Question Technology

Convergence 08

I just learned about Convergence 08, a two-day event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA featuring a bunch of futurists and other thinkers on technology. From their buzzword-heavy blurb:

On November 15-16, 2008, the world's most dangerous ideas will collide in Mountain View, California. Convergence⁰⁸ examines the world-changing possibilities of Nanotech and the life-changing promises of Biotech. It is the premier forum for debate and exploration of Cogtech ethics, and ground zero of the past and future Infotech revolution. Convergence⁰⁸ is an innovative, lively unconference, the first and only forum dedicated to NBIC (Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno) technologies.

Link: Convergence08.org.

The speaker list includes some heavyweight futurists/technologists like Paul Saffo, Aubrey de Grey and Peter Norvig, and at least one critic, Denise Caruso.

I'm not sure I get the idea of an "unconference" as the main event, though. I thought those were typically free, alternative forums that took place outside big conferences.

Presidential Candidates Invited to Science Quiz, er, Debate

The Science Debate 2008 campaign sent out invitations to the four major candidates recently for the debate, now set for April 18th if anyone shows up.  In the invitation they write:

This is a policy debate.  It is not intended to be a science quiz. Nor are we interested in state-level battles such as the evolution versus creationism/ID debate.  Our goal is to find out how aware candidates are of America's major science and technology problems and opportunities, and how they propose to offer the kind of visionary leadership and policy solutions that will tackle those challenges and ensure America's place as the most scientifically and technologically advanced nation on earth.  This is your opportunity to demonstrate that you are such a leader.

It's telling that they needed to reassure candidates that it's not a quiz, because when Science Debate first came on the scene it was clear that many of the people pushing for it wanted a quiz.  There was gloating in comment boards about the chance to make fun of candidates who don't believe in evolution or don't understand science.  (Not that those are excusable -- thank the gods that Mike Huckabee doesn't have a chance of winning.)

There are important science and tech policy issues to discuss, but I'm still skeptical of the need for a separate debate on this.  (Previous post: Do we need a presidential debate on science?)

There have been several recent articles on the story:

• New Scientist Short Sharp Science blog
• Wired (where the commenters definitely don't get the quiz vs. debate distinction, and the techno-libertarians are upset Ron Paul wasn't invited).
• Nature expresses skepticism: Nature's The Great Beyond blog, Nature editorial.
• The New York Times addresses the quiz vs. debate problem as well.
• Biopolitical Times points to Nature's doubts and has some good quotes.
• There's some interesting discussion (and confusion) in comments at the blog of Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, two of the organizers: The Intersection.

Public Nanotech Forum

Next Tuesday and Wednesday (October 23-24) there will be an online public forum about the benefits and risks of nanotechnology, hosted by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnology and Consumers Union.  From the description:

Nanotechnology—the ability to measure, see, manipulate and manufacture things between 1 and 100 nanometers (1 billionth of a meter)—is seen as the driver of a new industrial revolution emerging with the development of materials that exhibit new properties and potential new risks and benefits at this tiny scale. However, according to recent polls, the majority of Americans have heard little or nothing about nanotechnology, even as consumer products containing nanomaterials are entering the marketplace at a rapid pace. There are already over 575 nanotechnology consumer products available to the consumer, with nanoscale materials now in use in cosmetics, clothing, sports equipment, electronics, automobiles, and home furnishings.

We decided to launch this dialogue in order to provide an easily accessible venue for the public to discuss information and share their thoughts about the usage and potential benefits and risks of consumer products made with nanomaterials. It is aimed at exploring key issues surrounding the ways that consumers, citizens, students, researchers, policymakers, scientific experts, and the media learn about and respond to nanotechnology consumer products. Participants in the dialogue will have the opportunity to ask questions of expert panelists about nanotechnology, to examine its use in consumer products, to discuss who is responsible for oversight, and to brainstorm with each other on needed future actions.

