FIRST BIOLOGICAL NANO-ROBOTS CREATED

So many people sent me various versions of this story - and did so seemingly all at once - that it was one of those rare stories that almost immediately made it into this week's "final cut" of stories to blog about, and in reading it, I can understand why it caught the attention of so many readers of this website, because there's all sorts of thorny "high octane implications" to it. Here's the version that most caught my eye:

Scientists create first ‘living robots’ in major breakthrough

It's difficult to talk about this article without citing all of it, but let's focus on these paragraphs:

Scientists have created what they claim are the first ”living robots“: entirely new life-forms created out of living cells.

A team of researchers have taken cells from frog embryos and turned them into a machine that can be programmed to work as they wish.

It is the first time that humanity has been able to create “completely biological machines from the ground up”, the team behind the discovery write in a new paper.

...

“These are novel living machines,” says Joshua Bongard, the University of Vermont expert who co-led the new research. “They’re neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal. It’s a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism.”

The new creatures were designed using a supercomputer and then built by biologists. They could now be used for a variety of different purposes, those behind the creation say.

We can imagine many useful applications of these living robots that other machines can’t do like searching out nasty compounds or radioactive contamination, gathering microplastic in the oceans, travelling in arteries to scrape out plaque,” said co-leader Michael Levin who directs the Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology at Tufts University, where the xenobots were actually created.

...

The researchers admit that there is the danger that such developments could be harnessed in ways that we don’t even understand, leading to unintended consequences. If the systems become sufficiently complex, it might be impossible for humans to predict how they will start to behave.

“If humanity is going to survive into the future, we need to better understand how complex properties, somehow, emerge from simple rules,” said Mr Levin n a statement. “This study is a direct contribution to getting a handle on what people are afraid of, which is unintended consequences,” he said. (Emphases added)

As the article makes clear, there are a number of quite beneficial applications than can emerge, for example, it states these micro-programmable organisms could be fit with very small pouches to deliver medicine to specific areas of the body. One such use springs to mind, and that is the potential ability to bridge the blood-brain barrier, and deliver medicines or chemotherapy to otherwise inoperable types of brain tumors like a glioblastoma multiform, or to types of bone marrow cancers. It specifically mentions their potential utility in cleaning out arteries and vessels, and one can imagine their potential for getting rid of tumors bite by tiny bite, a kind of microsurgery that sums up to a macrosurgery, without the cutting and scraping of current surgical techniques.

But that's the rub, because as usual, we're being sold on the technology by a litany of potential benefits, while the article itself ends on the warning note about "unintended consequences." That, plus that "little" admission that the nano-bio-machines were designed by a supercomputer, gave me pause. So for the purposes of today's "high octane speculation," let's couple that admission to the "Elon Musk Scenario". Mr. Musk, a few years ago, warned about the possibility that in our quest to create a real "artificial intelligence" that the danger might be that we inadvertently transduce a "someone" or a "something" into that machine, i.e., the machine wakes up, but acquires a "personality" that is less than human-friendly. Next let's couple that idea to 3D printing, and what results is an AI that could literally design, and then create, organisms-to-design, its own design, and they might not be very human-friendly. With this, voila! We have a bio-apocalypse of almost unimaginable scale.

And there's yet another possibility, which for want of a better expression, we might call the "unknown biological firewall." Might there be, within nature herself, an in-built safeguard against too much genetic tinkering, a limit that says "this far, but no further?" And if so, what might it entail? A total reset mechanism that wipes all such engineering out if that wall is breached? I certainly don't know the answers to those questions, but my intuition - based on certain old doctrines such as logoi spermatikoi or rationes seminales - says that might indeed be the case. Indeed, if there are such things as "seminal reasons" embedded in reality, and in things, then they are, as "reasons" or "rational principles," discoverable, and as the Latin language version of the doctrine suggests, the root here is ratio, reason, proportion, ratio in the arithmetic sense, and hence, harmony. All of those things suggest quantifiability. So perhaps before we take yet another technological plunge without knowing those "unintended consequences," we'd better re-examine some ancient doctrines, and examine them first with a view to finding that firewall.

See you on the flip side...

