnology research. I can't recall the list: the EU,
obviously, I recall China, I think Israel, perhaps Korea, maybe
India. But in any case, we did not have the--kind of the lead
in the--in research in this area that we have had in other
great advances in the last generation. What is going on in the
other nations doing nanotech research on these issues? Are they
pausing over ethical concerns or pausing over safety issues,
environmental hazards? Are they setting up citizen panels? What
are they doing? Anything?
Mr. Kurzweil. I don't think the ethical concerns are
slowing down nanotechnology yet. Some of the activist groups
that have gone after genetically modified foods are now turning
their attention on this issue, but so far, it is really in the
discussion stage. Most of the research is in diverse areas, and
is experimental. It is not really being slowed down a bit. It
is a very diverse activity.
Another exciting area, which is really going on around the
world, is in electronics, developing three-dimensional
molecular circuits, which can then continue the exponential
growth of computing beyond the flat integrated circuits
governed by Moore's Law. And that actually--most of that
research has been here with some in Europe and Israel, but we
have a lead in that particular technology.
Dr. Colvin. Last year, I participated in a workshop in
Italy on societal impacts of nanotechnology with many
international participants. What was clear to me is that the
European funding agencies take particularly the near-term
consequences quite seriously. They come from a culture where
basically concerns about genetically modified organisms or some
of the mistrusts between scientists and the public is quite
severe. So they are actually in the stage this year of ramping
up significant funding. I don't know the exact numbers, I could
provide them, to get put particularly into the issues of
environmental and health impacts.
And in fact, in England, this has received--noted the
highest levels of the government because of the activities of
some of these non-governmental organizations. So they have been
quite effective, particularly in Europe, of drawing attention
to this issue. And I believe our European colleagues will be
paying very close attention. And there is much more substantial
discussion, for example, of regulation in Europe than there is
here.
Dr. Winner. I can't speak to the question of, you know,
whether the United States is ahead or behind in specific areas.
But your question suggests to me that in a global economy and
global science and technology, with--these kinds of societal
and ethical issues we are talking about today really need to be
addressed globally as well, internationally. And I think one
thing that people that are interested in this area should begin
to explore is the creation of new institutions, trans-national
institutions in which these kinds of research, deliberation,
debate, and attention to issues could be pitched for attention.
Ms. Peterson. I think we can expect to see these issues of
societal implications being addressed. As Dr. Colvin said, in
Europe, they are probably ahead of us. Here, we are ramping up,
but there is substantial activity in Asia in nanotechnology and
Japan and in China and in other countries. And I would be
surprised, myself, to see an organized effort there. Maybe the
other panelists can comment on that, but I think it is--in
Asia, it is full steam ahead, and I think it is worth keeping
an eye, for example, on China, where the number--the last
number I saw for China was 300 million U.S. dollars equivalent.
And keep in mind that the cost of scientists there is much
lower. And so when you look at that number, you have to put in
the multiplier effect, and so we may see tremendous advances
coming out of China over the decades to come. And we could be
surprised.
Mr. Miller. Very surprised at how much the technology comes
out of China?
Ms. Peterson. Yes, China could, yeah.
Mr. Miller. But if we were the only nation in the world--
well, there may be some race at the bottom in their--in concern
for safety and ethical----
Ms. Peterson. I think yes. I think if there is
nanotechnology research being done in countries that, perhaps,
don't have our level of safety concerns, we might want to keep
an eye on that.
Chairman Boehlert. Thank you very much. The gentleman's
time has expired. Actually, you have two seconds left.
Mr. Miller. I will yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Boehlert. Thank you very much. The distinguished
Chairman of the Subcommittee on Space, Mr. Rohrabacher.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Am I the only one who is skeptical of the
social sciences here? I don't know. I get to be the proverbial
skunk at the lawn party.
Chairman Boehlert. You are not out of character.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I mean, this sounds like to me you are
putting all of the sociology and literature majors in charge of
defining the goals of the engineering and, you know, science
majors. I don't know what your experience in college was, but
you know, I wasn't the one who wanted to trust the sociology
majors with those type of decisions. Is that what I am getting
here?
Dr. Colvin. Do you want me to take--yeah, I will jump on
that one.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. Please do.
Dr. Colvin. Yeah, I think--so as a member of the
nanotechnology community as scientists and engineers, it is
strange to say, ``Okay, we are going to--social scientists will
receive substantial funding to evaluate our technologies.'' I
think that we are all very open and believe that only an
economist, for example, or an anthropologist could really
figure out how, if you give very small palm pilots to, you
know, third world countries how that might disrupt their
culture. That is not something I can do.
But where we really find significant issues is when those
same groups do their technology forecasting. So if they make an
assumption that they are going to study some technology, that
is what I believe you have to leave to the nanotechnology
establishment is to decide what are the real issues? What are
the technologies that exist? What are the specific things we
are working towards? So that when we get partnerships with our
social scientists and environmental scientists, they focus on
the issues that actually are--matter to the groups that are the
most closely related to the work. So I agree with your
perspective, to some extent. But I believe the consequences
research can't be done by nanotechnologists.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I think what we are talking about here
is----
Dr. Colvin. Right.
Mr. Rohrabacher [continuing]. Injecting bureaucracy into
the sciences. I mean, you know, my experience is that you have
got--you know, bureaucracy is the most effective method ever
devised of turning, you know, pure energy into solid waste.
And----
Dr. Colvin. Well----
Mr. Kurzweil. If I could interject one thought, which I
think builds on something Dr. Colvin said, if you look at how
things have gone with GMOs that has not gone well, and it is
not apparently a scientific issue. It is a political and
cultural issue. It is certainly a deeply cultural issue in
Europe, and so it requires people with that kind of background.
If we want to avoid----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Are we assuming the nuts aren't going to
be the ones on the panel?
Mr. Kurzweil. Well, if we want to avoid that kind of
disruption and have the benefits of these technologies go
smoothly, avoid the peril, and avoid, you know, being
sidetracked by these kinds of political and cultural issues,
then we need people with that background to help us guide the
technology.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Let me be a--the skeptic again and--with
what you are saying that--I mean, I really appreciate your
engineering skills, and here we are. I mean, the--here is the
non-scientist over here talking to the scientist about how you
organize a structure, social structure, so that you can get
your job done. I will tell you that it--when you are--if you
set up these panels, you are going to have more quagmires
rather than fewer quagmires, because you will have been
giving--you will give a forum to the very nuts that you are
trying to overcome in Europe and etcetera, especially when
people talk about global panels, for Pete's sake.
Mr. Kurzweil. But it may be better a panel and a lot of
public discussion than the kind of complete breakdown of GMOs
that we have seen in Europe.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, maybe a--I will have to say that I
certainly respect your opinion on the way engineering works and
the way your scientific research works. I don't necessarily
think that that is where we get our advice on how to create the
social system that will permit your science to work best. I
don't know if that made any sense at all, but that is--I said
something in there.
Mr. Kurzweil. It made a great deal of sense to me.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. Let me just----
Mr. Honda. Could we have one quick comment from Mr. Winner?
