SITE LOGO
|
Nano Immortality: Russian Approach. Part 1.The title of the book – "Nano Immortality…” may seem yet another trick like "nano youghurt” advertising. Nevertheless, the idea that nano technologies are the way to "practically limitless existence” and "non-ageing”, are far from being new. Some guesses of this can be already found in the earliest texts on nano technologies, and today the correlation between new technologies and the problem of practical immortality is the common ground for most experts. It is not surprising, as the fact that living cells are a kind of natural nano devices is absolutely evident. It is quite clear that to control this basis of life is possible only on the same nano principles.Another thing is ever more surprising: so far, very few researchers have made any attempts to seriously analyse social, economic and civilizational consequences of such a radical intervention into human nature, which is needed for the realization of the dream of "eternal life”. My works are an attempt to fill this gap and to give answers to the questions – what are we to expect of a new level of human knowledge and skills; what should we prepare ourselves for and be afraid of? It is important to understand that this interest is far from being academic: enormous scientific and material resources now involved into the nano tech development, convince of the reality of forecasts that limitless existence of an individual will become real not in hundreds or thousands of years but in the lifetime of the present generations. The matter is that the process of revealing secrets of biology started long ago, and science has already made considerably progress on this way. This progress is impeded by the lack of instruments adequate to study processes at the cells level. Without any doubt, nano technologies are our main hope in this field. However, elementary logic suggests that such an important event as the development of the technology of immortality cannot but provoke crucial changes in the world. In fact, having ceased being mortal, man will no longer be Homo Sapiens! Properly speaking, the matter in question is nothing less than the change of intelligent life on the Planet. In anticipation of these events, the world will start to rapidly change, and any changes bring forth social problems, tensions, conflicts and cataclysms. We shall not be able to avoid them this time. Moreover, this period of the Earth history is expected to be one of the most difficult and tragic – the influence of the "immortality factor” will be unprecedented. New technologies will give people invaluable deliverance of physical problems and sufferings, but we’ll have to pay corresponding price for it. Unfortunately, this price will be extremely great. V. Kishinets "Who does
not feed his army, will feed the others’ armies”. But to have one’s
own vision of the future is even more important – who does
not have philosophy of his own, will follow the others’ paths, what
we have been doing for almost one hundred years. And this brings about
discomfort and craving for the national cause, which the works by
Vladimir M. Kishinets, philosopher, engineer and sociologist does not
involve in any fashion. But they certainly possess a national scope:
while the western wise men state that the Earth’s history has already
ended with the victory of a pleasant in all respects liberalism, the
author argues that fascinating events are just beginning. And then we
will face all what is so dear to our hearts – the meaning of life,
universal goals, struggle, suffering and radiant future.
* * * «I have not been reading anything
so intelligent in content for a very long time. …Thank you!» – wrote in
the Internet the reader of V.M. Kishinets’ first monograph - «Nano
Sapiens, or Silence of the Skies» ( Within the framework of the
article we mostly did not alter the order of the presentation and titles
of the books’ parts. Instead of Introduction: Technologies are
Changing the World
Perhaps, for the first time the
nanotech ideas were publicly formulated by Nobel laureate R. Feynman in
his lecture at the luncheon at the American Physical Society in the end
of 1959. But they were so ahead of their time that were accepted more in
the style of a popular at the time «Scientists are joking» section and
then utterly forgotten. Only at the turn of the millennium this
technical philosophy was again brought to life under the name of
«nanotechnology». As an engineer, the author was deeply impressed by the
nanotech technological potential but as a sociologist, never joined
cries of admiration «Nanotechnologies will change the world!» typical in
such cases. The history shows: new technologies often entail not only
the wonders of science and technology but adverse social effects as
well. There is a wide range of examples testifying to the fact –
extensive traffic jams due to fine new cars, the Luddite wars caused by
an innocuous hosiery machine, etc. So what are we to expect from the
nanotech – a new technical paradigm the implementation of which is
evaluated by many experts as a real technical revolution? The search for answers to these
questions led the author to overwhelming findings: the impact of the new
technologies would be phenomenal and lead today’s good old human world
first «to a point beyond which there is a reality quite unlike the
current one, the reality of another economy, other values, another life,
another civilization…». CHAPTER ONE.
