Expansionary Institute

EXPANSIONARY CULTURE: Two New Books on Nanotechnology Just Published. With Review by Ron Bailey, WSJ.

Review / Books: The Revolution Has Begun
Wall Street Journal

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Print Media Edition: Eastern edition
New York, N.Y.
May 23, 2003

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Authors: By Ron Bailey

Pagination: W.14

ISSN: 00999660

Subject Terms: Nonfiction
NanotechnologyBooks-titles -- -Multiple review

Classification Codes: 8690: Publishing industry

Personal Names: Atkinson, William
Uldrich, Jack
Newberry, Deb

Abstract:

If you can't spare the time for such a course -- and who can? -- Mr.
[William Illsey Atkinson]'s "Nanocosm" is a good substitute, an irreverent,
comprehensive romp, by an experienced science popularizer, through the
many fascinating details of the nano-world -- including portraits of the
colorful figures who helped to "discover" it. "The Next Big Thing Is Really
Small," by [Jack Uldrich] (with [Deb Newberry]), is another helpful book,
a breathless but nevertheless handy nano-primer that sketches the many
ways in which nanotechnology will change how we live and work.

They are incredibly useful. Already researchers are drawing on carbon
nanotubes to make electronic circuits that are one-thousandth the size
of our current microchips. It is conceivable that, one day, we may store
the entire contents of the Library of Congress in a computer memory the
size of a 1-inch cube. Carbon nanotubes are likely to make electronic displays
incredibly cheap, too, leading to easily programmable books, magazines
and newspapers.

Nanotechnology is not just pie-in-the-sky. Nano-products already exist.
Right now most commercial applications involve nanocoatings and catalysts.
For example, the window manufacturers Pilkington and PPG Industries offer
self-cleaning windows coated with nanoparticles that catalyze dirt and
cause rainwater to sheet down rather than bead up (and so wash away dirt).
Lee Jeans and Eddie Bauer are offering spill-resistant pants using "nano-whisker"
fabric technology developed by NanoTex. Popular sunscreens use nanosize
particles of zinc oxide to block damaging ultraviolet rays. And pharmaceutical
companies are already devising new nanosize systems that deliver precise
doses of drugs to specific tissues. Such systems will reduce side effects
while boosting a drug's efficacy.
Copyright Dow Jones & Company Inc May 23, 2003

Full Text:

NANOCOSM

By William Illsey Atkinson

(Amacom, 306 pages, $24.95)

THE NEXT BIG THING IS REALLY SMALL

By Jack Uldrich, with Deb Newberry

(Crown Business, 207 pages, $28.95)

PRINCE CHARLES is leery of it. Activists want to ban it. Michael Crichton
has written a scary bestseller about it. And financial analysts predict
that it will be a trillion-dollar global business in a few years.

It also has a strange name.

Nanotechnology is the science of the very small. How small? A nanometer
is one billionth of a meter. Ten hydrogen atoms lined up in a row would
fit within a single one. The width of the dot above this letter "i" ranges
across about a million nanometers. In the world of the nanocosm, the tiny
etchings on our densest microchips are vast highways.

And nanotechnology is coming on fast. "For the first time in history,
a technical revolution will approach the abruptness of a political event,"
writes William Atkinson. "No one in any age has heard, seen, or felt anything
like it. But you will." He adds: "A.D. 2003 will seem antediluvian not
in 50 years but in 15."

Such claims may seem far-fetched, but they may be right. And obviously
such a revolution, if it comes about, will have major effects on business.
Already places like Northwestern and Stanford universities are offering
minicourses on nanotechnology for business executives.

If you can't spare the time for such a course -- and who can? -- Mr.
Atkinson's "Nanocosm" is a good substitute, an irreverent, comprehensive
romp, by an experienced science popularizer, through the many fascinating
details of the nano-world -- including portraits of the colorful figures
who helped to "discover" it. "The Next Big Thing Is Really Small," by Jack
Uldrich (with Deb Newberry), is another helpful book, a breathless but
nevertheless handy nano-primer that sketches the many ways in which nanotechnology
will change how we live and work.

It should be said that nanotechnology is not one thing; it is more a
conceptual breakthrough than a specific kind of machinery or design. Basically,
it arises from the insight that it is now possible to manufacture objects
by placing individual atoms and molecules in precise locations, making
their interaction more reliable, predictable and fast. Nanotechnology has
already invaded a good deal of business and industry -- from telecommunications
and computers to industrial materials and pharmaceuticals. The great appeal,
in each case, is smaller, more efficient products.

Consider carbon nanotubes, filaments of pure carbon less than one ten-thousandth
the width of a human hair. The chemical bonds formed by carbon nanotubes
make them "the strongest material known," according to a recent study in
Physical Review Letters B, a leading scientific journal. They have 100
times the strength of steel but only have only one-sixth the weight.

And they are incredibly useful. Already researchers are drawing on carbon
nanotubes to make electronic circuits that are one-thousandth the size
of our current microchips. It is conceivable that, one day, we may store
the entire contents of the Library of Congress in a computer memory the
size of a 1-inch cube. Carbon nanotubes are likely to make electronic displays
incredibly cheap, too, leading to easily programmable books, magazines
and newspapers.

Both books foresee various nanotechnologies enabling all sorts of things:
laboratory-like, medical diagnostic capacity on a 1-inch computer chip;
hyper-refined computers, even computers built into clothing for self-repair;
powerful batteries lasting longer than anything we can now imagine; and
medical monitoring systems embedded in human bodies and ready to sound
an alert when a disease organism strikes or a cancer cell develops. In
the meantime, nanomanufacturing, applied to a thousand different goods,
will use less energy and produce less waste.

With so many benefits, why is Prince Charles so worried, along with various
other nano-skeptics? Evidently because they give credence to some version
of Michael Crichton's dystopic vision in his novel "Prey," in which rogue
nanomachines -- self-replicating in the manner of a bacterial colony --
escape the laboratory, attack people and consume the biosphere, the so-called
gray-goo problem.

Not to worry. Even if such nanomachines can be built -- and Richard Smalley
of Rice University, a Nobel Prize-winning nanoscientist, doubts they can
be -- they are a long, long way in the future. Researchers are already
thinking of ways to manage them -- for example with centralized sources
for fuel, or computer codes, that are controlled solely by people. In any
case, none of the amazing near-term benefits of nanotechnology require
such machines.

No, there is every reason for celebration. Echoing the authors of these
books, Mike Roco, a senior adviser at the National Science Foundation,
declares: "Because of nanotechnology we will see more change in our civilization
in the next 30 years than we did during all of the 20th century." Small
wonder.

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Mr. Bailey is Reason magazine's science correspondent.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.
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Tue Jun 17