UC lab experiments with nanotechnology

Meanwhile, liberals display more irrational fear

By Jessica Mintz and Deaglan Halligan
From the March 2007 Print Edition

            We live in an age of rapidly advancing technology. As the capabilities of technology and the ideas behind them get bigger, devices themselves seem to be getting smaller. Although a Zoolander cell phone is not on the market quite yet (Cingular sells a model that comes close, however), buzz about miniaturization in many industries is more pervasive than ever before because of improved manufacturing equipment and well-funded research.

            A new umbrella term that has emerged to describe a diverse array of sciences is “nanotechnology,” which in simple language is the engineering of the very small, i.e., devices on the order of a micron that can accomplish tasks at the molecular level. As befits a major subject of the Berkeley City Council’s current whine-a-thon (a truly superb contrarian indicator), nanotechnology is extremely promising and should be encouraged.  Unfortunately, as is common for technological advances that could improve our standard of living, it is mostly resented and/or feared here in Berkeley.

            This city never misses a chance to stifle productive and educational scientific research. (Does anyone remember the reactor that used to be in the Etcheverry basement or the medical research once conducted at the National Tritium Labeling Facility?)  Unless “research” is coupled with terms like “alternative,” “green,” “enhancing diversity,” “global warming,” or “catastrophic environmental disaster that’s all the Republicans’ fault,” chances are the geniuses on the Berkeley City Council will demand endless discussion and regulation while Berkeley falls further and further behind more enlightened communities.

            The Berkeley Nanotechnology Regulation, for all the media attention it has garnered as a result of being the first of its kind, actually only amounts to another worse-than-useless bureaucratic impediment  for manufacturers and users of “nanoparticles” within the city. (A “nanoparticle” in the ordinance is defined as being less than 100 nanometers long along any axis.) Despite its dry terminology, the regulation amounts to an attack on innovation in this critical futuristic field. Will Berkeley residents be denied the flood tide of life enhancing benefits nanotechnology is poised to bring?  Certainly the City Council, in its misguided zeal to wrap us all in the largest diaper of the Nanny State, seems unconcerned.

            The discussion about nanotechnology in Berkeley was originally fueled by a nanoscience research facility, the Molecular Foundry, at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which opened to researchers last December. Sure, Berkeley is full of paranoid hippie hoards that once feared the imminent ice age and generally make Chicken Little look reasonable by comparison, but the mistrust and subsequent regulation-strangulation of this facility in particular are unwarranted and destructive. The demand for LBNL to be transparent regarding work conducted at the facility is extraneous; the Molecular Foundry is funded by the Department of Energy, which already requires of researchers as part of the agreement for using the facility that the results they produce be publicly released.

            Criticisms of LBNL activities by City Council members regarding their fear for the well-being of the community are thinly disguised attempts to sabotage and undermine the work that is the purpose of federally funded research sites, and are at best laughable grasps for relevance from a decidedly irrelevant civil body. Consider, for example, the council’s utter lack of interest in situations that pose actual threats to residents, such as the drug hub that is People’s Park and the deteriorating roads throughout the city.  Of course, it is much easier to rant and rave about imaginary threats than to solve real problems. Instead of merely offering sophomoric legislative swipes at nascent technologies, the council should just focus on the next milestone in tree legislation as usual.

            In summary, nanoscience is an incredibly promising field to which LBNL has great potential to contribute.  There are, as for any frontier, many unknowns that researchers must have the freedom to explore, but the risks are small and manageable. The sky is not falling.  It is important to be cautious, but the world does not have to fear Eric Drexler’s “grey goo” emerging from Berkeley (except perhaps from the City Council chambers in a deadly combination of hot air, BS, and poisonous anti-Americanism). The results of research done here at Berkeley will continue to improve the human condition throughout the world, and it is important that we not allow it to be subdued by baseless paranoia and cynical manipulation of public fears.

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