Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: ems%nanotech@princeton.edu Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: viruses, computer & bio (plus a fix) Message-ID: Date: 25 Jul 89 03:27:42 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 87 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu [ C.R. Mckinney draws apt analogies between computer and biological viruses.] >....In summary, the computer virus metaphor is very apt, and I don't know >why people want to criticize it. I welcome your replies and comments. > >--Randy McKinney > Urbana, IL > mckinney@m.cs.uiuc.edu Probably the analogies are criticized to guard against a natural human tendency to lump things that are called by the same name together. As time goes on, and parallelism makes more inroads in computer technology, and as "parallel" computer viruses appear, I think that it's likely that even more analogies may be drawn. Even so, it is good to remember that these viruses are covered by two different scientific disciplines, that we are used to thinking of today as being widely separated. (No flames from biological chip designers, please, but other mail is welcome :-) >[exercise for the reader: Why is it unlikely that nanotech will > produce "bio" viruses that are worse than those that could be produced > by existing (ie, gene-splicing) techniques? > --JoSH] May I answer this question? I assume that by "worse" you meant "more lethal". One reason may be that every means of producing illness or death in an organism has already been ferreted out by chance during the long evolutionary battle. Hence there is some gene complex, already coded for each ill, available for gene splicing. Nanoviri could at best, only equal this lethality. After all, dead is dead. But, I don't think this is quite the entire picture. One promise of nanotechnology is the ability to make that nanovirus vastly more *selective* in it's targets, hence a better weapon. One might build an AI-based nanovirus that would only spare ardent capitalists, for instance. ( Thereby giving new meaning to the phrase "never volunteer" :-) I'd hope that neither means of producing such a virus is ever attempted. It's more realistic to assume that both techniques *will* be tried by various groups of unethical technologists. After all germ warfare labs do exist. It's also likely that gene-splicing, as the much more mature technology, has already been used to create some new disease. By a clear choice of vector, even a splicing-derived virus could be made more selective, although never to the degree of a nanotech virus. If someone told you that a blood-borne disease, lethal to drug addicts and promiscuous persons, but *unable* to use the mosquito vector, just arose naturally, would you believe them? And lest we believe we're safe just because most of us fall into neither category, remember that a virus may mutate. (OK, I finally admit I'm being a little paranoid here :-) This is part of the whole category of questions relating to the unethical misuse of technology. Let me now suggest a "fix" that one day, just *might* be possible thru nanotechnology. The leading force might use their time advantage to design an artificial conscience, and apply it to *everyone*, to modify behavior. The artificial conscience would make it impossible for anyone to attempt to injure others using technology, sort of like an enforceable Hippocratic Oath. Sounds like an abhorrent restriction of freedom? Well, just keep in mind that it may be the only practical means of permitting us to explore powerful new technologies without courting world disaster. Perhaps the artificial conscience would only need to be applied to those persons who desired to actually learn the dangerous technologies. This would result in a future where everyone would be forced (at their majority?) to choose between complete knowledge and complete freedom. Ed Strong princeton!nanotech!ems [The major advantage of a virus is that it hijacks the "construction machinery" of the host's cells. Thus it must consist in large part of host-compatible DNA. Thus the putative advantages of novel construction and/or coding methods would be inapplicable. This is what I meant by my conundrum... I think your "conscience" mechanism has a great similarity to Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics. A good starting place (Asimov is no dummy) but with some unsettling ultimate implications--read Asimov's later works where he follows some of them up (he's still no dummy...). --JoSH]