[extropy-chat] Smalley, Drexler and the monster in Lake Michigan

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Sun, 7 Dec 2003, Hal Finney wrote:

> It's disappointing that the recent nanotech bill
> has explicitly removed funding for Drexlerian nanotech.

But it didn't Hal!  The study people are all talking about
in the oringally proposed Senate bill was explitly for
"self-assembly"  (I checked that section of the 4 bills
in the congressional records yesterday).

Self-assembly isn't in the index in Nanosystems.  He mentions
it once commenting on how it might be used for the assembly
of molecular electronics in a 1987 paper and he then discusses
it more extensively in his Annual Review paper on Molecular
Nanomachines in 1994.  Without rereading the paper I think
much of that discussion may be about biological nanomachines.

You should go read my comments, esp. those of the last couple
of days on nanodot.org.  What Eric was driving towards was
"directed molecular assembly" and that isn't what the bill
proposed to study.  Since the original bill was heavily
contributed to by the NanoBusiness Alliance I'm wondering
if they messed up and used the wrong term.  Or perhaps
some of the molecular electronics folks wanted a study
to show how difficult self-assembly was (perhaps to justify
increased funding).

At any rate it would appear that someone deleted the study
from the floor of the Senate sometime between when it was
proposed (January) and when it got sent to committee (September).
I would love to know who and why.

> But he doesn't use it!  The proposed manufacturing system that he
> describes in some detail only uses giant robot arms in a final assembly
> stage, to manipulate relatively large, pre-built blocks that are a
> cubic micron in size, far larger than the arm above (which is only 0.1
> micron long).

That is because MEMS hasn't scaled down to electronic scales yet
because it hasn't had to.  For there to be a use for it people
would have to believe it would work and that generally isn't
true.   The studies I cite below are making it a bit harder
to hold that position however.

> This isn't a game of 20 Questions.  If nanotech were the dominant
> paradigm, this lack of specificity might be acceptable.  But when you
> are on the outside looking in, it will not succeed.  All you're going
> to do is make people confused and angry.

Drexler does cite a set of concrete paths in Table 16.1 in Nanosystems.
If you think about them in detail it becomes obvious that one could
probably write a book about each of the 4 stages he proposes.  Eric
really withdrew from MNT to a large degree after the first Scientific
American critiques.

> I share Smalley's frustration when he writes, "it would be helpful to
> all of us who take the nanobot assembler idea of 'Engines of Creation'
> seriously if you would tell us more about this nonaqueous enzymelike
> chemistry."

Plan to read the following:

Ralph C. Merkle, Robert A. Freitas Jr., "Theoretical analysis of a
carbon-carbon dimer placement tool for diamond mechanosynthesis," J.
Nanosci. Nanotechnol. 3(August 2003):319-324.
http://www.rfreitas.com/Nano/DimerTool.htm or
http://www.rfreitas.com/Nano/JNNDimerTool.pdf

Jingping Peng, Robert A. Freitas Jr., Ralph C. Merkle, "Theoretical Analysis
of Diamond Mechanosynthesis. Part I. Stability of C2 Mediated Growth of
Nanocrystalline Diamond C(110) Surface," J. Comp. Theor. Nanosci. 1(March
2004). In press.

David J. Mann, Jingping Peng, Robert A. Freitas Jr., Ralph C. Merkle,
"Theoretical Analysis of Diamond Mechanosynthesis. Part II. C2 Mediated
Growth of Diamond C(110) Surface via Si/Ge-Triadamantane Dimer Placement
Tools," J. Comp. Theor. Nanosci. 1(March 2004). In press.

They survived review by the hard-core computational chemists at Zyvex.

Robert