Slashdot Mirror
Nanotechnology: Are Molecular Assemblers Possible?
Roland Piquepaille writes "Two experts in the field of nanotechnology, K. Eric Drexler, Ph.D., cofounder of the Foresight Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., and the person who coined the term "nanotechnology," and Richard E. Smalley, Ph.D., a professor at Rice University and winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, exchanged open letters about "molecular assemblers" -- devices capable of positioning atoms and molecules for precisely defined reactions in almost any environment. These letters are making the -- long -- cover story of the current issue of Chemical & Engineering News. At the end of this rich exchange of four letters, they still disagree about the issue. Drexler thinks "molecular assemblers" are possible while Smalley denies it. Who is right? Don't count on me to give an answer. This summary contains some forceful quotes from the original letters."
If, in the future, copying physical objects is nearly as easy as copying information on a computer, will corporations lobby to pass laws that make it illegal to do so? In other words, will I be arrested one day for making a copy of my friend's Ferrari?
Richard Feynman talked about nanotechnology way back in 1959--before "nanotechnology" was even a word.
It kind of irks me that the person who coins a word gets more credit than a person who talked about the actual process--nearly thirty years prior.
Read Feynman's talk at the Zyvex Web site.
Also interesting is Ray Kurzweil's comments on the exchange:
/ ar ticles/art0604.html
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=
Even if they are not possible, I suspect by studying a way to make these possible, one may find out something interesting so, let's pretend these are possible...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
How long would it take one of these assemblers to make a cup of "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot"?
Trolling is a art,
There is a fundamental obstacle to creating moleular assemblers: What do you make them out of?
Imagine that you were given the task of designing a machine to lay bricks. This probably would not be all that difficult, considering all of the things we already do with robots.
However, the problem becomes much more difficult if I add the stipulation that the machine be constructed entirely from bricks and mortar.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In lectures and in a September 2001 article in Scientific American, Smalley outlined his scientific objections to the idea of molecular assemblers, specifically what he called the "fat fingers problem" and the "sticky fingers problem."
/.ers have had to face at one point or another.
Aye, this is something that almost all
84-page peer-reviewed white paper on nanofactory. Conclusion: we see no hurdles, predicted time line: 10 years from now we could haave the first operating assembler... http://www.jetpress.org/volume13/Nanofactory.htm
*sigh* I'm touched.
Also I found it interesting that the usage of Nanotechnology was changed so greatly that the creator of the term accepts the newer phrase 'molecular assemblers' for that process.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
They are possible, and Twinkies(TM) provide the proof. They are manufactured with absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever, and this is only possible if vitamins and minerals are screened out at the molecular level.
They say its impossible, but isn't DNA essentially just that, and I'm quite sure some lab recently built a transitor from DNA so I'd say its definatly possible.
From reading the letters I don't think Drexler has really addressed the problems raised by Smalley fingers at all, he just tries to brush the problems aside.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
So there, Smalley wins, he got scared children into the debate. Only thing likely to win debates better are beautiful women's tears, knockout punches, and defaulting by just leaving the room in a huff.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
No matter how unlikely it seems, I think you have to be very careful saying something is impossible. Especially something that we are only just starting to explore - such as nanotech.
As Dexter quotes Smalley:
Molecular assemblers are not currently possible so we're not discussing 'now'. As for the future, well anything is possible. Look back through history and I don't think anyone can seriously say that anything is impossible given a long enough timespan - given enough research and progress and time, humans will probably find ways to overcome any physical, chemical, biological etc limit.
So if the future is certain, then all these discussions are about is when. Given the lack of developments in the nanotech area, i doubt anyone can give an accurate timeline as more research/developments is required.
Therefore the whole discussion seems like a pissing contest since neither side can really provide any solid info to predict when their predications will become true.
