Jim's Molecular Nanotechnology Web

Preparing for and profiting from the "challenges and choices of the last technological revolution."

Nanotechnology, as it is expected to develop during the next 30 years, offers the potential to cure all physical diseases, reverse aging and prolong or restore vital youth, provide abundant and almost limitless wealth, open the frontiers of space, and in general empower individuals to seek fulfillment of their wildest dreams, within, of course, the limits imposed by the laws of physics.

It also offers the potential to produce our worst nightmares. The transition from our current world to the world of nanotechnology will be a time of immense danger, instability, and uncertainty, as well as a time of immense opportunities. Surviving this transition, and profiting from it, will require the efforts of many energetic and talented people.

I became very much interested in nanotechnology in 1986, and over the past twelve years I have also become increasingly interested in the potential of hypertext information systems for publishing information and conducting discussions. I am creating this web site to forward discussions of, and (I hope) the development of nanotechnology.

Two years ago I changed careers. After 25 years as a molecular biologist, doing research in cancer and other areas, I decided to focus on nanotechnology, and in particular using the Web to help prepare for and to help develop nanotechnology. My principal work since then has been as Webmaster for the Foresight Institute and for the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing.

What is nanotechnology?

Nanotechnology, or what could more specifically be termed molecular nanotechnology or molecular manufacturing, is the anticipated ability to inexpensively fabricate complex devices, both large and small, with precise control over the arrangement of the individual atoms that constitute the device. Educated guesses are that this technology will arrive sometime in the next 15 to 30 years.

The performance and capabilities of such devices are expected to exceed those of current technology by large margins, in many cases by many orders of magnitude. Such devices will make possible novel activities (for example, true and general molecular repair of biological tissues) and will increase greatly what is possible in current activities (for example, computation and cheap, clean manufacturing).

Where have these ideas come from?

Nanotechnology has for the past 10 years captured the imaginations of those interested in the future, ever since Eric Drexler painted his compelling picture of the coming of nanotechnology and of its implications in his 1986 book Engines of Creation. Prior to writing his book, Drexler had presented his key ideas in a paper on molecular engineering published in 1981 in the prestigous scientific journal Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. Published a few years after Engines, Drexler and his coauthors Chris Peterson and Gayle Pergamit wrote Unbounding the Future to provide a less technical introduction to molecular manufacturing, focused more on the near term transition to nanotechnology and less on its ultimate implications. In 1992, Drexler's nanotechnology textbook Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation was published.

Some aspects of the technology Drexler envisions were described by Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman in a talk he gave in 1959. This talk was prophetic, but seems to have initially inspired workers in only a fairly narrow field of microtechnology. Over the past 20 years, however, there has been rapidly increasing scientific progress in several fields leading towards the capabilities for manipulating atoms and molecules that Feynman foresaw, and which Drexler has woven into his vision of the "last technological revolution." The rapid progress in this field can be seen from the Foresight Conferences on Molecular Nanotechnology.

Learning more about nanotechnology?

The best starting points on the Web are

• Ralph Merkle's nanotechnology home page. Dr. Merkle gives a superb and concise introduction to the key ideas that are the foundation of the molecular manufacturing proposal. He has made about a dozen of his research papers on the subject available on the web, and provides annotated links to several dozen other web pages devoted to nanotechnology and related subjects.
• The Foresight Institute's introduction to molecular manufacturing, which provides links to general and technical introductions, FAQ's, applications, policy issues, studying nanotechnology, finding jobs, and sources of further information.

Both of the above Web sites provide links to many sources of information on the Web about nanotechnology and related fields, so I won't attempt to list more here.

The best technical book about nanotechnology is

• Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation . K. Eric Drexler. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1992. Here Dr. Drexler provides the theoretical foundation and justifications for the vision he advanced in Engines of Creation. Books on nanotechnology and related subjects can be ordered from Foresight's online bookstore.

An on-line conference proceedings available here:

The NanoCon Proceedings provides a record of a conference on nanotechnology held in Seattle in 1989. This conference explored issues that are still vital to preparing for the molecular manufacturing revolution:

• What is nanotechnology and how can we predict the coming of a technology that does not yet exist?
• What are some key technical ideas?
• What current laboratory research points in that direction?
• What is hypertext publishing and how is it important to preparing for nanotechnology?
• What are the implications for humanity, both near term and long term?

Institutions focused on nanotechology:

The two most important institutions involved with nanotechnology are the two that K. Eric Drexler helped found and works with, the Foresight Institute and the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing:

• The Foresight Institute is a non-profit, educational organization founded to help society prepare for nanotechnology. The goal of this organization is that nanotechnology be developed safely and beneficially.
• The Institute for Molecular Manufacturing is a non-profit research organization founded to promote research in nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing. The goal of this organization is that nanotechnology be developed faster.

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is funding an initiative on nanotechnology. NSF is also sponsoring a nanotechnology database on the web listing organizations, research centers, publications, etc.

Zyvex is the first molecular nanotechnology development company, founded with the mission to develop the first assembler, the molecular device that will make molecular nanotechnology a reality.

If you are interested in entrepreneurial and seed capital activities related to nanotechnology, check out Molecular Manufacturing Enterprises, Incorporated.