We hope to use information that emerges from this conversation to inform policymakers about how consumers perceive the use of nanotechnology in products that they can buy in the stores or over the Internet and what consumers think about related risks, benefits, and uncertainties. We also hope that consumers will bring to our attention additional nanotechnology consumer products that are not contained in our on-line inventory, which is available at http://www.nanotechproject.org/consumerproducts.

It sounds like a very interesting event.  To participate in the discussion you just need to complete a free registration.  There's much more information at their site: Nanotechnology and the consumer: A public dialogue.

Update: They've posted summaries of the event, as well as archives of the discussions, at the same link: Nanotechnology and the consumer: A public dialogue.

Excerpts from The No-Nonsense Guide to Science

At the Post-Normal Times blog, Jerry Ravetz has posted excerpts from his book, The No-Nonsense Guide to Science (described here previously).  An excerpt of an excerpt:

The decline of the illusion of objectivity

Over the last half-century, science has experienced great transformations in its scale, size, power, destructiveness, and corporate control and social responsibility. There is lively debate over many policy issues concerning health and the environment, and over proposed innovations such as those in the GRAINN set. But until we get over the illusion of objectivity of science, as embodied in its supposed certainty and value-freedom, those debates will be hindered and distorted. So long as each side in a debate believes that it has all the simple and conclusive facts, it will demonise the other, and dialogue will not be achieved. We need not fall into some nihilistic philosophy of total subjectivity or power-games. That is not the only alternative to the lost illusion of perfect objectivity of science. To find a viable alternative we will need to examine why scientific objectivity is no longer common sense.

The process is already well underway. Towards the end of the last century, just too many things began to go wrong for science. First we discovered how mankind has been polluting the environment. And sometimes the pollution was worse when the science was the strongest. The first big pollution scare came in 1963 with Silent Spring, where the death of the songbirds was explained by their being poisoned with agricultural pesticides. Then we had the accidents in civil nuclear power. Of all industries this was the one most completely based on science. We might have expected that an industry created and run by scientists would not be vulnerable to sloppy workmanship and elementary blunders; but we were wrong. In both those cases, as in many others, the pattern was that even where science had defined the situation, something would unexpectedly go wrong, leading to an accident or disaster. Then science would be brought it for the attempt to understand the accident and to prevent its happening again. It was as if science was chasing after itself in the cleanup jobs, retrospectively correcting its own mistakes.

The public's experience of values, priorities, choices and exclusions has come through debates on science in fields relating to health and the environment. For a very long time, supporters of 'alternative energy' have pointed to the vast disparity between the meagre funds doled out to them for research and development, and the huge sums still lavished on the moribund nuclear power industry. In medical research, patients' groups have observed how the lion's share of the resources, even those collected and allocated by charities, goes on that 'basic' research which someone hopes and claims will solve the problems of cause and cure of the disease. At the same time, research on the quality of treatments and of care is left on the margins. The reasons are plain: everyone hopes for a 'magic bullet' which will kill the pathogen that makes us sick. Also, that sort of research is also useful in building a career in the relevant research science. By contrast, treatment and care are the 'soft' sciences, in which there are no Nobel prizes. It doesn't take much imagination to see how particular sets of values are built into the ruling criteria of quality in science.

Link: The Post-Normal Times - Putting Science into Context: Excerpts from The No-Nonsense Guide to Science.

Hazards of Extreme Genetic Engineering

The ETC Group (Action Group on Erosion, Technology, and Concentration) has released a free 70-page report on the threats of "synthetic biology."  From the press release:

A new report by the ETC Group concludes that the social, environmental and bio-weapons threats of synthetic biology surpass the possible dangers and abuses of biotech. [...]

"Genetic engineering is passe," said Pat Mooney, Executive Director of ETC Group. "Today, scientists aren't just mapping genomes and manipulating genes, they're building life from scratch - and they're doing it in the absence of societal debate and regulatory oversight," said Mooney.

