Imagine cellphones that can be used by a flea, military uniforms that automatically harden to repel bullets, even tiny robots that run through your bloodstream scraping your arteries clean.
These are some of the promises of nanotechnology. Computer giant Hewlett Packard is running a TV commercial that defines it as “the science of things smaller than a thousandth the width of a human hair.”
That’s not a bad way to put it, because not many of us can get our heads around concepts like “a few billionths of a metre.” But we need to, because nanotech is likely to be the next big thing, and it’s not all gonna be so good.
The Banff Centre’s New Media Institute, known for its thoughtful and eclectic programs, recently assembled a diverse group of experts to consider both the science and the social implications of nanotechnology.
Executive producer Sara Diamond played ringmaster to a roster ranging from nano-physicists working in the trenches, to artists who are eager to exploit the amazing properties of nano-matter. There was even a practising liver pathologist from New York City who hopes to fight cancer cells on the nano level.
In three days of fast-paced sessions and discussions, we all got a crash course in the science of the very small, and came away with pretty big ideas buzzing in our heads.
Nanotechnology actually has a birthday of sorts – Dec. 29, 1959. On that date, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman gave a famous speech called “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” to the American Physical Society. In it, he raised the concept of writing the Encyclopedia Britannica on the head of a pin. “The principles of physics,” he said, “do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom.”
Of course, he didn’t have tools back then to do much about this. It took time to invent the Scanning Tunnelling Microscope and the Atomic Force Microscope. Most of us mere mortals first heard about nano-manipulation in 1989, when newspapers carried the famous picture of the letters I-B-M written in atoms by scientists at one of that company’s labs.
A lot has happened since. In 1998, Dr. Jim Gimzewski and his team at the IBM Zurich lab unveiled a molecular motor just one-millionth of a millimetre across. Now a UCLA chemistry professor, Gimzewski showed conference attendees an elaborate landscape made with atoms and including the UCLA logo. He said it’s still difficult and tedious to move atoms around, but the rewards are great.
For example, he recently discovered that yeast cells “sing,” emitting a tiny but distinctive sound at around 1000Hz. You can bet that, after 9/11, lots of people are now interested in “listening to cells” to find out if they’re bonbons or bioweapons.
In fact, the militarization of nanotechnology was one of the unexpected recurring themes of the Banff conference. Joanna Berzowska, assistant professor of fine arts at Concordia University, says she could get lots of funding for her ideas on smart fabrics if she was willing to work for the military.
“They’re interested in adaptive camouflage, and exoskeletons that instantly harden if a soldier is wounded,” she says.
Her own love, however, is the esthetic side of smart fabrics. By putting pixels and textiles together, she hopes to make clothing that changes color with temperature and mood, and that might even send out messages. So, “I’m hot for you” could take on a whole new meaning.
One of the most distinctive conference attendees, both physically and intellectually, was University of Calgary medical researcher Dr. Gregor Wolbring. “I’m a thalidomider,” he says. “My mother took that drug 41 years ago and so I was born without legs.” He has one arm that looks like yours and mine, and one that has become a truly versatile appendage that’s hard to describe. It allows him to do everything from driving his hand-powered car to vaulting himself up into it. “We were given artificial legs as kids in Germany,” he says, “but we all got rid of them as soon as we could. My vision of my body doesn’t include legs.
“Anyway,” he adds, “legs are boring. I would rather have something like a Segway.” That’s the $5,000 US scooter-like device that allows you to zip around. Someone really should give him a Segway, because he’d probably find amazing new uses for it.
Wolbring’s comments were a catalyst to some great discussions about how nanotechnology might change our very sense of who and what we are.
While Wolbring and others are looking forward to the benefits of linking nanotechnology with bodily structures, many are also wary of taking this step. Let’s say you’re injected with lots of little cancer-fighting nanobots. What if they go haywire? What if they have “back doors” that allow people to spy on your comings and goings? How do you get rid of something that’s become part of you? It’s clear that we’ll need to have some important ethical and social discussions in parallel with, and not after, the technological ones.
There was a priceless moment at the conference when a speaker was talking about surfaces and suddenly had a blinding flash of the obvious. “It just occurred to me that, at the atomic level, there’s no such thing as a surface.” This comment whistled through the room as we all realized how much our thinking will need to change to deal with the wacky world of nano-materials.
One of the big unanswered questions is when and where we will see real nanotechnology appearing in our daily lives. Most experts expect to see it soon in medical applications, though smart fabrics, or something entirely different, might get there first.
One thing is certain – Alberta will be on the forefront of this research. The federal and Alberta governments have funded a $120-million research centre at the University of Alberta to allow scientists to pursue their very, very tiny dreams on a big, big scale.
Web watch:
www.banffcentre.ca/programs/bnmi_carbon_vs_silicon
www.zyvex.com/anotech/feynman.html
www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/atomo.html
(Dr. Tom Keenan, I.S.P., CISSP is a professor at the University of Calgary and an internationally known expert on technology and its social implications. He can be reached at keenan@businessedge.ca)
