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Google spake thusly:
Scientific American nanotechnology articles: linky.
Richard Feynmand's famous talk: linky
Ralph C. Merkle's Small World article: linky

Some more google results: linky

Just though I'd share.

From here: http://www.zyvex.com/nano/ ?

Richard Feynman's address to the American Physical Society is a good intro to the physical limitations of miniaturization as it applies to Moore's Law. Also intersting, is the Law from the Horse's mouth found on this Intel page.

The problem I see is that the reviewer accidently used the hyphenated word 'sci-fi'. It never once occured to me to consider any of Crichton's works as 'sci-fi'. In fact, go to a book store. I worked at Borders for a period of time, and they had a couple of Crichton's books in sci-fi, which surprised me because Barnes and Noble had always carried all of Crichton's books in the regular fiction section. Indeed, Crichton's books were never intended to be in the same genre as Orson Scott Card or Connie Willis (If you haven't read 'Dooms Day Book' by Willis, I highly recommend it. It won a couple awards; it is very excellent).

Books like Prey are a post-modern perspective on how the world is developing. Jurassic Park came out around the time that the high level gene studies first started to come around. Human Genome Project website, "Begun in 1990, the U.S. Human Genome Project is a 13-year effort...". Coinciding, Jurassic Park was published in 1991. Prey is a similar concept, we know nanotech is under developement as we speak. An interesting page with nanotech resources: zyvex.com.

Certainly, Crichton's books aren't perfect, but I think they succeed in what they intend to do. They are very readable (I read Jurassic Park in 6th grade [am I that young?]), and usually suspense filled. They also try to maintain a level of realism even while stretching the bounds of technology. I thought it was fairly clever to incorporate modern distributed computing design into the nanotechnology in his book. His books are always well researched, go to the last few page of prey and you will find a list of sources that he used for information. I think prey is one of his better books I've read in a while. Timeline was good, and Airframe disappointed me.

I say, if you are looking for a sci-fi read, Crichton isn't really the go to guy. But, his books are generally good, no less; and Prey is a good one.

By asking you to explain or expand on your statements? You alluded to some objections you had to Drexler and I asked you for more details. I'd hardly call this "stirring up controversy."

Saying that "Drexler isn't ahead of his time" is not the same thing as saying "everything he has ever done is rubbish". I said the former, and I'd appreciate it if you stopped acting as if I said the latter.

What you said was (and I quote):

• Engines of Creation[...] wasn't a very good book, if memory serves.
• Nanosystems isn't that great either.
• There's nothing brilliant about what he does.
• The only change he's made to the scientific community is flooded the field with scientists and engineers who use his media hype to get funding for poorly conducted research.
• Engines of Creation were a lot of fun... when I was in middle school. If you want to understand nanotech, go read some real science.
• I see Drexler's work as detrimental to the scientific community
• most if his ideas aren't original
• the way he markets them harms the people he wants to assist

You mention Feynman's talk, "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom"; it seems you've not actually read it though. Feynman explicitly mentions building things at that level, and created a prize for the first people to build particular nanostructures (granted, some reprints of the talk might not include the prize information).

As a matter of fact, I have read it. (There's a copy on the web for anyone who hasn't.) The talk was mostly about something like modern semiconductors and what we currently call MEMS, including the prize you mentioned.

If you read it, you see that Feynman saying things such as (and again, I quote):

• Why can't we make them very small, make them of little wires, little elements---and by little, I mean little. For instance, the wires should be 10 or 100 atoms in diameter, and the circuits should be a few thousand angstroms across.
• If I make the thing too small, I have to worry about the size of the atoms
• Plastics and glass and things of this amorphous nature are very much more homogeneous, and so we would have to make our machines out of such materials.
• We can make flats by rubbing unflat surfaces in triplicates together---in three pairs---and the flats then become flatter than the thing you started with. Thus, it is not impossible to improve precision on a small scale by the correct operations.

If you fail to understand what I'm saying, you're welcome to ask for a clarification rather than assuming the worst.

That is exactly what I did. You made a number of statements and I quoted your statements verbatim, and asked you for examples, clarification, etc.

