nanotechnology

Matthew Putman: Don’t Be Intimidated To Jump Into The Future

by

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS

Matthew Putman is the most eclectic guest I have had on Singularity 1 on 1. Matthew is a PhD in applied mathematics and engineering, Professor at Columbia University, a Thiel fellowship mentor, entrepreneur, poet, jazz pianist, inventor holding patents in nano-imaging, film and theater producer, and a cancer survivor.

After spending over an hour talking to Putman I feel confident in saying that he is indeed an eclectic genius extraordinaire who is not afraid to embrace his humanity and follow his passions. So, while some of his friends have noted that Matthew’s eclecticism is “not the best route to target a Nobel prize”, they acknowledge that Putman is a lot of fun to be around. I can attest to the latter myself because I enjoyed very much having him on my show and am looking forward to our first face-to-face conversation.

During my interview with Matthew Putman we cover a variety of topics such as: why he considers himself to be a producer, first and foremost; the contradiction between being a Thiel mentor and a Columbia University Professor; the present and future of education; the importance of experimentation; his work in polymers and semiconductors; nanotechnology and Nanotronics Imaging; Henry Markram’s Human Brain Project and other such initiatives; his fear of death and his personal struggle with cancer; his take on immortality and the technological singularity; determinism and free will.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

 

Who is Matthew Putman?

Matthew Putman is a musician, scientist, producer and author currently living in Brooklyn, NY with his wife Marine and two children. He is a Researcher at Columbia University, and the founder and CEO of Nanotronics Imaging. His area of scientific focus includes advanced materials, and nanosystems. He teaches courses on new unique ways to use nanoparticles in polymers for the creation of flexible electronics, bio-scaffolds, flexible solar panels and other cutting edge areas of material science. Nanotronics is a growing business in high resolution imaging that is currently providing unique process control and research tools for the semiconductor industry as well as life sciences.

As a musician he has received acclaim from for his first album Perennial which was released in August 2008, and the quintet called The Gowanus Recordings. Matthew is an inventor who holds patents in several areas including a new microscope with extremely high resolution. He has co-authored technical papers, and received the American Chemical Society Best Paper Award. He was an owner of the technology company Tech Pro which was purchased by Roper Industries in 2008. Matthew is a published poet, whose book Magnificent Chaos has just been published and is available.

Matthew has worked as a music, theater and film producer. In the 1990’s he produced a monthly series of readings of new works at Lincoln Center. He also worked with playwrights such as Israel Horovitz whom he managed the Gloucester Stage Company with in 2000. Matthew was a producer of the off-Broadway play Perdita by Pierre-Marc Diennet, with his wife Marine which played at the Lion Theater on Theater Row. Matthew and Marine have also worked together as Associate Producers of the award winning film Definition of Insanity. Matthew is an Executive Board Member of The Montauk Observatory, and a founding benefactor and advisor of the World Science Festival. He is also an Artist in Residence for Imagine Science. Matthew is recently an adviser for the not-for profit The Cure Is Now.  Matthew is an adviser and investor in Plexus Entertainment Group, a leader in online movie distribution.

Currently Matthew is working an affordable test for cervical cancer to be used in Sub Saharan Africa. He is also composing a ballet based on the life of Kurt Godel.

Christine Peterson on Nanotechnology: Push the Future in a Positive Direction

by

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS

Christine Peterson is not only the co-founder and past president of the Foresight Institute for Nanotechnology but also the person credited with coining the term open-source software. More recently her interests have evolved to include longevity and life extension technologies and she is currently the CEO of Health Activator.

During my Singularity 1 on 1 interview with Christine Peterson we discuss a variety of topics such as: how she got interested in nanotechnology and the definition thereof; how, together with Eric Drexler, she started the Foresight Institute for Nanotechnology; her interest in life extension; Dr. Drexler’s seminal book Engines of Creation; cryonics and chemical brain preservation; 23andMe and other high- and low-tech tips for improved longevity; whether we should fear nanotechnology or not; the 3 most exciting promises of nanotech; women in technology; coining the term “open source” and using Apple computers; the technological singularity and her take on it…

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

 

Who is Christine Peterson?

Christine Peterson writes, lectures, and briefs the media on coming powerful technologies, especially longevity and nanotechnology. She is CEO of HealthActivator, which provides online videoconferences on science-based health, brain fitness, and longevity.

She is Co-Founder and Past President of Foresight Institute, the leading nanotech public interest group. Foresight educates the public, technical community, and policymakers on nanotechnology and its long-term effects.

She serves on the Advisory Board of the International Council on Nanotechnology, the Editorial Advisory Board of NASA’s Nanotech Briefs, and the Advisory Board of Singularity Institute, and served on California’s Blue Ribbon Task Force on Nanotechnology.

She has often directed Foresight Conferences on Molecular Nanotechnology, organized Foresight Institute Feynman Prizes, and chaired Foresight Vision Weekends.

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 humanity and Earth’s environment 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.

