Constant Improvement Or Disaster

Much of the recent excitement going on in the scientific community about the possibilities of nanotechnology was severely deflated when one of the leading research scientists in this promising field, Hendrick Schon, turned out to be a fraud. Schon's experiments that supposedly demonstrated how logic circuits could be designed and sustained on a carbon-based molecular level could not be duplicated in the laboratory and his supposed observations mysteriously “vanished” off of his computer hard drive. I learned of this sad story by watching the program Hendrick Schon’s Dark Secret on the Science Channel recently.

One of the reasons that there was great relief at the prospect of a developing nanotechnology was that the ability of engineers to squeeze information into smaller units had reached its capacity with the silicon chip. A different system needed to be devised if something called Moore’s Law were to remain viable. Moore’s Law, in a nutshell, proclaimed the trend that the progressing state of technology was enabling memory on a chip to double every two years. Many believed that this pace needed to continue in order to sustain the developing world economy. So a new method of storing information was needed that was not silicon-based. Hence the great disappointment at Schon’s deception.

But this problem with computers and nano-processing is just a symptom of a much greater problem with humankind. We tend to set processes in motion with our innovations that need further innovation in order to avert disaster. Look at the development of antibiotics during the last century, and the resulting increasing resistance of different strains of pathogens to them. Human-caused global warming, which in turn is causing the melting of our large freshwater polar ice, is not only endangering sea life by cooling the ocean; the change in currents caused by this could drastically change the world’s climate in just a few years’ time. Plus, fresh water is a precious commodity desperately needed by people across the planet. And our natural supply of it is simply going to waste. The development of nuclear power created the need to rid us of the danger caused by ever-increasing quantities of radioactive waste. The increasing population’s demand for food is resulting in large quantities of grain that is relatively homogeneous genetically, predisposing the food supply to the danger of blights. So genetic research is needed to diversify the food supply more. And so on.

It seems to be a symptom of the human condition that somebody will come up with an promising innovation in some area. That innovation will then be modified, mass produced, and mass-consumed, causing unintended side effects that require more innovation to “fix” the problems generated by the original innovation.

Suppose we do, at some time in the near future, keep Moore’s Law going by coming up with a way to develop nanotechnology. The program Hendrick Schon’s Dark Secret revealed nightmare scenarios of “nanobots” based on carbon reproducing and going off on their own in swarms, consuming all life on earth in their drive to sustain themselves. But, innovate first, fix problems second! If you’re still around, that is!