Hopes
A new book
of V.M.Kishinets continues «the analysis of human, humanitarian
consequences of new technologies’ development, primarily of
nanotechnologies». The apparent high specialism of the topic is
misleading – very soon you begin to understand that it is not a book «on
the wonders of engineering» (engineering itself is given little place
there), but rather a new theory, an integrated worldview where, as in
real life, intellect and economics, psychology and inhabited worlds,
philosophy and politics are intricately interwoven. Moreover, the author
with commendable modesty calls his work a logical model, «enabling us
to better conceive a little fragment of an immense mosaic of the world».
We would add for ourselves that this fragment is extremely valuable, as
it is nothing but a part of the mechanism of intelligent life
development, a model that enables us to perceive our extraordinary
future and to come closer to understanding the nature of the laws
governing our existence. All the readers of the «Nano
Sapiens…» will find much known information in the first part of the new
book – its first chapter is dedicated to the already mentioned theory of
transition, without which it is impossible to
understand the second part of the book, where global socio-economic
issues and political problems of the pre-transition period are being
analyzed. A Few Words on Technology
What is nanotechnology? The
following definition is put forward in this paper: «a collective term
for various ways of manipulating individual nano-sized objects (a
nanometer – a billionth part of a meter or millionth part of a
millimeter), down to molecules or atoms». A nanometer (nm) is the
measure of the atomic molecular world: the size of a molecule of olive
oil is about 1.7 nm, of a molecule of water – 0.2 nm. The size of a
ribosome, one of the working parts of a living cell amounts to 10-20 nm. Even
R.Feynman in the above-mentioned speech said that in principal, nothing
forbids to create any objects «atom by atom». But what is the way to do
it? How are we to grasp a single atom that resembles a solid ball only
in a picture in textbooks? How to put it in the proper place with the
proper (incredibly high) precision? Moreover, how are we to detect this
atom, because with a size smaller than the length of light waves, it is
not visible at all? These problems seemed unsolvable a few decades ago.
Even today many people would be surprised to know that the necessary
technologies have already existed for over 20 years. Wonderful
instruments called atomic force microscopes, which, however, have
nothing in common with conventional microscopes, are able not only to
«see» single atoms but to move them with surprising precision. These
sophisticated instruments (by the way, Russia is in the first ranks of
the world manufacturers of these devices), were invented as early as in
the middle of the 80s by Swiss physicists G.Binnig and G.Rorer. It is
with their assistance that works are being carried out today in hundreds
of nanotech laboratories and scientific centers. How can such an atom-by-atom
production be useful in practice? First of all, we can produce
structural materials not found in nature, with unusual properties,
super-hard, super-light, super-plastic, super-solid and super-pure.
Varying in structure and form, single-piece and so extremely durable, of
any fantastic shape, made out of any now hard-to-treat materials. The
atom-by-atom production provides a significant progress in electronics,
aviation, energy, in many other fields of science and technology and
undoubtedly enables us to make a huge technological leap. There are such
projects as an individual nano-factory in the kitchen that produces
anything using specialized programs, from a new swimming suit to a
mobile phone or a replica of some museum brooch. It would be something
like a three-dimensional printer, the size of a microwave oven,
«printing» any objects atom by atom. At the place of production in
full silence, without shrilling cutters and splashes of hot metal, such
devices would be manufacturing the most complicated components of
unprecedented strength and precision. They would be able to make what is
impossible today, for example, to combine in a single design, with no
adhesives and metal welding, metal, glass and rubber parts to glaze a
cockpit. Such technologies would reduce the weight of future aircraft,
increasing their reliability and efficiency. But still it would be
hardly possible to notice any differences from today’s aircraft. And the
improvement of flight characteristics would not be so radical.
Nano-trains, nano-cars and the more nano-ships would not be
fundamentally different. In general, all the machines needed to satisfy
basic significant human wants have already been invented. In future
their improvement is possible but principally new needs will not arise,
so it is difficult to assume that something may appear in the area of
machinery «to turn our world over». Some time ago, the invention of
sewage and the WC was a breakthrough in the field of hygiene and
comfort. Today you can buy an electronic WC with heating, automatic
control and a built-in musical center. From a technical point of view it
is thousand times more complicated than an old toilet, but it is hardly
adequate to consider it revolutionary. The use of the nanotech in the
weapons area also does not promise any revolutions, for example, the
creation of something more advanced than today’s rocket and nuclear
weapons. As to the improvement of individual parameters, it certainly is
the usual practice. (In this area, however, there is a
problem that will require special attention in due time, – some
particularly troublesome citizens would have the possibility to «print»
bullets and pistols, or even the parts of an atomic bomb in some garage.