Logically, there are only a few possibilities:

• You think that Drexler is wrong, atomically precise machines are not feasible. In which case, my question is, why do you think this?
• You agree that atomically precise machines are feasible, but think that someone else came up with and elaborated the idea first. If so, who?
• You think that Drexler is correct, and original, but has mismanaged the presentation of the idea. If so, I would be tempted to agree, while laying more of the blame on Foresight than on Drexler himself. But if this is your position, it's hard to see why you said what you did about his books, originality. etc. Further, it's hard to see why you'd object so strongly to whoever said he was ahead of his time, since (on the premise that you agree that Drexler-style nanotech will someday be a reality) coming up with an idea that will someday be feasible but isn't yet is practically the definition of being "ahead of your time". Thus my assumption that you must hold one of the first two positions.

See http://uw.physics.wisc.edu/~himpsel/nano.html, or this and Feynman's talk on the subject.

In 1959 Richard Feynman said that all the information accumulated in all the books in the world could theoretically fit in a cube 1/200th of an inch on a side.

You can read the transcipt of the speech from when he made that prediction.

Feynman worked on developing the atomic bomb, he won a nobel in physics and is known as much for his scientific research as for his story telling.

...taken from here: http://www.zyvex.com/Publications/sites/MerkleNano . tml

1. Nanotechplanet's Nanotechnology FAQ
2. Foresight's FAQ about Molecular Nanotechnology
3. Richard Feynman's ``There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom'' (an old classic that essentially started the field).
4. Engines of Creation (by K. Eric Drexler, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1986)

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may just wander around aimlessly until their batteries wear out

I didn't see that exact wording in the articles. Was that a paraphrase? Just curious.

Anyway, I totally agree. Whenever I have been to a robot competition, I am very surprised at how primitive they are. Usually more than half of the robots are completely incapacitated for some reason or another. But people in the field get excited over the littlest successes. I think "experts" in the field of AI and robotics sometimes forget how far away from artificial intelligence they actually are. I couldn't tell you how many AI/robotics things I've read where they say - "We're just going to let them loose and see what happens. We think they will evolve intelligent behavior." My experience is that the opposite happens. Not only do the robots not evolve intelligent behavior, usually half the things you specifically programmed them to do don't work.

But back to the robot reproduction thing - I heard about this before at a talk on nanotechnology by Zyvex. Atomic size autonomous robot arms are supposed to be able to build more robot arms. I'm usually an optimist but does this sound even remotely realistic to anyone?

Thermodynamics says that when a computation throws away a bit of information, there is a necessary minimum heat dissipation. In today's relatively large circuitry, that dissipated heat is lost in the noise of resistive heating along the silicon conductive paths. In smaller circuits, it will become the dominant source of waste heat. An example of "throwing away a bit" is when an AND gate accepts two bits and produces only one. If you can run your logic circuit backward in time and recompute the inputs from the outputs, it's reversible.

Google has some links: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=reversible+co mputing and there is an interesting project at MIT to design an entire reversible processor, called Pendulum.

Not surprisingly, the reversible computing idea is well-liked among nanotechnology thinkers such as Ralph Merkle.

Nanotech is decades off. This whole thing was completley blown out of proportion. Let's keep it in reality, please. What's the point of even having a business alliance for a non-existant business?

I've been a critic of nanotechnology ever since reading Drexler's rather silly book in the 1980's, but I feel you are mistaken in the absolutism of your position. It has become clear from the mid-1990's to the present that nanotechnology is real, and that nanotechnology has very little to do with the crackpot speculations of the 1980's. The movement has differentiated into the real wing, represented by among others the inventors of buckminsterfullerene, and the remaining crackpot wing, still led by K. Eric Drexler and other quacks such as Ralph Merkle.

Which half of the movement is being represented here? Well, let's take a look at the overview of nanotechnology at the NanoBusiness Aliance web site. What ho, it's quite pragmatic. "Reporting, both from the popular press and respected business sources, all too often mixes up nanotechnologies that are just around the corner with those that are highly speculative or very long-term." Very true, and as polite a critique of the quack wing as one could hope for.

Let's see what technology they're most interested in. Is it artificial intelligence? Resurrection of the dead? Medical nanobots? General-purpose assemblers? Smart mists? No, it's materials, electronics, and biochemistry, all of which have started to be affected by nanotechnology now. Interesting. Even more interesting, looking at their coming reports page, we see very plausible applications for the short term, and no bizarre science fantasy of any kind.

So it looks like these are the people we would want talking to Congress. Let's give them a shot.

