Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 12:45:51PM -0500, CurtAdams at aol.com wrote:

> Maybe, but mechanochemistry isn't the only form of nano.  There's
> no proof of mechanochemistry working, and no near-term prospects

Actually, there is. It's just not called machine-phase chemistry.
What is missing is experimental proof of a number of anabolic and catabolic
reactions resulting in deposition of a structural repertoire rich enough to 
allow doing something interesting enough (such as extruding a
nanolithoprinted copy of the assembler device itself), and with a
processivity enough to be practical. We need a simulator, a design, and a
(top down and/or bottom-up) pathway to that design; the whole bootstrap 
shibboleth, in other words.

Soon after, that device will be made obsolete by a family of successors.
The whole notion of atom-by-atom assembly is a red herring anyway. It's just
a formal notion, it's not necessary to build functional devices, and no one
is going to use these capabilities for bulk fabbing of bread and butter
gadgetry.

> on the table.  However, we do have, in the form of life, demostrated
> functionality of wet enzyme chemistry and electromechanical devices.
> With technology, when have demostrated funtionality of micromechanical
> devices.  Devices based on such systems are like to beat MBPGMD
> in time, assuming MBPGMD will ever work at all.

How on earth did we wind up with that horrible tongue-breaker, in the first
place?
 
> Incidentally, wet enzyme chemistry could theoretically spin out a
> functional MBPGMD device, possibly even on a relatively large
> and economic scale, even is MBPGMD can't self-replicate (or we
> don't want to make such things for safety reasons).

-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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