 

Posted in

Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

30 Comments

  1. Anthony on February 10, 2020 at 2:36 am

    All for technology used tward the greater good.Hopefully not for dark agenda taking over humanity .Evolution will run its course.This may be evolutionary.Just hope it doesn’t find its way into wrong hands.



  2. Andrew A Currie on February 1, 2020 at 11:01 pm

    Gerry Anderson’s 1960’s British Supermarionation sci-fi tv series “Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons” (1967-68) and the later 2005 computer-animated reboot, “Gerry Anderson’s New Captain Scarlet” was based around the idea that the remnants of an advanced civilization from another galaxy left a sophisticated artificial intelligence on Mars. This presence called themselves the Mysterons and in the story they could ‘reverse matter’, meaning they had the power to heal injuries and re-create the likeness of any object or person. Their intent was a retaliation against Earth because of a human attack on their city complex on the Red Planet.

    As per usual Anderson’s creativity inspired wonderful children’s tv adventure programming, but it was his subtle wisdom about technology and the human capacity to deal with it’s unfolding challenges that threads through all of his amazing shows. Perhaps like Roddenberry and many others who have envisioned a future of extraordinary potentiality, he ‘saw’ the future, or maybe in some unknown way, he like the others knew what was coming.



  3. Lee B Langer on January 26, 2020 at 12:02 pm

    In the Honor Harrington book series, there is a deep state organization that uses these little nano robots for assassination. The person ingests them, within minutes certain key words or phrases can make a person “suicide” and lose total motor control over their body.
    Like all technology, there is good and evil applications



  4. Hyperborean1 on January 23, 2020 at 3:43 pm

    Because this solution concerns all of us, will the being who posted the video by Ms. Dana please accept a big Thank You?



    • zendogbreath on January 27, 2020 at 11:53 pm

      huh?



      • zendogbreath on January 29, 2020 at 11:00 pm

        Oh. Dana Ashlie. Thank Doc or Gosh or Loxie or whoever turned me on to her.



  5. Loxie Lou Davie on January 23, 2020 at 3:17 pm

    anak….Your postings really make my mind start whirling to understand what it is you’re talking about!! 😉

    Does anyone remember the experiences of those who have been on “ships”?! Many speak of seeing tubes with “beings” in a type of suspension. Others have even seen clones of themselves!! What is going on here?! Makes me think we are just “catching up” with a program that has been running for eons & we have purposely been kept in the dark!! It IS more comforting to stay within a “box” someone else has constructed for us, rather than venture out into the Wide, Wild Universe, not knowing what we will find & trying to fit that into our tiny brains!!!

    Then, of course, we have the 20 & Back Boys who put in a 20 year stint & then are returned home with the same age body in which they left….very little “Earth time” having elapsed!! Their memory seems to have been erased, except that once in awhile something will happen to jog it!! I love the story of the one who, after having a cycle accident, was put in an MRI machine & blew it apart because of whatever implants he had!!! 😉 Then….he was able to recall all he had been through!

    Of course, The Controllers want us to make fun of such people & act like they are crazy!! I do tend to believe what Bob Dean has related from his own life; but now we also have the Fakers who have mined others’ stories & use it for making money out of it!! Kind of like the Religious Conmen of every century, right?!!! It’s always about the money, isn’t it?!! (Even in politics!!) 😉



  6. Loxie Lou Davie on January 23, 2020 at 7:23 am

    Does anyone remember the story going around a year or so ago about the 29 Japanese scientists who were killed by their own created robots??? The only way to stop them was to start pulling them apart & the last one was taking directives from a satellite!!!

    As far as our own “built in” system….isn’t it the telomeres??? I was fascinated by a talk given by Billy Carson about how our “creators”(elohim) did give us a determined lifespan. This man has read most of the Ancient Writings & gathers the threads to piece together a rather logical picture of our past as humans!!

    We are not alone in the Universe & never have been!!! 😉 IMO



  7. anakephalaiosis on January 23, 2020 at 1:09 am

    One only has to look into the mirror, to see a Rune robot, programmed by Runes, that are principles of natural law.

    Running course from crib to grave has preprogramed processes, that are predictable and fixed in sequence.