Tim

I've recently finished a detailed analysis of what is required to achieve the full vision of molecular nanotechnology via the wet (biotechnology enabled) path (in contrast to the dry path being pursued by Zyvex). It will require significant improvements in both computer capacity and tools for the computer-assisted, and eventually automated, design of enzymes. Currently our abilities to design enzymes is limited, but we can expect these capabilities to increase significantly within the current decade. Within the period from 2010-2020, the costs for the design of assembly lines for nanoscale parts should fall low enough that the design and assembly of nanorobots should become feasible. So Drexler's estimates may yet prove to be right on the money.

• Processors are too numerous to merit individual names. Any interaction between programmer and processors is a bulk operation; processors are never individually addressed. Think broadcast architecture.
• Processors are unreliable. Any individual processor may fail at any time, or may be broken already at power-up.
• No assumption of reliable geometry: processors have no a-priori knowledge of their physical location in the cloud.
• Weak assumptions about connectivity: each processor is connected to N close neighbors, where the probability distribution of N is approximately known. Connections are unreliable and may be time-varying.
• All processors are assumed to be manufactured with the same program in ROM. (This doesn't preclude the possibility of a distributed boot loader.)

Current efforts in nanotechnology are not directed towards making "analogs" of things "found in nature with elements not commonly used in nature". Current efforts are directed towards using the laws of physics and chemistry to explore regions of the phase space for atomic structures that are by and large unexplored by nature. Zyvex wants to assemble diamondoid materials -- that isn't a different element, its a different way of putting carbon atoms together than that commonly used by nature. Nature primarily assembles polymers (DNA, RNA & Proteins) which involve creating 2 covalent bonds -- molecular nanotechnology seeks to create more rigid, stronger materials by controlling the creation of 3-4 covalent bonds.

The development of nanotechnology is likely because of the "existance proofs" provided by nature. The development of "picotechnology" is highly speculative, as documented by Hans Moravec in Harvard Doesn't Publish Science Fiction.

It would be nice if people really knew something about a topic before they commented on it.

I laughed out loud when I read michael's comment to the post. Ha, this poor geek has been reading too much science fiction... But then for kicks I googled for "self-replicating," and look what I found:

http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/selfRepNASA.html

Seems like a lot of people are taking this stuff pretty seriously. I especially like the part about machines that feed on moon dirt.

But what about when machines have been given control over their own replication.

See here, here and here.

I would like to think that humans could at least limit the amount of technology and capability that goes into its creations. But the fact remains, if we give the machines the ability to procreate and self-replicate, we are also giving them the ability of evolution, which once given will conceivably allow for the time when humans will be rendered obsolete.

BTW, I believe that human/machine/computer integration is inescapable due to what might be just another stage in our evolution.

xen

A company called Zyvex plans to build such micro-scaled machines. Check out their website for details

Sorry, I meant a link found from Ralph Merckle's page. Read here.

It is most unfortunate that yet another individual wasn't prepared for a premature death. Someone with this his education and technical awareness should certainly have been signed up for cryonics. For readers who want to call that crazy, don't hit the submit key until you have read the the detailed commentary by Ralph Merkle on how molecular nanotechnology may be used to repair the damage caused by freezing. Be informed and be prepared or be dead. Its pretty simple logic. It is very sad that Douglas Adams wasn't informed enough and smart enough to follow this path. Until Mind Uploading becomes feasible, cryonics is the only viable option we have available defeating death.

Probably the best background, is this article by Richard Feynman. It's definitely what got me interested in the field in the first place. Unfortunately nanotech is out of reach right now, we have to settle for things 1000x bigger (MEMS). TI's Digital Light Projector is pretty phat though.

Reading the article you get the answer: The arms are put the surface of a plates. In front of this plate you put a plate without arms. Now the one plate puts arms on the surface of the other other plate. Afterwards you put each plate in front of a plate without arms. Repeating this proces will generate exponential growth. You would also get exponential growth if you had somehow put the arms in water and added new unnassembled arms, to maintain the same concentration of assembled arms.

However, it does seem limited to assembly of pre-fabricated parts. Still, it's another step on the road to genuine nanotechnology.

What would be nifty, would be to merge this technology with chemical assembly: i.e. the smallest manufacturable arm, with a range of active tips, which use enzymatic techniques or positional assembly to build even smaller. . .

Elsewhere on Xyzzy's site you can find the original nanotech (and, indeed, MEMS to nano) talk; "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom". If you've read anything about Feynman, you're already a fan. If you haven't, this is a good place to start.