This new headache is a special issue, which requires a special
consideration in the near future). In general, the author is of the
opinion that in the area familiar to us, that is in a surrounding
machine civilization – machinery – the nanotech will be another, though
extremely successful stage of the production and technical progress. Does this
mean that the new technologies will affect our life insignificantly? On
the contrary, their effect will be immense. Nanorobot
Imagine that instead of a mobile
phone a nanoprinter «printed» a special device from individual atoms,
which, however, has accessories for movement, actuators («hands»), an
in-built computer, means of communication with other such devices and
can work on operator commands or by means of internal programs. Such
devices – «nanorobots» - (or nobots, as the author calls them) are the
second basic idea of the nanotech after the «atom printer». Nobots can
be very small and able to perform useful tasks in a variety of media:
clean the Earth from pollution, assist people in extracting minerals,
repair the inside of engines, and perform a great many other functions
that today seem absolutely fantastic. You do not need to have a very
rich imagination to understand how useful they can be. However, for human beings it is
the development of biological nanorobots (bionobots) i.e. robots
designed to act within the living bodies, would be of utmost importance
and could radically change their destiny. Placed inside the human body,
they can, for example, remove cholesterol deposits in blood vessels,
cure thousands of diseases, making necessary operations, carry out
necessary cosmetic changes, etc, doing all that in an accurate, quiet
and invisible way, without any blood and pain. Even more advanced robots
will be able to penetrate inside a living cell and «operate» the very
basis of life – a molecule of the DNA, thereby eliminating faults in a
human organism at their initial stage. This will mark a victory over
diseases, the possibility to treat mental disorders, defects of
character, to enhance intellectual abilities, memory, etc. For humanity
this is of more importance than the most advanced machines. Life is
Natural Nanotech
Such nanomedicine perspectives
have a substantial basis. Today we become aware with surprise that in
nature the biological nanotech has been existing for billions of years,
that any living organism is a community of vast numbers of living cells
and each of them is a real natural nano-factory. The analogy is
surprisingly accurate: in the cell as in real production there are main
drawings – molecules of the DNA, working drawings – the mRNA, and
industrial robots – ribosomes, collecting protein compounds from the
working drawings, and other amazing nanomechanizms. It is clear that you
can influence effectively the work of nanodevices only at the same
nano-level. And biological nanorobots seem to be a very adequate tool
for this purpose. But the bionobots themselves are
not so new. The enormous diversity of biological nanoinstruments –
bacteria, viruses – can not only operate within living organisms, but
also interact with the DNA of cells. The idea to have micro-assistants
inside your body is also not new – there is a mass of micro-organisms
inside us, without which we will perish. There are no basic restrictions
on the development of useful artificial micro-devices – nobots. By the
way, they may not necessarily be hardware, but also protein,
hardware-protein, and even a sort of some «tamed» viruses. But certainly
any nanodevices are nothing but instruments. To intervene successfully
in the cell, knowledge of its operation is required and today
substantial knowledge in the field has already been accumulated. Many of
us, perhaps, have heard about the progress in studying the human
genome. But few people know that both individual elements of nanorobots –
manipulators, propulsion, means of communications and management – and
ways of their application have already been developed in the world for a
number of years. Connecting instruments - nanorobots, with the
knowledge of the cell will give us powerful nanobiology and
nanomedicine. Invulnerable
Infinite Existence
It is not hard to understand that
by developing the nanomedicine, people can not only treat diseases but
also get the perspective to stay forever young, to conquer the genetic
mechanisms of aging, this «tender murderer» of all living. In other
words, if people cope with aging, they will become virtually…immortal.
And today experts do not see any fundamental restrictions to do so. But the paradox is that, even
defeating aging, we will not solve the problem of our mortality, because
the living protein bodies are deplorably vulnerable. They are killed by
a very insignificant mechanical impact, instability of temperature,
tiny doses of radiation, because of the lack of oxygen, loss of blood,
etc. Transport accidents, fires, terrorist attacks, maniacs, wars,
poisons and many other aspects are a constant threat to human life.
