Alexander Yeh, Week 9, Nanobots Already Exist

During the lecture by James Gimzewski, one of the ideas that stuck with me was that nanotechnology allows the feasibility of much more than before, so much more that it cannot be though of through the usual perspective of scientists but must be seen through the perspective of artists. While the possibility of what can be done is far less bounded when perceived by artists, the reality is that the current artwork is not taking advantage of this.

I believe that with all the work done by scientists involving manually manipulating the position of molecules is esentially useless. We can easily image the vast possibilities of what can be done with manipulating individual molecules. The only barrier of realizing these possibilities is a manufacturing process capable of such manipulation on a large scale.

However, there is already an industry which manufactures trillions of nano-scale devices daily. In the electronics industry, the feature size of integrated circuits is approaching within the next several months 40 nanometers. The manufacturing challenges of creating transistors in this scale are already being tackled by engineers in this field. Molecular size limits the industry trend of downscaling of feature size, demanding that new technologies and new methods of manufacturing be develops to keep up with the standard trend of downscaling stated by Moore’s law. Moore’s Law is the pacesetter of the industry, stating that the feature size will be halved every approximately 18 months. While the feature size of integrated circuits has not been sub 100nm for long, nanotechnology has existed in the semiconductor industry for decades. In the article “Nanotechnology and the End of Moore’s Law” by David Bishop found at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/112142534/PDFSTART , Bishop tells how for some time in VLSI CMOS technology, the technology for semiconductor manufacturing, individual components have been on the nanoscale.

While many expect a huge paradigm shift with nanotechnology, I expect that the reality will still be based on old ideas applied to new venues. This scale of VLSI manufacturing is translates to mechanical devices with micro electrical mechanical systems (mems), described at the site http://www.memsnet.org/mems/what-is.html . Both VLSI and mems rely of the same chemical, optical, and mechanical processes for their manufacturing. People do not realize that nanobots already exist, just not at the complexity imagined by science fiction. David Bishop states that, “While in a decade or more much of the standard approach will be nanoscale, it will not feel like a revolution, but like an evolution—though rapid, it will still be an analytic continuation of what has gone on before.”

Thus, the work done by artists involving the individual manipulation of carbon monoxide molecules to create words is much like the GFP bunny by Eduardo Kac. It is a technology that has been around for a very long time, does not contribute anything to the scientific community, and does little to expose the public to the cutting edge of technology. However, unlike the GFP bunny, it is being replicated many times over. Imagine a GFP chicken, a GFP goose, and a GFC duck all created as artwork.