Diamonds apparently can shatter, although it would probably take something pretty big to do it. A jumbo jet would probably do quite nicely :-)
I had a poke around on Google and this article on Zyvex's website (a molecular nanotech company) popped up, all about the use of synthetic diamond.

Some interesting ideas about diamond's applications in molecular computer production.

It also mentions that diamond fibres could perhaps be used instead to avoid the shatter problem.

Ah well, Arthur C. Clarke can't be right about everything, can he? :-)

Nanotechnology, as it is currently designed (and in very few cases, implemented), is incapable of self-replication. The von Neumann "Universal Constructor" is sufficiently distant from present technology as to remain essentially fictitious. Additionally, the von Neumann model relies on both an independant instruction-control system (microcumputer or otherwise), and a supply of prefabricated components. Want to stop a von Neumann? Stop making parts.

The Drexler architecture, using chemical rather than mechanical manipulators, is closer to modern theory, as it mimics the effects of current biotechnology and organic chemical manufacturing, but still relies on an independant instruction-control system.

In both cases, the instruction-control system (referred to in the link above as a "universal computer") must be capable of infinitely variable tasks for the device to be useful. It must have the instruction set necessary to create another example of itself, and any instructions required by its target manufacturing process. It only requires sufficient memory to replicate, as any manufacturing process can be broken down sufficiently to use subprocesses infinitely simpler than self-replication

Regardless, the "universal computer" is unnecessary to the end goal of nanorobotics. A localized instruction-broadcast system can direct the nanorobots in any tasks relevant to their location, and would prevent any manufacturing, self-replicative or otherwise, while out of range of this signal.

"Don't worry, be nano." :)

-c.
--

This is sad. After all these years of nanotechnology, people are only starting to have department of nanotechnology.

And, this also seem like a trendy thing (Stanford Mech Eng dept is hiring Physicists to teach quantum mechanics to their grad students so they can do nanotech blalh blah.

The gauntlet was thrown down by Feynman years ago : read this.

Anybody heard of nanotechnology? Another good link is the Foresight Institute. I can see this becoming a reality within my lifetime (ie. much less than 1000 years). If you don't know what I'm talking about, read Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation or Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.

Once we get nanotech, this will all be moot. We'll either wipe ourselves out or become something much more than human. Either way, it should be interesting...

Now, the truly cool thing to build would be a self-assembler; an assembler that can build copies of itself. That's a toy for which people have yet to draw up a design.

We have two space habitats now, MIR and the International Space Station. The history of the development of space habitats shows that, using current technology, we produce very high cost habitats that are dependent upon the Earth. O'Neill in his promotion of real space habitats makes it clear that to be built cost effectively, the material for their construction must come from someplace other than the Earth. That requires future technology.

Given current habitat dependence on earth, a civilization destroying asteroid, would presumably doom the crews on the station(s) as well. If the impact is not too large (sufficiently large to vaporize the oceans), then we should expect crews in submerged nuclear submarines to survive. Because they have long life power sources and extensive food stores, they would presumably be able to emerge someplace where even longer term energy resources are available (e.g. the Middle East). This would potentially allow them to construct green houses that could support a small population until the dust clears from the atmosphere. There are possible locations (deep valleys, underground facilities, etc.) that could survive the impact as well. Collectively, these would form the seeds of a new civilization. There are of course problems such as how do you identify locations where there are likely to be preserved the seeds, power sources, light sources, etc. in relative proximity that would allow you to maintain an agricultural base. But I think people could figure this out. It would be interesting to start a project that created a number of protected "humanity shelters" around the world that were widely know about just to be able to know we had a solution to the most probable doomsday scenarios.

Now, with regard to moving extensive numbers of people into space habitats or colonizing other planets with self-sustaining groups. This is going to require nanotechnology to be done cost effectively. If you have self-replicating systems based on nanotechnology (discussed by Josh Hall in this paper), then you can rapidly move people off the planet. You can also dissassemble a planet or two and build in the vicinity of ~100 billion telescopes the diameter of the moon. This array of telescopes would fill most of the inner solar system out to the orbit of Jupiter. At that point we would certainly be able to identify all of the Oort Cloud objects. Nanoprobes would then be launched to these objects using mass drivers. Once they arrive at these objects, they can be disasssembled into useful construction material and reoriented on orbits to deliver that material to useful locations. If objects were found that were on killer trajectories that could not be reformatted/redirected in time by the nanoengineers, then the mass drivers could also be used to deliver high velocity projectiles into the oncoming path of the object to deflect or vaporize it.