Would any of us refuse to have a terminator body, which does not burn in
the fire and does not sink in the water? Therefore, creating the
nanomedicine, man, no doubt, will not only cure diseases, but also carry
out the most active «modernization» of his body in an effort to make it
safer and more invulnerable. And on this way there already exist
theoretical research works of the most radical «conversion» of the human
body using the same nanotech. The analysis shows that to solve
the problem of vulnerability and along with it the problem of real
immortality is not possible within the protein bodies – this material is
very fragile. There is only one way out – to gradually step aside from
biology and replace it with hardware - this is no coincidence that in
science fiction films invulnerable creatures are not made of meat and
bones but of solid or liquid metal. There is no doubt that such attempts
will begin as soon as man get the first nanorobots. Humans very
successfully replaced the horse by cars, so who can forbid us to develop
a stronger, invulnerable, everlasting new body for ourselves? And
indeed, man, who will never accept death with resignation, simply has no
choice. And it is the nanotech that will become the tool which will
enable us to do it within a relatively short historical period. Without
any doubt, in a foreseeable historical period, intelligent life on our
Planet will receive a new, everlasting and invulnerable material carrier
of our personality, worthy of the beings possessing the gift of
thinking, instead of our mortal, fragile bodies. A person, acquiring
power over his own body, will cease to be its slave and become its
master. The End of Man
However, it is known that one has
to pay for everything in life. Therefore, it is no surprise that the
result of these human metamorphoses would be quite unexpected: in the
long run, man will be transformed into virtually invulnerable eternal
being but in the process he will totally cease to be… human. "The use of
nanorobots for medical purposes which is forecasted to come in 10-15
years, will initiate a transition of intelligent life on the Earth from
the current natural-biological form of homo sapiens into a technological
form – nano sapiens. Intelligent life will immediately
finish its bio-evolutionary stage and will further on exist in totally
new physical forms.” This is evidently the central phrase of the book
related to its most crucial idea that can be termed the "hypothesis or
theory of the Transition”. Nano sapiens and others
This shocking forecast is based
on the premise of the inevitability of radical technological
redevelopment of human organism: the possible substitution of blood with
a variety of special nano devices, bone tissue – with metal, the
implantation of nanocomputers and communication means, etc. This process
will result in the transition from man as an evolution product to a
technological self-regulating being, the transfer of a natural faculty
of thinking from homo sapiens physical body into a totally different
physical form that the author has termed nano sapiens
(NS). It is important to note that
people who have lived until this Transition, will not
disappear or perish but just transform into a new state
in accordance with the essential principle of continuity of
intelligence. If we consider a human body as an apartment and a
human soul as its inhabitant, the shift process would be similar to "a
complete capital reconstruction of the apartment without resettlement”.
In the result, the apartment will radically change. And though the
personality will not undergo repairs, we know how drastically an
individual can be transformed in these new conditions, therefore, the
changes of the personality will also be inevitable in the Transition
process. As a consequence, NS will become a
totally new being. Our successor will not resemble us in any way,
either in his appearance – if it is appropriate to consider appearance
in our current sense, or in his interior life. Here another analogy is
appropriate – the Transition as the transformation of a
pupa into a butterfly: a butterfly is the result of a pupa’s existence
but has nothing in common with it. As in the Biblical Paradise, NS
will not have either a wife, or a husband, or children, family or
relatives. No such concepts as work, rest, sleeping, food, money,
cinema, books or art will exist. They won’t need clothes, dwellings,
organic food and oxygen. NS will not create artificial environment for
their life like men, adopting their bodies (material carriers of their
personalities) to external environment, that is much more effective from
the energy point of view. They will need less external technical
devices. There will be no wars, diseases and sufferings in their world.
We can list these differences endlessly. But it should be mentioned that
they won’t have bodies in the usual sense. According to this logic,
they will be substituted by some dispersed structures. A major difference from man will
be that NS won’t have any instincts. They will purposedly "switch off”
this control system, thus delivering themselves of the irrational burden
of "human bondage”. It goes without saying that anything that is caused
by instincts – aggression, criminality, violence, states, nations,
armies and boundaries will cease to exist. The NS world will differ from
the human world more radically than "the organisms of the age of the
origin of life differ from modern man”. They will have only one thing in
common – the faculty of thinking. Still, we should in no case
consider nano sapiens as some real being. It is just a symbol for the
next (and not final) stage of the intelligent life development,
succeeding man. This next stage will involve the realization of the
utility principle: "in Nature many mortal beings are needed to sustain
life activity, and only one immortal will suffice”, therefore, one
immortal being is in all senses more optimal than billions of individual
species. Nature is ever striving for optimality and in the foreseeable
future individual NS will integrate into a single immortal
being-civilization. This new self or, if you will, a new stage of
intelligent life existence, the author called "mega sapiens”. So far, it is extremely difficult
to conceive the outlines of mega sapiens but one of the consequences of
his birth will be a considerable reduction of the Earth civilization
energy consumption – one mega sapiens will need thousand times less
energy than the present multibillion population of the Planet. Objective Needs
In order to embrace the idea of
the Transition from a psychological point of view, it is by no means
unimportant to conceive that this is a way to provide the survival of
the Earth intelligent life that is now completely defenseless to natural
disasters. It is only due to lucky chance that homo sapiens still exist
on the planet where a lot of living beings have already disappeared.