Related articles

Michio Kaku: Can Nanotechnology Create Utopia?

by

Dr. Kaku addresses the question of the possibility of utopia, the perfect society that people have tried to create throughout history.

These dreams have not been realized because we have scarcity. However, now we have nanotechnology, and with nanotechnology, perhaps, says Dr. Michio Kaku, maybe in 100 years, we’ll have something called the replicator, which will create enormous abundance.

 

Transcript:

Michio Kaku: Throughout human history people have tried to create utopia, the perfect society.  In fact, America, the American dream, in some sense was based on utopianism.  Why do we have the Shaker movement?  Why did we have the Quakers?  Why did we have so many different kinds of religious movements that fled Europe looking to create a utopia here in the Americas?  Well, we know the Shakers have disappeared and many of these colonies have also disappeared only to be found in footnotes in American textbooks, and the question is why?

One reason why is scarcity because back then the industrial revolution was still young and societies had scarcity.  Scarcity creates conflict and unless you have a way to resolve conflict, your colony falls apart.  How do you allocate resources?  Who gets access to food when there is a famine?  Who gets shelter when there is a snowstorm and all of the sudden you’ve eaten up your seed corn?  These are questions that faced the early American colonists, and that’s the reason why we only see the ghost towns of these utopias.

However, now we have nanotechnology, and with nanotechnology, perhaps, who knows, maybe in 100 years, we’ll have something called the replicator.  Now the replicator is something you see in Star Trek.  It’s called the molecular assembler and it takes ordinary raw materials, breaks them up at the atomic level and joins the joints in different ways to create new substances.  If you have a molecular assembler, you can turn, for example, a glass into wood or vice versa.  You would have the power of a magician, in fact, the power of a god, the ability to literally transform the atoms of one substance into another and we see it on Star Trek.

It’s also the most subversive device of all because if utopias fail because of scarcity then what happens when you have infinite abundance?  What happens when you simply ask and it comes to you?  One of my favorite episodes on Star Trek is when the Enterprise encounters a space capsule left over from the 20th century, the bad 20th century.  People died of all these horrible diseases, and many people froze themselves knowing that in the 23rd century or so they’ll be thawed out and their diseases will be cured.  Well, sure enough, it’s the 23rd century now.  The Enterprise finds a space capsule and begins to revive all these people and cure them of cancer, cure them of incurable genetic diseases, and then one of these individuals, however, was a banker.  He is revived and he says to himself, “My God, my gamble worked; I’m alive; I’m in the 23rd century,” and he said, “Call my stock broker; call my banker; I am rich; I am rich; my investments, they have been sitting there in the bank for centuries; I must be a quadrillionaire!”  And then the crew of the Enterprise looks at this man and says, ”What is money; what is a bank; what is a stock broker?  We don’t have any of these in the 23rd century,” and then they say, “If you want something, you simply ask for it and you get it.”

Now that’s subversive.  That’s revolutionary because if all utopiansocieties vanished because of scarcity and conflict, what happens when there is no scarcity?  What happens when you simply ask and you get what you want?  This has enormous philosophical implications.  For example, why bother to work?  Why bother to go to work when you simply ask for things and it comes to you?

Now, some sociologists think that if drugs, for example, are totally legalized, absolutely legalized then maybe three to five percent of the human race will become permanent drug addicts.  That’s the price for total legalization of drugs.  I don’t know, but that’s a number that people talk about.  What happens when we have this society based on replicators?  Then will we have three to five percent of the human race become permanent parasites?  This is a possibility.  The whole nature of the human psyche is based around producing things, doing something, making a contribution.  What happens when you don’t have to do that anymore?  What happens when there is infinite plenty?  What happens if there is a utopia?

The detractors will say, “Bah-humbug! There is no replicator; it violates the laws of physics.”  Well, actually that’s not true.  There actually is a nanobot that can replicate, actually take apart molecules and rearrange them in fantastic ways.  Mother Nature has already created it.  It’s called the ribosome.  The ribosome can take hamburgers, milk shakes and turn them into a baby in nine months.  That is a miracle.  The ribosome takes hamburgers, French fries, potato chips, breaks apart the molecules and reassembles them into DNA.  Mother Nature has created the replicator.  It replicates humans, but what happens when humans create replicators by which we can replicate everything?  This is a very subversive idea.

Related articles

Our Grey Goo Future: Possibility and Probability

by

What is Grey Goo?

Not necessarily grey, and not necessarily gooey, “grey goo” is both a nanotechnological substance which increases exponentially without practical limit, and a hypothetical scenario in which the mass of planet Earth – or the universe – is ecotophaged into self-replicating nanobots.

