Refutation: http://www.zyvex.com
Much longer refutation: http://www.rfreitas.com
There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it
31–40 of 117 posts
Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not really true, we self-replicate all the time (thanks mom and dad). What we don't know how to do is design things that self-replicate from scratch, but we do already have plenty of existence proofs. Also, self-replication is actually easier at the molecular level because all the parts are perfectly regular.
Somebody just created artificial DNA, put it in another cell, and it self-replicated. So yes we DO know how to do this now.
Yeah, but we were reusing the cell's own molecular machinery there. What I was thinking of, though I wasn't clear, was all new machinery.
Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please link to the evidence of progress in the direction of 'genetic synthesis' meeting 'nano technology'
At your service: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7245/abs/nature08...
And that sounds like what the author of the OP said here:
"I’m willing to bet, at some nebulous point in the future, long after Drexler and I are dead, someone may eventually develop a technology sort of vaguely like what he imagines."
It's been a while since I read Drexler's books, but if I remember correctly he alluded to more mechanical processes than biological ones. The article you linked to is purely biology and not really what Drexler was arguing for.
Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it
#34The name is all about the funding. There are many 'nano'-technology grants, which focus on devices that are tens of thousands, or even millions of nanometers large. Micro-techology, however, doesn't get the same funding from the NSF et al. MEMS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microelectromechanical_systems ) has come a long way in a very short time, and, research-dollars willing, will shrink further, so the author is…
For the same reason, it's "machine learning" rather than "non parametric statistics".
love that! I'm so going to be using that as a jargon buster in the next corporate symantic symposium navel gazing event.
Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it
#35For those that are skeptical about nano machinery, google 'ribosome' and be amazed. Nano machinery is real, it exists, it powers the world, it's called biology. The problem is that we seem to have a hard time translating our hard won knowledge of mechanical engineering to the nano scale, I expect some time will pass before the SF visions will become a reality but I think eventually we will get there. Figure another 5…
"Figure another 50 to 100 years or so?"
5 to 10 years? 500 to 1000 years? 5000 to 10000 years? 5 to 10 months?
What are we basing our estimates on?
That is the author's real point. If we don't have a good enough handle on the principles necessary to make this into an engineering problem, there just isn't any sense in trying to guess when these technologies will arrive.
Unless you have some facts or data you're keeping from us.
Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it
#36Flying cars have long been a symbol of the possible technological height of human transportation. But we're not exactly surprised by their absence. Similarly, can't Drexler's '90s idealism be regarded as the possible peak of nanotech? Does the fact we don't have tiny toasters in our bloodstream really negate the acheivement of nanotechnology in medicine and materials science? Personally, I don't think so. This article is too deliberately inflammatory, and doesn't properly look into anything beyond what is now an ancient thesis - as far as fast-moving research areas are concerned. This makes his dismissal of nanotech as sweeping as Drexler's predictions.
Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not really true, we self-replicate all the time (thanks mom and dad). What we don't know how to do is design things that self-replicate from scratch, but we do already have plenty of existence proofs. Also, self-replication is actually easier at the molecular level because all the parts are perfectly regular.
Somebody just created artificial DNA, put it in another cell, and it self-replicated. So yes we DO know how to do this now.
We know how to train the brain of a human being to learn physics (well not always), but that doesn't means that we understand how that brain really works.
The life if full of examples of things we know how to use but that we don't understand. Sometimes it's just impossible to control that things. Think in the stock market or economics. Chemist has been studying this type of things for centuries and you can see the result: there are chemical products everywhere you look.
What the post attack is the concept of creating nanomachines that doesn't degrade (Cosmic rays! oxidation! temperature!!) and do exactly what we want.
And about the "artificial DNA", it's something so simple... Really! the problem is in the emergent properties of DNA, proteins and environmental effects, this is where you loose control. Even nature has problems with that, life forms die, had cancer...
Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it
#38What about liquid glass coating? First step. "coating one millionth of a millimetre thick – 500 times thinner than a human hair – can be applied to virtually any surface to protect it against water, dirt, bacteria, heat and UV radiation." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7125556/Liqu...
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Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it
#39For those that are skeptical about nano machinery, google 'ribosome' and be amazed. Nano machinery is real, it exists, it powers the world, it's called biology. The problem is that we seem to have a hard time translating our hard won knowledge of mechanical engineering to the nano scale, I expect some time will pass before the SF visions will become a reality but I think eventually we will get there. Figure another 5…
"Figure another 50 to 100 years or so?" 5 to 10 years? 500 to 1000 years? 5000 to 10000 years? 5 to 10 months? What are we basing our estimates on? That is the author's real point. If we don't have a good enough handle on the principles necessary to make this into an engineering problem, there just isn't any sense in trying to guess when these technologies will arrive. Unless you have some facts or data you're keepin…
is that the author's real point? i didn't see him say it anywhere.
Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it
#40Alternate view: A bunch of nano machines. http://mems.sandia.gov/gallery/images.html
Those are actually "micro" machines. That's a very different scale.