CONTEXT:
Converging Technologies
This report describes and analyzes the convergence of nano-scale technologies and their potential societal impacts. Our goal is to translate complex scientific information and to catalyze widespread public debate. (New or specialized terms related to nanoscale technologies appear in bold in this document and are defined in the glossary—see "NanoGrammar" in Appendix B).

Industry and governments promise that the manipulation of matter on the scale of the nanometer (one-billionth of a meter) will deliver wondrous benefits. All matter—living and non-living—originates at the nano-scale. The impacts of technologies controlling this realm cannot be overestimated: control of nano-scale matter is the control of nature's elements (the atoms and molecules that are the building blocks of everything). Biotech (the manipulation of genes), Informatics (the electronic management of information), Cognitive Sciences (the exploration and manipulation of the mind) and Nanotech (the manipulation of elements) will converge to transform both living and non-living matter. When GMOs (genetically modified organisms) meet Atomically Modified Matter, life and living will never be the same.

Today, public and private research at the nano-scale is evolving beneath the radar screen of civil society and government regulators. While society is mired in acrimonious—though vital—debates on the promises and perils of genetic modification, industrial

enterprises are harnessing an Atomtechnology revolution that could modify all matter and transform every aspect of work and life. Understanding and oversight by civil society and governments is urgently needed or the products of nano-scale technologies will be rushed to market without transparent and democratic processes of review, assessment and regulation.

Traditionally, we have thought and manufactured on the macroscale (meters). Over the past 50 years, we have learned also to think and manufacture at the microscale (micrometers and smaller). We have just begun to turn our attention to the nano-scale, where the raw material of both science and commerce is the atom.

Atomtechnology refers to a spectrum of new technologies that operate at the nano-scale and below—that is, the manipulation of molecules, atoms and sub-atomic particles to create new products. By adopting the term nanotechnology, industry implies that the manipulation of matter will stop at the level of atoms and molecules—measured in nanometers. However, it would be naïve to assume that the nano-scale will be the final frontier. "Atomtech" better describes the technologies that aim to manipulate the fundamental building blocks of matter.

Generally, nanotechnology refers to mechanical engineering on a molecular scale, but it is a slippery and ambiguous term. Sometimes it refers to today’s applied nanotechnology, such as the use of nanoparticles in cosmetics or industrial coatings. Sometimes it refers to the longer-term goal of molecular manufacture—atomic engineering feats that are not yet possible. These are vastly different faces of a technology that have dramatically different implications for society. It is important to bear in mind that while some applications of Atomtech are market realities, others are in the early stages of development, and still others are dismissed as the aberrant visions of "fringe futurists." Based on recent history, etc Group believes it is distinctly "bad science" to dismiss any technological research that is so well-funded and involves so many diverse industrial actors.

Atomtechnology is trans-disciplinary. It borrows from physics, engineering, molecular biology and chemistry. Its real power lies in its ability to touch every sector of the world economy and its potential to re-define life itself. For example, genetic engineering as we know it today will be fundamentally changed and empowered by Atomtech. But Atomtech will eclipse genetic engineering because it involves all matter—both living and non-living.

The issue of ownership and control of this all-pervasive technology is paramount. Who will control the products and processes of Atomtech? Like the industrial revolutions that have preceded it, will we see a decline in the well being of poor people and increased disparity between rich and poor? Nano-scale manipulation in all its forms offers unprecedented potential for sweeping monopoly control of elements and processes that are fundamental to biological function and material resources.

The hype surrounding nano-scale technologies today is eerily reminiscent of the early promises of biotech. This time we’re told that nano will eradicate poverty by providing material goods (pollution free!) to all the world’s people, cure disease, reverse global warming, extend life spans and solve the energy crisis. Atomtech’s present and future applications are potentially beneficial and socially appealing. But even Atomtech’s biggest boosters warn that small wonders can mean colossal woes. Atomtech’s unknowns—ranging from the health and environmental risks of nanoparticle contamination to Gray Goo and cyborgs, to the amplification of weapons of mass destruction—pose incalculable risks. While the potential to develop environmentally friendly and inexpensive products and processes is enormous, we do not know enough about the socio-economic, health or environmental implications of Atomtech—present or future.

Biotechnology Encompassing a variety of techniques involving the use and manipulation of living organisms, biotech has become synonymous with genetic engineering (recombinant DNA technology), the process by which genes are altered and transferred artificially from one organism to another. Biotech focuses on the cell nucleus.