Synbio - dubbed "genetic engineering on steroids" - is inspired by the convergence of nano-scale biology, computing and engineering. Using a laptop computer, published gene sequence information and mail-order synthetic DNA, just about anyone has the potential to construct genes or entire genomes from scratch (including those of lethal pathogens). Scientists predict that within 2-5 years it will be possible to synthesise any virus; the first de novo bacterium will make its debut in 2007; in 5-10 years simple bacterial genomes will be synthesised routinely and it will become no big deal to cobble together a designer genome, insert it into an empty bacterial cell and - voilà - give birth to a living, self-replicating organism. Other synthetic biologists hope to reconfigure the genetic pathways of existing organisms to perform new functions - such as manufacturing high-value drugs or chemicals.

A clutch of entrepreneurial scientists, including the gene maverick J. Craig Venter, is setting up synthetic biology companies backed by government funding and venture capital. They aim to commercialise new biological parts, devices and systems that don't exist in the natural world - some of which are designed for environmental release. Advocates insist that synthetic biology is the key to cheap biofuels, a cure for malaria, and climate change remediation - media-friendly goals that aim to mollify public concerns about a dangerous and controversial technology. Ultimately synthetic biology means cheaper and widely accessible tools to build bioweapons, virulent pathogens and artificial organisms that could pose grave threats to people and the planet. The danger is not just bio-terror, but "bio-error," warns ETC Group.

Link: ETC Group - Publications - Extreme Genetic Engineering: An Introduction to Synthetic Biology.

There's some interesting discussion happening at Salon between Salon columnist Andrew Leonard, ETC Group, and MIT assistant professor of synthetic biology Drew Endy.  The latest post is here (update: and in the comments I believe I'm called both a Luddite and evil -- nice!).

The ETC Group is based in Canada and was one of many parties behind an open letter calling for public debate on synthetic biology, issued last May to coincide with the Synthetic Biology 2.0 symposium -- see previous post.

Their site has lots of interesting reading material.  They recently had a competition to design a hazard symbol for nanotechnology (the final judging will take place soon).

What Are You Optimistic About?

The Edge has published its 2007 question that it asks of dozens of big-name scientists and other thinkers.  I've only skimmed a few, but as usual the results are a mix of the interesting, amusing, and (mostly) predictable.  Cory Doctorow is optimistic about the anti-copyright movement -- who'd have thought?  Ray Kurzweil surprises by giving a bit of space to biotech risks (reprising an op-ed that he co-wrote with Bill Joy in 2005 called Recipe for Destruction).

We have a new existential threat which is the ability of a destructively minded group or individual to reprogram a biological virus to be more deadly, more communicable, or (most daunting of all) more stealthy (that is, having a longer incubation period so that the early spread is not detected). The good news is that we do have the tools to set up a rapid response system, like the one we have for software viruses. [...]

So I'm optimistic that we will make it through without suffering an existential catastrophe.

Link: THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2007.

Last year they asked "What's Your Dangerous Idea?" (see previous post).

I am optimistic about pessimism: that people will begin to understand the momentous risks and biases inherent in some technologies now with us or on the horizon, will see the value of thoughtful, rational debate, and will learn that, despite the rhetoric to the contrary, technology is not inevitable -- we can make choices and always have.

Book Notes

Some new books and other recent reading:

Code: Version 2.0 by "free culture" and Creative Commons guru Lawrence Lessig is a revision of his 1999 book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.  What's unique about this book is that it's the "first ever reader-edited revision of a popular book."  The revisions were done at this Wiki, where you can still read the book for free, though I don't know if it's still undergoing revision.  (Update: read or "remix" the new version here.)  Basic Books just released the print version.  From the book jacket:

"Under the influence of commerce, cyberspace is becoming a highly regulable space, where behavior is much more tightly controlled than in real space. But that's not inevitable either. We can-we must-choose what kind of cyberspace we want and what freedoms we will guarantee. These choices are all about architecture: about what kind of code will govern cyberspace, and who will control it. In this realm, code is the most significant form of law, and it is up to lawyers, policymakers, and especially citizens to decide what values that code embodies."

