Meeting notice: 10-20-98; 7:30 pm. Until further notice we will be meeting at the Royal East (782 Main St., Cambridge, a block down from the corner of Main St. and Mass Ave. Suggested Topic: Nanotech and social regulation Historically societies have regulated social activities with three instruments: laws, torts, and reputation. Nanotech might have the interesting property of being largely invisible to all three. The apparent consequence is that as society learns how to control ever-smaller units of space, time, and mass, it appears likely to lose control over itself, as control is usually defined. This might be, but is not obviously, a good thing. It is a commonplace that NT poses substantial problems for regulators, both because the information phase of the activity can be encrypted and the fabrication end takes place behind closed doors. While in the extreme case regulators can send microsurveillance machines behind those doors, in reality significant advantages always lie with those who have control over the local terrain. For instance, the local owner retains physical control over the degree of atmospheric processing that takes place in situ. It is not hard to imagine NT-derived air processing technologies that would sweep a room down to particle sizes much smaller than any possible, let alone likely, device. It is less often observed that NT subverts the tort system as well, but that seems to be the case. End-fabrication will have been done under the supervision of the user, presumably the plantiff, while the original design will have come from companies that will probably look like most software or design companies today: small and transient, and therefore unlikely to have the depth of pocket needed to finance a serious level of tort-inspired regulation. (Firms might also be located differentially in jurisdictions offering protection against such actions.) While consumer injury suits, etc., will probably not disappear altogether, it is hard to imagine the typical class action suit taking root in this environment. The third possibility is a regime of reputation and endorsement, perhaps somewhat on the model of movies and popular music. While imaginable, these examples do not offer a world of comfort. No one would want the degree of quality assurance found in contemporary popular music to be generalized to, for instance, pharmaceuticals. A universe characterized by the rapid introduction of highly innovative products by large numbers of small transient firms distributed around the globe, which is close to the fantasy of the NT industrial sector, is not well adapted to control through reputation. We do not need to wait for self-replicating assemblers to experience the effect. Any increase in control over smaller units of time, space, and mass appears to subvert regulatry regimes (by increasing the degrees of freedom of the end users). The spam and viruses thriving in the internet illustrate the point. 3-D printers that can handle multiple materials, a toy that might start arriving in the home in a decade or so, will make the point with the world of atoms. When you make your own ladders, who will pay any attention to the Consumer Products Safety Commission? When you find you built a ladder around a ladder virus, a design that craftily waits until you are balanced on the top step and then collapses, whom will you sue? Nanonews: State of the art in brain implants: http://world.std.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage/implants Announcement Archive: http://world.std.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage.html. hapgood@pobox.com