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Show treat virus-makers with ever-greatey harshness. More+ cently, we are begis ning to see some HOTLIST including myself, are Wehaveleamed to put quite i queasy hackersin ackers in jail. jail. Errant Errar biotechnologists Wil! soonjoin them. And we may hope that bythe time we eel) aol vere made to makelif how conie it's so hard to find the right gift fora gadget guy? ii Sears makesit easy with these handy gadgets your guy will love. PATER|:) Pils Ty Cg re Cosine) % $59.99 crattsman 5-pe. CreerAci ae ee Renie Mechanic's Tool Set - theultimate Go i) ya yw $19.99 Cae Leech Sa a ee Me Re MMe mae | ed see this? Y get SUI hg Cerreer aan Meeecie aed Pony SEARS resistant fabrics and composite materials in cars. Soon they will be used to make computers and storage devicesofextremely small size. Someof the long-anticipated “miracle” products have started to appearas well. One company is now makingself-cleaning windowglass; another is making a nanocrystal wound dressing with antibiotic and antiinflammatory properties. At the moment, nanotechnologyis primarily a materials technology, butits potential goes far beyond that. For decades there has been speculation about self-reproducing machines. In 1980, a NASA paperdiscussed several methods by which such machinescould be made. Now,at thestart ofthe 21st century, we are closerstill. Most expertspredictthatselfreproducing machinesare only a decade away. These are the people who say we mustprepare now fortheir arrival. It’s worth remembering that we already have some experience with man-made,selfreproducingentitiesreleased in the environment. Thefirst ofthese. of course. were computer viruses. Ourhistory with themis instructive. st Viruses Were created as a game— 1960s battle between mainframe programmers, each releasing a programinto the others’ mainframe computer. The game was limited tospecialists, but it was not long before hackers began toexperiment as well. The growth of computer networking made rapid worldwide transmission possible, and what wasoriginally a specialist’s interest became anintemational threat to information and global business Wehave lived for someyears with thefirst of these self-replicating entities, computer viruses. And we have learned, with time, to protect our networks more carefully and to wt the problemsofsel/ replicating biotech nology agents. Therecent report that modified maize genes now appear in native maize in Mex ico—despite laws againstit andefforts to preventit—is on!) the start of what we may expect to be 4 long journey to con trol this new techno ogy. The endresult cannot be doubted a tel) “Many people, about the consequences of this have the first nanomi nm technology, says K. Eric chines, we will have settled uponintern: tional controls to deal Drexler. with self-reproducing technologies. Atthe moment, there are essentially no laws dealing with this subject. Thefailure to look ahead ty worrisometo experts in thefield. In the words ofthe chief proponentofnanotechnology. K Eric Drexlerofthe ForesightInstitute: ‘There are manypeople, including myse! who are quite queasyabout the consequences ofthis technologyforthe future. We aretalk ing about changing so manythings that th. risk of societyhandling it poorlythroughlack of preparationis very large.” We knowthese machinesare coming. We know we will have to control them whenthe do. It is not tooearly to plan how wewill treat them, what we will allow in the way of re search and what wewill forbid. Historical!) humanbeings havea poorrecord of address ing the hazards of newtechnologiesasthey rive. We generallypass laws after the acc dents occur, But in the case ofself-reproducin machines, we simplycan’t wait. " Michael Crichton’s latest novel, “Prey” (Ha perCollins), arrives in bookstores tomorn PAGE 8 - NOVEMBER 24, 2002 - PARADE MAGAZINE |