So the answer, as it is with most things, is we need molecular nanotechnology and self-replicating engineering systems. The last time I looked at some of the sites suggested, they did not include nanotechnology in their habitat development strategies. Without nanotechnology, the costs are likely to be so high that serious people can only consider them fantasies.

We have two space habitats now, MIR and the International Space Station. The history of the development of space habitats shows that, using current technology, we produce very high cost habitats that are dependent upon the Earth. O'Neill in his promotion of real space habitats makes it clear that to be built cost effectively, the material for their construction must come from someplace other than the Earth. That requires future technology.

Given current habitat dependence on earth, a civilization destroying asteroid, would presumably doom the crews on the station(s) as well. If the impact is not too large (sufficiently large to vaporize the oceans), then we should expect crews in submerged nuclear submarines to survive. Because they have long life power sources and extensive food stores, they would presumably be able to emerge someplace where even longer term energy resources are available (e.g. the Middle East). This would potentially allow them to construct green houses that could support a small population until the dust clears from the atmosphere. There are possible locations (deep valleys, underground facilities, etc.) that could survive the impact as well. Collectively, these would form the seeds of a new civilization. There are of course problems such as how do you identify locations where there are likely to be preserved the seeds, power sources, light sources, etc. in relative proximity that would allow you to maintain an agricultural base. But I think people could figure this out. It would be interesting to start a project that created a number of protected "humanity shelters" around the world that were widely know about just to be able to know we had a solution to the most probable doomsday scenarios.

Now, with regard to moving extensive numbers of people into space habitats or colonizing other planets with self-sustaining groups. This is going to require nanotechnology to be done cost effectively. If you have self-replicating systems based on nanotechnology (discussed by Josh Hall in this paper), then you can rapidly move people off the planet. You can also dissassemble a planet or two and build in the vicinity of ~100 billion telescopes the diameter of the moon. This array of telescopes would fill most of the inner solar system out to the orbit of Jupiter. At that point we would certainly be able to identify all of the Oort Cloud objects. Nanoprobes would then be launched to these objects using mass drivers. Once they arrive at these objects, they can be disasssembled into useful construction material and reoriented on orbits to deliver that material to useful locations. If objects were found that were on killer trajectories that could not be reformatted/redirected in time by the nanoengineers, then the mass drivers could also be used to deliver high velocity projectiles into the oncoming path of the object to deflect or vaporize it.

So the answer, as it is with most things, is we need molecular nanotechnology and self-replicating engineering systems. The last time I looked at some of the sites suggested, they did not include nanotechnology in their habitat development strategies. Without nanotechnology, the costs are likely to be so high that serious people can only consider them fantasies.

9.0 Conclusions and Public Policy Recommendations

The smallest plausible biovorous nanoreplicator has a molecular weight of ~1 gigadalton and a minimum replication time of perhaps ~100 seconds, in theory permitting global ecophagy to be completed in as few as ~10^4 seconds. However, such rapid replication creates an immediately detectable thermal signature enabling effective defensive policing instrumentalities to be promptly deployed before significant damage to the ecology can occur. Such defensive instrumentalities will generate their own thermal pollution during defensive operations. This should not significantly limit the defense strategy because knapsacking, disabling or destroying a working nanoreplicator should consume far less energy than is consumed by a nanoreplicator during a single replication cycle, hence such defensive operations are effectively endothermic.

Ecophagy that proceeds near the current threshold for immediate climatological detection, adding perhaps ~4C to global warming, may require ~20 months to run to completion, which is plenty of advance warning to mount an effective defense.

Ecophagy that progresses slowly enough to evade easy detection by thermal monitoring alone would require many years to run to completion, could still be detected by direct in situ surveillance, and may be at least partially offset by increased biomass growth rates due to natural homeostatic compensation mechanisms inherent in the terrestrial ecology.

Ecophagy accomplished indirectly by a replibot population pre-grown on nonbiological substrate may be avoided by diligent thermal monitoring and direct census sampling of relevant terrestrial niches to search for growing, possibly dangerous, pre-ecophagous nanorobot populations.