Nanotechnology Nanotechnology refers to the manipulation of living and non-living matter at the level of the nanometer (nm), one billionth of a meter. It is at this scale that quantum physics takes over from classical physics and the properties of elements change character in novel and unpredictable ways.

Cognitive Science Cognitive science focuses on how humans and other animals (as well as machines) acquire, represent and manipulate knowledge. Greater understanding of cognition enables the development of artificial intelligence where machines emulate mental processes. This discipline also includes cognitive neurosciences, enabling the exploration and manipulation of the mind, especially for "enhancement" of human performance.

Informatics Information technologies, including computing and communications, that allow scientists to capture, organize and analyze data.

Robotics A technology that focuses on building computer-directed machines capable of performing a variety of tasks.

Atomtechnologies All matter (living and non-living) is composed of nano-scale materials including atoms and molecules. Atomtechnologies refer to a spectrum of techniques involving the manipulation of molecules, atoms and sub-atomic particles to produce materials. Atomtech also involves the merging and manipulation of living and non-living matter to create new and/or hybrid elements and organisms. Atomtech’s power will be fully realized with the integration of technologies that operate at the nanoscale, including biotechnology, informatics, robotics and cognitive science.

There are many ways to describe how these technologies will converge. The US government favors "NBIC"—nanotech, biotech, informatics and cognitive science. Bill Joy, the Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems, has written provocatively about the implications of GNR—genetics, nanotechnology and robotics. Others point to "GRAIN"—genetics, robotics, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology. Whatever the acronym, the critical point about converging technologies is that they all meet at the bottom.

HISTORICAL CUE I
Technology: Impoverishing Improvements?

"He made a disgusted wave of his hand. ‘Tis true, ‘tis true. For though it can be said that a rising tide lifts all boats, a leaky skiff will scrape bottom no matter what the tide.’" - Gary Krist Extravagance: A Novel

In his fictional contrasting of the London stockmarket of the 1690s and Wall Street in the 1990s, author Gary Krist shows that the two eras were driven by rapid technological transformations catapulted by greed and collusion between government and the Captains of Industry. While the rich led lives of unbelievable extravagance, London's poor and even New York's middle class became more marginalized.3 Despite the passing of three hundred years, the lessons of history remain unlearned. Rising tides still swamp many boats.

INDUSTRIAL RENAISSANCE? Historians usually peg the European Renaissance as being between

1450 and 1625 (or an era that roughly encompasses the lives of Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo). Some historians like John Gribbin are more precise. A period of science and discovery began, he contends, in 1453 when Gutenberg began printing the bible. Copernicus forced Europe to look "up" by publishing his treatise on the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres; and, Vesaluis urged Europe to look "down" with the publication of his revolutionary

tome on the Fabric of the Human Body.⁴ At a pace barely matched by today’s Internet, printing presses spread across Europe within 25 years from Palermo to Oxford carrying the new thoughts and ideas to every nook and cranny of the continent. Copernicus changed our sense of ourselves in the universe but also pressed scholars to investigate the nature of matter itself. Vesaluis launched biology as a science—info, nano, bio!

That the Renaissance was actually an industrial revolution has usually been ignored. “The main reason for productivity gains [during the Renaissance] was technological progress…,” historian Carlo Cipolla insists, looking back on the explosion of wealth during that period.5 The productivity of Italian weavers doubled and then tripled—even without the textile machinery that became the trademark of Britain’s Industrial Revolution centuries later. Gutenberg’s first printers churned out three hundred pages a day. By the end of the Renaissance, a printer could produce four times that amount. Between 1350 and 1550, English iron production rose seven or eightfold. Many of the Renaissance advances came in the areas of shipping and trade. Before Columbus, the crew-to-cargo ratio was one sailor for every five or six tons. The Dutch achieved a ratio of one man per ten tons by the end of the Renaissance.6 Five hundred fifty years later: info, nano, and bio.

According to historian Kevin Phillips, “The Renaissance and rise of capitalism, between roughly 1450 and 1625, hummed with technological and commercial innovations.”7 Venice became the hub of European commerce. The Northern Italian city-state improved shipbuilding technology—pioneering assembly lines and interchangeable parts that oceangoing vessels could built in one day. Technology spurred the first modern era of Globalization. Between 1450 and 1625 trade in Europe grew by 600–800 percent. Not since the heydays of the Roman Empire had so much wealth been amassed so quickly.

