Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!cup.portal.com!mmm
From: mmm@cup.portal.COM (Mark Robert Thorson)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: Megascale Engineering
Message-ID: <8905231916.AA29773@athos.rutgers.edu>
Date: 22 May 89 03:51:26 GMT
References: <18630@cup.portal.com>
Sender: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
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Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu


> hkhenson of cup.portal.com says:
> 
>     Roger Gregory (of Xanadu Hypertext) has predicted that molecular design
> software will be in the hands of an army of unfunded hackers within the next few
> years.  Simulation programs are available now for molecules of several
> thousand atoms. They are expensive, and burn a lot of computer time, but given
> the ever rising capacity of personal computers, who cares?  These tools can be
> used to design (= build in computer space) and run a whole family of molecular
> manipulators.  Eventually "molecular hackers" seeking prestiege and perhaps
> prize money will design one that can make a copy of itself in computer space. We
> then have a target to link with what we can do in the known world of chemistry/
> biotechnology.  Once we have all the steps down (this object with this input and
> this outside help can generate the next one in the chain to this more capable
> device, etc.), it should become a relatively short-term project of months, or at
> the most a few years, to physically implement nanotechnology.

Several years before assembly at the atomic scale becomes possible, assembly
at the molecular scale will be possible.  To a large extent, it is already
possible.  Short proteins and chains of nucleic acids can be assembled to
order by machines that will fit in your office, if not your desktop.

Before the Age of the Nanomachine becomes possible, it will be easy to design
and construct arbitrary DNA/RNA/protein structures.  Even easier will be
taking the published sequences of natural structures and combining them in
new ways.

This brings forward the prospect of awesome destruction.  For example, let's
say someone of the Robert Morris ilk takes the protein coat of a large virus
and stuffs into it the combined genetics of influenza and the AIDS virus
(with the redundant protein coat genes replace by the corresponding genes from
the large virus).  We then are faced with a lethal disease with high
communicability and a long incubation time.  There are strong parallels
to a computer "worm".  A few years after a brief epidemic of new-flu,
people start dying.

Now suppose this molecular hacker gets a little clever and designs a synthetic
structure which acts like a lock.  We then are faced with a password-
protected super-virus.  The man who holds the molecular key could ransom it
for untold wealth.  Who's to say a man who holds this kind of power would
care to share it with anybody?  He may decide to suppress nanotechnology and
its practitioners just to keep a lid on the competition.  Heck, the rest of
us may be lucky to be allowed to live.  If the only price he asks is for us
to turn you guys in to his police (and let him have the monopoly on printing
dollars, so he can pay the police), do you really think you will be able
to escape?

[A true "practitioner of nanotechnology" would be able to find the 
 key to such a virus if anyone could.  We should be so lucky.
 --JoSH]