Limits Be Damned

COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS

by which all or part of a human body would be frozen at death in the hope that it could be re-animated later. Drexler also imag- ined that cryonic immortality could be

facilitated by programmable ‘molecular RICK GUIDICE/NASA assemblers’ — nanometre-scale robots, or nanobots — repairing the tissues of corpses frozen at death. Pillars of the California counterculture — such as the psychologist and LSD advocate Timothy Leary, and Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog — also took up the visions of O’Neill and Drexler, working them into manifestos on transhumanism and the ‘electronic frontier’. Brand served on the board of the Foresight Institute, set up in 1986 by Drexler, and made Drexler’s molecular assemblers a centrepiece of the future scenarios that his Global Business Network sold to enthralled chief executives. McCray documents how cryonics and rad- ical life extension, space colonies, molecular nanotechnology and exotic sources of energy (such as solar-power satellites and zero-point The Cylindrical Colony: one of several designs for a space settlement mooted by Gerard O’Neill. energy) were widely popularized, alongside unsceptical articles about paranormal phe- INNOVATION nomena, by the pornographers Bob Guc- cione and Kathryn Keeton in their glossy monthly magazine Omni. Indeed, McCray argues that the audience that Omni catered Limits be damned to — young and male, with a taste for luxury goods, high-tech gadgets, libertarian politics and libertine excesses — strongly resembled Cyrus Mody applauds an examination of the twentieth- the visioneers and many of their followers. century scientists who dreamed of breaking the bounds. One thread ran through all of this: the 1972 blockbuster The Limits to Growth (Universe), by global think-tank the Club of Rome. o the best of our knowledge, human McCray focuses This book goaded O’Neill and Drexler, says life is constrained by natural limits: on Gerard K. O’Neill, McCray, into sketching their plans for a lim- we do not live forever, we cannot the Princeton physi- itless future. The Limits to Growth — along Ttransport ourselves or transmit information cist and designer of with public intellectuals such as the biolo- faster than the speed of light, and there is space colonies, and gist Paul Ehrlich and the ecologist Garrett a finite supply of fossil fuels. Debates about on his protégé, K. Eric Hardin, plus fictional films such as Soylent such limits have shaped, and been shaped Drexler, the ‘specula- Green, Logan’s Run and Silent Running — by, scientific and technological knowledge tive engineer’ trained popularized the idea that resource scarcity for centuries. Even faulty predictions about at the Massachusetts and a growing population would combine limits have made important contributions. The Visioneers: Institute of Technol- to create shortages of economically crucial Thomas Malthus’ pessimism, for instance, How a Group of ogy (MIT) in Cam- materials. That message took root around the prepared the ground for Darwin’s theory of Elite Scientists bridge who helped to world in the 1970s, particularly (if temporar- Pursued Space natural selection, and the overly optimistic Colonies, put nanotechnology ily) in a United States beset by ‘stagflation’, oil vision of Lewis Strauss, former chairman Nanotechnologies, on political agendas in shortages and environmental crises such as of the US Atomic Energy Commission, and a Limitless the early 1990s. Along the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969. of “energy too cheap to meter” facilitated Future the way, McCray However, the original computer models decades of nuclear-power research and W. PATRICK MCCRAY introduces a large on which The Limits to Growth was based, development. Princeton University and colourful cast of developed by veterans of Jay Forrester’s Press: 2012. 328 pp. In The Visioneers, science historian £19.95, $29.95 others who, over four systems-dynamics group at MIT, failed to Patrick McCray of the University of Cali- decades, promoted account adequately for the role of techno- fornia, Santa Barbara, argues that the technological progress logical innovation in ameliorating resource resource-scarcity debates of the 1970s as the way to overcome every limit. scarcity, at least over the near term. Although inspired a generation of visionary scientists O’Neill’s ideas reached a mass audience the models were later refined, the 1972 ver- and engineers. This influential crew had big in part through the L5 Society founded in sion provoked a storm dreams about overcoming all kinds of limits; 1975 by Keith and Carolyn Henson. These NATURE.COM of criticism, much of occasionally built working models to dem- livestock farmers and Tolkien enthusiasts Hugh Gusterson it justified. Many lay onstrate progress towards their dreams; and from Arizona later drifted into advocacy on how the hippies people, particularly passionately assembled coalitions to make for the Strategic Defense Initiative and cry- saved physics: those of the genera- those dreams a reality. onic life extension, a proposed technology go.nature.com/rzxvhe tion whose childhoods