Mr. Rohrabacher. Oh, yeah. Please.
Dr. Winner. Yeah. Scientists can tell you the knowledge
required to make these things work. Engineers can tell you how
to make them work in practice. What neither of those groups
really can do, except to perform their own roles as citizens as
well, is what these technologies will mean to people when they
enter the world of practice when they enter the environment.
You talk about sort of multiple quagmires. In my view, that is
probably inevitable to occur. And what you want to have happen
is the most open, rational, critical, many-sided debate
possible so that society can sort through not only how things
work, but what they mean to us.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I am just afraid that you are talking
about setting up a situation where scientists in the physical
hard sciences are going to be doing their work, coming up with
terrific things like nanotechnology, and so these sociologists
say, ``Well, it has got to go through this buffer, this filter
first before it can get to the public.'' You know, people have
claimed to believe--claimed to have, you know, a fundamental
knowledge of what the public interest is, you know, be very
suspicious of giving them power, because they really think they
know, and they might not.
Dr. Winner. Well, that is why I have suggested we try, in
this kind of work, to establish a voice for ordinary folks,
citizens panels, who can look at the evidence, listen to the
different points of view, and then offer their own ideas about
what this is all about.
Mr. Kurzweil. I would distinguish between dialogue and
debate on the one hand and regulation on the other. And I think
you are concerned about undue bureaucracy and regulation, which
I share. But a lot of open debates and dialogue, even if some
of it is not well grounded is ultimately going to be helpful to
get some of the issues out so they can be addressed.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. Thank you.
Chairman Boehlert. Thank you very much. Mr. Sherman.
Mr. Sherman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to apologize,
because I have got hours of things I want to talk about and
only five minutes. So I am going to raise a bunch of questions
and ask you folks to respond in writing, but I am going to do
something else and that is invite you, or whichever of you
might be free, to lunch. And perhaps a few of my colleagues
will join us when they find out I am buying. I want to respond
to the distinguished Chair of the Space Subcommittee that long
before his Subcommittee authorized the programs that took us
into space, the poets made us want to go there. And it is good
to have the societal elements or, as he would abbreviate the
term ``nuts'', talking to the scientists at an early stage in
this process rather than wait until toward the end.
I commend the panel for focusing on the fact that one of
the things nanotechnology may bring us is new orders of
intelligence, whether that is through genetic engineering,
perhaps at the nanotechnology level, or non-organic
nanotechnology, or some combination. First I would point out
that intelligence is the most explosive thing in the universe.
There are those who think that fusion is the most explosive
thing, except you realize intelligence gave us that fusion.
Less than a decade--there was less than a decade between when
Einstein wrote to Roosevelt of the possibilities of nuclear
explosions and when we had to develop a nuclear,
nonproliferation regime. And now we are engaged in regime
change as part of that regime.
You know, Secretary Rumsfeld is in the armed services room
briefing many of our colleagues on what is going on. Arguably,
he should be briefing them in this room since his entire
enterprise is described as a technology control project, that
is making sure that the wrong people aren't doing the wrong
kinds of science. So those who believe that only fools want to
explore the idea of controlling and guiding science, you should
talk to our men and women in uniform who are guiding the Iraqis
to less science in some small aspect of their national life.
About 100,000 years ago, we saw the last increase in
intelligence when Cro-Magnon greeted Neanderthal. Perhaps the
first thing a Neanderthal said upon looking at Cro-Magnon is,
``Is that us?'' And I don't know. And we may be looking at new
entities and wondering whether the next intelligence is our
prodigy or our competitor or a bit of both. The--you have
pointed out that we are going to see massive increases in the
spread of knowledge and technology, and I am confident that
humans will be better at curing those things that can be cured
by intelligence. If SARS emerges 20 years from now, you science
folks will give us a cure in weeks instead of years.
But there are problems caused by intelligence, like the
fact that we can bombard nuclear atoms--or rather uranium
atoms. And those problems will probably also increase, since
their cause, human intelligence, increases. I want to commend
Dr. Colvin for her pointing out that perhaps we ought to spend
five percent of the budget on sociological research. I am sure
Ms. Peterson was facetious when she suggested that that go
exclusively to an impartial panel of physicists. And I think
that Dr. Wiener--I think----
Dr. Winner. Winner.
Mr. Sherman. Oh, am I pronouncing your name right? Winner.
Winner. I forgot my reading glasses.
Chairman Boehlert. That is a New Yorker.
Mr. Sherman. Well, I believe that if you build a better
mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door, even if
that world is a world of mice. And I think that as this
technology develops, many paths will be beat to many doors. The
question is whether the five percent of the budget that we hope
to put into societal research will bear fruit. Mr. Kurzweil, I
believe you have written that it is roughly 30 years between
now and when we get a non-biological intelligence that
surpasses human intelligence and have suggested that that
occurs by reverse engineering the human brain. Since I am out
of time, I am going to ask each panelist how many years they
think it will take any of the branches of nanotechnology to
give us an intelligence that surpasses any known human
intelligence. Just shout out a number of years, and make sure
it is longer than anyone will hold you to account for, because
we will forget your answer in less than a decade.
Mr. Kurzweil. Well, 26 years.
Dr. Colvin. 45.
Dr. Winner. Actually, I hope never. One of the concerns
about nanotechnology and science and engineering on this scale
is that it is plowing onward to create a successor species to
the human being. I think when word gets out about this to the
general public, they will be profoundly distressed. And why
should public money be spent, I would wonder, to produce an
eventual race of post-humans? Perhaps this needs wider public
debate.
Mr. Sherman. That is pretty much how we spent the last five
minutes. Ms. Peterson.
Mr. Kurzweil. If I could just suggest, since it came into
the discussion, we already have people walking around who have
computers in their brains who have Parkinson's disease or
hearing disabilities or a dozen different neural implants. We
have artificial augmentations or replacements of almost every
body system, so the ultimate implication of these technologies
will not be a successor species but really an enhancement of
our human species. I would define the human species as that
species that inherently seeks to extend our own horizons. We
didn't stay on the ground. We didn't stay on the planet, and we
are not staying with the limitations of our biology.
Mr. Sherman. I hope you are free for lunch. Ms. Peterson.
Ms. Peterson. Well, I will say 25 to 30 years and express
my surprise that this question would come up here and also say
that these kinds of things are labeled science fiction. I--my
work is often labeled science fiction, but I point out that if
you look ahead 30 years and what you see sounds like science
fiction, you might be wrong. But if it doesn't sound like
science fiction, you are definitely wrong.
Chairman Boehlert. Thank you very much. The gentleman's
time is expired. Let me note, once again, that Mr. Sherman has
offered to buy lunch. And following this hearing, those who
want to beat a path to his door are invited to do so.
Mr. Wu. Mr. Sherman, that was to the entire audience, was
it not?
Mr. Sherman. Except for those from Oregon.
Chairman Boehlert. The Chair is pleased to recognize the
Vice-Chairman of the Full Committee, Mr. Gutknecht.
