DOCUMENT
UFD037 Laura Tripaldi Fundamental Principles of Global Ecophagy Self-assembly + replicating capacity: How viruses went from representing the technological future of humanity to being the absolute emblem of pandemic extinction
I first came across the FFP3 respirator a few years URBANOMIC / DOCUMENTS / URBANOMIC ago when I started working in a lab where nano- Viruses are far more refined and materials were being prepared. It’s a personal pro- potentially far more dangerous objects URBANOMIC.COM tective mask that, together with surgical gloves and than any synthetic nanoparticle gown, may be appropriate to use in cases where, not being able to work under a fume hood, you are features, beginning with the most obvious one: their exposed to the risk of inhaling nanoparticles. These size, which varies between 20 and 400 nm, makes precautions are necessary because nanoparticles them equally difficult to filter out. are not a normal kind of object: they are so small that they pass through almost everything, including I confess that talking about viruses makes me awe- the skin and, in some cases, the cell membranes of struck, and not just because of their potential ca- our body. This incredible capacity for penetration, of pacity for extermination. In fact, I find the virus one course, is also the reason why nanoparticles can be of the most fascinating of biochemical systems, but used for advanced biomedical applications. it is also an object that is incredibly highly charged with cultural and technological significance. The vi- Nanomedicine, an emerging interdisciplinary sub- rus simultaneously represents a sort of dark omen ject of study, exploits the ability of nanometric ob- of the future of technology and the emblem of its jects to slip into places unthinkable for any mac- failure; over the last century, viral thought was one roscopic instrument, allowing the identification of the most relevant components of the imaginary and, if necessary, the destruction of cancer cells, of the future, a miraculous intersection between the for instance, with astonishing accuracy. The health worlds of biochemical matter, technology, and hu- and environmental effects of exposure to inorganic man culture. The virus is a hybrid object in every nanoparticles such as those I use in my research sense, which inhabits space on the borderline be- depend upon their size, their chemical nature and tween chemical matter and living matter, and for state of aggregation, and are still widely debated. In this reason it illuminates the mechanisms of assem- any case, I have always had some difficulty in -de bly that govern complex molecular structures. scribing the subtle anxiety that something invisible and vaguely harmful might have entered my lungs. The ability of viruses to self-assemble is a feature Now, viruses are far more refined and potentially of particular interest: some viruses are able to re- far more dangerous objects than any synthetic na- build themselves even in a test tube, without the noparticle; but they share a number of interesting help of any preformed organism, starting from their
1 elementary components—a little as if a human being were thrown into a giant blender and then The two fundamental properties emerged intact from its own mush. The technologi- of the virus, that of self-assembly on cal interest of this capacity is obvious: the possibility the one hand and that of replication of designing complex and functional systems capa- on the other, have been two key ble of assembling themselves independently would enable an incredible extension of our control over concepts for thinking about the matter, especially on the nanometric scale, where technological future of humanity and, the mechanical manipulation of objects has obvi- inevitably, also for imagining its end ous limits. This idea is encapsulated in the concept of nanobots, the nanotechnological automata that today is, without a doubt, quite surprising; there is have populated the dreams of scientists and futur- no mention of global warming or zoonotic infections, ologists for generations, but which, in fact, have not but there is extensive and almost mathematical cer- yet seen the light. tainty about artificial super-intelligence and futuris- tic nanobots which, escaping from some laboratory, On the other hand, the virus is also a model of how risk making life on earth obsolete. Here Joy refers matter and information are in close and interde- to the so-called ‘gray goo’ scenario, a nanotechno- pendent contact; an idea that, in the new digital age, logical dystopia on the border between science fic- seems less and less alien to us. Not only does the tion and scientific speculation that gained surprising virus encode the information needed to build the popularity in the nineties and succeeded in arous- URBANOMIC / DOCUMENTS / URBANOMIC ingredients that make it up in the form of genetic ing genuine, albeit completely unfounded, concern code, but it is also ‘almost’ nothing but information. among the public. Gray goo, an unstoppable infesta- URBANOMIC.COM Devoid of any physical structure that is not strictly tion of automatic nanobots, in many ways resembles functional to the replication of a code, the virus has a viral pandemic, with the difference that, where- been perceived as a quasi-virtual object, appropri- as viruses need living organisms to replicate, grey ate for highlighting the intrinsic virtuality of biological goo will definitely manage to do without us. In other structures and, at the same time, able to reveal the words, grey goo as nanotechnology pandemic takes creative—and destructive—potential of the new the virus to its most extreme consequences, theo- computational sciences. The virus as a fragment of rizing an exponential replication that no longer even parasitic software illuminates, finally, the last step in needs a biological vector to operate. the evolution of viral thought, in which genetic in- formation is supplanted by the cultural element, and In Joy’s words, leads to the formulation of Richard Dawkins’s doc- trine of memetics, with which we are all, for better Accustomed to living with almost routine sci- or worse, familiar. In general, the two fundamental entific breakthroughs, we have yet to come to properties of the virus, that of self-assembly on the terms with the fact that the most compelling one hand and that of replication on the other, have 21st-century technologies—robotics, genetic been two key concepts for thinking about the tech- engineering, and nanotechnology—pose a dif- nological future of humanity and, inevitably, also for ferent threat than the technologies that have imagining its end. come before. Specifically, robots, engineered or- ganisms, and nanobots share a dangerous am- The relevance of the virus as a conceptual catego- plifying factor: They can self-replicate. A bomb is ry is very well expressed in a 2000 article in Wired blown up only once—but one bot can become by Bill Joy, the founding computer scientist of Sun many, and quickly get out of control. Microsystems, entitled ‘Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us’.1 In his article, Joy reviews all of the tech- Much of my work over the past 25 years has nologies that, over the coming millennium, will place been on computer networking, where the send- the future of humanity at risk. Rereading this article ing and receiving of messages creates the op- portunity for out-of-control replication. But while 1.