If I had to bet, I'd say that Drexler was right. Smalley seems to rely on strawman arguments (they'd be restricted to water) and arguments from incredulity (the fat fingers schtick). This is the same sort of plausible sounding arguments that have been used to "prove" (in my lifetime) that we will never detect planets around other stars, that we will never be able to image individual atoms, that I will never have a hi-res colour display on my desk, that we will never be able to clone a mammal, etc., etc.
If you strip away the fancy words (and shamelessly simplify), this becomes much more obvious:
Drexler may well be optimistic about the timeline, and may well be underestimating the difficulties, but I've yet to see an argument that it can't be done that holds up under critical examination.-- MarkusQ
Your body does what you've described all the time using DNA as the storage device, and only a two-part complex to do the actual assembly (ribosomes). One problem is, there we're talking about assembling from a fairly well defined set of components which are themselves complex enough to have ways of being selective (an amino acid of a particular geometry will bind preferably to a particular other structure). When you're talking about single atoms, there isn't that much of a geometric factor acting in your benefit anymore. Of course, we even manage that somewhat, since there are particular proteins in our body which end up having a single metal ion of some type or other in the center of them (hemoglobin - iron, chlorophyll - magnesium). The question is, can we generalize this and make it externally controllable (i.e. we feed the DNA-equivalent in by some remote process that preferably doesn't involve changing the environment we're building in).
In the body, communication is usually done diffusing some chemical species that the other cells react to. So perhaps there'd be a byproduct of what one robot is building, and the others would be designed to be able to detect that byproduct to measure the local status. You should be able to build fairly complex uniform structures just knowing the local environment (periodic structures like crystals or networks), but it'd be difficult to build a single highly specified structure unless you used some other control mechanism with good spatial resolution, like in chip manufacture.
Yes, they are possible. Look at what living cells already do ... every single one of them. They convert raw materials into cell structures. We already know it's possible; we just need to figure it out how to do it our way, or copy the way the cells do it.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Ribosomes are essentially molecular assemblers that build proteins out of amino acids using instructions from messenger RNA (originally transcribed from the DNA in the nucleus). So, it's not only possible, your cells are doing it as you read this.
[Insert pithy quote here]
...but I'm really not skilled in reading molecular assembly language.
For a good book check out The Computational Beauty of Nature). Some tasks can be broken down into very simple repeated actions which simple machines can perform. The beauty of these system is that they require little communication between agents. Merely an awareness of what is around you and a simple list of tasks can create some complecated forms.
Take a look at this:
Here
From the article:
"an atomic manipulation facility, unique in the world. This atomic manipulation facility will enable a new generation of experiments to unfold. It will allow McGill researchers to construct new devices atom by atom, thus developing the science and technology required for future electronic and biochemical systems."
Now, I have only a vague understanding of the subject, but from what I read, I was lead to believe that you didn't have one little agent running around like a little gnome (or group thereof) building some complicated structure. You had a sequence of these things which acted like an assembly line. Each agent knows how to slap a specific atom or subset of atoms onto some atomic structure it receives, and only does something when it receives that atomic structure. So there wouldn't really need to be any memory, or very little, since it only does a specific task repeatedly. The thing could almost be stateless.
Again, this is my dim recollection from something I read awhile back, so I bow down before more informed heads.
No offense, but what idiot thought to use 2.4ghz inside the body?
Yes, of course it barely transmits, 2.4ghz is the frequency used by microwaves to heat food, because water absorbs it so well.
Hint: We're mostly water too.
Now if we could just dessicate people utterly, those transmitters would work just fine...wouldn't be much of a life monitor, though...
--Dan
Although Feynman proposed the idea first, it was Drexler who actually developed practical ideas about how it could be done. It was Drexler who fully explored the implications of the new invention, benefits and dangers. It was Drexler who designed molecular machinery (in Nanosystems) and calculated their physical parameters.
It doesn't need molecular technology. They already try to come after you even today. See this nice (and real) example:
_ sl r-pl_us.htm
http://www.mb-portal.net/html/news/special/2003
Some guy from Poland "copied" the new Mercedes SLR, long before the real car hits the market. Mercedes tried to buy it from it to get it off the streets. Because that failed, they sue him.