Mr. Gutknecht. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Some of the
questions that I was going to ask have already been asked, and
I want to thank you for coming here today. I think this is sort
of the beginning of what ultimately will be a big national
debate. Coming from an agricultural area and also serving on
the Ag Committee, I am concerned with what has happened in the
whole debate about genetically modified organisms. And
sometimes I think you can help as scientists to put this in
some historical context. The GMO's best example is we have been
modifying the genetics of plants for a very, very long time. I
mean, we didn't just wake up one day and find tomatoes.
Actually, the American Indian bred up the tomato plant that we
know today. The same is true with what we now know as corn.
So this has been going on for a very long time, but all of
a sudden, in the last 20 years, there is at least an element of
the scientific community that has decided that we can't take
any risks. There is no risk that we should take. And I like to
remind scientists and my colleagues that it is not the statue
of security that sits in New York Harbor. And our ancestors did
not get to the great river, the Mississippi, and say, ``You
know, that is a pretty wide river. I guess we are going to have
to turn around and go back.'' You know, there is something
about being an American, and the same is true with space
flight. You know, if we would have done the analysis and say,
``You know, if we start putting people in space, some people
are going to die. I guess we can't do that.''
You know, I think we have to put all of this in some kind
of context. The bottom line is we are going to move forward, it
seems to me, with nanotechnology. That is going to happen. Now
our European friends may, you know, sweat and curse and say we
are being imperialistic or whatever, but it is going to go
forward. The question is, can we do it in a moral way. I think
there is a moral question here, and I think we have to begin to
deal with that. But I want to come back to what I think is the
fundamental question about genetically modified organisms. And
that is that the people who developed them did a fabulous job
of selling them to our farmers. They did a miserable job of
selling the benefits to the consumers. And I wonder if any of
you want to comment on that.
Dr. Colvin. I will take that one. I have looked really
closely at the GMO situation. I think that that is an excellent
example of why public education is so important. It is clear
that, as a scientist, I can not, and I don't think it is my
place, to judge the risk benefit of any technology I develop.
That is actually the policy makers' and the public's place. But
it is up to me to provide the hard data, and so that is what I
work towards. But I agree completely. As we enter into the
nanotechnology realm, we have to point out when we have
proponents saying, ``Oh, my gosh, something might cause
cancer,'' to point out very clearly that we already know that
we can cure certain types of cancer in animals with
nanotechnology. I think it is--you present to the public the
benefits, they will make the right decision, especially in this
country.
Mr. Kurzweil. I am just--I would agree with your concern,
but it disturbs me to see countries like Zambia and Zimbabwe
reject vitally needed food aid under pressure from European
anti-GMO activists. And I think we have a real consensus on
this committee, despite some of the different perspectives that
we come from, on substantial forums and analysis and debate and
dialogue and review of these issues by interdisciplinary groups
of people and real funding to do that, not bureaucracy and
regulation, but open dialogue and exploration to really avoid
some of the irrational and emotional reactions that have
stymied GMO.
Dr. Winner. Yeah, technologies are not only material
inventions; they are also social constructions. I have tried to
argue that the final stage in the matters of sort of social
exceptions comes when the people themselves who are going to
use these things say, ``Yes, we like it. We can build this into
our lives.'' Very often in recent times, people have said,
``No, we don't want this.'' Right. They do it for reasons that
seem significant to them, well grounded to them. We may look
and say, ``Oh, you are being irrational. You have a defective
culture. Why don't you see the things the way we do?'' And I
think that attitude is going to be going forward extremely
destructive.
What we need to do is to look more closely at the sources
of doubt and resistance and say, ``Well, what is on these
people's minds?'' Very often, the way people view risk, for
example, in society, has to do with the way of life in which
they are deeply involved. And they see technologies entering
in, posing a threat to their livelihood, posing a threat to
their system of meanings, including the religions that they
have, and saying, ``Well, wait. We are being rushed off in a
direction that we are not comfortable with.'' And I think faced
with that kind of message to say, ``Well, just look at the
science and all of your problems will be solved,'' is not going
to be actually a very workable approach.
Ms. Peterson. I think----
Mr. Smith of Michigan [presiding]. Very briefly, and then
we will move on to Mr. Bell.
Ms. Peterson. Just to agree, I think rather than take the
societal implications money and put it all into, perhaps,
academic social science research, what I am hearing, I think,
and what I agree with is broad public discussion reaching out,
actually, to the people themselves. Because I think as Dr.
Colvin pointed out, at least the American people, I think, if
they are--if they feel informed, tend to reach to the right
decisions. Also--another thing that would help would be for the
research itself to be both open and international.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Just--it seems to me, before we move
to Dr. Bell, that there are always going to be those groups,
though, that embrace the precautionary principle defined as
zero risk that are always going to be out there questioning the
advancement and any research that is less understood. And Mr.
Bell, and I assume that you are going to really direct tough
questions to Dr. Colvin. Is--am I correct that you are working
in his district?
Mr. Bell. Just a bunch of softballs, Mr. Chairman. Thank
you. I--Mr. Chairman, I want to begin by saying I think this
hearing demonstrates why it is so important that we be having
this debate now rather than later. As Dr. Winner properly--
appropriately points out and accurately points out in terms of
nuclear energy, many of the problems were raised after the
fact. We have seen the same thing with stem cell research. We
know that there are going to be societal and ethical questions
raised. It makes all of the sense in the world to be proactive
and be addressing those questions here on the front end rather
than on the back end to see if the questions can be addressed.
And yes, I am very glad to have Dr. Colvin here. I don't
think that I have succeeded at a single Science Committee
hearing in not mentioning Rice University. And today will be no
exception. The shameless self-exploration will continue, and
she is also joined by Dr. Kristen Kulinowski, and I have been
working with Rice to learn as much about this particular
subject.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. And your time is----
Mr. Bell. I will stop. If we can listen to Mr. Rohrabacher
that long, you can certainly listen to me this long. I think
that the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology
at Rice is somewhat unique in that it is the only NSF funded
center studying the environmental and health impacts of
nanotech. And it is unique in that it claims to characterize
the unintended consequences of nanotech, particularly in the
environmental area, but it is also looking at some of the
societal questions. And Dr. Colvin, I wanted to ask you, of
course, you point out the need for increased funding, but I
would also like you to touch on the review, how you would like
to see proposals reviewed for these impact studies. And Dr.
Winner, I am going to give you a chance----
Dr. Colvin. Right.
Mr. Bell [continuing]. To touch on that as well.
Dr. Colvin. That is a real concern. I think that when you
say societal impact, there is a--generally, that is going to
mean social scientists. That is the code word, so the
modification of that to include other topics will be important.
As I say, I see two pieces to any societal impact research
proposal. One is technology forecasting. What are you going to
assume? Are you going to assume that there is going to be smart
clothing that can merge with your body, detect its temperature,
and maybe whisper in your ear people's names when they--you see
somebody and you can't remember their name? It is possible that
that could happen. Wouldn't that be great? Are you going to
basically red team that?
Mr. Bell. That would be a big seller here.
Dr. Colvin. Yeah, I figured. Are you going to red team
that? Are you going to red team self-replicating swarms of, you
know, potentially bioterrorists or other kinds of weapons that
have the ability to sense and interact with their environment.