Related links: A few links for

Biology and chemistry

• Pedro's BioMolecular Research Tools. A huge collection of links to information and services useful to molecular biologists.
• NWFSC Molecular Biology Protocols. A very comprehensive collection of molecular biology laboratory methods and other resources.
• Indiana University's BioTech page provides life science resources and reference tools designed for a range of users, from high school students to professional researchers.Check in particular, their Science Resources page.
• Entrez Browser. A browser provided by the National Center for Biotechnology Information to search the protein and DNA structure and sequence databases, and a large fraction of the Medline literature databases.
• The BioMedLink page provides a searchable database of information about biomedical topics. It is part of the BioMedNet web site, the "Internet community for biological and medical researchers."
• All the Virology on the WWW seeks to be the best single site for Virology information on the Internet
• Chemistry on the Internet: The best of the Web 1995. Just what it says--a very large collection of excellent Web sources for chemistry information.
• A very detailed periodic table of the elements.
• The ChemCenter Web site maintained by the American Chemical Society. Especially useful is the Resources page.
• The Chemistry Hypermedia Project provides some online tutorials.
• The MathMol Home Page provides an introduction to molecular modeling.
• The Universal Molecular Modeling Software List

Hypertext publishing

• Hypertext Publishing and the Evolution of Knowledge This essay by Eric Drexler explains how our current media and scholarly communication methods fail to provide the knowledge our society needs to survive, and how to solve the problem.
• An overview of the efforts of the Foresight Institute to develop a true hypertext publishing network on the World Wide Web, especially to facilitate critical discussions.
• The CritSuite software developed by Foresight, "The Other Half of Hypertext", provides new, free web tools to enable users to put their own comment links into any web document.
• Foresight Institute's first discussion topic using CritSuite: how new technologies in surveillance and encryption will affect longstanding standards of privacy and openness: http://crit.org/http://crit.org/openness.

Some software development issues that might be relevant to developing nanotechnology

• Computer Security Fact Forum. If nanotechnology will bring precise digital control of matter, including your own body, it would be nice to believe that the software running all these devices was secure against intrusion.
• Is this all-important software likely to be more reliable if it is developed in the usual way, as the closed, proprietary property of some corporate behemoth, or in an open fashion: for a proposal of a better way see "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and "Open Source: the Future is Here".

Transhumanist links

To me,the most interesting and useful applications of nanotechnology will be its application to medicine, leading eventually not only to the cure of all physical diseases, but to reversal of aging and major enhancements in both physical and mental capacities. Foresight's Nanomedicine page provides more on how nanotechnology will enable these truly revolutionary changes.

These changes will be of such unprecedented magnitude that the major assumptions and attitudes that have underpinned human existence need to be reexamined, and in many cases, drastically altered. The following links are to "transhumanist" Web sites, that is, to those that deal with the question of how humans will change as a result of the opportunities afforded by new technologies.

• Anders Transhuman Page. This page is an excellent and comprehensive introduction to the philosophy of transhumanism, which has been described as the philosophy that human beings can and should continue to develop themselves in all possible directions, emphasizing rational thought, science, and technology. Anders also maintains a Library Page that is a very large collection of links to on-line reference and information sources.
• The Transhuman Web Alliance
• Transhuman World Culture InfoMark
• Extropians have been described as libertarian transhumans.
• World Transhumanist Association

Cryonics links

The medical advances that nanotechnology will bring are at least a decade away, probably several decades. Is there a way for individuals today, regardless of current age, to increase the probability of benefitting from tomorrow's medical technology?

• Merkle's Cryonics Page. Dr. Merkle's work in nanotechnology provides a basis for his arguments that cryonics (having your head preserved by freezing in liquid nitrogen shortly after legal death) provides a real life insurance policy in case the state of your health, or other circumstances, conspire to prevent your living until nanotechnology matures and brings robust life extension technologies.
• Alcor Life Extension Foundation. The home page for the largest of the organizations providing cryonics services.
• CryoNet Page. A page devoted to cryonics, which lists all of the cryonics organizations and other resources.

About me...

I have a PhD in chemistry and have worked as a molecular biologist for 25 years in several research institutions and in the biotechnology industry. You can read my biography for more details.

I read Engines of Creation in early 1986, and during the summer of 1987 participated in the founding of the Seattle Nanotechnology Study Group as a local forum to discuss nanotechnology. The major accomplishment of this organization was to host NanoCon in Seattle in February of 1989. The NanoCon Proceedings are available at this site.

After NanoCon, the Seattle Nanotechnology Study Group ran out of steam. A group of us got together to form an organization we called NTG to develop a set of HyperCard® stacks we called PATH to collect information about nanotechnology. Last year we abandoned that project because the WWW was clearly the better place to provide information about nanotechnology. I plan to transport some of the material from PATH to this site.

I coedited two books that resulted from nanotechnology conferences sponsored by the Foresight Institute.

Nanotechnology: Research and Perspectives. Edited by BC Crandall and James Lewis. The MIT Press. 1992. This book contains papers from the First Foresight Conference on Nanotechnology, held in October of 1989.

Prospects in Nanotechnology: Toward Molecular Manufacturing. Edited by Markus Krummenacker and James Lewis. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1995. This book contains papers from the First General Conference on Nanotechnology: Development, Applications, and Opportunities, held in November of 1992.

These books can be ordered from the Foresight Institute's Nanotechnology Online Bookstore.

Currently I am:

Working with the Foresight Institute on their Web Upload project, to get all important material related to nanotechnology on the WWW.

Researching progress in technologies leading to nanotechnology in order to identify areas of research crucial for technical progress and for creating markets that will drive the development of nanotechnology. I plan to place some of this work at this site.

Doing other, mostly nanotechnology-related, consulting: James B. Lewis Enterprises.