Specific public policy recommendations suggested by the results of the present analysis include:

1. an immediate international moratorium on all artificial life experiments implemented as nonbiological hardware. In this context, "artificial life" is defined as autonomous foraging replicators, excluding purely biological implementations (already covered by NIH guidelines tacitly accepted worldwide) and also excluding software simulations which are essential preparatory work and should continue. Alternative "inherently safe" replication strategies such as the broadcast architecture are already well-known.
2. continuous comprehensive infrared surveillance of Earth's surface by geostationary satellites, both to monitor the current biomass inventory and to detect (and then investigate) any rapidly-developing artificial hotspots. This could be an extension of current or proposed Earth-monitoring systems (e.g., NASA's Earth Observing System and disease remote-sensing programs) originally intended to understand and predict global warming, changes in land use, and so forth -- initially using non-nanoscale technologies. Other methods of detection are feasible and further research is required to identify and properly evaluate the full range of alternatives.
3. initiating a long-term research program designed to acquire the knowledge and capability needed to counteract ecophagic replicators, including scenario-building and threat analysis with numerical simulations, measure/countermeasure analysis, theory and design of global monitoring systems capable of fast detection and response, IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) discrimination protocols, and eventually the design of relevant nanorobotic systemic defensive capabilities and infrastructure. A related long-term recommendation is to initiate a global system of comprehensive in situ ecosphere surveillance, potentially including possible nanorobot activity signatures (e.g. changes in greenhouse gas concentrations), multispectral surface imaging to detect disguised signatures, and direct local nanorobot census sampling on land, sea, and air, as warranted by the pace of development of new MNT capabilities.

probably the best solution to the heat dissipation problem is reversible computing. I looked on google and found some links:

• Zyvex has a bit on the subject
• a group who say they've made a reversible-architecture CPU
• Mike's BibTeX file. I have no idea who the guy is, but there are some papers on the concept.

Lea

Silicon technology is still a bulk technology. The most likely candidates for a further circuit miniaturization are what is called "molecular electronics." These involve using organic molecules with dimensions of several dozen angstroms for swithces and interconnects. People are already working very hard on metal contacts to organic molcular componet. There was a special issue of the Proceedings of the IEEE on Quantum and Nanoscale Devices and an article titled "Molecular Electronics" by Prof. Reed of Yale EE dept surveyed the field.

The Most striking figures in that article were (i) a very tiny organic molecular diode which operated at room temperature with voltages around +/- 0.5 volt, and (ii) a resonant tunneling device at room temp. with similar voltages. These are highly practical voltages and temperatures! The biggest obstacle is to integrate these devices.

The variety of possibilities offered by organic molecules in conjunction with metals and other solid materials is simply staggering. What is going to open the floodgates is development of techniques to integrate these tiny devices with tiny interconnects in an inert matrix.

Zyvex and the Foresight Institute website are the best resources for information on this subject. Particularly, the writings of Eric Drexler and Ralph Merkle.

Actually, it didn't start with Drexler, it started with Richard Feynman, on Dec 29th 1959 in his now famous lecture "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom", you can find a copy of this at http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html

Of course, Eric Drexler's book Engines of Creation started it all. Unbounding the Future , by Drexler, Chris Peterson, and Gayle Pergamit, is a less technical popularization of the ideas put forth in Engines. Drexler's Nanosystems is the authoritative technical book on the subject.

Zyvex researcherRalph Merkle is acknowledged worldwide as one of foremost authorities on nanotechnology; his nanotech website is the definitive starting place for locating nanotech resources on the web.

Here's a link to Feynman's famous talk, "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom." A very interesting read. Especially considering it was given in 1959!!

The father of nanotechnology spoke in 1959 of etching with reversed electron microscope. He also refers to us in the year 2000 looking back...

Actually, there have been molecular design CAD/CAM tools out for YEARS: Autodesk even has a commercial one, or had, several years ago. . .when in doubt, one can ALWAYS consult Ralph Merkle's nanotech page, probably the biggest summary of data and state-of-the-art in nanotechnology. . .

Anyone have any pointers to good companies to invest in to get in at the start of this technology? The prime ones would seem to be the likes of IBM, Motorola, biotech companies like Genentech and Celera, but who else? Unfortunately Zyvex are not a publicly traded company

That article didn't really go into depth about nanotechnology, this web site http://www.zyvex.com/nano/ has links to pretty much anything you'd want to know about it. :)

damn. i'd put some money on them being the first to market on any nanotech.