2 that could not be implemented in practice. Among Philip K. Dick’s ‘Autofac’ speaks to the them, Robert A. Freitas’s 2000 article ‘Some Limits anguish of being trapped in a produc- to Global Ecophagy by Biovorous Nanoreplicators, 2 tion system that has revealed its viral with Public Policy Recommendations’ is a brilliant and surreal example of speculative science—a and parasitic nature, blind and totally wacky collection of elementary notions from inor- indifferent to the future of the human ganic chemistry, physical laws taken out of con- beings who designed it, dominated ex- text, and completely hallucinatory conclusions. The clusively by the thermodynamic princi- term ‘ecophagy’, coined by Freitas, indicates the ples of self-assembly catastrophic scenario in which nanotechnologi- cal automatons synthesized by humans will begin to compete with living ecosystems, using them as can be a nuisance, at worst it disables a machine reservoirs of chemical resources before finally de- or takes down a network or network service. stroying them. ‘Perhaps the earliest-recognized and Uncontrolled self-replication in these newer best-known danger of molecular nanotechnology’, technologies runs a much greater risk: a risk of explains Freitas, ‘is the risk that self-replicating na- substantial damage in the physical world. norobots capable of functioning autonomously in the natural environment could quickly convert that Joy’s story here draws upon both science fiction natural environment (e.g., “biomass”) into replicas and the science literature of the time. His explicit of themselves (e.g., “nanomass”) on a global ba- URBANOMIC / DOCUMENTS / URBANOMIC reference is scientist K. Eric Drexler, who became sis, a scenario usually referred to as the “grey goo famous for being one of the first pioneers of nano- problem” but perhaps more properly termed “global URBANOMIC.COM technological thought, and for popularizing the idea ecophagy”’. In a bitterly ironic twist of fate, one of that grey goo could pose a real threat to the future the most significant limits that Freitas indicates to of humanity. And indeed, Drexler’s thinking is strictly the exponential replication of grey goo is precisely viral, both in his treatment of nanobots—for which climate change: by converting living biomass into the virus provides an excellent example of natural robotic nanomasses, nanobots will produce such a nanoengineering—and in his approach to the prob- quantity of heat that it will cause a catastrophic rise lem of the development of technology as a whole. in the temperature of the planet. The ideological pool, in Drexler’s thought, is domi- nated by the Darwinian imperative of the survival of One of the first science fiction stories to con- the most suitable ideas, to the point of completely template the problem of grey goo was Philip K. destroying the boundary between reality and vir- Dick’s ‘Autofac’ (1955). In this tale Dick imagines a tuality. ‘Just as viruses evolve to stimulate cells to post-atomic scenario in which humanity, threatened make viruses’, Drexler suggests, ‘so rumors evolve by nuclear war, has entrusted its production system to sound plausible and juicy, stimulating repetition. to a fully automated cybernetic network in order Ask not whether a rumor is true, ask instead how it to ensure its survival. At the end of the war, this spreads. Experience shows that ideas evolved to be system of self-replicating machines now has an ab- successful replicators need have little to do with the solute monopoly on natural resources, and the pro- truth’. It is, perhaps, precisely for this reason that tagonists of the story try everything possible, ulti- Drexler cared very little that his theories were pretty mately without success, to regain control of human much pure speculation, belonging more to the realm civilization. Right at the end, when it seems as if the of fantasy than to that of respectable science. Autofac system has finally been razed to the ground, swarms of tiny robots emerge from the rubble and, In Drexler’s wake, the idea that a nanotechnologi- after being shot like spores across the world, be- cal catastrophe was on its way began to spread gin to assemble microscopic replicas of their mother in an unexpected way, in a proliferation of articles factory. Dick’s story speaks to the anguish of being and books filled with pseudo-technical jargon and diagrams of complicated molecular combinations 2.
3 trapped in a production system that has revealed its viral and parasitic nature, blind and totally indifferent to the future of the human beings who designed it, dominated exclusively by the thermodynamic prin- ciples of self-assembly. ‘One word of caution’, one of the story’s automatons communicates to us in a sinister tone. ‘It is fruitless to consider this receptor human and to engage it in discussions for which it is not equipped. Although purposeful, it is not capable of conceptual thought; it can only reassemble ma- terial already available to it’. Catastrophe theorists, take note. URBANOMIC / DOCUMENTS / URBANOMIC URBANOMIC.COM
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