Marc
Everyone seems to ignore the fact the with nanotechnology any disgruntled employee can manufacture a nanoplague that will kill off the whole world's population. Imagine something like a miniature time bomb that spreads like a cold virus. At a predetermined time it explodes (Diamond Age's cookie cutters), produces a poison, or compiles a toaster in your brain. With a GPS antenna (graphite is an pretty good conductor) this could be very location specific. With the capability to map the bloodstream, it could selectively kill fat people (body mass index), stupid people (small brains), blacks (thick lips), various asian races (epicanthic fold variances), ugly people (by scanning the face). And all this is no more difficult than compiling a toaster. You can't even enforce assembler containment; read about how Hackworth stole the primer (Diamond Age): any engineer working with assemblers could do exactly the same thing to get himself one. And this ONE MAN can kill off everyone in the world. Now tell me, which benefit of nanotech will offset this not-too-negligible danger?
Of course molecular assemblers are possible. Your body contains billions of them -- ribosomes.
A ribosome (a combination of several large protein molecules) constructs arbitrary protein molecules from individual amino acids according to the instructions on a strand of RNA (copied from DNA). Sounds like a molecular assembler to me.
Now, as to whether they can be made smaller and more flexible than that (nanotech's "universal assembler") is another question -- ribosomes may turn out to be the minimum possible assembler. Or not.
-- Alastair
In your terms Smalley's objection is that the current existance proof is a special case. Specifically, Smalley points out that the extant examples are all dependent on WATER BASED CHEMISTRY. Water is one of the most powerfully corrosive solvents known. Smalley implies this rules out nanoassembly of items unstable in water... such as steel, silicon, titanium, &c. At the very least, it presents a highly non-trivial problem, and Smalley thus challenges Drexler to provide an non-handwaving solution. Drexler ducks; there may be a solution (or solvent), but it ain't simple.
The biotic existance proof proves it's not impossible, but doesn't prove that general materials assemblers are possible, due to the limitations of water chemistry. (I don't count humans as a general nanoassembler; not cost effective.)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
The smallest self-assembler is equivalent in size to the smallest microorganism. Nanotech devices cannot do better than the already extant nanotech devices: all the enzymes and proteins in a cell (any cell, any virus, any bacterium). Not a single enzyme or protein in any cell anywhere is capable of reproducing itself from first principles (atoms). Even the small "self-replicating" prion protein cannot make itself from scratch. It requires a premade template protein assembled by ribosomes using instructions provided by RNA which was produced by RNA polymerase, which is itself a copy of a DNA "library" generated by an evolutionary decendent of RNA polymerase called DNA polymerase.
The closest thing to a self-assembling "machine" would be the hypothetical self-replicating RNA molecule of primordial, pre-life earth. The presumed precursor to all things living today. But you don't get much use from a self-replicating RNA except more copies of that RNA, which doesn't even do anything but copy itself. It cannot be a universal replicator. Nothing can. Information takes space. All the information needed to replicate the smallest possible item, a prion, is exactly the size of a prion - and it doesn't do anything de novo, just refolds an already extant protein generated by the minimum-sized machinery necessary to generate that protein. Thus a virus could be considered a measure of the smallest possible self replicant capable of producing complex systems (the virus).
But wait! A virus CANNOT be the smallest possible self-replicator. It REQUIRES a pre-existent cell with all the machinery necessary to start from first principles (atoms and small molecules) and generate more complex "machines" and structures. Thus a virus is not, and can not be considered self-contained anymore than a prion can. No, a full-blown cell, the smallest being independently replicable bacteria, are the smallest possible self-replicator starting from first principles (atoms and molecules as a source of building material). Drexler, not being really versed in anything beyond simple chemistry and physics sees things through rose-colored glasses, and ignores the facts around him.
