Page 136 - Nanotechnology an introduction

growing asymmetry between “producers” (production itself is anyway becoming more and more automated) and “consumers”. Whereas previous
visions extrapolating the trend of ever more efficient production, which implies ever increasing leisure time, have thought of this leisure time being
used for personal cultural enrichment and “working out one's own salvation”, presumably because of the preponderance of information technology
today personal leisure is also nowadays characterized by “producers” and “consumers”—even though the technology actually enables anyone to be
an author, film-maker, journalist or singer, we have not achieved increasing microproduction of culture, with works produced by small audiences,
maybe of just a few dozen, with everyone more or less on an equal footing; these potentially very enriching aspects of nanotechnology have been, at
least until now, largely thrown away.
Information technologies have already enabled the “personal nanofactory” of culture to be realized (but little use has been made of this possibility by
the vast majority). If and when the real personal nanofactory capable of fabricating virtually any artifact becomes established, will things be
different? Open source software demonstrably works and its products seem on the whole to be superior to those produced in closed, “professional”
companies. Attempts are already being made to mimic this model through open source hardware. Nanotechnology implies that everyone can be a
designer, or at least contribute to design in the case of complex technology. Among other things, this implies the complete obsolescence of patents
and intellectual property laws. At present, nanotechnology is at best seen as an enabler of “mass customization”, taking a little further existing
technologies that allow the purchaser of house paint, and possibly of a T-shirt or a motor car, to specify a unique, individual color. Ultimately,
though, everyone could be as much a producer as a consumer, of hardware as well as software. This would render the present commercial model
obsolete.
12.5. Environmental Impacts
One often hears it stated that nanotechnology will enable the environment to be returned to a pristine state, without explaining the process by which
this rather vague assertion might be realized. It seems that there are going to be two principal impacts of nanotechnology on the environment. The
first is immediate and direct, the second long-term and indirect. The first is concerned with the use of nanoparticles for environmental remediation.
In particular, iron-containing nanoparticles are being promulgated as superior alternatives to existing remediation procedures for soil contaminated
with chlorinated hydrocarbons using a more or less comminuted scrap iron. This proposed technology raises a number of questions—to start with
there does not seem to be any conclusive evidence that it is actually efficacious, and furthermore there is the still open question of the effect of
dispersing a significant concentration of nanoparticles (and it has to be significant, otherwise there would be no significant remediation) on the
ecosystem, especially microbial life.
The long-term and indirect effects follow from the obvious corollary of atomically precise technologies—they essentially eliminate waste. This
applies not only to the actual fabrication of artifacts for human use, but also to the extraction of elements from the geosphere (should those
elements still be necessary, cf. Section 12.3.2). Furthermore, the localized fabrication implied by the widespread deployment of productive
nanosystems and personal nanofactories should eliminate almost all of the currently vast land, sea and air traffic involved in wholesale and retail
distribution; this elimination (and commensurate downscaling of transport infrastructure) will bring about by far the greatest benefit to the
environment.

Nano-engineered “artificial kidneys” can be used not only to extract desirable elements from very dilute sources, such as seawater, but also to
extract harmful elements or extractable compounds from natural water polluted with them.
12.6. Social Implications

The focus in this section is on some of the collective activities of humankind, those that have not been covered in the preceding sections. Clearly
the technical advances sketched out in Section 12.3 also have social implications; for example, localized medicine—diagnosis and treatment—will
make large central hospitals obsolete, which will be quite a big social change.
If the present commercial model becomes obsolete, what are the political implications? The political arrangements in most countries have co-
evolved with commercial developments. If centralized production becomes obsolete, does that imply the same for centralized government?

12.6.1. Regulation

There are already widespread calls for stricter regulation of the deployment of nanotechnology, particularly nano-objects in consumer products.
These calls are driven by a growing awareness of the potential dangers of nano-objects penetrating into the human body, and by the realization that
understanding of this process (cf. Section 4.3) is still rather imperfect, and prediction of the likely effects of any new kind of nano-object is still rather
unreliable. Furthermore, there have been a sufficient number of cases, albeit individually on a relatively small scale, of apparently unscrupulous
entrepreneurs promoting nano-object-containing products that have turned out to be quite harmful.
These calls, while seemingly reasonable, raise a number of difficulties. One is purely practical: once nano-objects are incorporated into a product
they are extraordinarily difficult to trace. Traceability is only feasible up to the point of manufacture, and even then only if the manufacturer has
sourced materials through a regulated or self-regulated commercial channel such as a commodity exchange. Establishing the provenance of
nanoparticles that might turn up in a waste dump, for example, poses a very difficult forensic challenge.
Furthermore, regulation will become essentially meaningless if productive nanosystems become established: every individual would be producing
his or her own artifacts according to his or her own designs and it is hard to see how this could be regulated.

12.6.2. Military Implications

It is a striking fact that the mechanization of war has resulted in a reversion of society's involvement in fighting to an early epoch when every
member of a tribe was essentially a warrior. During the last 3000 years, the trend in civilized countries was for fighting to become a highly
specialized activity practiced by a small minority. This changed dramatically in the First World War. Not only was the actual number of fighters a
significant proportion of the active working population, but virtually the entire rest of the nation was actively working for the war effort, supporting the
fighters. The nature of warfare also changed. Military activity was beginning to become highly mechanized in the First World War, but it still saw
battlefields of the kind epitomized by the Battle of Waterloo; that is, places where pitched battles between the professionals took place, in a manner
analogous to a game played on a sports field, but in the Second World War the tendency was rather to speak of battle theaters, and that war was