[extropy-chat] [wta-talk] RE: Research question

[mike99]

The simplest means for stopping your nanobots is, as Jef said, to **assume** that they have in-built systems designed to prevent uncontrolled spread, and that your hero/heroine can hack into these systems and activate them.

Many types of security systems are imaginable. But, again, for the sake of simplicity, you may assume that the most comprehensive fail-safe is based on reversible computing. When activated, the reverse-compute security system would cause the nanobots to retrace their steps, undoing what they had already done, and ceasing further activity as soon as they reached the starting point of their activity trace.


Regards,

Michael LaTorra
WTA Publications Director
Board of Directors, World Transhumanist Association: www.transhumanism.org

> -----Original Message-----
> >From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
> >[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of pjmanney
> >Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 11:20 AM
> >To: wta-talk at transhumanism.org; extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org;
> >transhumantech at yahoogroups.com
> >Subject: [extropy-chat] Research question
> >
> >
> >
> >I'm working on the book and I've left a crucial, climactic section quite
> >vague that I need to start to flesh out in detail.  You know the kind of
> >vague I mean: hero neutralizes the threat and action ensues.  Only I was
> >naughty and eager to just get writing and hadn't completed my 
> research for
> >it.  So this is a theoretical question for all you engineers and 
> physicists
> >and just plain smart folk:
> >
> >What would theoretically destroy nanobots?  I guess the more specific
> >question would be: what disassembles diamondoid nanostructures 
> at an atomic
> >level and reverts them back to harmless carbon atoms?  Or simply 
> screws with
> >them enough to render them neutral/inactive/harmless?  To give you some
> >possibly important detail, these are medicinal bots and would be used
> >internally in the brain.  They would need to pass the blood/brain barrier
> >after ingestion.  And there are a whole lot of them.   
> >
> >Remove their external energy source, or if they're using the 
> host metabolism
> >then possibly poison it (without killing host), or relocate their energy
> >source as a means of controlling their behavior, or...) (they're 
> too small
> >to carry their own fuel, right?)
> >
> >Modify their programming (with a virus, or by communicating with their
> >controller, or lots of other possibilities here) to either stop them or
> >convert them to some useful purpose.  Exploit some bug in their 
> programming
> >in an unexpected way,.Force them out by infiltrating their command and
> >control structure with similar, but benign nanobots.
> >
> >Find and activate the secret failsafe or deadman switch built in by their
> >designer.
> >
> >Give them a decoy host brain and when they're all there, destroy it.
> >(Sorry, I'm sure that's too simple.)
> >
> >I don't know of any chemical means to dissolve the diamondoid 
> atomic bonds
> >without killing the host, but I am not a chemist.
> >
> >- Jef
> >
> >
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