Mathematician John von Neumann originally described macroscopic self-replicating robots. These replicators are sometimes called “von Neumann machines.” In turn, nanotechnology pioneer Eric Drexler coined the term “grey goo” in his book Engines of Creation. Drexler described the exponential growth and inherent limits of such highly specialized nanomachines:

“…the first replicator assembles a copy in one thousand seconds, the two replicators then build two more in the next thousand seconds, the four build another four . . in less than two days, they would outweigh the Earth; in another four hours, they would exceed the mass of the Sun and all the planets combined …”

Drexler further compares the functionality of nanobots to the functionality of biomass:“ ‘Plants’ with ‘leaves’ no more efficient than today’s solar cells could out-compete real plants, crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage. Tough, omnivorous ‘bacteria’ could out-compete real bacteria: they could . . reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days. Dangerous replicators could easily be too tough, small, and rapidly spreading to stop . . ”

 

Why we are safe: 

Of course, grey goo wouldn’t pop into existence without some form of intelligence – biological or otherwise – first assembling and programming the nanobots. Molecular nanotechnology scientists and molecular manufacturing engineers continue to study the possibilities and implications of nanobots in medicinal and environmental applications.

Drexler argues that self-replicators would be too complex and inefficient for any practical manufacturing scenario, and specific grey goo may be limited by what it is programmed to consume. Indeed, grey goo candidates must meet several criteria to achieve true grey goo status. The bots must be:

  1. Self-replicating. This would be the basic definition of a grey goo-bot.
  2. Hardy. The grey goo-bots must survive whatever environment they encounter to keep replicating.
  3. Mobile. Perhaps this criterion would be met simply by the new grey goo pushing old grey goo out of the way.

Bonus criterion – Each grey goo-bot must also have a sufficiently-sized, self-contained computer to store the information to direct the ‘bot. A person reading this article in 2012 may conclude such a computer would be too large – and therefore too cumbersome – to practically be included in a grey goo-bot candidate. But given technological growth predictors such as Moore’s Law, this same person reading a few years in the future may conclude nanotechnology is sufficiently advanced for this criterion. So the fret-worthiness of grey goo may depend on whether one adheres to such trendy predictions.

Furthermore, the Royal Society’s 2004 report on nanoscience declares that the foreseeable future contains no grey goo.

Why we are doomed:  

Grey goo does not violate the laws of physics.

Enterprising scientists and engineers could, sooner or later, build grey goo and set it in motion. Whether these grey goo-ists would be motivated by advancing technology, criminal gain, or simply be insane is of little relevance. Grey goo wouldn’t care what or why it does anything – grey goo would simply “do.” The initiating intelligence is the fret-worthy factor. Perhaps present-day grey goo-ists even have altruistic motives, and are working on the development of what they believe would be controllable grey goo. But if and when grey goo is unleashed, the exponential replication could likely become too rapid to contain.

In the Wired magazine article Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us, computer scientist Bill Joy warns “it is far easier to create destructive uses for nanotechnology than constructive ones.” For example, take a relatively plausible present and future environmental problem/solution – cleaning a nature habitat after an oil spill. In this scenario, billions of nanobots are deployed to consume the toxic oil and convert it into less harmful substances. But a programming error directs the nanobots to devour all carbon-based objects, not just the oily hydrocarbons. These nanobots destroy everything, and in the process, replicate themselves. Within days – or hours – planet Earth is turned into “goo.”

Or paperclips.

What we can do:

Starting with the premise that grey goo is possible, there’s not much we can do to guarantee grey goo won’t happen. Outlawing specific grey goo technology, or even regulating it into obscurity, would only drive the grey goo-ists underground. In turn, the scientific checks and balances taken for granted in the light of day would be grounded as well, and a grey goo future would be even more plausible. The chance of it happening may even approach one in one billion.

In 2004, in the Institute of Physics journal Nanotechnology article Safe Exponential Manufacturing, Drexler and nanotechnologist Chris Phoenix conclude:

“Nanotechnology-based fabrication can be thoroughly non-biological and inherently safe: such systems need have no ability to move about, use natural resources, or undergo incremental mutation. Moreover, self-replication is unnecessary: the development and use of highly productive systems of nanomachinery (nanofactories) need not involve the construction of autonomous self-replicating nanomachines … Although advanced nanotechnologies could (with great difficulty and little incentive) be used to build such devices, other concerns present greater problems.”

So perhaps grey goo, as exotic and exciting as it sounds, is the least of our worries. Then again, 2004 was a long time ago within the context of exponential growth.

I, for one, welcome my grey goo overlord…

About the Author:

CMStewart is a psychological horror novelist, a Singularity enthusiast, and a blogger. You can follow her on Google + or check out her blog at CMStewartWrite.

 

Related articles

Nano, the Next Dimension

by

Nanosciences and nanotechnologies represent a formidable challenge. World-class infrastructure, new fundamental knowledge, novel equipment for characterisation and manufacturing, multi-disciplinary education and training for innovative and creative engineering, and a responsible attitude to societal demands are required.

This documentary film, made available by the European Commission, provides a glimpse of some of the many activities that are being carried out in Europe in these fast-growing fields of research and technological development.

This video was made available by the European Commission in January 2002.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]