Question 1: Tell us about yourself. What is your background, and what current projects are you working on?

I work on a question that increasingly preoccupies scientists and skeptics alike: Why risk it? Why build risky technologies that may get out of hand or into the wrong hands? In my research, I've found a compelling motivation that may inspire us to take such risks: We may have to use such technologies to help us cope with nature's big surprises, that we're only now discovering. With that in mind, my work describes how the convergence of nanotechnology, genetics, robotics, and artificial intelligence is revolutionizing our lives.

As part of that I'm working on nanoecology: the interface between nanotechnology and ecology. An example is nanobacteria--newly discovered nanosized life forms that seem to cause illnesses ranging from heart disease to kidney stones. This vast new area is transforming medicine.

I've also begun helping the World Transhumanist Association to develop variants for what the "enhanced human" might look like.

My works on these and other subjects are published by The Futurist, Futures Research Quarterly, Small Times magazine, and the National Post. The Futurist will be publishing one of my related articles in its January/February 2003 issue. The New York Times and International Herald Tribune have cited my work also. Financial Times Books, London, Die Zeit and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany, Water Environment & Technology in the U.S., and "O Globo" in Brazil published my earlier works.

I don't just write about technology though. For years I managed scientists who developed water purification for public health protection, in co-operation with the European Commission and multinational research labs in Brazil and China. My academic background is communications--which I find that scientists are short on. I earlier co-founded an international television network and produced some award-winning documentaries. Then I integrated that experience with science.

Question 2: Your book: Our Molecular Future, describes a future world utterly transformed by molecular nanotechnology. Yet some scientists doubt that we will ever have Eric Drexler's molecular assemblers. How confident are you that full-blown Drexlerian nanotech is coming?

Carnegie Mellon's head of Robotics Dr. Hans Moravec aptly pointed out that the progress of information processing is logarithmic instead of linear, therefore the move to molecular assembly is accelerating accordingly. Moreover, as Stanford Professor Richard P. Feynman said decades ago, the laws of physics do not stop us from assembling machines at the molecular level. When we put these ideas together it is reasonable to say that self assembling machines may soon be feasible.

Just a few years ago, some scientists said that self-replication--a precondition for full blown Drexlerian nanotech--was decades off. Yet just this year self-organizing materials were invented. Skepticism remains high though. For example a Publisher's Weekly reviewer referred to a forecast in my book--that we may have cars and clothes changing color with the flick of the hand--as more science fiction than science. Yet, shortly after the review was published, the U.S. army began developing nanoscale coatings for armor with precisely such characteristics.

This gray area between what is "science fiction" and "science" is becoming central, due to the speed at which molecular science is developing. I call it the "conditional present" - something that is in the future when a book or article goes to press, but that materializes by the time it hits the bookstands. That's the focus of my upcoming article in The Futurist magazine.

For example, in the brief time since Our Molecular Future was published, discoveries that were forecast in the book--and which move us toward molecular assembly--have already occurred:

--Super-fabrics many times stronger than conventional materials have been developed using nanoscale chemistry. This makes possible buildings that withstand hurricane and flood, as foreseen in the book. It gives us a taste of what might be possible with molecular assembly.

--Artificially intelligent computers have begun to design products and are outperforming human stockbrokers in forecasting market moves. This suggests that artificial intelligence may soon underpin and accelerate molecular nanotechnology.

These Such examples show that we have to focus on such a "conditional present" when we make judgments about the feasibility of molecular assembly.

Question 3: How extensively do you see molecular nanotechnology changing society? Will it be as momentous as the first industrial revolution?

Molecular nanotechnology may transform what we are as a species; not just what we do. Computers already communicate directly with the human brain via artificial retinas that send images through the optical nerve. From there it becomes feasible to link artificial intelligence with ours. Once that happens, the human species may transform. This may be a precondition to let us co-operate and compete with our own intelligent machines.

Many of us have the idea that somehow machine intelligence is going to be under the control of homo sapiens who stay unchanged while everything around them is transformed. Yet with the convergence of these technologies, it is more plausible that our intelligence will merge with machine intelligence. This may be the path that we have to take to survive as a species in a world of smart machines that otherwise might supercede us.

Question 4: Tell us about your work with the nanocomputer dream team.

I'm an occasional contributor to Nanotechnology Magazine on the topic of nanoecology.

Question 5: You hypothesize in Our Molecular Future that in the near future, a computer may "spontaneously tell a National Security Agency Programmer to 'get a life'". Does this indicate that you are confident that genuine machine sentience will emerge within the next decade?

Emphasis on the word "may". Our Molecular Future looks at potential futures instead of making absolute predictions. Technology practitioners such as Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil are more qualified to give timeframes. Yet as other experts such as Nick Bostrom point out, many variables may throw the schedule off, and I explore those in the book.