Dr. Ralph Merkle, crypto-god, is now working for them and no doubt played a big part in getting this funding for nanotech (which Zyvex will no doubt see some of). - Uberdog

While commenting on some problems regarding SETI searches, I provide a discussion of how O'Neill's colonies might be updated using biotechnology and nanotechnology. Steel and aluminium are terrible structural materials compared with diamond, buckytubes and sapphire. The combination of the short replicating times allowed by nanoscale self-replicating systems and the material properties of the strongest materials will allow us to rapidly go far beyond O'Neill's vision -- to the point of dismantling entire planets.

Government support or programs is not required to do this. Molecular Nanotechnology of the type being developed by Zyvex is required. In addition, we need the designs for the nanobots to take apart the asteroids or planets, construct the mass drivers and solar arrays, etc. The lack of molecular designs, is discussed in the Nano@Home proposal. Because we will be able to do the designs at home, a small dedicated group will eventually be able to bootstrap the development of space and achieve the vision O'Neill described. Because of the rapid increase in the available resources (matter and energy) per person, the large number of people living in poverty should disappear as well. The only potential problem I see is if Mind Uploading becomes feasible (or real AIs are developed) and unlimited copying of such entitites is allowed. This has been explored in more detail by Robin Hanson in If Uploads Come First.

While commenting on some problems regarding SETI searches, I provide a discussion of how O'Neill's colonies might be updated using biotechnology and nanotechnology. Steel and aluminium are terrible structural materials compared with diamond, buckytubes and sapphire. The combination of the short replicating times allowed by nanoscale self-replicating systems and the material properties of the strongest materials will allow us to rapidly go far beyond O'Neill's vision -- to the point of dismantling entire planets.

Government support or programs is not required to do this. Molecular Nanotechnology of the type being developed by Zyvex is required. In addition, we need the designs for the nanobots to take apart the asteroids or planets, construct the mass drivers and solar arrays, etc. The lack of molecular designs, is discussed in the Nano@Home proposal. Because we will be able to do the designs at home, a small dedicated group will eventually be able to bootstrap the development of space and achieve the vision O'Neill described. Because of the rapid increase in the available resources (matter and energy) per person, the large number of people living in poverty should disappear as well. The only potential problem I see is if Mind Uploading becomes feasible (or real AIs are developed) and unlimited copying of such entitites is allowed. This has been explored in more detail by Robin Hanson in If Uploads Come First.

Yes! Read "There's Plenty of Room At The Bottom", a speech by Feynman in 1959.

Try reading Engines of Creation by Eric Drexler. Then you'll know where Neal Stephenson got his material.

Or take a look at the website for Zyvex, "the first molecular nanotechnology development company".

Start with the Foresight Institute .
Make sure you read the Nanotech Study Guide .
Then go to the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing .
Also look at Zyvex , a company founded to develop molecular nanotechnology.
For fun, read Neal Stephenson's DIAMOND AGE and Michael Flynn's NANOTECH CHRONICLES .

Good luck.

I think I'd rather help bring it around than just sit and hope.

An excellent area for contribution is design software. Currently there are a number of excellent free molecular modeling packages: MMTK, NAMD, Moldy, NWchem. There are also several excellent display programs: RasMol, VMD, Midas, and my own feeble effort, xyz2rgb. What is still lacking is:

• Software to generate structures painlessly. Two efforts in this area are CavityStuffer by Markus Krummenacker, DiamondCAD by Chris Phoenix and John Michelsen, and some tinkering of mine.
• Some kind of wrapper that makes all this stuff easy to use. There is a commercial package called HyperChem, and the DiamondCAD folks are working on an open-source version called OpenChem.

I think I'd rather help bring it around than just sit and hope.

An excellent area for contribution is design software. Currently there are a number of excellent free molecular modeling packages: MMTK, NAMD, Moldy, NWchem. There are also several excellent display programs: RasMol, VMD, Midas, and my own feeble effort, xyz2rgb. What is still lacking is:

• Software to generate structures painlessly. Two efforts in this area are CavityStuffer by Markus Krummenacker, DiamondCAD by Chris Phoenix and John Michelsen, and some tinkering of mine.
• Some kind of wrapper that makes all this stuff easy to use. There is a commercial package called HyperChem, and the DiamondCAD folks are working on an open-source version called OpenChem.