The book was published in the translation of Emanuel Lotem by Sefrit Ma'ariv
Direct link to this page: https://www.hayadan.org.il/232578232.html
Michael Creighton specialized in one thing. Taking one or several scientific or technological findings, extracting the core from them and carrying out an extreme projection of these developments. So it was with the possibility that it might one day be possible to extract a piece of dinosaur DNA and reconstruct the animal from it. As of today, scientists are unable to even extract DNA from mammoths that were frozen several tens of thousands of years ago, only a thousandth of the time that separates us from the dinosaurs, but the extrapolation was successful and became a movie series.
Now he is trying to find the implication for the integration of three different scientific and technological fields, which apparently have no connection between them: nanotechnology, biotechnology and distributed artificial intelligence - which belongs to computer science in general (implemented through agents, a field that is becoming common with the spread of the use of the XML format in networks, to whom this means he has something). This is also where the artificial bacteria came out, which is also an agent that works inside the body and of course its size is nanometers out of control and multiplied to such an extent that it was about to destroy humanity, and Creighton, as in every scenario in the Hollywood style, knows how to solve the second last problem.
Nanotechnology is a relatively new field. Although the general line was outlined by the late Nobel laureate in physics Richard Feynman back in the fifties of the 20th century, in recent years we have witnessed the development of nanometer-sized systems. In the meantime, these are still relatively bulky systems, but in the future the idea is to produce atom by atom completely new type of machines, machines that will have mixed properties - both of conventional (relativistic) physics and of quantum physics.
For example, a nanometer agent, a robot the size of a few tens of atoms, could penetrate the bloodstream, look for damaged cells and kill them, and thus it would be possible to fight cancerous tumors or carry out the action of the unruly white blood cells and fight the AIDS virus.
There is no university in the world that does not have a nanotechnology department. both for medicine and for other industries (computers whose nodes are nanometer-sized, systems on a visible scale, but re-engineered so that their physical properties change (strengthening the fuselage without increasing weight, for example). And the examples are only the good imagination of the researchers, equipped with electron microscopes to identify them.
Creighton brings us to the seam between nanotechnology, biotechnology and computer science and asks what would happen if biotechnology produced a virus that could replicate itself, and whose principles of propagation were taken from computerized viruses and the production capacity would be made possible thanks to nanotechnology. If all these things collide together, these artificial bacteria will multiply, spread and possibly wipe out humanity.
We won't tell you the end, but like in Jurassic Park where the dinosaurs took over and killed the humans, here these bacteria ran riot and if they are not stopped they will destroy the entire planet.
This book of tension is responsible among other things for the fact that parliaments have genuinely accepted resolutions calling on the governments of those countries (including Israel) to establish laws that will supervise experiments in nanotechnology and genetic engineering even if the price is slowing down the pace of development. At least as far as nanotechnology is concerned, this is certainly the influence of the book that has now been published in Hebrew by Sefrit Ma'ariv
Emanuel Lotem, the veteran translator of science fiction and popular science books took on the task of bringing these developments, many of which barely have Hebrew terminology, to the Hebrew reader. Although the book was published in its English version over a year ago, this does not detract, on the contrary, some of the technologies described in it have matured in the right direction, but as with any technology, the person who determines whether it is good or bad will ultimately be the person. Whether it is the developer or the users of these systems. It is true that too many feel that technology is running too fast, but since this is beyond our control as individuals, all that is left is to try to cope with the pace.
