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There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it

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Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it

#71

Post by Ixiaus »

BrandonM wrote: post #68
paraschopra wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evolution took billions of years to engineer the ribosome (and more importantly to engineer the whole supporting ecosystem where ribosome can do what it needs to do). I doubt humans will be able to do that in next 100 years. Granted a similar argument can be made for many other comparisons (such as camera or airplanes) but at nano-scales physics of environment plays a tremendous role. The beauty of evolution was that…

> Evolution took billions of years to engineer the ribosome I see this argument a lot, but it doesn't really hold water. Evolution wasn't trying to engineer the ribosome. In fact, the only thing evolution tries to do is replicate. The biological forms that have come out of that are completely random. Humans, on the other hand, consciously make efforts at engineering. Thousands of monkeys will never (for all practical…

I like this perspective, I prefer optimism over critical pessimism. This stance is really what drives innovation - not being restrained by perceived or even real limitations.

Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it

#72

Post by raquo »

(off topic a bit)

I think every Russian HNer laughed out loud when they saw this title. Nanotech here in Russia is a synonym of enormous and inefficient government spending on vaporware since they started considering it a "National project". To be fair, I have no idea how true it is, but it does look very much so, especially with frequent appearance in news but no details about actual results.

Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it

#73

Post by physcab »

jacquesm wrote: post #14

For 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…

I don't know why, but there's a fascination with everyone outside the materials science/chemistry/physics world that nanotechnoloy is only about little tiny moving things inside a larger system. Yes, there are bio-molecular robots that are supposed to be used for things like drug delivery and whatnot.

But nanotechnology encompasses such a broad array of other disciplines that are primarily concerned with operating at the nano-scale. For example, anyone doing research that involves the electromagnetic spectrum (light) would be considered doing research in "nanotechnology". Those people would include: solar cell manufacturers, laser physicists, radiation specialists, electrical engineers...and so on

Hell, since nano is just a length description, ANY profession could be considered "nanotechnology". "Yes, we our car can travel 26 822 400 000 nanometers per second, its amazing"

Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it

#74

Post by jacquesm »

spot wrote: post #56
pedrocr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is an honest summary of Drexler’s Ph.D. thesis/book"

why summarize and criticize a book published in 1986?

Not that I necessarily agree with this particular summary in everything, but the point of summarizing something it to make it easier to digest the core of the argument before criticizing it.

For that to work you have to have a really good understanding of the subject matter though, and I think he does Drexler great disservice when he says "He seems to lack the imagination, and of course, the physics to figure out what a real nanosized doodad might look like.".

That to me is the hallmark of someone with an ax to grind rather than an objective reviewing of a book written quite a while ago.

Of course Drexler didn't have the physics to figure out what a real nanobot might look like, nobody did, and nobody does.

Drexler could not have easily foreseen some of the obstacles a direct translation of mechanical concepts would encounter, but there are more ways to skin a cat, and biology seems to have found at least one of them.

Now it's up to us to find either another path or to harness biology to produce those structures that we can not produce by direct means and to build up a library of tested components to do our 'nano engineering' with.

I see Drexler more as a visionary than as a 'hard applicable science' guy and that's the way to approach his book. If you're looking for a 'ready to build' nano bot or a hard treatise on nano engineering you're not going to find it, if we had had that at that time then we wouldn't be where we are today.

Incidentally, I think that the 'proponents' of nano tech have done a very bad job at raising expectations (Drexler among them), I do believe that long term nano technology will become a reality and will become a mainstay of our technological arsenal. Just like electronics, which were practically non-existent one hundred years ago are today.

Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it

#75

Post by paraschopra »

BrandonM wrote: post #68
paraschopra wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evolution took billions of years to engineer the ribosome (and more importantly to engineer the whole supporting ecosystem where ribosome can do what it needs to do). I doubt humans will be able to do that in next 100 years. Granted a similar argument can be made for many other comparisons (such as camera or airplanes) but at nano-scales physics of environment plays a tremendous role. The beauty of evolution was that…

> Evolution took billions of years to engineer the ribosome I see this argument a lot, but it doesn't really hold water. Evolution wasn't trying to engineer the ribosome. In fact, the only thing evolution tries to do is replicate. The biological forms that have come out of that are completely random. Humans, on the other hand, consciously make efforts at engineering. Thousands of monkeys will never (for all practical…

> Evolution wasn't trying to engineer the ribosome.

Evolution isn't purposeless. Sure, it is a random process but it has a purpose. And that's of survival of the organism (or if you like Dawkins, genes that encode the organism).

> The biological forms that have come out of that are completely random.

Wow, biological forms are NOT random. They are what they are because of the environment they are habituated in. The exact implementation (animal) may not be deterministic but if you set the right fitness function, evolution will produce what you wanted it to produce. Evolution is like a blind tinkerer who knows he needs to fix but doesn't know where to hit the hammer to fix it. He only gets feedback once he has hit the hammer. From the feedback, he can definitely avoid hitting at the wrong spot again and again. I wouldn't call this process random.

My original argument is about engineering macro v/s nano machines. Evolution is great at doing nano work because it is an inside out process.

PS: Thousands of moneys _will_ produce a Shakespearean work if their survival depended on it! (Just kidding)

Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it

#76

Post by shadowfox »

daten wrote: post #40
krschultz wrote: post #30

Alternate view: A bunch of nano machines. http://mems.sandia.gov/gallery/images.html

Those are actually "micro" machines. That's a very different scale.

The author says this too:

> "We don’t even have micromachines. Mechanical objects on microscales do not exist."

Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it

#78

Post by BrandonM »

paraschopra wrote: post #75
BrandonM wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Evolution took billions of years to engineer the ribosome I see this argument a lot, but it doesn't really hold water. Evolution wasn't trying to engineer the ribosome. In fact, the only thing evolution tries to do is replicate. The biological forms that have come out of that are completely random. Humans, on the other hand, consciously make efforts at engineering. Thousands of monkeys will never (for all practical…

> Evolution wasn't trying to engineer the ribosome. Evolution isn't purposeless. Sure, it is a random process but it has a purpose. And that's of survival of the organism (or if you like Dawkins, genes that encode the organism). > The biological forms that have come out of that are completely random. Wow, biological forms are NOT random. They are what they are because of the environment they are habituated in. The ex…

Thanks for correcting the bits that I was wrong on. I hope the point I was trying to make was still meaningful in spite of the inaccuracies.

Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it

#79

Post by akshayubhat »

wow this article is so wrong that I wont even comment about issues with it.

Anyone who wants to read good research in nano tech can browse through this journal: http://pubs.acs.org/journal/nalefd

This is same as saying to someone working on EINACS and early computers that they are a laughing stock and nothing but huge calculators. Reminds me of an article by Scott Aaronson : "Whats taking so long Mr. Babbage" : http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=446

Re: There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it

#80

Post by BrandonM »

jacquesm wrote: post #70
BrandonM wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Evolution took billions of years to engineer the ribosome I see this argument a lot, but it doesn't really hold water. Evolution wasn't trying to engineer the ribosome. In fact, the only thing evolution tries to do is replicate. The biological forms that have come out of that are completely random. Humans, on the other hand, consciously make efforts at engineering. Thousands of monkeys will never (for all practical…

> The biological forms that have come out of that are completely random. That's not strictly speaking true in the sense that we normally use 'random'.

You're right. What I meant to say was that biological forms are not the end goal of evolution, as opposed to engineered products which generally are the goal of human production.
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