I have not yet read any of Lessig's books, mostly because I feel like I've heard enough of the ideas already through the blogosphere, but I should probably check them out.

She's Such a Geek: Women write about science, technology, and other nerdy stuff edited by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders is out, and there's also a website and blog for the book at www.shessuchageek.com.  As the title says, it's an impressive collection of essays about women and technology.

Knockout Mouse by James Calder is a fun little murder mystery and is the first of Calder's "Bill Damen Silicon Valley Mystery" series.  I picked it up on a whim this past Thanksgiving weekend and enjoyed it quite a bit.   The story takes place amidst competing biotech firms and there are lots of science bits about pharmaceutical research, genetically modified foods, as well as some Bay Area trivia.  Calder also has a website.

I've been reading Paul Virilio's 2000 book, The Information Bomb.  Virilio, in true French intellectual style, is over-the-top, sloppy with science terms, and spends too much time talking about American movies, but he does say a few pithy things about the Internet, the coming surveillance society and the immaturity of today's adults.

Jerome Ravetz's No-Nonsense Guide to Science is part of the No-Nonsense series from the activist New Internationalist magazine.  Ravetz addresses the myths of scientific objectivity, certainty, and value-neutrality, and the ways that the practice of science has shifted from independent "little science" to corporate-sponsored "mega science."  Ravetz uses the term "Post-Normal" science for the new, value-laden and ethically challenging sciences such as genomics, neuroscience, and nanotechnology.  He also discusses the Science Shops movement that is growing in Europe and is fostering citizen involvement in scientific ethics questions.  Jerome Ravetz has a website and contributes to a blog called The Post-Normal Times: Putting Science into Context.

FDA to look at Nanomaterials in Food

From The Center for Food Safety:

The Food and Drug Administration has scheduled a its first-ever Public Meeting on October 10, 2006 to discuss the issue of nanotechnology, a powerful new technology for taking apart and reconstructing nature at the atomic and molecular level.  While this is FDA’s first meeting on nanotechnology, the agency is behind the curve: Many products are already on market shelves that contain unlabeled nanomaterials, including food and food packaging products.  Thus far, nanotechnology-laced products are treated by FDA like any other products or product ingredients; yet scientists agree that nanoparticles are fundamentally different substances that create new and unique risks to human health and the environment and need new forms of safety testing.

Link: Take Action: Tell FDA to regulate unlabeled and untested engineered nanomaterials in food!

Follow the link to learn more and send a letter to the FDA commissioner.

 

The Odds on Immortality

Marshall Brain, founder of HowStuffWorks.com, asks: Will my kids be immortal? (At the pro-human-enhancement Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology's blog.)  He gives them a 50/50 chance.  I eagerly await the "How Immortality Works" article.

Daily Show's Future Shock

In case you haven't seen it already, I recommend checking out The Daily Show's funny new feature called "Future Shock" with Samantha Bee.  The first installment featured Ray Kurzweil and RFID-chip-implant do-it-yourselfer Mikey Sklar.  You can watch the videos on the Daily Show site (or you can find copied snippets on YouTube as well, if that makes you feel better).

Asbestos Lessons For Nanotech

Andrew Leonard has a good recap in Salon today of some of the recent research into nanotech risks.  Excerpt:

The question of the day, however, is are they safe for humans and other living things? Earlier this year, Andrew Seaton, A U.K. scientist who was the lead author of a 2004 report investigating the saftey of nanotechnological materials raised a bit of a ruckus by comparing carbon nanotubes to asbestos fibers. Asbestos once had its day in the sun as an all-purpose wonder material. But then we learned that tiny asbestos fibers, once ingested by the human body, could be extremely deadly. Carbon nanotubes: also easy to ingest, and exquisitely capable of penetrating cell structures. Could they be equally toxic?

Right now, we don't know much for sure, though a survey of the literature indicates that there has been a recent surge of academic interest in investigating the question. The journal Carbon devoted its entire June issue to the topic. Early in July, another journal, Nano Letters, reported on three separate studies of carbon nanotube toxicity, with widely varying results. A new newsletter, NanoRisk, which started publishing in June, does a decent job of summing up the current state of knowledge in layman-accessible form.