Regardless of the timetable, the big risk we face today is pretending that such sentience won't occur in the near future. That is the best way to be caught flatfooted by a revolution. We have to get ready now to cope with machine intelligence by hypothesizing about what it may bring.

We have to stop pretending that it's science fiction. This future comes at us quickly, and we have to find new ways to prepare. One way is to pay attention to organizations such as the World Futures Society and World Transhumanist Association.

Question 6: Another prediction that you make in your book is that robots may soon "see, feel, smell, taste, and tell us about it". But to many, it seems as if the field of robotics hasn't progressed much in the past four decades. Do you see robotics growth as being slow and steady, or do you foresee a time when a nanotechnology or Artificial Intelligence breakthrough will cause the field to grow exponentially?

I don't "predict". The book constructs potential futures based on emerging technologies. It may just as well be that a natural catastrophe such as a gigantic volcanic eruption throws us back to the dark ages. That is one of my hypothesis based on scientific discoveries about natural risks.

Yet, barring that, it seems probable that the convergence of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology will cause robotics to grow exponentially, because A.I. may be able to build complex robots more quickly that we can.

Also, the whole idea of what a robot is may be changing, because the vast majority of them may soon be invisible to the human eye.

Question 7: You seem to feel very strongly about environmental causes. What part could molecular nanotechnology play in cleaning up the environment?

Ray Kurzweil argues that human technology is nature's way of continuing evolution. Extrapolating from that, I see a day when our technology becomes the environment. If nanoscale machines develop varying intelligence capacities, we may have what I call "the intelligent environment".

The natural environment today is already intelligent because it is self-regulating. Yet, for better or worse, technology may bring that intelligence to another level. This may help us to clean up the ecology by, for example, using sensors to detect and stop contamination. Yet our machines may also be so pervasive that they come to constitute a new kind of environment: one where some form of intelligence is present at every level of the ecology.

This idea may upset many environmentalists because of the implications and risks, but we have to face the reality that we're inventing technologies that are so pervasive they may do that. Look at our cities today. Many of us live in artificial environments. This isn't the end: it may be only the beginning of a new "intelligent ecology".

Question 8: What is your current best guess for when full-blown nanotechnology will arrive?

Barring a naturally induced climate flip that cripples our technologies--which the book explains is a possibility based on newly discovered evidence from the past--we may see full blown nanotechnology in the lifetimes of most individuals under 30 today. Why that timeframe? First, many of us may live longer, so we have to alter our time horizon when we say "in our lifetimes". Next, just look back a hundred years to see how many technologies that our society depends on now didn't exist then. The next hundred years aren't going to be just as revolutionary; they may be far more revolutionary due to the exponential progress of technological invention. Hyper-change.

Question 9: Some individuals think that trying to create guidelines for emerging technologies is useless. They argue that since the future is inherently uncertain, any guidelines that we create today will become irrelevant. How can we create guidelines for a future that is so unclear?

The most important guideline to develop is how artificially intelligent machines or artificially enhanced humans treat other species, including us. For example, if an artificially intelligent life form examines the way that we treat other "lower" life forms, it may reach conclusions about the way that it should treat us. Think about that the next time you're digging into a steak. The probability is that we're building intelligence that exceeds our own, therefore we have to look at the compass that may guide it: our attitudes to other species.

Question 10: What is the single most important enabling technology for nanotechnology?

Nanoscale computing that leads to enhanced intelligence.

Question 11: Are there any personal changes that you have made to your life, in order to prepare for these emerging technologies?

I try to remember that many things we worry about now may soon be irrelevant, and many of the things that we don't worry about may transform what we are. Right now we worry about our jobs, crime, and military conflicts, but soon we may have to cope with intelligence that is far greater than ours. That's not to belittle our present problems. It's just to say that our place here on earth and in the broader universe might soon be changing dramatically. We have to get ready.

Question 12: What are your plans for the future?

I'm writing about breakout technologies that have impacts on each of us, especially the role of nanobacteria treatments in reversing the diseases of aging. I'm focusing on technologies that help everybody, because in an age of fear about security at every level, it's important to show how technology works for us instead of terrorizing us. For example, treatments for nanobacteria may be the biggest thing to hit medicine since the discovery of antibiotics. Everybody who worries about heart disease, kidney stones, or gum disease may want to look at www.nanobaclabs.com [profile] and www.heartfixer.com to see how this works. It's still early days but results are promising. Watch their space.

For more about these and other technologies such as desktop manufacturing that may help us adapt to what comes, tune in to: www.ourmolecularfuture.com.