Hegswarm – what a great word!  Far more elegant and versatile than the “Gray Goo” that has nibbled at the heels of nanotechnology for the past decade.

Over the holiday break, I’ve escaped academia for the relative sanity of family reunions and mince pies, and have been catching up on some reading.  Currently I’m in the middle of Iain M. Banks’ latest novel Surface Detail – which presents a disturbing yet compelling vision of a future where mind-states can be moved between biological (i.e. gray matter) and digital (i.e. computer) media, and the idea of an afterlife becomes an engineered reality.  However, what grabbed my attention yesterday while reading the book was Banks’ concept of a “hegenomising swarm,” or “hegswarm”.

These he describes as outbreaks where

“…by accident or design – a set of self-replicating entities ran out of control somewhere and started trying to turn the totality of the galaxy’s matter into nothing but copies of themselves.”

He adds

“It was a problem as old as life in the galaxy, and arguably hegswarms were just that; another legitimate – if rather overenthusiastic – galactic form of life.”

Passing over his rather delicious allusion to questionable human traits, this seemed the perfect extension of the idea of self-replicating nanobots – the mythical constructions that turn everything in their path into copies of themselves.

Maybe as the nanotechnology is re-invented under the “Nano2” banner we need another nano-bogeyman to help it along – in which case, I nominate the nano-hegswarm as the number one contender.

But, I must confess, all this is really just an excuse to pull out one of my favorite nanotech videos for the holiday season – Ransom Riggs‘ rather excellent if entirely fictitious short “Destroy Civilization with Nanotechnology… in Just Six Amazing Steps.”

Enjoy, have  great holiday, and watch out for those hegswarms!

How many good nanotech videos have you come across?  Chances are, you’ll be struggling to name more than one of two.  But over the past few weeks there have been a few posted on the web that are worth watching.  These three in particular mesh together rather nicely to tell a story of nanotechnology’s potential, some of the hurdles that need to be overcome to make it work, and one or two of the myths that have messed around with people’s perceptions.

The first two feature footage of me in conversation with Jorge Ribas at the Discovery Channel, but don’t let that put you off – Jorge did a fantastic job of editing the conversation into something worth watching.  The third is a deliciously wicked cartoon from Ransom Riggs that has already done the Web circuit, but is well worth airing again.

THE GOOD STUFF

A glimpse into some of the cool stuff that could come about through engineering matter at a nanometer scale:

THE “BAD” STUFF

Actually, this isn’t bad at all, but video does give a glimpse into some of the challenges we face if nanotechnology is to reach it’s potential without causing unnecessary harm:

AND THE WEIRD STUFF

I thought this cartoon from Ransom Riggs was a great foil to the first two videos, as it lampoons one of the persistent myths of nanotechnology – the idea of a “gray goo” of self-replicating nanobots destroying the world.  Crazy as the idea sounds, it was Prince Charles’ concerns over gray goo that led to the UK Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering publishing what is still one of the most authoritative assessments of nanotechnology benefits and risks.

All in all, a great introduction to the promise, hurdles and outright myths of nanotechnology.

If you have other favorite nanotech videos, please let me know.