I think that if you look at those two scenarios, they are both
really interesting. Which one is actually going to happen? And
the people best suited to evaluate that part of the proposal
will be nanotechnology researchers, people very entrenched in
the field who know what the capabilities currently are and know
where the various disparate areas are going. So every proposal
should have a review, which is consistent of a nanotechnology
group.
However, there are the societal and ethical consequences,
and hopefully environmental. And those should be reviewed by
subject experts there. By relying only on one or the other, I
believe that you will really weaken societal impact research
overall. So you really need both components, especially the
technology forecasting component is an essential recognition
that that is a very important thing that only, I believe,
nanotechnologists are able to peer review successfully.
Mr. Bell. One thing that concerns me when we have these----
Dr. Colvin. Um-hum.
Mr. Bell [continuing]. Debates about societal and ethical
concerns in regard to science is that sometimes they seem to be
based more on misinformation than real information. I want to
give you a chance to comment on some of Dr. Winner's
statements----
Dr. Colvin. Um-hum.
Mr. Bell [continuing]. Earlier as far as a post-species and
those types of things that obviously when put out there are
going to scare a lot of people. Is that, as far as you
understand it, the goal of people involved in nanotech
research?
Dr. Colvin. You know, I don't have a crystal ball. I wish I
did to know where we were going to be in 30 years. And the
further out you try to go, the more difficult it will be to get
accurate predictions about technology. I believe--you know, my
personal opinion, especially as a chemist, is that many of the
self-replicating concepts and the ways that people propose to
build them are untenable, so I believe we are not going to see
that. And I believe that those concerns, especially about human
intelligence taking over the world, I would certainly side with
Mr. Kurzweil on that. I believe it will be incorporated into
part of who we are. But those are very, very far out things
that are so far in the distant future, it is difficult to study
them with any great level of accuracy, because it could be many
different possibilities.
The near-term effects, which really are going to affect the
trajectory of what--where those futures might be, are going to
be, perhaps, more mundane, but just as important to developing
a culture and a public awareness and acceptance of this area.
So for that reason, I really believe it is important that we
look very closely at, particularly, health impact, because that
is the one we see now, but to do that in preparation for what
might happen in the future. But technology forecasting is a
dangerous game, so I kind of feel uncomfortable, as a
scientist, going there, but I do think that you can go too far
out, and that has the disadvantage of being very unlikely,
perhaps, technologically, and also, of course, public education
and interaction issues become----
Mr. Smith of Michigan. The gentleman's time has expired,
but we will do a second round, if----
Mr. Bell. Can I ask one more question, Mr. Chairman----
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Certainly.
Mr. Bell [continuing]. Of Dr. Winner, because you talked
about focusing on what the research could mean or what they
will mean, and don't you think the focus should be on what it
could mean, because it--she brings up--Dr. Colvin brings up the
health impact. Energy is another area where a lot of research
is going forward, two areas of huge concern throughout the
Nation. And if we are able to make advances on those, I think
most people here would be behind that. So when you say ``will
mean'', do you mean ``could mean'' or what do you mean by that?
Dr. Winner. Well, I do mean ``could''. As I listen to this
conversation, one thing that strikes me is that in evaluating
these ethical and societal consequences, outcomes, that I think
one serious mistake would be to adopt one single strategy, let
us say, to hire the social scientists and the philosophers and
get them studying. I think we need, probably, at least two or
three different strategies here that would, perhaps, involve
different kinds of people in long-term assessments.
I regret to say that one thing that I have seen happen more
than once is that you have a very cozy relationship between the
researchers and the people who are supposedly doing the ethical
evaluations. The people doing the, let us say, bioethics, don't
want to offend the people that they are working with. So what
happens is you get only the most trivial kinds of issues,
typically, raised. And in this field of research we are
entering into, they are the most momentous issues that are--
that society is going to need to address, and we need to find
strategies that will bring those into the open for good,
critical evaluation.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. The gentleman from Oregon, Mr. Wu.
Mr. Wu. Thank you. Well, for my friends from California,
one of whom is still here, Mr. Sherman may think that the last
time human recognition of superior intelligence was when
Neanderthal ran into Cro-Magnon 100,000 years ago. But when I
ran into Mr. Sherman on Pennsylvania Avenue last week, I
immediately recognized him of superior intelligence.
With respect to the comments made by the other gentleman
from California, Mr. Rohrabacher, with whom I share many
concerns, I think there are quagmires in their quagmires. And
sometimes, you just charge through a quagmire. Sometimes you go
around a quagmire. Sometimes you build a bridge over a
quagmire. Sometimes you fly over a quagmire. And sometimes, a
quagmire doesn't exist. If you spend too much time worrying
about the quagmire at the edge of it, you do have some
legitimate concerns of the type that Mr. Rohrabacher expressed.
However I think it is important to, as best we can, look at
some of these quagmires in advance so that sometimes we don't
go charging into one and find that it is a little bit over our
heads or that, you know, we might have some problems with it
that we might not otherwise have anticipated.
Having said that, I want to return to just one very simple
question for Mr. Kurzweil, because I was in the back of the
room when I heard you first describe the further out challenge,
and I am glad to see that you have a background in software.
That is where I come from, too, except I did software legal
work, and I could never understand how software really ran on a
chip or how it interacted with a substrate and so on. And the
thing that I am having a little--you know, I heard you mention
this, and--how would nanotechnology become self-replicating?
Just how would that work? And what makes it any easier for a
nanotech machine to self-replicate when it seems pretty
difficult to have a self-replicating full-sized machine? What--
can you go into this a little bit for me?
Mr. Kurzweil. Well, we have an example of a self-
replicating machine, which are biological systems and
biological cells. These are, in fact, nanoscale----
Mr. Wu. Oh, yes, but that is not the question asked,
because the problem with biological examples is we have not
thus far successfully replicated them except--unless you want
to call farming.
Mr. Kurzweil. Well, we are actually pretty close to
creating completely synthetic organisms. But I think the goal
is not to have self-replication of non-biological entities
happen naturally. But if you are going to start with building
devices at the atomic level, and you want to actually create a
product that, say, can interact with humans, it has to have
some scale. Somewhere in the manufacturing process, there has
got to be a scaling up process. We have that in the human body.
We have ribosomes that are little machines that actually
assemble protein machines. So there is a form of self-
replication going on with one device building another and doing
that in parallel. We will have to have some comparable examples
to that, if we are going to actually engineer things at the
atomic level, because there are many trillions of molecules in
a device that we can actually interact with. And how to do that
safely so that the self-replication doesn't go awry, which is
really the course--source of all problems we have with disease,
for example, is a key----
Mr. Wu. The reason why I am asking this question is that if
we are on the verge of self-replicating machines, then that is
something that we want to put a red team on and something we
want to pay a lot of attention to. It is my impression, and
correct me if I am wrong, but we understand some things about
ribosomes, but there are certain proteins that are not that
complicated where we don't understand how they fold into a form
that works. And so I am trying to get a sense from you about
whether the self-replicating machinery that I don't think we
have seen in full scale. I mean----
Mr. Kurzweil. Well, you are correct. We don't----
Mr. Wu [continuing]. Since we haven't seen that, are we
really on the edge of nanotechnology that is self-replicating?