    We are born, take our first steps, fall in love, get married, take responsibility, and keep track of time. Life is life.

    A closed system, with open applications of free will!



    • anakephalaiosis on January 23, 2020 at 1:48 am

      That being said, one can also deviate from the natural order of things, being led astray by vile choices.

      The idea of conscience is a vague notion of natural order. Yet, guidance is more clear, when principles are explained.

      The strength of the Runes is, that they are footsteps on the way, self-evidently true, closing circle of life.

      Runes are fruits of the good tree in the garden.



  8. basta on January 22, 2020 at 8:23 pm

    [Cough cough] Morgellon’s [cough].



  9. Pierre on January 22, 2020 at 7:58 pm

    Musk is the new Einstein.
    https://archive.org/details/ChristopherJonBjerknesTheManufactureAndSaleOfSaintEinstein

    The guiding principle and discipline is what E Michael Jones calls Logos (forthcoming book, Logos Rising).

    What can go wrong? Everything, as planned , as inspired by the once greatest (so far) Messasiah (and oh what a Mess) Shabbtai Levi, now presented to us by a Levine.

    Easier to rape than to woo, to imprison than to honestly keep, to browbeat than to convince, to print money than to work for it., to burn the village rather than save it, and to lie than to look in the mirror.

    Frankenstein was based on Adam Weishaupt, incubator and sucubator of Illuminism (Rothschilds sponsored) and the French Devolution. Head of a Mason, Gonads of a wall wailing Rabbi, Legs of a traitor, arms of a prince (Rothschilds indebted) and smile of a crocodile.



    • anakephalaiosis on January 22, 2020 at 10:09 pm

      Thanks. A most illuminated comparison between Weishaupt and Frankenstein!

      When Washington writes his Masonic letter in 1782, he speaks of “superstructures”. (Note the devil in the detail – as the word is in plural, so there must be more than one.)

      https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/1jv9diid2j75e41/geopold-swampington.pdf

      It appears, that Washington is comparing TWO superstructures, created in a joint effort in 1776, (May 1st / July 4th). Thus the Jesuit-Masonic sleeper cells are brought together, into TWO umbrella organizations – one in Europe and one in America.

      Subsequently, Weishaupt is Europe’s Washington, and Washington is America’s Weishaupt:

      The Brothers Frankenstein!



      • Pierre on January 23, 2020 at 9:37 pm

        @anakephalaiosis
        got it, ta. I do wish E Michael Jones (Catholic or Bust) would do a book on the American Revolution (from my voluminous listenings to him of late, he would have it as another one of all the others). My Franken quote of his from his Libido Dominandi book, p386/1991 )
        “Mary Godwin Shelley immortalized Weishaupt as Dr. Frankenstein, after reading Barruel. Even a bona fide revolutionary like Buonarroti learned about the Illuminist conspiracy not by any direct initiation into its secrets but by reading Barruel as Shelley did. We are talking about literary influence here, not, as the Germans put it, “Drahtziehertheorie.” Freud like Shelley and Buonarotti most likely found out about the Illuminist-Jewish-Masonic-Satanist conspiracy by literary influences, all of which led back to Barruel.
        ” eg Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism Abbe Augustin Barruel 1797.pdf (at archive.org)
        all french to me…
        https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22August%C3%ADn+Barruel%22



  10. marcos toledo on January 22, 2020 at 7:44 pm

    Does the idea that the late Hugo Chavez being assassinated by being cancered ring a bell. I put nothing beyond our depraved elites full speed ahead and dame the consequences.



  11. Scott S on January 22, 2020 at 3:20 pm

    I stopped reading as soon as you mentioned Elon Musk. Musk is not an authority on anything aside from fraud. Listen to the man speak. He blathers about using technical sounding words and then he or his minions bully and insult anyone who dares questions his genius.

    Musk’s history of lies, insults, bullying, doxxing, and fraud is so vast and well documented at this point that it just astonishes me that anyone, much less someone I respect as much as Dr. Farrell, can still use the name Elon Musk with any kind of respect whatever.