24 | NATURE | VOL 493 | 3 JANUARY 2013 © 2013 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT were infused with the optimism of the US ASTROBIOLOGY space programme, responded to talk of scarcity with a visceral aversion. These teens and twenty-somethings latched on to O’Neill’s visions of suburbs in space The cosmological you piping abundant solar power and lunar regolith back to Earth. O’Neill himself Birger Schmitz weighs up an exploration of how the was ambivalent about their support, and Universe permeates us. when his star faded they moved on to form or follow other high-tech enthusi- ast movements, each of which took The eil Shubin’s masterpiece Your Inner The Universe similar fossil organ- Limits to Growth as its foil. Fish changed the way I see myself. Within: isms on distant con- McCray’s book is especially convincing Using evidence of the first fish- Discovering the tinents led Alfred in following the various movements that Namphibians that left the oceans for land Common History Wegener and others of Rocks, Planets, arose in reaction to the Club of Rome’s 375 million years ago, Shubin described and People towards the idea of 1972 book. At present, we face genuinely with stunning clarity how every aspect of our NEIL SHUBIN continental drift. We alarming limits to growth. Our ability to anatomy goes back to our distant ancestors. Pantheon: 2013. also meet William comprehend and act on such constraints Now, in his follow-up The Universe 240 pp. $25.95, £20 Smith, who invented — particularly with respect to climate Within, he takes the discussion a step fur- stratigraphy, Louis change and alternative energy — is still ther: how the Universe formed, our place in Agassiz, who discovered ice ages, and geolo- distorted by the infelicities in the first edi- the Solar System and the intertwined evolu- gist Bruce Heezen and oceanographic car- tion of The Limits to Growth and the fero- tion of our planet and life. He shows that all tographer Marie Tharp, who were central to cious reaction to its conclusions. Some this is built into us as physical beings. developing the theory of plate tectonics. visioneering ideas for overcoming limits Inside us, for instance, are atoms that Shubin is at his best when he deals with to economic growth have contributed to formed in exploding stars. The movements of anatomy and biology, as in his discussion of inaction on climate change by promis- heavenly bodies are inherent in our percep- the inventive geologist Michel Siffre. In 1962, ing an appealing but impossibly easy, tion of time and in biological clocks. Physical Siffre spent two months living in a subter- sacrifice-free, small-government path to parameters such as gravity determined our ranean cave to gauge whether he could track a limitless future. These have distracted shapes and sizes. Had Jupiter formed closer time without any tools with which to meas- attention from politically difficult, less to the Sun, we would have turned out short ure it. After two months, he was convinced technology-intensive solutions. and squat; farther out and we would have that only 37 days had passed. This was in line McCray’s argument that visioneers been slender and elongated. This is because with what we know about the role in ‘internal play an important part in the “techno- Jupiter formed before the inner rocky plan- clocks’ of the pineal gland, which regulates logical ecosystem” is also compelling, but ets, and its position relative to the Sun deter- the production of sleep-inducing melatonin asymmetrically deployed. For one thing, mined Earth’s size and gravity. depending on the available light. Shubin’s as the book’s subtitle implies, only those Shubin starts with the formation of the storytelling in such passages is gripping. who propose a limitless future get to be Universe 13.7 billion years ago, segueing into The Universe Within is a charming and visioneers; technical experts who popular- that of the Solar System 4.6 billion years ago. enjoyable read, but it does not reach the ize visions of a future that is constrained by Much later, about 200 million years ago, when heights of Your Inner Fish. There is a familiar scarcity (Forrester or the biologist Barry the supercontinent feel to some of the sections, and the book’s Commoner, for example) apparently do Pangaea broke up, the “The mystery title raises expectations that are not really not count. McCray also sometimes treats continents and ocean of why we met. Where are the mysteries of the brain, his visioneers less critically than their basins we know today are here is the laws of thought and our consciousness? foils. He describes The Limits to Growth began to form. This perhaps These, to me, are the most amazing aspects of as “refuted” by experts, but treats equally was accompanied by greater than the ‘universe within’. In my view, the popular damning arguments against the visions the rapid evolution ever.” astronomy writer Timothy Ferris has touched of O’Neill and Drexler in a ‘he-said–she- of more complex life on these aspects of the relationship between said’ fashion. For instance, Nobel Laureate forms — dinosaurs, mammals and birds. the soul and the Universe in a more thought- Richard Smalley’s contention that Drex- Shubin suggests a rather original connec- provoking way in books such as The Mind’s ler’s molecular gears and conveyor belts tion between continental break-up and the Sky and The Whole Shebang. obey an impossible chemistry is dismissed evolution of such creatures: mud settling on And what if our view of the Universe as “Drexler and Smalley largely talk[ing] the vast stretches of coastline created by the continues to change as much as it did in the past one another”. break-up of Pangaea buried biological mate- past century? From Shubin, one gets the Yet McCray is correct that visioneers rial that would otherwise have decayed in impression that much is now solved. But influence, and are influenced by, an water, using up oxygen. The result, Shubin the mystery of why we are here is perhaps ecosystem of philanthropists, politi- says, was an increase in atmospheric oxygen, greater than ever. Maybe, as the physicist cians, funding agencies, entrepreneurs, one of the key factors that allowed animals Max Planck put it: “Science cannot solve undergraduates, scientists and others. to conquer land. Mammals require a lot of the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is That group spurs technological innova- oxygen to maintain their high-energy, warm- because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are tion, crafts science policy, and shapes and blooded lifestyle. Life on the low-oxygen Earth part of nature and therefore part of the mys- shares widely held visions of the future. ■ of 200 million years ago would have been like tery that we are trying to solve.” ■ that today at 4,500 metres above sea level. Cyrus C. M. Mody is an assistant Much of the second half of The Universe Birger Schmitz is a professor of geology at professor in the History Department, Rice Within summarizes the history of how our Lund University in Sweden and the leader of University, Houston, Texas. geological view of Earth developed. It incor- the ASTROGEOBIOSPHERE project. e-mail: [email protected] porates stories such as how the discovery of e-mail: [email protected]