Mr. Kurzweil. We are not on the verge of--I think we have
commented that that is a number of generations away. We haven't
solved the protein-folding problem yet. A new generation of
supercomputers that are emerging, it is expected we will get to
be able to actually simulate protein folding for the first
time. But we get from here to some of these very futuristic
scenarios that Dr. Colvin alluded to being difficult to
anticipate not in one step, but through a series of generations
of technology where each one is more conservative. Right now,
we are developing nanoparticles and we are--and Department of
Defense is developing smart dust, which are insect-sized
devices. And we are shrinking technology. So through five, six,
ten different generations of technology, we will get from here
to devices that can scale up the way we see in the biological
world.
But it is important to note that these generations are
getting faster and faster. It used to be a generation of
technology was equal to a human generation. Now it is maybe
two, three, four years. And 10 years from now, it is going to
be one or two years. So it won't be that long before we get
through five or six generations. So I think scientists have to
begin to overcome their reluctance to look more than one or two
generations ahead, because the generations are so short.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. The gentleman's time has expired----
Mr. Wu. Thank you, Mr. Kurzweil.
Mr. Smith of Michigan [continuing]. But Mr. Wu, we will do
a second round, if you wish.
Mr. Wu. I will just join Mr. Sherman at lunch.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Ms. Peterson, you wanted to give a
quick reaction to Mr. Wu's question.
Ms. Peterson. Yes, it is a great question. And I think it
is an important one to deal with. It turns out we don't need to
solve the protein folding problem before we make these
nanoscale machines, and here is why. Proteins are--have been
evolved over a long time to do what they do, but they haven't
been evolved for predictability. There is no connection there
at all. In fact, they are--they tend to be just on the edge of
stability. When we design our own machines at the nanoscale, we
can design specifically for predictability and buildability. So
it is a--it is conceivably--in some ways, it is actually a
simpler problem.
Mr. Wu. I just want to add one comment to that. I didn't
mean to imply that protein--that we need to solve the protein
issue. It is just that Mr. Kurzweil seemed to imply that we
were understanding this biology pretty well. My question really
went to if you can't build a big self-replicating machine, what
makes you think you can build a small self-replicating machine
and how would that really work? That is the important question.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Very briefly, Ms. Peterson.
Ms. Peterson. Just--I will try to do it in one sentence.
One thing that helps a lot at the nanoscale is that you are
working with molecules that are actually atomically perfect. At
a small enough scale, atoms are either in the right place or
the wrong place. When you build a big machine, things aren't
that perfect. Things aren't atomically perfect, the pieces that
you are working with. So there are some ways that it is--and it
is a very challenging problem, don't get me wrong. But there
are some ways that it is easier, actually.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. With semicolons, that was a good one
sentence. I think, Ms. Peterson, then maybe you and Mr.
Kurzweil, what right now currently is existing now and what do
you see is the potential for private sector investment and
interest in nanotechnology? First you, Ms. Peterson.
Ms. Peterson. There is tremendous private sector interest
and involvement in near-term nanotechnology. I don't have the
exact numbers, but there is plenty of money out there for
products that can get to market in the next, say, three to five
years and have a substantial sale. So it is absolutely huge,
and not just in the United States, certainly in Europe and
Japan and around the world. So--however, in the longer-term, if
it is not fundable today by venture capital, people, at least
out in Silicon Valley, say, ``Go get a grant.'' So the
expectation is that government does all of the funding right up
until it is time to go to market, pretty much. That is the
current feeling out there.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. And your comments, Dr. Kurzweil.
Mr. Kurzweil. There is a mini boom right now in venture
capital for nanotechnology, but actually, aside from
nanoparticles, which isn't really consistent with the original
conception of molecular engineering but is nanoscale, most of
the activity isn't really quite nanotechnology, it is something
called MEMS, Microelectronic Mechanical Systems. But these are
devices a little bit bigger than nanotechnology, but as I
mentioned, as a pervasive trend toward miniaturization.
But the prospect for these MEMS scale devices is very
exciting. We have mentioned the medical applications. I will
mention another, which is energy. The Administration has a goal
of the hydrogen economy, and one of the best ways to do that is
to actually use MEMS, tiny little devices that are essentially
microscopic fuel cells, and then you can power things inside
the body or scale them up. I know one company, innovative fuel
cell technology that is actually building MEMS based fuel cells
that can power portable electronics for weeks rather than
hours. And it is inherently safe, because you build up
thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of little cells,
each of which have protection built into them. So it has a
number of safety features comparable to biological systems.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Dr. Colvin, are you and Dr. Smalley
seeing that kind of interest and participation at Rice?
Dr. Colvin. You mean from the----
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Private sector.
Dr. Colvin [continuing]. Industry? Oh, yeah. I think that
there is--it is clear in, I would call, nano-manufacturing from
the bottom up, which is specialty chemical industries or
pharmaceutical industries or it can be coming more interested
in producing nanoparticles. I would say that those are not just
a little, you know, mundane element. They will be core elements
to more complex structures, but there is a great deal of
interest, both in established corporations, surprisingly
enough, as well as venture capital. So we will see.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Well, my question--let me ask a
question on safeguards. I mean, with biotechnology, we probably
have the best--by far, the best safeguards in the regulatory
process in biotechnology with the FDA, with USDA, and with EPA
all interacting to try to assure that anything that we develop
in the arena of biotechnology outside of pharmaceuticals is
going to have a very strict review. Any thoughts or suggestions
on the similar kind of structure in terms of review and
oversight with nanotechnology? Whoever wants to answer.
Mr. Kurzweil. I would put in--it is not in direct answer to
your question, but I do have a concern about the regulatory
process we have in biotechnology, which I alluded to earlier.
When it comes to intentional abuse of these technologies,
irresponsible practitioners, bio--would-be bioterrorists, don't
have to follow those regulations. And we are not putting enough
resources as a society, enough money into developing the
defense of technologies. And we--I used, really, the software
virus as an analogy. We have kept one step ahead of the
destructive applications. If we want to be as successful in
biotech and ultimately nanotech, we are going to have to put
explicit resources. We are very close, actually, to anti-viral
drugs. We are not going to be able to invent an antidote for
each new bio-peril that comes along. We are going to have to
have some general broad tools, which we don't have today. We
are not investing enough into it, and we have to figure out
some ways to streamline the regulatory process. We can't take
eight years to get FDA approval on a protection from
bioengineered pathogens.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Any other comments?
Dr. Colvin. Yeah, I will comment. I think that the
regulation question is a really important one. It is, perhaps,
beyond the privy of the NNI legislation, but----
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Mr. Sherman----
Dr. Colvin [continuing]. EPA and--as well as NIEHS, the
National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, are both
organizations that would be in the line for thinking about
potential, with respect to materials, regulation issues. But it
is very clear we need to study these materials first and
regulate second. And the studies haven't happened, so----
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Thank you. Dr. Winner.
