|
||||||
|
Here at Foresight our main focus is on longer-term technologies such as molecular manufacturing, but we keep an eye on what’s arriving along the nearer-term pathways as well. In 2007 I attended a workshop on “Nanotechnology for Chemical and Biological Defense” and the proceedings volume of that meeting, with the same name, is now available. [...] Sonia Arrison over at TechNewsWorld takes on the issues of genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and steering innovation toward responsible uses: For many years, Foresight has been pointing out that nanotechnology will be used for surveillance. Now Kevin Mitnick makes a long-term prediction on nanosurveillance. An excerpt: Jamais Cascio offers four nanotechnology policy scenarios over at CRN, looking at options resulting from two axes: centralized vs. decentralized, and precautionary vs. proactionary. In their current issue, the folks who usually focus on nuclear war take a look ahead to nanotech war, via a book review by CRN’s Mike Treder of the book Military Nanotechnology: Potential Applications and Preventive Arms Control by Jürgen Altmann. Registration for Foresight’s Nov. 3-4 Vision Weekend focused on nanotechnology and other advanced technologies — traditionally restricted to Foresight Senior Associates — is being opened to the general public this year as an experiment. Space is limited and participants are advised to register very soon. This year as an experiment we are opening up a subset of seats at the Nov. 3-4 Foresight Vision Weekend to members of special groups such as Nanodot readers. The event is usually open only to Foresight Senior Associate members: Registration is now open to new and renewing Senior Associate members; cost for Senior Associate members to attend the meeting is $65. Space is limited. Join us! —Christine We are very pleased to announce the dates and location of the 2007 Foresight Vision Weekend, to be held November 3-4 in at Yahoo! headquarters here in Silicon Valley. Keith Powers brings to our attention a claim that the German government has started collecting the chemical profiles of individuals, to be used for political purposes. From The Register in the UK: In the long term, we’ll need effective security techniques for advanced nanotechnology-based systems. This will take a while to figure out, so come help us do it at an upcoming open source conference, Penguicon: The Institute for the Future, in a UK-funded study published on the Stanford website, presents eleven outlooks for nanotechnology over the next 50 years: A new book by German physicist Jürgen Altmann of Dortmund University looks at Military Nanotechnology: Potential Applications and Preventive Arms Control (Routledge, 2006). Both near-term and long-term applications are examined. From the abstract: Nanotech Takes on Homeland Terror is the title of a piece by Josh Wolfe and Dan van den Bergh over at Forbes.com. It describes current and near-term applications for nanotech in detecting biowarfare agents and in protecting soldiers: Red Herring reports on complaints by U.S. Senator Wyden : “ ‘Just discussing export controls in our country, while Europe and Asia are making progress, could have a chilling effect on U.S. leadership in this area,’ Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) told NanoBusiness Conference attendees over cocktails early this week in New York City. The [...] In case you missed attending this in person (as I did), check out the transcript from the Council on Foreign Relations discussion on nanotechnology, including George Atkinson, science and technology adviser to the secretary of state, U.S. Department of State: “Do we need every wise nanotechnologist working here in the United States? I think my [...] Mike Treder writes Center for Responsible Nanotechnology March 31, 2005 Molecular Manufacturing: Step by Step Advanced nanotechnology — molecular manufacturing — will bring benefits and risks, both on an unprecedented scale. A new paper published by the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology suggests that development of molecular manufacturing can be an incremental process from today's capabilities, and may not be as distant as many believe. "Molecular manufacturing has always had great promise, but as a single challenge, it has seemed intimidating. Breaking the problem down into stages shows that it can be achieved step by step," says Chris Phoenix, CRN?s Director of Research and author of the paper, "Developing Molecular Manufacturing." More… � Three interesting articles appeared today on /. related to security which bear some thought when we think about nanotechnology. The first involves the ChoicePoint Identity Theft problem. This involves perhaps 40,000 people in California and more than 110,000 people nationwide (in the U.S.) whose complete personal information has been lifted from an integrated identity database maintained by ChoicePoint. The scary part seems to be that they weren't checking their own customers with respect to their trustability — they were selling the information in the database to allow their customers to confirm that J.Q. Public could actually be trusted and weren't doing that themselves. The second, involves good old Microsoft warning the the next generation of Windows spyware inserts itself into the kernel using "rootkits". This potentially effectively negates all normal virus scanning software. Its a case of the virus scanning software asking "Do you have any viruses installed here?" and the system responding, "No sir, absolutely not sir, we wouldn't even consider retaining spyware, malware, viruses or worms on this system, sir!" Microsoft has some proposed solutions — boot up a copy of windows from a CD-ROM and compare the binaries to make sure they exactly match the binaries on your hard drive. And of course that is likely to happen because as we all know everyone in the world is running with the most recent MS security patches installed… And finally, there is the nice little comment about the T-Mobile web site that allowed one cracker (Nick Jacobsen) to log into the T-Mobile web site (details) and not only download lots of information about the secret service agents investigating him but he also managed to access Paris Hilton's account and some of the pictures she had been taking on her phone. Oh I am predicting such a bright future for nanosecurity experts… |
|
|||||
|
Copyright © 2010 the Foresight Institute - All Rights Reserved |
||||||