If a self-replicating, autonomous nano universal replicator were actually possible, it would have won evolutionarily as the most efficient replicator and it would be the dominant form of replicator on earth. Hmmm...nope, none around here. There isn't even anything CLOSE to such a beastie within ANY living organism of ANY type.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
However, there's also Asimov's Corollary to Clarke's First Law (1977):
From the above linked article:
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Nanotech assemblers already exist. There are billions of them inside your body. They're called cells.
It may well be that we will use tailored DNA to bootstrap nanotechnology. Cells are already very efficient organisms; perhaps it would be possible to grow them in an artificial matrix, with their DNA programmed so that they would express out nanomachines of arbitrary construction. Or perhaps just parts.
Which is more difficult-- understanding of DNA to the level where that would be possible, or doing it from scratch? My guess would be the former.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
If you strip away the fancy words (and shamelessly simplify), this becomes much more obvious:
The argument is about putting molecules together mechanically, as Drexler proposes. Drexler repeatedly refuses to address this point. I agree with Smalley that mechanical positioning, as Drexler advocates, is an inherently very limited method.He's always supported nanotechnology since he was a student at MIT, but many people have pointed out that he goes about it the wrong way. He's made a lot of efforts to further the science, but he tries to do it in one large leap. A lot of the academic community see him as a pseudo-scientist who is way too optimistic. He's gained a lot of his popularity from saying things that are shocking but don't have much credibility to them.
chillax137
OK, lots of people have read "Prey" or one of the other Shiny! Exciting! Books! that talk about the "Gray Goo problem". Simply stated, this is that nanoassemblers which are trained to self-replicate could potentially go bonkers and start turning the entire planet into more assemblers. As Homestar Runner might put it, "That's just ridiculous" -- and yet this is what some people lose sleep over! The reason that nanoassemblers will never be able to replicate in an uncontrolled environment, and therefore will never take over the world, is that they need energy to function. Lots of it. Breaking pi and sigma bonds can be ridiculously expensive, requiring several eV of energy in some systems. Pulling a carbon out of a single-walled nanotube takes over 10 eV. Where does the energy come from? Absent a large and complex digestive system, the assemblers will have to be fueled ahead of time or provided with a simple energy source along with their raw materials. These robots will not be able to find the energy they need to keep going in the wild. That's why Smalley's not worried about runaway nanobots. The extreme difficulty of doing "machine-phase chemistry" is another good reason, by the way -- assuming machine-phase chemistry is even possible, how are the nanobots supposed to create a clean enough environment to do their work in the wild? If machine-phase chemistry can be accomplished at all, it will be a much more complicated affair, I think, than Drexler would have us believe.
Maybe when everyone has their own personal assembler, no one will feel compelled to buy anything anymore. Therefore, the only people in business selling a product will be those selling assemblers. But maybe there will also come a day when the government provides them, too... kinda like phone booths. The phone book could be a directory of things it can make. Anyway, the market would die, but only products. People selling services would still be valued. ;). Maybe if everyone had anything they wanted at the touch of a button, we would all shift our new attention to creating new and better things, instead of the pursuit of money. Of course, money would have to be kept track of electronically, if it still existed, since it could easily be copied. True, the serial numbers would be the same, but it could be spent before it was caught as a double.
Of course, I can imagine that someone would get the idea to copy a person so that they wouldn't even have to pay for services... just make a servant. I think in this case the government would make a law against copying a human- much in the same lines with the cloning issue today- so as not to devalue the human life
Well, that's the end of my rant.. tell me what you think. Also, I have a question. Forgive me for not RTFA, but from what the poster said, it seemed to point at the fact that the assemblers simply rearranged matter. On what level does this happen? i.e. would i be able to make an apple if i threw in some raw glucose, pure water, etc.? would i need even that?
The power of Christ compiles you.
A Random Blog
I read the letters, and skimmed Drexler's "Nanotechnolgy: ..." book.
