[Chris Phoenix wrote:]
Not sure what you mean here. Nanotech does not generally have the power
to morph preexisting "dumb" objects.

WHAT??? Is utility fog incapable of embeding itself in jello? Are burrowing
nanites impossible?
With all the conjecture regarding DNA recontructionism (possibly allowing us
even Odo-like capabilities)
what exactly are you saying?

On another note, a few ideas on the value of 3d printers...
....Although "fear of
abuse" is a real concern; I need to think that any desire to abuse
the power of nanotech comes from having grown in the
dysfuntionalisms of this pre-nanotech culture.

.... When significant numbers of DF's [desktop fabricators; 3D
printers] are aquired by consumers new markets
open up. The Design of Interesting, Usefull products
fabricatable with DF soars! It fosters innovation! The
tools,instruments to implement discovery are always at hand!
.... I can think of no better way to inculcate world mind
with the full ramifications of post-nanotech potential.

Conclusion:
The part that 3d printers play in the transition to mainstream
nanotechnology, should not be under-valued. Through the
popularization of 3d printers, many of the key benefits we hope to gain
through nanotechnology will become main-stream ideas unconjoined
to the darker side of nanotechnology.

Rory McLean wrote:
Religious and Hobby/Social, and from a negative point of view,
Terrorist. I don't think these neatly fit into any of the three
you have given. I still think it's a good starting point, though.

As I explained in another post, I see Religious as basically Guardian.
And I see Hobby, and (to answer David Oker) Scientific Exploratory, as
Information. Why don't you think these fit?

Social is harder--there are many ways and modes of interacting
socially. But I'm not sure policy work is relevant to unorganized or
emergent social activities--more precisely, it may be relevant to each
activity on a case-by-case basis. (Competitive body modification?
No-risk orgies? "Telepathic" technologies based on neural implants?
Etc...)

Keep in mind that some organizations do not fit the classification
because they are monstrous hybrids: they pick and choose ethics/precepts
for convenience.

If there is a desire to restrict the distribution of products
built by say a nearly universally distributed table-top
nanofactory, then a number of things need to be considered:

== Only verified product designs should be built.

We cover this in our paper, "Safe Utilization of Advanced
Nanotechnology"
http://CRNano.org/safe.htm

== Only products compatible with the ethics of the organisation
should be built.

Many products will be dual-use, and individuals may belong to more than
one type of organization. So I don't think this can be a hard-and-fast
rule. The overall rule is: organizations should stick to their
imperative/precepts. Monitoring of products could provide (usually
circumstantial) evidence that an organization was not doing so.

== Product designs should only be used in accordance with the
associated agreement with the design's publisher.

Guardians may put a lot of restrictions: I'm looking at a can of Raid
that says, "It is a violation of Federal law to use this product in a
manner inconsistent with its labeling." An Information-type publisher
will have relatively minimal restrictions.
[snip]

All the above will, I believe, need some sort of Agreement
Modelling,

Can you give me a reference for Agreement Modelling?

What is proposed above would allow anyone to work on nanotech
product designs, simulate them as much as they liked, maybe even
test manufacture them in a controlled environment (such as a
remote-accessed testing facility), but only distribute them
widely in a controlled way.

I like the way you think.

Given the power of nanotech to alter physical objects, it is
possible that the traditional way of trying to restrict use of
systems by restricting the hardware will not be workable, and any
restrictions will need to be in the software, protected by
complex, self-checking, and interlocking strong encryption.

Not sure what you mean here. Nanotech does not generally have the power
to morph preexisting "dumb" objects.

Chris Phoenix cphoenix@CRNano.org
Director of Research
Center for Responsible Nanotechnology http://CRNano.org

The sort of remote-accessed testing facility that I have in mind
would have the "flush it out with thermite" approach to dangerous
nanotech; I don't think much would stand up to that. Then, maybe
watch the resultant solidified iron for suspicious temperature
variations, for a while, if you are really paranoid?

Given the power of nanotech to alter physical objects, it is
possible that the traditional way of trying to restrict use of
systems by restricting the hardware will not be workable, and any
restrictions will need to be in the software, protected by
complex, self-checking, and interlocking strong encryption.

Are they going to have to be accessible *at the same time*? That would
be very difficult for a designer to grasp. If I have a "virtual
material" to fill a volume with, I know what it does; I don't have to
see what it's made of while I'm deciding its volume. (Of course, if its
properties change as its bounding volume changes, I'm in trouble. But
I'd rather just avoid those.)

I'm not sure interfaces have to share space with multiple objects.
Perhaps they simply share a common surface, and half of the interface is
attached to each object.

No offense intended!

I think human-scale MNT products won't have to worry about volume
limitations. They'll have far more volume than necessary to incorporate
the active nanomachinery that fits their power budget.

For a few products, such as some (but not all) medical devices and spy
devices, it may be important to squeeze things as small as possible.
These things may merely be comparable to modern structures in
complexity. I'm not sure that automated design aids will be
necessary--so they may not be widely accepted.

On the other hand, if you have all the space in the world, it's easy to
write an automated design tool. So maybe that mode of working will be
the norm for most projects, and the algorithms will get smarter as
people try to do more sophisticated and compact projects.

I wonder whether it'd be possible to make a design tool where you simply
specify the top-level qualities, and *everything* gets put in place
automatically, assuming it fits? Is this what you've been arguing for
all along? Maybe so...

In that case, I can see why you'd want to spend a lot of effort
designing the specification language. But I think, for the diversity of
products that people will want, and the diversity of properties they
will want to specify, and the variety of levels at which the properties
will have to be implemented, the difficulty of this lies somewhere
between automated theorem proving and strong AI. If you can't program
the low-level computers from the high level, then you're reduced to a
few canned properties, or you have to let the designer go in and "lay
out the board" by hand all the time.

But I think that, rather than building a single unified design language,
you'll have to build a modular framework, a "property-solving engine",
and let people define their own properties during their design process.
Want to try to specify everything in advance? All possible mechanical
and programmatic behaviors? No...

Actually, I've never participated in a code review. I'm vaguely aware
that they're a good idea. At EFI when I was there (91-97), we generally
had one person per function (e.g. serial comm, PostScript interpreter,
UI, networking), and each person wrote code and then debugged it, and
then we integrated it, and after very little more debugging, it worked.
This started to fray a bit when we put a full real-time operating system
into our product, but we still developed working products much faster
than anyone else in the industry. We simply made sure to hire only
excellent programmers.

Are you shocked? Does this explain my liking for brute-force
quick-and-dirty methods?

But I don't think we're on track yet. As I said, I don't know of anyone
in the US who's putting resources toward MNT. There are lots of
enabling technologies being developed, but if no one is trying to
integrate them, they might as well not exist (from the MNT point of
view--they're very useful in their own right).

I don't think, as some do, that all scientists should be responsible for
all implications of their work. But I do think it's important for at
least some technically-aware people to be thinking about the politics
and policy implications. There's a massive political, economic, and
social disruption coming, and I see only two choices: to face it
uninformed and scared, or to have a few technically-minded people like
me spend time educating people and policy-makers about what's coming.

Nice to have my conclusions supported... But note that I actually listed
three very different kinds of development. Open Source is fundamentally
different from Commercial. See CRN's recent paper at
http://CRNano.org/systems.htm . (I'm realizing as I write this that no
one has described a system of precepts/ethics for international
administration. This needs thought...)

So even those focused on research need to worry about politics, if only
to avoid it.

Yes, it won't be easy to design a system that's resistant to sabotage or
being pulled off-track. An awaremess of the appropriate precepts to
follow for the purpose of the system may help a lot. I don't know if
it'll be enough.