Nanotech Pinball and Miniature Engines

glenmark writes "Researchers at the Solid State Electronics Laboratory at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed the world's smallest pinball game. The video is fascinating. The flippers are electrostatically-actuated monocrystalline silicon cantilevers. I hope Pat Lawlor and Steve Ritchie see this. I have a feeling they would get a kick out of it." And in another nanotech story, psmears writes "Three hundred times more powerful than ordinary batteries, but much lighter and smaller? Researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a micro-engine that will allow people to charge mobile phones using lighter fluid. Further information at Research-TV including photos and a film."

Comments

Side discussion:

[Skyshadow]

Given that this is just another "Look that we can do now with interesting molecules!" thread, I suggest a side discussion:

Will the Diamond Age begin in our lifetimes?

I'm personally of the opinion that when the nanotech revolution starts, it'll happen so shockingly fast that applications, society and governance will take decades to catch up -- think internet x10.

In a world of pervasive nanotech, I suspect the next really big industry will be power generation; it'll require a step up in juice unlike any seen since the start of the century. Fortunately, nanotech will hopefully solve some technical problems (superconducting power transmission, materials suited to support fusion, etc) at the same time it's demanding this huge level of power generation.

Of course, in a world of pervasive nanotech, our existing governmental and societal structures are in a lot of trouble... We live, as the ancient Chinese said, in interesting times (and I mean that in the spirit in which they did).

Re:Side discussion:

[Shadow Wrought]

I'll take up part of that discussion.

While nanotechnology has many great potentials, they are still in a hazy future. Lasers were once seen as the technology that would transform the world. Same with Computers. Yet the bulk of the world is still relatively unchanged by either of these. Certainly the developed nations have changed substantially, but in many respects they have not changed much if at all.

I get up in the morning, go to work from 8-5 every weekday morning for 40 hrs a week. Same as my dad did, and same as my kids will. How we do our work has changed, but the simple pattern of society in which we work to earn money to pay for housing, food, et al. has remained unchanged.

In the bulk of the world, life is much closer akin to my grandfolks time. People work from sunrise to sunset to scratch out a living, and their sustenance, from the land. Nano technology is not going to dramatically change their lives. Drought or other climatic changes will be the key variable to their lives.

We do indeed live in interesting times, but I do not think that our time is any more interesting on an individual level than any other time. We live in a time that has seen the average american progress steadily further from the basic compnents of survival. How many average americans would be able to fend for themselves in the "wild?" The "interesting" past of our American lives is when all the artificial walls separating us from basic needs come crashing down.

Nanotechnology then does but attempt to fortify those walls and afford us protection from our fear of being without. Earlier times had the same fear, the difference being that they lived closer to their fear than we do.

Re:Side discussion:

[danila]

The change is not a matter of fact, it's a matter of perception. Essentially, nothing changed in this world during the last 14 or so billion years. After the laws of nature formed, nothing ever changed and I don't expect any changes for another 10^N years, until protons start decaying. Even talking about human life, knowing the history of technology well, one may argue that nothing really changed. Yeah, there have been fast food joints in Babylon (honest) and may be your grand-grand-...-grandfather was flipping the Babylonian analogue of burgers there (I don't imply here that you work in McDonalds).

The problem is that unless we both agree about what constitutes significant change and what doesn't, any discussion on that topic is pointless. But I can only pity you for your 9-5 work pattern. I, on the other hand, am basically free to do what I am interested in. I don't have to work much, because one year of work (in relatively undeveloped Russia) is enough to support me very well for the next 1-2 years. I have access to a large fraction of human knowledge. I live in good environment, with sufficiently high quality of life, nice people around me (now it's not Russia), etc.
Note: all that is not because I inherited a fortune or won it in a lottery.

Is this enough of a change for you? They say that change can only come to you from within and I can see how true it is. Unless you change the way you live, nothing will happen. You are right, even when advanced nanotech will become reality, some people will probably not notice that and continue working 9-5, while others will become posthumans. :)

And don't push your working philosophy on your kids. Instead help them become creative, intellegent, inquisitive and free people.