...". Nanotech is going to make heavy use of indexes like this. Storing all those enzymes, and shipping them one after another to the right place, is going to be SLOW. I suppose you could pipeline your enzyme fetches.
I think Smalley's argument is that for a specific reaction between two molecules, you need something like an enzyme designed specifically for that reaction. The number of possible molecules is astronomical, and the number of pairs astronomical squared.
I hear you can treat most of molecules mechanically except for a few dozen atoms surrounding the reaction site. That limits it to, let's say, 2^^30 possible molecules, so 2^^60 reactions you need specific enzymes for. Designing any one of those 2^^60 enzymes or reaction paths is feasible. Making an index iwth 2^^60 entries is feasible, given atom-scale memory, although it isn't microscopic. Drexler suggested such an index for diamondoid struts of different sizes in "Nanotechnology:
The real number of enzymes needed is much smaller than 2^^60. To get a self-assembling molecule, assuming you feed it the right basic building blocks, you don't need a universal assembler. DNA limits itself to 4 molecules with a single type of connecting part. Proteins limit themselves to 24 molecules (I don't know if the connecting parts are standardized but I suspect they are). Ribosomes can construct ribosomes, so we already know self-assembling machines are possible.
An interesting question is, given an assembler that knows how to do some fixed set of assemblies, what can be built? How big a set is needed? The smaller the set, the less work is needed to get the correct configuration for each reaction. Perhaps we need specialized factories for some building blocks with standard connectors, then just a tape-reading assembler that can connect standard connectors? Standards simplify things.
Neil Stephenson's Diamond Age is probably a more reasonable assesment of where things will go. People will still be employed in the design of new machines, and will be able to afford better pieces of land, and more electricity (Stephenson also suggested that perhaps handmade items would become status symbols). The (unemployed?) masses will live in unparalleled comfort from a historical perspective, being well clothed, fed, etc.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
What we have here are two different worlds colliding. Drexler is coming at this from the point of view of a theoretical physicist, while Smalley is an experimental chemist.
Drexler has found certain theoretical processes which would lead to molecular assemblers. The key problem comes from his assumption of complete control over the atoms. Despite his assurances to the contrary, you still have one big fat sticky finger which you've attached your strained structure to. He simply sees that it is possible (of course, if you read his books, there is a glaring lack of chemical calculations).
Experimentally (I'm a bit biased here, I'm an experimentalist) this is a bunch of crap. No one is anywhere close to doing anything like this. First we need to show experimentally that his idea of creating stressed structures and twisting them apart will work, and no one can touch that right now. How do you create the strained structures? In addition, this would have to be done in vacuum to keep interactions with the environment at a minimum. It would also have to be done at cryogenic temperatures to keep the atoms from vibrating out of place (remember we're relying on two unstable structures). This leads to an expensive and difficult proposal.
There are a few groups (I know of Wilson Ho's group at UCI - great pictures by the way) which are working on joining one atom with another. It's done under extreme conditions inside a scanning tunnelling microscope, and it's VERY hard. They don't do any twisting, they do the sensible thing and use applied voltages to excite and bind atoms.
Quite frankly, Feynman and Drexler have been major impediments to experimental nanotechnology for a long time now. There are plenty of interesting, self-assembled structures out there that can do some amazing things which are not related to the assembler idea. There are plenty of good research groups which are dismissed funding in favor of groups which are flailing around in the dark.
The first thing you learn about nanotechnology is that any intuition about the macroscopic world doesn't carry over. Trying to fit our notions of the rest of the world into the nano-scale world is foolish and wrong. Those strait lines between atoms in a molecule are not always strait.
Before we try to use nanotechnology to shape the future we need to understand it. Drexler gives the impression that we already do, and that it's time now to move foward, but no one knows how yet; we just don't understand.
I think it would be wrong of us to say that molecular assembles are impossible. Personally, I think it is possible, and that's why I do this. But to say that they are "close" or to give ANY prediction of when we will see them is just silly. After saying that, let me say something silly and say that although I hope to see nanotechnology come of age in my life, I don't expect to.