Dr. Winner. Well, my only comment here would be how did all
of these priorities reach such a level on the national agenda?
You know, I hear from schoolteachers the schools are falling
apart, their budgets are being cut. There is a crisis in all
state governments with funding basic social needs. You know,
the--our society has tremendous problems, tremendous issues
that it faces. And yet we are looking at hundreds of millions,
perhaps multiple billions of dollars to, as Ms. Peterson points
out, not only investigate a new area of scientific research,
but in effect, heavily subsidize one new industrial enterprise
after another. My question would be, you know, well who decided
that? Maybe the answer is the Executive Branch and the
Congress. But I see this as a real challenge to priority
setting in the United States right now. I wonder if this money,
a lot of this money, is going to be badly wasted in a time of
great need.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Ms. Peterson.
Ms. Peterson. For near-term nanotechnology regulation, I
think Dr. Colvin would probably be the better expert. For
longer-term nanotechnology, the two main areas would be:
Accidents: We already have a set of draft rules. I think
over time, just as with the early days of biotech--in fact,
these rules were inspired by those--there was a gradual process
where voluntary drafts slowly turn into, eventually,
requirements. And I think we will see that here. There is
also--
Regarding abuse, there is going to be very serious arms
control issues, but they are not that different, really, from
chemical and biological warfare issues, which means they are
very difficult.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Mr. Sherman.
Mr. Sherman. Thank you. I thank the gentleman from Oregon
for his comments. I have been sitting here trying to think of a
pithy rejoinder, and I can't think of one, thus illustrating
the falseness of his generous comments.
Mr. Wu. Just remember the beta tapes went. You know, the
better technology doesn't always win out.
Mr. Sherman. His comments are about self-replication. I
guess there is kind of--we are thinking--or at least I am
envisioning two types of self-replicating technology. One is
the obvious, but it won't be here for, I think one of you said
26 years. And that is in every science fiction book, the smart
robot always builds himself, and it is always a himself, a
companion. So we can have the self-replication in the self-
aware sense, but that is at least a generation away. And then
there is this idea of the self-replicating molecule, which is
DNA and life. And I was interested in Ms. Peterson's comments,
but I didn't fully understand them. Are you talking about, in
effect, synthetic life that is based on a more logical DNA
molecule or----
Ms. Peterson. No.
Mr. Sherman. Well, what were you talking about in the sense
of a self-replicating molecule that was not--did not have to
solve the protein-folding problem?
Ms. Peterson. Oh, okay. I don't think I used the term
``self-replicating molecule''. Although, and Dr. Colvin, as a
chemist here, could address this, I believe there are such
things, actually, as molecules that will template off
themselves.
Dr. Colvin. Oh, yeah. It is not uncommon.
Mr. Sherman. Is there scientific work being done to create
new self-replicating molecules, other than those based on the
DNA?
Dr. Colvin. So the question is is there scientific work
being done? It is a difficult question to answer, because there
are clearly molecules that have the ability to template
themselves, if put in the right environment. Is that self-
replication? Does the molecule think? No. It obeys the laws of
thermodynamics. So it is very common in chemistry to have that,
and it is not--it is just a property of some particular
systems. So I don't see that as self-replicating in the
terminology that people are using it.
Mr. Kurzweil. I think that your concern is something in
between a small, self-replicating molecule or a large, self-
replicating robot. But we are talking about our small machines
that are bigger than a molecule, but have some scaling
properties, some ability to be scaled up to millions or
trillions of devices. One way of doing that would be self-
replication. But I think the industry has realized that that
would be dangerous, so we really want to have controlled
replication and to avoid runaway self-replication. But there
has to be some way to scale up, because if you have two or
three little devices that are microscopic in size, it doesn't
do you any good. We need billions or trillions of them. So
there has to be some form of replication in the process. And
how to do that in a controlled fashion is the key safety issue
in the long-term.
Mr. Sherman. I don't know if Dr. Colvin----
Dr. Colvin. Well, I think why--it comes down to what you
mean by ``self-replication''. Molecules that are able to
template themselves are interesting, but they don't have--I
think people tend to answer--when we think about this, we think
of little tiny people that are really nano that go around and
do stuff. And that is where it breaks down, because you need a
power source. You have got to have multiple functions.
So when you think of the complex systems that people are
proposing for the nanoscale, that is when you can say there are
just not enough pieces to fit together on that size. Because
there is a big difference between the MEMS devices that Mr.
Kurzweil is talking about, which if they filled this room, the
nanostructures that we think about would be the size of a
baseball or probably tinier. And there is a big difference
between even the micron length scales and the nano with respect
to the scaling and physical and chemical properties. So I don't
take it as a given that things are simply going to march
smaller and smaller. I believe there will be fundamental
alterations to how we have to conceive of creating systems on
those length scales. And that is what I--why I feel
extrapolations are a little bit dangerous.
Mr. Sherman. Dr. Winner and Mr. Kurzweil have addressed
from opposite standpoints that interesting question what is a
human being. And I--Dr. Kurzweil puts forward the idea that
wherever evolution takes us, if it produces a self-aware and
ambitious, exploring entity, that that is human. And Dr. Winner
takes the more--well, he wants, I guess, to count the fingers
and count the toes. And I don't know if there is a way to
address this in the remaining 15 seconds, but----
Dr. Winner. Well, one important question is who gets to do
the counting at all. At last, the last statistics, I
understand, there are about six billion-plus humans on the
planet, most of whom, the overwhelming majority of whom, are
not involved in these projects. They might be interested to
find out these plans are in the works, and they might even want
to have a say.
Mr. Sherman. I think they would. And it does go back to the
question as to if Mr. Kurzweil was a Neanderthal and met that
Cro-Magnon whether he would be happy or unhappy. And I will let
him respond, if he wants to.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Very briefly.
Mr. Kurzweil. I think rather than developing non-biological
systems, although that will happen, I think our primary destiny
is to enhance our own capabilities. I mean, I like having ten
fingers and ten toes, but incrementally, one step at a time as
we overcome various types of physical afflictions and
limitations of our human capability, we will be enhancing our
whole civilization. We have done that already. We are doing
things today that couldn't be possible without the intimate
merger with our technology. And we are going to stay on that
path.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. The Chair calls on Mr. Barton,
another gentleman from Texas where nanotechnology is being
explored at the University of Texas.
Mr. Barton. Well, thank you. I am not going to ask any
questions. I just came by to show support. There is a
University of Texas Nanotechnology Center at the University of
Texas at Arlington that I have just been through and helped to
get several grants in the last several years. It is an amazing
technology, and we are still a ways from commercialization, but
obviously, it has got the potential to do great things in the
future. I want to appreciate you, Chairman Smith, for holding
this hearing and thank my--thank all of the witnesses,
especially Dr. Colvin, who is from Texas, for being here.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Mr. Wu, you had a question.
Mr. Wu. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. As you know, I
usually ask short, quick questions, but I think I will exercise
the user prerogative of members of this panel. And I just want
to comment on a range of things that I have heard today. And by
the way, Dr. Colvin, Dr. Winner, I appreciate your last
comments. They were very, very helpful.