Re:Side discussion:

[Shadow Wrought]

Please do not pity me for my 8-5 job. I work with incredibly sharp folks at a challenging and highly rewarding job. I have enjoyed paralegalling for several years now and will continue to do it as long as I enjoy it. I appluad you for fortune but even by your own admission you have only the means now to support yourself for a year or two. After that it is always possible that you could end up working the 8-5 thing yourself, which would be another drastic change in your life.

I wrote the reply more as a means of stimulating conversation than of espousing a philosophy but I certainly agree with what I wrote. That technological change has left the bulk of the world untouched, and that for those whom have been touched, it has not changed lives significantly. While I do not know your full circumstances, I cannot imagine that you believe yourself to be an average individual;-) So for the rest of us, all the leaps and bounds that technology has made has not yet changed us dramatically. The needs for human survival remain ever unchanged, but the average American's distance from the basics of those needs is getting progressively further way.

The point then is not that our lives are more interesting than any other time is, per se, so much as that there are different dimensions to the average stressors with which all people cope.

It is the affluence of Western Society that enables us to take so seriously things like SCO and Mariah Carey, and it has allowed us to touch space and create wonders that our ancestors could only perceive of as magic. Yet we have before us well the remnants of long dead civilizations which collapsed into ruin because the populace became to far removed basic needs of human survival.

My point is that there is always an underlying level of stress. For those in a remote village in Africa, it is whether or not there will be enough rain for the crops. For a techie in SV it whether the SCo suit will invalidate Linux meaning that all the development work he is doing will dry up and he will be enemployed and ergo not have enough money to eat. Same stress, different layers.

For our own society then I think we would be wise to consider the lessons learned from earlier ancient civilizations and to try and understand how their fall came about. There is, after all, no single date upon which you can affirmitavely place the end of the Roman Empire as having occured. It faded in its glory over hundreds of years. I think it more than a bit egotistical of us a country to think that any single technology will ensure our survival.

As to the kids, I appreciate your advice, but even children at a young age already have their predispositions. It is just as wrong to push a non-conformist artsy lifestyle on a child that needs structure as it is to push a free spirited child into a corporate suit. We encourage them to be who they are, and for one I see the 8-5 structure as being extremely beneficial. I think the other would do well to understand some of the discipline that the 8-5 world requires, but will probably not want to take up permanent residence there. That being said both will, and do, receive as much love and support as we can give them;-)

Finally, I would offer a completely unsolicted piece of advice which you are more than welcome to ignore. It is related to an anecdote of a talk I had with my borther once about Master of Orion. My brother, you see, has a PhD. in Mathematics. He mentioned to me that while all of the reviews for MoO found it to be difficult, he found it to be quite easy. I asked him if he honestly thought that he was the target audience, to which he replied, "[T]hat he had never of it that way before." You, Danila, are obviously not the target audience either. And while I believe you are quite aware of that, you must also remember that the course of the world is as much determined by the momentum of the masses as it is by the unceasing tug of the outlyers.

naming

[maddogsparky]

If its the size of 1 mm, shouldn't it be called a "milli-engine"? It always bugs me when people name things with words that imply many magnitudes of order difference in size and use up all the obvious choices for things smaller yet than what is now called a microxxxx.

Re:naming

[First Person]

Or how about when nanotech gets smaller then 1nm, are we going to have to the change that name too?

Given that atoms are on the order of 0.1 to 0.3 nm and given the strong limitations imposed by nuclear physics (particularly the strong force), I don't think there is much risk.

Lasers

[garyrich]

"Lasers were once seen as the technology that would transform the world."

And they were right - they did. Not then, and not in the laser death ray way they thought back then, but now. I read a compelling article a while back (probably here) that proposed that the tech boom of the 90's was not the result of computer, the Internet or anything else. It was about lasers becomming cheap enough to be put in everything. Lasers are in millions of things. We don't even think about them - CD, DVD, fibre networks, SP/DIF..etc.

The transformations don't happen until the price point comes down. Nanotech is more like the way people think about the Internet - it starts inexspensivley from the get go (wouldn't have without those cheap lasers though). Once the first practical molecular assemblers are created (assuming they can be) it will boom very very quickly.