    Please spare me the “EV revolution” or “lands rockets back of the pad” arguments. Douglas demonstrated the “lands rockets back on the pad” technology 30 years ago and concluded it was not worth the trouble, but it makes a great circus trick so it’s perfect for Musk. Tesla’s basic EV architecture was in place before Elon Musk became involved with Tesla.

    It is difficult to come up with a more succinct example of what is wrong with our society than the worship of Elon Musk.



    • zendogbreath on January 27, 2020 at 11:46 pm

      It was in place before Tesla was Tesla in the EV1 with General Motors.

      get a dvd of “Who Killed the Electric Car.”



  12. Robert Barricklow on January 22, 2020 at 12:08 pm

    Again, in the new book I’m reading on the Electric Brain. There, it may be used for mind control.

    My ass!
    Living Robots!
    Jesus Christ!
    I’m revoking all their literary licenses!



    • Robert Barricklow on January 22, 2020 at 12:17 pm

      Take two.
      Hope I get past the first paragraph this time.

      Well, at least they’ve admitted to creating another living parasite: the mad scientist himself! The mother of all parasites is busy giving birth to numerous parasitical bugs under the robot umbrella of good science.
      All the better to cure your… ?

      K. Eric Drexler Engines of Creation are starting to roll off the assembly line?
      Throw in some autonomous AI and have them designing next generations ad infinitum.
      Frankenstein is Mickey Mouse
      next to these Mad Scientist$.



      • Robert Barricklow on January 22, 2020 at 12:43 pm

        Take three.

        Easy stomach. Eaasy.

        It’s a new dawn for autonomous alchemy.
        LOL! Designed by supercomputers! Tragic dark comedies are going Live-In-Action, as we speak.

        Researcher$ admit there is a danger?
        What?
        That the monsters they create
        will come back to destroy them?

        How they will behave?
        LOL!
        What? Will they begin to behave like their creators?
        Yep. I can see why they’re worried.

        Or, worse yet.
        Intended consequences.

        And I thought the mosquito was a bad actor.

        Now at the point where the article is finding the Red Queen can’t run fast enough to catch up to her seeds of destruction growing out of control.

        Unknown Biological Firewall?
        Like a Twilight Zone episode where they solve the mystery of consciousness, which sets off the kill switch immediately in-sync w/the brief split nano/micro/second Eureka! thought/I know/knew.

        Too many technological trip wires in the treasury jungles of discovery; especially, when your motivation is backed by greed.

        one needs a solid foundation of belief systems to enter this jungle; and even then… ? As Asimov of Foundation lore has said/Science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.



  13. Helden S. Normansson on January 22, 2020 at 10:14 am

    My son studies with Prof. Josh Bongard, getting his Masters Degree in Evolutionary Robotics. Prof. Bongard studied at ETH in Zurich, the German-world MIT, and also where Einstein studied. University of Vermont has a Complex Systems Center that focuses on Robotics and AI, and is quite a groundbreaking Institution. Several Professors from ETH decided a school in beautiful Vermont is just a good a place to do research as MIT or Harvard. Actually better because less academic politics, and better standard of living in rural small sophisticated town-city of Burlington Vermont. Prof. Bongard also did some ground-breaking work for NASA on robots ‘dreaming.’ Prof. Bongard is a very philosophical person with a depth of classical non-engineering knowledge. I think you all will find his Evolutionary Robotics course linked below to be very interesting:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsoLdr6qMdU&list=PLAuiGdPEdw0jAKhgqWBqX_eacJWqyPCZ2



    • anakephalaiosis on January 22, 2020 at 1:44 pm

      The Rune system is a 2D tensegrity structure, that must be a closed system, to maintain equilibrium at the center.

      Runes are basically a Python program for humans, that makes political theories superfluous, and combats feminism.

      Diametrical oppositions must always counterbalance, so that the Rune robot can outwit the fire-breathing dragons.

      Raspberry Pi goes to Mars!

      https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/qav7519hrnzumpp/kylie-the-kangaroo.jpg



  14. enki-nike on January 22, 2020 at 9:02 am

    Could a supercomputer be programmed to design a coronavirus?