You know, there is a full spectrum of policy and regulatory
and legal responses to new technologies. And we have historic
examples of what they can be. In many respects, the Nuclear
Test Ban Treaty is nothing but a ban on experimentation, and it
is a ban that many nations have agreed to. Some of us believe
that the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty has done good things.
At the other end of the spectrum, you look historically and
what the church tried to do with Galileo and did with many
others, I think we would look back and say historically that
was not such a good thing. Those are sort of endpoints in the
spectrum, but somewhere in between are issues that we have to
deal with on an everyday basis. And I would just like to
suggest to my colleagues on this panel, some of whom are here,
and many of whom are not right now, that it is not such a
simple thing to decide we are just going to let the scientists
and the engineers go do their work, because if we just think
about some of the issues that we, as a Congress, have been
dealing with recently, stem cell research. I join some of my
colleagues on it--on that issue and differ with some of my
colleagues on that issue in terms of where we should be going
with stem cell research. And interestingly enough, if you flip
to something not that far apart from it, but I think distinct
from stem cell research, I share a position with a different
set of friends and colleagues on human cloning. And again, it
is a very appropriate, I think, set of lines that we should be
drawing in some public way, not necessarily here in Congress.
But just because people are scientists or engineers doesn't
necessarily give them a stronger vote in the societal decision
about whether we should be exploring the solar system, as
Galileo was doing, or doing self-replicating nuclear reactions
the way that some scientists would be doing or in some of these
other, you know, middle ground issues, such as stem cell
research or human cloning. It is a difficult line-drawing
exercise every single time. And that is our business. We are
here to draw lines and hopefully wise ones with you all's
assistance. And I would just like to add that the regulatory
response can be a positive one, it can be a negative one. It is
not always eight years that, you know, something is in the
pipeline. Some of the anti-cancer drugs, which were found to be
very, very effective, popped out of the pipeline in a matter of
days, weeks, or months, at the most, and did not take eight
years. So hopefully, we can engage in an important line-drawing
process and end up, if we need to, with a regulatory process,
which is appropriate to the technology, and not automatically
regulate or automatically reject regulation because of the
different technologies at hand.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your----
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Thank you. With your permission,
what we will do to conclude this hearing is ask each witness
for maybe your--any comments that you would like to make
guiding this committee as we start looking at our markup on
April 30 for the nano bill, H.R. 766. So if you would have any
comments and could sort of hold it down to about a minute to
guide our Committee as we look at markup.
Mr. Kurzweil. Well, quickly, just to respond to
Representative Wu, I think your comments are well taken. I have
advocated fine-grained relinquishment in response to the call
by Bill Joy and others for broad relinquishment. Why don't we
just do away with nanotechnology? There are specific narrow
tasks we would rather not see funded. I mean, how to modify
common flu and cold pathogens to be destructive, that is not
something we would want to fund. We don't want to see on the
Internet the genomes of the ten top pathogens. So there are
things that we--that are particularly dangerous that we need to
deal with through regulation.
And I would advocate that we--as we did with the Genome
Project, put three to five percent of the budget and devote it
to the ethical, legal, social implications, so called ELSI of
these technologies. And I do think it has to be a balance
between scientific analysis by scientists as well as an
understanding of the ethical and cultural issues by people who
are expert at those domains.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Dr. Colvin.
Dr. Colvin. Yeah. Just to sort of summarize my viewpoint.
First of all, in societal impact, hopefully environmental
impact will be part and parcel of that. It should be. And the
three things that I kind of think of when I look at this
legislation are the words. Strong support for this type of
work. I think I outlined what some of the natural barriers are,
just human nature. Most scientists would rather cure cancer
than do work that finds out some nanomaterial might cause
cancer, so you need to be very vigilant if you want this work
to continue and support it strongly. The methods in which it
occurs, we have heard that we need to have collaborative
enterprises. And finally, the resources are the most
important--an allocation for this type of research, I believe,
is very well recommended.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Thank you. Dr. Winner.
Dr. Winner. Yes. Two things. On my suggestion about the
possibility of citizens panels, the relevant part of the NSF is
called social dimensions of engineering, science, and
technology. That work also goes under the label of consensus
conferences, if the Committee wants to look into that. That
would be one--my one suggestion about how the bill might be
changed.
The other thing I would like to do is to express my
gratitude to the Committee and its staff for assembling so
diverse a group of panelists today to interact and to exchange
views. I think this is actually quite unusual right now in
American society where you can have issues of this kind so
intelligently questioned and expect to have a diversity of
responses coming back at you, who are, after all, the decision
makers.
Thank you.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Thank you. Ms. Peterson.
Ms. Peterson. Just to reiterate, we could use public
outreach and discussion perhaps even more than social science
work in this area. And you have seen there is some controversy
here, and that is a good thing, as Dr. Winner points out. The
hopes and the fears about this longer-term work, molecular
manufacturing, the self-replication issue, are spilling over
onto the near-term work. This is a problem for the folks doing
the near-term work. I would say we should just go ahead and do
that feasibility study, get this cleared up, and then we can
move on to be doing effective social implications work and also
public outreach.
Mr. Smith of Michigan. Thank you very much. With the
permission of the witnesses, some questions that staff would
have liked to ask but weren't by the Members, if you would
consider responding to any questions that might be sent to you.
Again, thank you all very much for giving us your wisdom and
knowledge. And with that, the Committee is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:20 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Appendix 1:
----------
Additional Material for the Record
108th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 766
To provide for a National Nanotechnology Research and Development
Program, and for other purposes.
__________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
February 13, 2003
Mr. Boehlert (for himself, Mr. Honda, Mr. Ehlers, Mr. Hall, Mr. Smith
of Michigan, Mr. Gordon, Mrs. Biggert, Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson of
Texas, Mr. Bartlett of Maryland, Ms. Lofgren, Mr. Gutknecht, and
Mr. Bishop of New York) introduced the following bill; which was
referred to the Committee on Science
__________
A BILL
To provide for a National Nanotechnology Research and Development
Program, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Nanotechnology Research and
Development Act of 2003''.
SEC. 2. DEFINITIONS.
In this Act------
(1) the term ``advanced technology user facility'' means a
nanotechnology research and development facility supported, in
whole or in part, by Federal funds that is open to all United
States researchers on a competitive, merit-reviewed basis;
(2) the term ``Advisory Committee'' means the advisory
committee established under section 5;
(3) the term ``Director'' means the Director of the Office
of Science and Technology Policy;
(4) the term ``Interagency Committee'' means the
interagency committee established under section 3(c);
(5) the term ``nanotechnology'' means science and
engineering aimed at creating materials, devices, and systems
at the atomic and molecular level;
(6) the term ``Program'' means the National Nanotechnology
Research and Development Program described in section 3; and
(7) the term ``program component area'' means a major
subject area established under section 3(c)(2) under which is
grouped related individual projects and activities carried out
under the Program.
SEC. 3. NATIONAL NANOTECHNOLOGY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM.
