Writing the Encyclopedia of Britannica on the Head of a Pin

…they tell me about miniaturization…They tell me about electric motors that are the size of the nail on your small finger…But that’s nothing; that’s the most primitive, halting step in the direction I intend to discuss. It is a staggeringly small world that is below. In the year 2000, when they look back at this age, they will wonder why it was not until the year 1960 that anybody began seriously to move in this direction… Richard Feynman (1)


Richard Feynman, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, was believed to be the greatest physicist of the twentieth century after Albert Einstein. In my paper “Quantum Computer:….”, I had described that the earliest idea about quantum computer came from him. The seeds of this idea were planted in a lecture that he gave on December 29, 1959 at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The title of this lecture was “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, which was somewhat cryptic to many in the audience (1). One young Physics Professor thought that it meant while there were ample opportunities for the physicists in the low cadres, they were not so plenty at the top. So there was a great deal of anticipation about what Feynman would talk in his lecture. Feynman was known to be a practical joker and a delightful speaker (besides being a clever safe cracker).

He opened his lecture describing Kamerlingh Onnes, “who discovered a field like low temperature which seems to be bottomless and in which one can go down and down.” Then he mentioned Percy Bridgman for designing a way to obtain “higher pressures,…” And then prophetically he said, “I would like to describe a field in which little has been done, but in which an enormous amount can be done in principle. This field is not quite the same as the others in that it will not tell us much fundamental physics (in the sense of, what are the strange particles?) but it is more like solid-state physics in the sense that it might tell us much of great interest about the strange phenomena that occur in complex situations. Furthermore, a point that is most important is that it would have an enormous number of technical applications. What I want to talk about is the problem of manipulating and controlling things on a small scale.” To further elucidate his point in mundane terms in which it could be appreciated by every one, he said, “Why cannot we write the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica on the head of a pin?”

Feynman was not only a great scientist, but he was a great seer and a sage also. He could perceive and think of objects which ordinary scientists found hard to imagine. He was probably inspired by microbiology for his epochal concept of ‘technology at small scale’. He mentioned in his lecture, “This fact… that enormous amounts of information can be carried in an exceedingly small space..is, of course, well known to the biologists, and resolves the mystery which existed before we understood all this clearly, of how it could be that, in the tiniest cell, all of the information for the organization of a complex creature such as ourselves can be stored. All this information … whether we have brown eyes, or whether we think at all, or that in the embryo the jaw bone should first develop with a little hole in the side so that later a nerve can grow through it.. all this information is contained in a very tiny fraction of the cell in the form of long-chain DNA molecules in which approximately 50 atoms are used for one bit of information about the cell.”

His lecture has become a historical heirloom of human heritage which heralded the age of nanotechnology and quantum computer. (The word ‘nanotechnology’ was coined in the 1980s by K. Eric Drexler) Its consequences are far reaching, which can improve the lot of humankind beyond anybody’s imagination but which also has the potential to obliterate the human race from the face of our planet, if this technology is not wisely used.

Regarding computers, he explained his thoughts in these words: “If I look at your face I immediately recognize that I have seen it before. (Actually, my friends will say I have chosen an unfortunate example here for the subject of this illustration. At least I recognize that it is a man and not an apple.) Yet there is no machine which, with that speed, can take a picture of a face and say even that it is a man; and much less that it is the same man that you showed it before….unless it is exactly the same picture…. Now, this little computer that I carry in my head is easily able to do that. The computers that we build are not able to do that. The number of elements in this bone box of mine are enormously greater than the number of elements in our wonderful computers. But our mechanical computers are too big; the elements in this box are microscopic. I want to make some that are sub-microscopic.” Thus he laid the conceptual groundwork for both the quantum computers and nanotechnology in his historic speech.

Feynman was not talking about building miniature machines and equipment using the conventional technology; he indeed conceived of building these structures atom by atom and molecule by molecule. In his conception, it would become possible for the technologists to manipulate atoms and molecules the way they needed to build nano-machines. In thirty years, Feynman’s foresight bore fruit. According to Ed Regis (2), “… in 1989, exactly thirty years after Feynman predicted it, individual atoms were in fact pinned down, moved, and bodily manipulated despite all the obstacles presented by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, thermal vibration, radiation, and everything else. This feat was performed at the IBM Almaden Research Center, in San Jose, California, when experimenters dragged thirty-five individual atoms of xenon around on a surface until they spelled out the letters IBM.”

Elaborating this idea further and succinctly, Ralph Merkle (3) wrote, “If we rearrange the atoms in coal, we get diamonds. If we rearrange the atoms in sand (and add a pinch of impurity) we get computer chips… In not too many decades we should have a manufacturing technology able to:

• Build products with almost every atom in the right place.
• Do so inexpensively.
• Make most arrangements of atoms consistent with physical law.”

Another visionary who provided a practical impetus to Feynman’s dream is K. Eric Drexler. He is the founder of Foresight Institute, a research organization in Palo Alto dedicated to advancing the study of nanotechnology. He graduated from the MIT with a Ph.D. in Molecular Nanotechnology in 1991 and had completed his S.M. in Engineering at MIT in 1979. He was inspired with nanotechnological ideas in 1970s while he was at MIT. He spelled out succinctly what nanotechnology could be used to do for the amelioration of the mankind. He was also probably the first one to comprehend the destructive potential of nanotechnology. He put forth the idea of nano-assmblers, kind of nano robots, which will replicate and do anything atom by atom as directed by appropriate programs.

