Meeting notice: The 08-17-99 meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the Royal East (782 Main St., Cambridge), a block down from the corner of Main St. and Mass Ave. If you're new and can't recognize us, ask the manager. He'll probably know where we are. Suggested topic(s): Nanotechnology and the Gentrification of Outer Space For many years those of us for whom the emptiness of the night sky is a challenge have assumed that the colonization of space would spring from the natural urge to express such drives as curiosity, the thirst for adventure, and the eagerness, apparently innate in the species, to explore the unknown. Many still feel this way. However, it has been obvious since Pathfinder that there is no place that humans are likely to go that machines will not have arrived at decades earlier, and therefore no place that will not be as familiar to those interested in it as, say, the San Francisco Bridge is to most Americans. It might be argued that there will be some interest in visiting a place 'physically' or 'in reality', but these are metaphysical terms whose pragmatic definitions are arbitrary and volatile. Advances in virtual reality and sensory extension technologies may well raise the issue of what 'physical' and 'reality' even mean in these contexts. The familiarity problem is particularly intense if we think of space colonization in terms of orbiting habitats, since one point in offplanet space looks very much like another, at least to a casual glance. In sum, the appeal to the spirit of adventure suggests a small market and therefore a weak impulse to colonization. This is somewhat depressing. A second rationale is that space will serve as a safety valve and outlet for those feeling oppressed by their society. This argument has the virtue of referring to a driver well established in history; many emigration decisions have been made for just such a reason. Further, it is easy to see world society falling into a repressive local minima and never climbing out; if peace is the upside of unified societies, the downside is an unchallenged collapse to sterile mannerism. Something much like this happened in and to China in the early 15th century; had it not, the inhabitants of North America would probably be speaking Mandarin now. So world society may be very well be worth escaping from in a few hundred years. However, it is not clear that escape will be possible -- the world state might be able to afford faster spaceships than malcontents for quite some time -- and in any case the fraction of the population that minds being oppressed is clearly quite small. (40% of the US population thinks the government ought to approve stories before the media can carry them.) Once again we seem to be left with only a weak motive to take the big step. A third rationale grounds the colonization of outer space not on the drive to explore the unknown or the thirst for freedom but something far deeper and more general in the species: the urge to accumulate stuff. Life in space has several advantages to offer a determined consumer: the attic is infinitely extensible, at least in terms of anything like current appetites; energy is abundant, especially at lower solar orbits; and there are lots of atoms floating around in various forms, including dust. So you can make a lot of stuff, you can keep it around, and you can power it all. What else is there? It is at any rate trivial to draw up a list of features that would dispose of a (say) billion cubic feet easily -- a seriously interesting home rafting experience could take most of it -- and leave us eager for more. One interesting aspect of the consumer path to colonization is that it is the only one that has nanotechnology at its heart. The other models of colonization would benefit from nanotechnology but they do not absolutely require it. The gentrification of outer space is unthinkable without nanotechnology and indeed, given nanotechnology, the malling of the stellar reaches is probably inevitable. Fred Hapgood <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> NanoNews David Sowsy has put together a neat resource at www.nanorevolution.com. Contains a news subscription service and FAQ and many other features. He is soliciting buildout suggestions, so cruise by and see if anything comes to mind. The NSF has just announced funding for a Nanotechnology Center to be based at Cornell (but supporting efforts in several institutions). Research programs will include: -- Microanalysis of biomolecules: miniaturized sensor technologies to detect and analyze small numbers of molecules in various matrices with high spatial resolution. This will allow the study of detailed functioning and response of cells and biomolecules to wide-ranging stimuli and also facilitate massive parallelism in analytic processes. -- Molecular templates: fabricate patterned structures or controlled arrays of molecules for use as tools in investigating and controlling structural features and function of biological components and processes, as well as the interaction between specific molecular components in biological complexes. -- Selective molecular filtration: separating complex mixtures of molecules, sorting and then identifying the molecules and processes. -- Sparse cell isolation: isolating sparse cells from large volumes of fluids containing unspecified cells, based on parameters such as size, deformability, optical properties and surface chemistry. -- Powering nanomachines with molecular motors: By converting the chemical energy of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) molecules into mechanical energy for biological molecular motors, researchers hope to develop implantable probes, drug-delivery systems and nanomachines that mimic biological functions, such as active valves in microfluid devices. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Announcement Archive: http://world.std.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage.html. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> If you wish to subscribe to this list (perhaps having received a sample post via a forward) send the string 'subscribe nsg' to majordomo@world.std.com. Unsubs follow the same model. Discussion should be sent to nsg- d@world.std.com. Note: you must be subscribed to nsg-d to post to it and you must post from the address from which you subscribed. (An anti- spam thing.) Comments, petitions, and suggestions re list management to: nsg@pobox.com