But, as Phillips points out, while the rich lived lives of extravagance as a result of the new technologies, the cost of living increased desperately for the working classes.8 “Peasants and tenant farmers staggered under rent increases that outran their crop receipts. Diets everywhere had less meat and grain and peasants spoke with envy of grandparents who had eaten elegantly from farming the same plot of land.”9 Inequities between rich and poor (especially with respect to food and shelter) grew greater than they had been for one thousand years.

DUTCH (TECH) TREAT:

Technology, trade and capitalism united in the Low Countries (the British enviously called it “Dutch finance”10) to give Europe (contd.)

its second industrial revolution. As did the Italians before them, Holland’s inventors looked up (or out) and down—inventing both the telescope and the microscope for commercial use. Dutch technologies involving shipbuilding, fishing, and textiles, among others, dominated the 1600s.¹¹ The Low Countries had 6,000 ships in 1669—a commercial armada equal to that of the rest of Europe’s.

IMPERIAL IMPOVERISHMENTS:
In the early 1700s, however, the technology torch was passed to a new industrial giant. The UK dominated the world at least from the mid-18th century to the late 19th century. Between 1808-1830 global trade rose by 30 percent. Between 1840 and 1870, world trade jumped fivefold with Britain controlling half of all manufacturing trade.12 Uniquely, Britain’s Industrial Revolution united power with portability. Steam power (through steam engines in factories and steam locomotives) made it possible for manufacturing to take place where ever most convenient. Industrialists could build close to labor markets or upwind from High Street.13

Once again, the enormous wealth generated by Britain’s Industrial Revolution was far from universal. Between 1760 and 1845 the overall trend in working-class wages was downward. Even The Economist concedes that in the 19th century, "the initial enriching impact of the industrial revolution had given way to the Dickensian miseries of urban life."¹⁴

REPUBLICAN REVOLUTIONS: 
By the end of the 19th century, industrial power shifted across the Atlantic to the United States. The advent of the railway and the telegraph in the mid-19th century spurred huge changes in US industry. With the coming of the automobile—followed by the airplane, radio, and a host of related technological innovations—US industrial dominance was definitive. The extravagances of the "Gay ‘90s" and the "Roaring ‘20s" are legendary. Less well remembered

is that between 1920 and 1927 approximately 650,000 workers were added to the jobless roster. As many as 200,000 people per year were thrown out of work as a result of new technologies in the years immediately before the 1929 stock market crash.15

Another industrial revolution— one led by informatics and biotechnology—got underway in the final decades of the 20th century. Between 1980 and 2000, the share of total market capital held by high tech stocks in the USA

rose from 5 to 30 percent (before the collapse). But, while Corporate America brags about entrepreneurship and innovation, the development of semiconductors, computers, robotics, aero space technologies, and the Internet have either been instigated or heavily subsidized and protected by government. This has not only given us cell phones and GM crops but increasing inequity, unemployment and impoverishment in the United States and abroad.

TECHNOLOGY’S RISING TIDE: For at least 550 years, technological transformations have shaped world affairs. The importance of science and technology in the last century— and in the years ahead—cannot be exaggerated. Economists see technological advancement to be the rising tide allowing benefits and abundance to "trickle down" from those first enriched eventually to all. History suggests otherwise. From Europe’s Renaissance to America’s "IT" revolution, humanity has been marched through a succession of industrial revolutions that—in their early generations—have further disempowered and disabled marginal groups. Whether it is the technological transformation of Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries or of England in the 18th century—or the United States in the 20th century—each of these revolutions profoundly distorted social equity and politics. In each case the innovators were subsidized by the ruling class/government of the day. Each industrial transformation created extravagant wealth (whether for the Medici family or the Gates) and enormous poverty. The peasant farmers who were "out of the loop" in Renaissance Italy were defeated by the Price Revolution that accompanied the new technologies. Likewise, the miners and textile workers of Great Britain were caught in a price squeeze that expanded the ranks of the hungry. Nutrition was so imperiled that the average height of young military recruits in the UK, Sweden, Hungary, and the USA (where records are available) during their industrial revolutions declined substantially and did not return to pre-"revolutionary" levels for as much as a century.16 As the Italians subsidized Leonardo da Vinci, the Dutch and British likewise subsidized their inventors and industrialists.

The Americans made this collusion an art form. In every case, technologies have piggybacked on government in order to gain consumer acceptance and market monopoly. In every case, at least initially, the poor and marginalized have suffered.