I read Engines of Creation, got all fired up, went back to undergraduate school for a second undergraduate degree in chemistry, and really loved quantum mechanics. But organic chemistry opened up a serious can of kick-butt on me!
So I can read the debate but damned if I can make an intelligent contribution to it. Maybe I can translate it down a little:
Drexler: Yo, machine-phase chemistry is the bomb. We can put atoms wherever we want and make anything we want!
Smalley: No you can't, dork. Atoms are not little balls and bonds are *really* not little sticks. You can't build molecules like tinkertoys.
Drexler: Enzymes do it in nature, therefore it's possible.
Smalley: Well, if you wanna make more better enzymes, great, but enzymes only work in water-based living cells and it's kinda hard to grow a cell phone from organic components.
Drexler: My machine-phase chemistry will be to living enzymes as a metal airplane is to a bird.
Smalley: Whatever. Go do your "machine-phase chemistry" and come back when you've actually built something. Hint: I think it's gonna take you 200 years.
I think Smalley is wrong when he says that it's by nature impossible. And I think Drexler is wrong when he says nature has already provided an existence proof. I think we should get started on those 200 years of work and see what we can do!
A while back, Sean Morgan did the most interesting work I've seen on a timeline and prerequisites for Nanotechnology. At present, odds are that we'll see an assember sometime around 2022.
Apparently my design for a molecular assembler is deemed impossible for the sticky or fat finger aspect, but I need help understanding why this is impossible. I think I can circumvent that problem.
Anyways here's the design. It is simple and achievable. It is not conducive to building/replicating itself easily though.
The core is an STM microscope-like device, with many parralel tips each working on its own square millimeter (or smaller) area. Needle Tips or fingers doped with the next mollecule (properly oriented) to be inserted move along a conveyor belt where each are inserted into one of the parallel heads, the head then sticks the molecule in place, then the needle is sucked out, and sent to be refilled.
I don't really have a process for making mollecules, and placing them in the proper orientation on a needle.
The one good thing about this design, is that there probably exists a needle material than can react "properly" with any given mollecule, such that it can 1) capture it, and 2) release it. (One method of releasing could just be to jab the needle quickly forward, flinging the package into place).
There's one problem with Drexler's universal assembler theory, with little publicity, that is only partially solved by my design. There is not an infinite number of universal assemblers created instantly, and as a secondary problem, programming them to work and move around cooperatively is not easy, and increases their required size if only because of the massive cpu they need to operate with.
The Other issue only partially addressed is speed. If everything is built using 3d tetris-like merging of 10nm building blocks (mollecules), then finishing a square milimeter takes 10B blocks. A quadrillion blocks makes a cubic milimeter of something. Even at 1 billion blocks per second, it takes 11.5 days to make 1 milimeter thick object. The billion blocks per second seems outrageously high to reach, but another way to increase throughput (but increase congestion of feeder needles) is to have denser parallel heads. If each head works on a square micrometer area, then building a cubic micrometer object takes 1 million 10nm blocks. At (only) 100K blocks per second, a 1mm thick object takes 10,000 secs = 2.77 hours
There's one other big problem. Like building a house of cards on an uneven surface, mollecules won't necessarily maintain a desired orientation without simultaneously placing adjoining molecules to couterbalance them. Seems like there would be a solution to this, with all the arms in such close proximity, but it would also slow down the process.
Author: Atkinson, William Illsey
Title: Nanocosm: nanotechnology and the big changes coming from the inconceivably small
Summary: Atkinson is a technology reporter who surveyed the nanotech field (actually talked to researchers), and from his perspective, Drexler's assembler is not feasible, but he gives lots of other examples of nanotech now in labs around the world.
If you think Drexler is right, reading this book might change your mind.
But that's just my point of view - I dislike Drexler's constant reference to Feynman, his total lack of any experimental pedigree, and his unwillingness to take on board the views of those who actually know a bit about what he spouts off about, because they have tried it.