Blissful Utopia of Nanotechnology

Discussing the scope of nanotechnology, Julian Brown (2) stated, “Nanotechnology, he (Drexler) predicted, would change the world because it would make possible tiny machines that could construct virtually anything that the laws of nature allow to exist. Such machines could be programmed to enter human cells to fight disease, cure cancer, and even prevent aging. They could build spaceships from superstrong, supertight diamond-based materials, making possible space flights to the stars… All this and more would be made possible by constructing tiny little machines that could take materials apart and reconstruct atom by atom.” Such anticipations and expectations appear outlandish and hard to believe. But if atom by atom construction is possible as evidenced by construction of the IBM logo mentioned earlier, nothing, which is allowed by the physical laws, seems to be improbable.

In a more down to earth and mundane manner, Ed Regis (3) described, “He (Drexler) thought that once you had the ability to deal with atoms on an individual basis, you could invent this black-box – a ‘meat machine’ or ‘cabinet beast’ or something of the sort – that would physically transform common materials into fresh beef. The machine might be about the size and shape of a microwave oven, for example, and it would work the way a microwave oven did too, more or less. You’d open the door, shovel in a quantity of grass clippings, or tree leaves or old bicycle tires or whatever, and then you’d close the door, fiddle with the controls, and sit back to await results. Two hours later, out rolled a wad of fresh beef… The meat machine would be a mechanical cow, a factory at the level of atoms.” Opportunities are endless.

Regarding its uses in medical field, Ralph Merkle (4) wrote, “It is not the modern medicine that does the healing, but the cells themselves: We are but onlookers. If we had surgical tools that were molecular both in their size and precision, we could develop a medical technology that for the first time would let us directly heal the injuries at the molecular and cellular level that are the root cause of disease and ill health. With the precision of drug combined with the intelligent guidance of the surgeon’s scalpel, we can expect a quantum leap in our medical capabilities.”

On June 26, 1992, Drexler testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space. Although the testimony was open to the public but it sounded so unrealistic that there were no cover stories. According to Ed Regis (3), “..none of Drexler’s testimony was printed in the New York Times. He didn’t even make it to ‘All Things Considered.’ This was puzzling. Or maybe it wasn’t. We only cover things that actually happen, said a Time editor, not things that are supposed to happen. In fact, maybe Drexler’s whole scheme was nuts, after all.”

Some of the scientists had some bad things to say about Drexler. “Calvin Quate, professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, said, I don’t think he should be taken seriously. He’s too far out. Philip Barth, of the Hewlett-Packard Company, said, The man is a flake. This is the kind of thing we see in Omni magazine, said Shalom Wind, of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. It’s more science fiction than it is science,” (3). So on and so forth. The skeptics however were swept away by the tidal wave of the developments in nanotechnology; they couldn’t hold their ground.

Nanotechnological Apocalypse

The gray goo threat makes one thing perfectly clear; we cannot afford certain kinds of accidents with replicating assemblers. (5)

The arguments seemed simple enough and clear enough so that we had no question that nanotechnology was going to work, and no question that if it worked it would cut both ways, it would be a two edged sword. So to us it was a clear and present danger. [Kevin Nelson, (3)]

Eric Drexler was probably the first one to apprehend the potential dangers of nanotechnology and its threats to humankind. He had envisioned that the nano-assemblers (invisible, tiniest robots) would be self-replicating and possess Artificial Intelligence (AI) and in due time would outmatch the humans. This could be a danger to the human race in a deathly struggle of ‘survival of the fittest’. In a book, Engines of Creation, he drew attention to the dangers posed by uncontrolled development of nanotechnology. He wrote in his book (5), “Among the cognoscenti of nanotechnology, the threat has become known as the ‘gray goo problem’. Though masses of uncontrolled replicators need not be gray or gooey, the term ‘gray goo’ emphasizes that replicators able to obliterate life might be less inspiring than a single species of crabgrass.”

Other threats that confront us, other than the displacement of human race by machines, is from the military warfare. According to Drexler (5), “States could use special replicators directly to wage a sort of germ warfare – one made vastly more practical by programmable, computer-controlled ‘germs’. Depending on their skills, AI systems could serve as weapon designers, strategists, or fighters.” The possibilities to destabilize human life are extraordinary. It is rather difficult to go in details herein due to the limited scope. Again, according to Drexler (5), “AI systems able to build better AI systems will allow an explosion of capability with effects hard to anticipate. Both AI systems and replicating assemblers will enable states to expand their military capabilities by orders of magnitude in a brief time.”

We are thus on the threshold of heavenly bliss and apocalyptic Armageddon. Which of these one overtakes us first depends on what we do with our knowledge.

References

1.Feynman, R.P., “There is Plenty of Room at the Bottom, in ‘The Pleasure of Finding Things Out,” Helix Books, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1999, pp. 117-140.
2.Brown, Julian, “Minds, Machines, and the Multiverse: The Quest for Quantum Computer,” Simons and Schuster, New York, 2000.
3.Regis, Ed., “Nano: the emerging science of nanotechnology: remaking the world – molecule by molecule,” Little, Brown, and Company, 1995, pp. 11-12,9,142.
4.Merkle, R.C., “Nano: It’s a Small, Small, Small, small World,” http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/merkle.html
5. Drexler, K.E., “Engines of Creation,” Anchor Books, DOUBLEDAY, New York, 1986, pp. 172-73, 174.