But luck cannot last forever. It is unwise to think that our rockets,
computers, houses and cars can defend us against planetary changes or
disasters in any way. We should develop principally new means of
physical protection, considering that now and in the foreseeable future
we are not able to oppose Nature. For this purpose, the
Transition may become a totally unique possibility. It should be taken into
consideration that Humanity does not have any historical future because
of our inherent extensive way of development. The Earth resources cannot
endure ever growing consumption. The idea of our possible expansion to
other planets also seems rather doubtful from an ethical point of view
and totally unreal in practice. In this case the Transition
also appears a quite adequate solution of the problem. Therefore, there is a wide range
of various arguments and technological prerequisites of the transition
from a biological stage of development of intelligent life on the Earth
to a technological one. For millions of years life on our Planet has
been evolving in accordance with the evolution laws irrespective of
living beings’ will. But we are soon to face a moment when intelligent
life reaches such a technological level that it will become able to
change itself in its own interests. And this will be a logical,
objective and inevitable stage of any intelligent life development. The
Universal Law or Why Heavens are Silent
We can consider the
Transition as a result of man’s struggle for the improvement of its
existence. However, this aspiration cannot be only a human
characteristic - it should be inhering in all the intelligences in the
Universe, compelling them to develop technologies, like the Earthmen. At
a certain stage, any intelligence (we are not exception) invents
nanotechnologies and becomes able to create a new physical body for
itself. But physical laws are the same in the whole Universe, so an
optimal form of this new body should be similar. It is the evidence that
any intelligent life, notwithstanding its origin, transforms into a
totally new physical form that we term "mega sapiens”. Thus, the overall
conclusion is as follows: a transition from an evolutionary-biological
form to a technological one is a universal law for all
the intelligent life. This premise is further
substantiated by… a failure of SETI – the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence Program. This well-known program
is based on an anthropomorphic idea that more ancient and developed
civilizations who, as estimated, exist in multitude in the Universe,
should gradually master surrounding interplanetary space, consuming more
and more energy in the process. It is impossible not to observe such
astral engineering activities from the Earth. But the long-term SETI
observations have demonstrated that there are no such activities in the
Universe. However, this paradox is easily solved by the
Transition theory that states that, having reached the
nanotechnologies level, any intelligent civilization drastically reduces
energy consumption and economic activities. The silence of the Universe
is accounted for by the fact that alien civilizations have already
passed the Transition point (which is in no way in
contradiction with calculations) and, not being of biological nature
anymore, do not need either space expansion, or huge amounts of energy.
It is also clear that they do not need communications in a human sense,
at least via radio. Therefore, the silence of the Universe is, at a
minimum, an indirect proof in favor of the Transition
theory. Nano
Revolutionism
So, nanotechnologies are the most
effective tools for the solution of the problems related to our
biological nature. So far, few people are aware of this, but when this
idea wins recognition, it will radically change the motivation for the
development of nano technologies, making them more humanitarian problems
related to the preservation of human life and health, than prospective
technical-and-economic projects. Still, it is this very
task that is the quintessence of humanism. Therefore, the rejection of
the nanotechnologies development by any state means a political
alienation of this society from the solution of the most urgent human
task – concern for human life. Nevertheless, it is likely that efforts
for the development of nanotechnologies will be eventually taken by the
most energetic people, as people are not willing to die and they will do
their utmost to stop suffering caused by our imperfect bodies. "Not
everybody will like the idea of the Transition, but
they dislike death even more”. So, what does the nano revolution
imply? Like E. Tsiolkovsky, the author puts forward the following
aphorism: "A human body is the cradle of intelligence, but we cannot
stay in the cradle forever”. Nowadays we are our bodies’ slaves that
have to serve them in full obedience. In future, we will become our own
masters. That is why nanotechnologies are so revolutionary. And this
revolution is just around the corner. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
