[extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech

[Eugen Leitl]

On Tue, Nov 11, 2003 at 07:12:45PM -0500, Robin Hanson wrote:
> OK, here is my current attempt to distinguish the key assumptions and what 
> they imply.
> 
> The social implications of nanotech depend greatly on which specific 
> economic assumptions hold.
> 
> 1.  Atomic Precision:  Atom-scale manufacturing becomes cheap; we put atoms 
> where we want.

This is a very strong constraint. The bottleneck at which nanotechnology
becomes useful is a repertoire of deposited structures sufficiently rich to
allow self-replication at sufficiently high fabbing rate. That set of
structures is more than sufficient to generate a cornucopia of products
without requiring such degree of control.

Nanotechnology by self-assembly is a weak constaint. It doesn't even require
self-replication, it's based on conventional chemistry and biotechnology to
arrive at useful products (structural, nanoelectronics).
 
> Such abilities should allow many new products, including much cheaper and 
> smaller computers, medical devices that float in bloodstreams, and thorough 
> waste recycling.

Much cheaper and smaller computers are easy. Waste recycling by
nanodisassembly is ridiculously wasteful as far as energy is concerned. It
would probably make more sense to just pyrolyze, and recycle the gas/volatile
fragments.

Medical nanotechnology does in fact require above strong-constraint
nanotechnology. It's just appears not possible to achieve the required stiffness and
functionality concentration otherwise.
 
-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20031112/7ec40060/attachment.bin>