Molecular Nanotechnology - Entropy

The Foresight Guidelines on Molecular Nanotechnology start by saying that the term "molecular nanotechnology" (MNT) refers to the ability to program matter with molecular precision, and scale it to three-dimensional products of arbitrary size.

This developing technology presents an unprecedent new set of technical and economic opportunities. The opportunities include, among other things, the possibility of widespread material abundance for the Earth´s people and the development of revolutionary new techniques in medicine. And they stress: along with these new capabilities come new risks, and new responsibilities.

So if you remember the preceding article (read here: "Thermodynamical Models of Evolution"), James Fournier alerts that the problem, both for humans and other organisms, has always been how to extract as much useful work from a potential energy gradient as possible, and this leads to a crossroads: one way to do this is to increase the magnitude of energy flow across the gradient, which can lead to increased entropy production; the other way is to increase the (thermodynamic) efficiency of its use, that is, maximize the work extracted (what is highly optimized in natural systems) and therefore, by definition, minimize the entropy production.

The Guidelines´ recommendations say that continued research and education are needed to create a shared understanding and sufficient knowledge base on the entire set of MNT development and risk management issues that must be addressed. While discussion of guidelines can be starting these days, the scientific and technical community will continue to evolve its understanding of the issues.

These rather dry considerations are very important when time comes to deal with the aforementioned new approaches to medicine, and mainly with the development of energy efficient and zero emission manufacturing and transportation. We shall be dealing no more with oil-fired boilers and self-winding watches, so we must watch our step very carefully.

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