Link: How the World Works - Salon.com.

Previously: Assessing Nanotech Risks.

Assessing Nanotech Risks

Here are two new, lengthy documents discussing the risks of emerging nanotechnologies:

The Project On Emerging Nanotechnologies, a Washington D.C. based institute, released Nanotechnology: A Research Strategy for Addressing Risk.  Kevin Bullis at Technology Review writes about it in his blog today: TR Blogs: Averting a Nano Tragedy.  Here's an excerpt from the report's abstract:

[The report] proposes for the first time a comprehensive framework for systematically exploring nanotechnology’'s possible risks. The report moves beyond a general call for more nanotechnology risk research to recommend how this research should be prioritized and implemented— -- who should do what, when, and how.

The report argues for a top-down strategic research framework within the U.S. federal government. It recommends a shift in leadership and funding to federal agencies with a clear mandate for oversight and for EHS research, and proposes a major increase in U.S. government spending over the next two years on highly relevant, targeted risk-based research to address critical research needs.

Link: Nanotechnology: A Research Strategy for Addressing Risk.

The Australian chapter of Friends of the Earth devotes the current issue of their magazine, Chain Reaction, to Nanotechnology risks.  From the editorial introduction:

It’s vital that we always question the bigger picture objectives of nanotechnology’s development when considering the potential for net social or environmental gain - nanotechnology’s development has so far been driven by corporate and military interests, and there is no indication that (without robust civil society intervention) its future path will be any different. [...]

[Governments] and corporations have so far failed to address pressing public interest issues surrounding nanotechnology. Ethical problems, the risks posed by nanotoxicity, socio-economic disruption and the erosion of democracy have to date been trivialised or ignored. Already firmly committed to nanotechnology, governments have been largely reluctant to initiate public engagement programmes; the little government communication on nanotechnology that has taken place has been firmly geared towards overcoming public resistance. Awareness about nanotechnology remains very low within both the general public and within many civil society organisations whose activities are directly affected by nanotechnology.

This issue aims to introduce the main issues surrounding nanotechnology, provide a brief overview of the key problems it raises, and serve as a call to action for its democratisation.

Link to pdf of the magazine: Friends of the Earth: Chain Reaction #97. (Via the pro-nanotech Center for Responsible Nanotechnology blog.)

I haven't read these yet, and am not very familiar with either Friends of the Earth or the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies.  At first glance they both look like high-quality contributions without a lot of spin.

SENS Challenge Results

Technology Review has posted the judges' decision.  I've just skimmed it so far, but basically the outcome is a mixed decision.  They think Estep et al.'s submission is the best, and de Grey's defense was not convincing, so they're giving them half the money.  On the other hand, they don't think Estep et al. disproved de Grey's program.  Here's a brief excerpt from Technology Review's article about the results:

In short, SENS is highly speculative. Many of its proposals have not been reproduced, nor could they be reproduced with today's scientific knowledge and technology. Echoing Myhrvold, we might charitably say that de Grey's proposals exist in a kind of antechamber of science, where they wait (possibly in vain) for independent verification. SENS does not compel the assent of many knowledgeable scientists; but neither is it demonstrably wrong.

Link: Technology Review: Is Defeating Aging Only a Dream?.

It seems to me like the judges were asking for way too much (and there's also a lengthy response from the winners to this effect).  The task was to explain why other scientists don't take de Grey seriously, not to exhaustively disprove every half-baked idea he has ever uttered.  I bet my dog too has ideas about medical science that exist in that "antechamber of science" waiting for verification, but I don't expect people to write a book in order to rebut him.  If you accept Estep's argument that de Grey is doing pseudoscience, then by definition you don't need to honor his work with a detailed analysis.

