[extropy-chat] Nanotech educations

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, Jun 28, 2004 at 07:27:58PM -0400, Chris Phoenix wrote:

> > Indeed, but we don't even have that very limited mechanosynthesis
> > reaction.  It's all 95% vapor at this point.
> 
> What about Freitas and Merkle's work with dimer deposition?

This is why I wrote 95%, and not 99%. Notice that this work lacks empiric
validation.

Right now I would focus on functionalized SWNT tips, both computationally and
in the lab. This paper can't be used for graphenes, and these are the ticket
if you want to validate.

There's no increased reactivity at the tip with diamond, there is with CNTS.
So you can use that for site-directed functionalization.
 
> What about Nano-Hive?  http://www.nano-hive.org/

There's also http://www.nanoathome.org which is unfortunately just blahblah.
There's furthermore http://www.fungible.com/fungimol/ which has not been
updated in a while.

Nano-Hive looks the most interesting right now -- there are still almost no users,
though. Thanks for reminding me about that project.

Is anyone here willing to contribute/cooperate on that? For real, I mean?
 
> >Imo, this is not something we should focus on right now.
> 
> If all we had to do was handle atoms, I'd agree.  But you can't do 
> multi-level design that way.  And you can't learn to do design that way.

I disagree. Our bottleneck is inability to build stuff. If you can prototype,
and build large computers cheaply, this results in instant design
capabilities.

If there's a simulation box with a living system 10^6 atoms large I can
manipulate in realtime and instantly see the results of my interaction, which
can record macros, and has a simple command line with a scripting language,
that's about all you are going to need. Especially if you can test prototypes
with a ~hour turnaround time in the real world.
 
> If I handed you a Merkle assembler with no software and no one trained 
> to do nanoproduct design, it would be years before you could start 
> replacing the oil infrastructure or building useful medical devices. 

Stuff and nonsense. A crude doped diamond cell only has a 1 d structure
(depth). It is trivial to write a control instruction stream for that, though I
won't guarantee I'd be the right man for the task (I could pick several
candidates who'd be far better at this, though).

Nanomedical devices are another kettle of fish entirely. I would start by
building realtime simulators with computational cells optimized to implement
the required physics directly. I can write you the spec sheet for that cell
in an afternoon, and there are many people who can layout the logics, though
not in 3d (we could use a silicon compiler which can do 3d logic layout).

> That would be a massive humanitarian and environmental tragedy.  Plus, I 

I think we'll be good and ready by the time we have the fabbing capabilities
you describe.

> think it would guarantee that weapon-building would be the first use to 
> develop.

Gray goo is difficult to develop for the same reason medical devices are
difficult to develop. It's not trivial to navigate the environment to munch
up cellulose, lignin and proteins for fuel and building blocks.
 
> It would take the mainstream several decades to catch up to even 
> Nanosystems-level performance.  Long before then, someone in some 
> military will have realized that they can build products decades ahead 
> of the curve by pursuing this.
> 
> Why are we in that ghetto, anyway?  It's not because the science was 
> bad.  It's because we tried to talk to the scientists.  And the 
> scientists, being conservative skeptical stick-in-the-muds, said "This 
> doesn't look like anything I recognize, so it must not be science."

Engines of creation is not science. Nanosystems is not science, as long as
you can't demonstrate that mechanosynthesis is solid.

It would have been a good idea to start with
http://www.rfreitas.com/Nano/DimerTool.htm & Co first.
 
> No, it's not even that.  Drexler did talk to the scientists, starting 
> with his 1981 PNAS paper.  But then he talked to the government.  And 

Drexler didn't invent nanotechnology. I've ran into plenty of (pretty
hare-brained) designs when mining the local military university library as
teenager in early 1980s.
http://www.imm.org/PNAS.html is not a milestone paper for the time.

However, the focus on mechanochemistry and machine-phase systems in general
is dead on and rock-solid. 

> the government talked to the bureaucrats.  And the bureaucrats made a 
> very sly decision: to define "nanotechnology" so as to achieve 
> short-term success in several fields that were about to cross the 100-nm 
> line.  And the bureaucrats funded the scientists.  And then the 
> scientists turned against us, because they had funding to defend.

I wasn't there, so I don't know whether this depiction is accurate.
 
> Drexler also talked to the public.  He spent about 400 words in Engines 

A complete waste of time. The general public doesn't fund directly, and
completely lacks background of telling science from fairy tales. If you want
funding and control, the only way is to play the machine.

It sucks to be too early, though. Always has, probably always will.

> talking about gray goo, and about 1300 talking about oppressive 
> governance.  But gray goo is unfortunately close to the archetype of 
> "bug," making it quite scary (this was obvious only in hindsight); so 

TEOTWAWKI is always scary, regardless of means of implementation.

> the idea self-replicated, mutated, and took over the whole discussion.

This is what happens when one paints fanciful scenarios to the public.
 
> So how do we climb out of that ghetto?  Not by doing good science, 
> because the science has always been good.  Not by taking baby steps; 

I disagree. Nanosystems was the first high-profile publication. It is weak on
the mechanosynthetic angle, and completely lacks good solid empirical
research.

If (some) people have stopped treating the Drexler/Merkle/Freitas approach as
wacko it's because of a number of recent *practical* landmark papers (some of which are on
http://moleculardevices.org/ ), and that you can get good funding that way.

> that will take too long, and won't lead to policy discussion until right 
> before the breakthrough.  Maybe just by starting new organizations with 
> new people, new messages, and new methods until one of them turns out to 
> be a good nucleus for sane-but-speculative interest in molecular 
> manufacturing to coalesce around.  I'll keep trying with CRN; but it's 
> been a year and a half, and if someone wants to create a new 
> organization on a new plan, I think that'd be a great idea.

I've stopped in believing that online people are good for anything, but I
suggest interested parties here join http://www.nano-hive.org and start
with installing or building that package, and contribute to the forum (damn,
what is it with that phpBB fad? It fucking sucks for communication).

I'm not holding my breath, though.

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