(a) In General.--The President shall implement a National
Nanotechnology Research and Development Program to promote Federal
nanotechnology research, development, demonstration, education,
technology transfer, and commercial application activities as necessary
to ensure continued United States leadership in nanotechnology research
and development and to ensure effective coordination of nanotechnology
research and development across Federal agencies and across scientific
and engineering disciplines.
(b) Program Activities.--The activities of the Program shall be
designed to------
(1) provide sustained support for nanotechnology research
and development through------
(A) grants to individual investigators and
interdisciplinary teams of investigators; and
(B) establishment of interdisciplinary research
centers and advanced technology user facilities;
(2) ensure that solicitation and evaluation of proposals
under the Program encourage interdisciplinary research;
(3) expand education and training of undergraduate and
graduate students in interdisciplinary nanotechnology science
and engineering;
(4) accelerate the commercial application of nanotechnology
innovations in the private sector; and
(5) ensure that societal and ethical concerns will be
addressed as the technology is developed by------
(A) establishing a research program to identify
societal and ethical concerns related to
nanotechnology, and ensuring that the results of such
research are widely disseminated; and
(B) integrating, insofar as possible, research on
societal and ethical concerns with nanotechnology
research and development.
(c) Interagency Committee.--The President shall establish or
designate an interagency committee on nanotechnology research and
development, chaired by the Director, which shall include
representatives from the National Science Foundation, the Department of
Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National
Institute of Standards and Technology, the Environmental Protection
Agency, and any other agency that the President may designate. The
Interagency Committee, which shall also include a representative from
the Office of Management and Budget, shall oversee the planning,
management, and coordination of the Program. The Interagency Committee
shall------
(1) establish goals and priorities for the Program;
(2) establish program component areas, with specific
priorities and technical goals, that reflect the goals and
priorities established for the Program;
(3) develop, within 6 months after the date of enactment of
this Act, and update annually, a strategic plan to meet the
goals and priorities established under paragraph (1) and to
guide the activities of the program component areas established
under paragraph (2);
(4) consult with academic, State, industry, and other
appropriate groups conducting research on and using
nanotechnology, and the Advisory Committee; and
(5) propose a coordinated interagency budget for the
Program that will ensure the maintenance of a balanced
nanotechnology research portfolio and ensure that each agency
and each program component area is allocated the level of
funding required to meet the goals and priorities established
for the Program.
SEC. 4. ANNUAL REPORT.
The Director shall prepare an annual report, to be submitted to the
Committee on Science of the House of Representatives and the Committee
on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate at the time of
the President's budget request to Congress, that includes------
(1) the Program budget, for the current fiscal year, for
each agency that participates in the Program and for each
program component area;
(2) the proposed Program budget, for the next fiscal year,
for each agency that participates in the Program and for each
program component area;
(3) an analysis of the progress made toward achieving the
goals and priorities established for the Program; and
(4) an analysis of the extent to which the Program has
incorporated the recommendations of the Advisory Committee.
SEC. 5. ADVISORY COMMITTEE.
(a) In General.--The President shall establish an advisory
committee on nanotechnology consisting of non-Federal members,
including representatives of research and academic institutions and
industry, who are qualified to provide advice and information on
nanotechnology research, development, demonstration, education,
technology transfer, commercial application, and societal and ethical
concerns. The recommendations of the Advisory Committee shall be
considered by Federal agencies in implementing the Program.
(b) Assessment.--The Advisory Committee shall assess------
(1) trends and developments in nanotechnology science and
engineering;
(2) progress made in implementing the Program;
(3) the need to revise the Program;
(4) the balance among the components of the Program,
including funding levels for the program component areas;
(5) whether the program component areas, priorities, and
technical goals developed by the Interagency Committee are
helping to maintain United States leadership in nanotechnology;
(6) the management, coordination, implementation, and
activities of the Program; and
(7) whether societal and ethical concerns are adequately
addressed by the Program.
(c) Reports.--The Advisory Committee shall report not less
frequently than once every 2 fiscal years to the President and to the
Committee on Science of the House of Representatives and the Committee
on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate on its findings
of the assessment carried out under subsection (b), its recommendations
for ways to improve the Program, and the concerns assessed under
subsection (b)(7). The first report shall be due within 1 year after
the date of enactment of this Act.
(d) Federal Advisory Committee Act Application.--Section 14 of the
Federal Advisory Committee Act shall not apply to the Advisory
Committee.
SEC. 6. NATIONAL NANOTECHNOLOGY COORDINATION OFFICE.
The President shall establish a National Nanotechnology
Coordination Office, with full-time staff, which shall------
(1) provide technical and administrative support to the
Interagency Committee and the Advisory Committee;
(2) serve as a point of contact on Federal nanotechnology
activities for government organizations, academia, industry,
professional societies, and others to exchange technical and
programmatic information; and
(3) conduct public outreach, including dissemination of
findings and recommendations of the Interagency Committee and
the Advisory Committee, as appropriate.
SEC. 7. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.
(a) National Science Foundation.--There are authorized to be
appropriated to the National Science Foundation for carrying out this
Act------
(1) $350,000,000 for fiscal year 2004;
(2) $385,000,000 for fiscal year 2005; and
(3) $424,000,000 for fiscal year 2006.
(b) Department of Energy.--There are authorized to be appropriated
to the Secretary of Energy for carrying out this Act------
(1) $197,000,000 for fiscal year 2004;
(2) $217,000,000 for fiscal year 2005; and
(3) $239,000,000 for fiscal year 2006.
(c) National Aeronautics and Space Administration.--There are
authorized to be appropriated to the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration for carrying out this Act------
(1) $31,000,000 for fiscal year 2004;
(2) $34,000,000 for fiscal year 2005; and
(3) $37,000,000 for fiscal year 2006.
(d) National Institute of Standards and Technology.--There are
authorized to be appropriated to the National Institute of Standards
and Technology for carrying out this Act------
(1) $62,000,000 for fiscal year 2004;
(2) $68,000,000 for fiscal year 2005; and
(3) $75,000,000 for fiscal year 2006.
(e) Environmental Protection Agency.--There are authorized to be
appropriated to the Environmental Protection Agency for carrying out
this Act------
(1) $5,000,000 for fiscal year 2004;
(2) $5,500,000 for fiscal year 2005; and
(3) $6,000,000 for fiscal year 2006.
SEC. 8. EXTERNAL REVIEW OF THE NATIONAL NANOTECHNOLOGY RESEARCH AND
DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM.
Not later than 6 months after the date of enactment of this Act,
the Director shall enter into an agreement with the National Academy of
Sciences to conduct periodic reviews of the Program. The reviews shall
be conducted once every 3 years during the 10-year period following the
enactment of this Act. The reviews shall include------
(1) an evaluation of the technical achievements of the
Program;
(2) recommendations for changes in the Program;
(3) an evaluation of the relative position of the United
States with respect to other nations in nanotechnology research
and development;
(4) an evaluation of the Program's success in transferring
technology to the private sector;
(5) an evaluation of whether the Program has been
successful in fostering interdisciplinary research and
development; and
(6) an evaluation of the extent to which the Program has
adequately considered societal and ethical concerns.