Update/more:  Okay, maybe I was hallucinating, but I could swear the "No one has won" subtitle was not on the Technology Review page when I read it last night.  It looks a little more decisive when presented that way.  Still, it seems to me the judges were lazy, both in the brevity of their summary (I have a sneaking suspicion that they didn't even read all the material) and in the depth of their analysis.  They write,

"At issue is the conflict between the scientific process and the ambiguous status of ideas that have not yet been subjected to that process."

I think that's incorrect, at least as I understand the point of this challenge.  The idea is not to discount undeveloped ideas or amateur science.  In fact, I doubt anyone denies Aubrey de Grey the right to do this research and publish it where he can.  The question is whether anyone should pay attention to him when he tries to hijack funding and misinform people with sensational claims.

The response from Estep et al. is worth reading in full.  A brief excerpt:

The summary of the judges' opinion states that SENS is not "demonstrably wrong," and Craig Venter says we have "not demonstrated that SENS is unworthy of discussion." It seems they suggest that SENS is highly speculative theorizing but not outside the bounds of legitimate science or engineering speculation. We strongly disagree with this assessment. Here are three primary attributes of SENS that differentiate it from the kind of nascent science or engineering described by the judges:

1. Direct contradiction of key claims by much available and generally accepted evidence.

2. Aubrey de Grey's pervasive falsehoods and misrepresentations.

3. Aubrey de Grey's demonstrated misunderstanding of relevant science and engineering.

These attributes might not make SENS "unworthy of discussion" by willfully uninformed immortalist dreamers, but they certainly make SENS "unworthy of learned debate" by people interested in real gerontological science and engineering.

And, if you haven't had enough yet, Aubrey de Grey and Preston Estep continue to debate in the comments to that article.

In any case, I think Technology Review should leave the radical life extension fantasies to the Omni-style magazines (and of course the web) and get on with more serious business.

Synthetic Biology Dangers

From David Rotman's nanotech blog at Technology Review:

Those interested in truly understanding the potential bioterror dangers of the emerging field of synthetic biology should make sure they read and keep updated on the discussion surrounding the Declaration of the Second International Meeting on Synthetic Biology. In this statement, which resulted from a conference attended by some 300 researchers, lawyers, and government policy types, experts in synthetic biology spelled out realistic concerns and suggested ways to go forward.

Also worth tracking is the controversy in the synthetic biology community over a newspaper article in The Guardian that led off with the teaser: "DNA sequences from some of the most deadly pathogens known to man can be bought over the Internet, the Guardian has discovered." A well-argued critique by Rob Carlson can be found at his website.

Link: Technology Review: Synthetic Bio Debate.

He goes on to say that Technology Review will feature more about the safety of synthetic biology on Wednesday.

Technology Review's SENS Challenge Submissions

On Friday, Technology Review posted articles from three scientists who have responded to the challenge to debunk Aubrey de Grey.  Here's their summary:

Last year, Technology Review announced a $20,000 prize for any molecular biologist who could demonstrate that a much-publicized prescription for defeating aging by biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey was "so wrong that it was unworthy of learned debate." The purpose of the challenge was to determine whether de Grey's proposals, called SENS (for Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence), was science or fantasy. Here are the three submissions that qualified for consideration according to the terms of the challenge. The results of the judges' deliberations (with their reasoning) will be announced on this website on July 11, 2006 and published in the July/August issue of Technology Review magazine.

Link: Technology Review: Is Defeating Aging Only a Dream?

Via IEET: SENS scrutinized.

I've just glanced at the articles, but plan to print them out to read later.  They do look fairly rigorous and well-written (as far as I can tell, knowing nothing about this field).  I also like that there are rebuttals by de Grey and counter-responses by the authors, so we get to see a bit of interaction, which looks rather heated/entertaining.

It's certainly good to have a scientific assessment of the nuts and bolts of de Grey's ideas, but I get the impression that Technology Review is distancing themselves from the earlier critiques by Sherwin Nuland and Jason Pontin, which were less about the science and more about the moral questions.  That type of critique is still valuable, and isn't superseded by the scientific one.