    • Robert Barricklow on January 22, 2020 at 12:55 pm

      Probably the disease and the cure.
      But the supercomputer wouldn’t be able to decide:
      Which is more deadly?
      The disease; or, the cure?



  15. anakephalaiosis on January 22, 2020 at 7:15 am

    Activating blood pump of collective flesh tent, is making water into wine. Stilling storm, by walking waves, that break shore, is crowd control.

    Lame man walking, and blind man seeing, is reviving collective corpus, awaking slave from death, into kingdom of heavenly bodies – the solar year.

    Firewall is dragon. Gatekeeper floods you, when barrier is broken. You bath in its blood. Nemesis is echo of hubris. Bloodwrack is Pendragon.

    Seminal rationality is yeast in ale. Spawning sperm of logic is firestarter. Runic principalities govern running course of planetary cycle.

    Ouroboros is circumscribed spell cast.



    • anakephalaiosis on January 22, 2020 at 8:42 am

      I do find page 186-187, in Ebenezer Henderson’s “Iceland”, vol 1, published 1818AD, rather illuminating:

      https://archive.org/details/b29338979_0001/page/186

      Psalms 119:164
      Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous judgments.

      Psalms 119:62
      At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee because of thy righteous judgments.

      How did Bede, in “The Reckoning of Time”, written 725AD, miss the obvious?

      Is there a Time War going on?



  16. goshawks on January 22, 2020 at 5:52 am

    I half-expected this development when biologists learned how to ‘reprogram’ muscle cells, etc., back to pluripotent stem cells and then vice versa. Once you have that ability, the draw to ‘play god’ with organisms must be immense. (Cue Dr. Frankenstein creepy laugh.)

    This is especially creepy because these are not built-up-from-zero cells. They are frog cells which have been ‘twisted’ into a (for them) nightmarish configuration. Imagine what human cells might ‘feel’ if used in a similar manner. (And yes, I believe that there is a ‘cellular consciousness’, even if limited. Perhaps electromagnetic, as Dr. Robert O. Becker found in experiments.)

    As Joseph points out, there may be “Blowback” from the universe. In addition to any ‘transgressing esoteric laws’ aspect, I would point out that other species – interstellar ones – would react to changes in Sheldrake’s ‘Morphogenetic Fields’. Remember, these MFs are not subject to space and time; changes ‘here’ are felt instanteously ‘there’. Make one or a few in labs, and it will not discernibly change a MF. Go into mass-production and make billions, and you may cause fundamental life-changes on other planets. And generate a response. If there is a Star Trek-like Federation out there, it would not be an embargo: It would be knocking our culture back to an era where that kind of technology did not exist. Anyone remember the term, Tower of Babel Moment ?

    In addition, from the cited article: “What’s more, they are able to repair themselves. Unlike traditional materials, the robots can be sliced almost in half and will fix themselves back together again, they claim.”

    If there is ever a need to exterminate a version gone bad, that may be hard to do. From Jurassic Park, “Life will find a way…”



    • DanaThomas on January 22, 2020 at 11:30 am

      And Goshawks, what would the morphic resonance of this cell grouping be like?



      • goshawks on January 22, 2020 at 5:42 pm

        No clue. Speculating, I suspect it would tend to ‘break up’ or ‘smear out’ the Morphogenetic Field of frog-like beings. Dr. Becker showed that there are ‘higher’ organizing principles in living beings. He saw electromagnetic signatures remaining in the area of a salamander’s amputated leg, for example. When a new leg regrew into that area, Dr. Becker assumed it was due to EM ‘guidance’. However, it could be MF guidance, as well.

        Messing-up frogs’ MF could result in more mutations. These would occur not because of changes in DNA but because a ‘guiding pattern’ had been weakened.

        (A slightly scary thought is that frog DNA is something like 80-90 percent similar to human DNA. I have no idea whether smearing-out frogs’ MF would somehow ‘bleed over’ to smearing-out human MF through the agency of similar DNA…)



        • anakephalaiosis on January 22, 2020 at 11:23 pm

          An archetype can manifest in two places at the same time, like an entangled particle.

          Archetypes exists in the mind, suggesting that reality is an echo of a thought.

          “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

          Sherlock Holmes.



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