Reading the article, it seems that Drexler in his second letter ignores the fact that he is contradicting what he says in his first letter, because the mechanisms proposed in the second would inevitably require the very same 'Smalley fingers' that he derides in his first polemic.
Drexler is just pissed that someone with credibility and experience has pointed out the holes in his arguments, and cast doubt on his percieved achievements (which are roughly on a par with other Sci-Fi authors, IMHO).
Leave it to guys like Smalley - we'll end up with nanotechnology that works - maybe not the grand self-replicators in the first iteration, but at least we'll have technology rather than the PR puff and self-publicity that characterises Drexler's current output.
Sorry for the rant, but Drexler really, really pisses me off.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
From the exchange, Drexler gives the impression that matter at the atomic scale behaves in the same way as matter on the macroscopic scale that we live in.
Physicists and chemists would know that this assumption is false. The Dalton theory of atoms as billiard balls has been refuted a long time ago.
How is a mechanical manipulator going to "grab" another atom? These manipulators are also at the atomic scale! Duh.
Today near the bottom of the http://www.foresight.org/ website, it shows a unrealistic graphic of one of Drexler's proposed nanofactories. There are what appears to be spherical atoms being manipulated by machinery. -- It fails to accurately show that the machinery is no more solid than the lego atoms that the machinery is manipulating. (Unless maybe the machinery material is made of some sort of selectively reactive/nonreactive, subatomic material)
When I see pictures & notions like that being bandied about and sold to the public, I get the same feeling when people push Jules Verne's voyage to the moon as science rather than science fiction. -- Baloney.
Right now Smalley wins. He's a doer, an implementer.
Drexler may get the last laugh in the far future, but some real science must appear first to make science fiction a reality.
The really hard stuff is in the implementation. The implementers deserver the real credit.
Plenty of people will say that molecular/atomic assemblers are impossible right up until the big breakthrough that makes it possible. That's how science works. People said that all sorts of computing stuff was impossible because vacuum tubes were too big, and then, all of a sudden, somebody figured out how to make transistors. All kinds of important stuff was impossible to figure out because the aether complicated it all and could not be measured, and then Einstein pointed out that it did not matter because the aether did not exist. Right now people are insisting that we will hit computing speed limits due to the limits of CMOS-but does anyone really think that there won't be a replacement?
Anything can happen with science. Magic is just what science cannot explain, because we have not figured out how to do it yet. But eventually, given enough time and resources, anything is possible.
Most people do not really understand the potential impact of mature nanotechnologies. And it's easy to see why - even Drexler's book Unbounding the Future: The Nanotechnology Revolution gives some really ridiculous examples (may be to make it simplier to understand). Here are my responses to two of particularly misleading comments in this thread.
:
:
2BorgDrone
However, if molecular assemblers ever become mainstream I'd rather design my own car and let it assemble that. If everyone is driving a Ferrari I'd rather have something different.
When molecular assemblers become mainstream, having a car would be rather pointless. First, there are unlikely to be any streets where you can impress chicks, since everyone would be able to live wherever on Earth they like. Second, there probably won?t be any roads, since you don?t need to transport goods (they can be manufactured from CO2 on the spot) and it?s easier to fly people from A to B. Third, designed cars would be as old-fashioned as horse carriages now ? smart completely transformable people-movers would be all the rage. And forth, you will be able to drive any kind of car in your personal virtual reality simulation, so you don?t need to actually design the car (just program how it should behave) and the issue of IP would be moot.
2jchoyt
Money will still have value. Someone has to create and/or design food, clothing, medicine, entertainment, etc.
Strong AIs will be able to create and or/design everything, including these things you describe. Furthermore, people will not need food, because it will be easier to just get energy from the environment without any conscious actions like eating from your side. Clothing is likely to be designed for the sake of it. Most couturiers are not in this business for money, they do it because they like it, and when all fabrics and basic production operations will become free, as well as everything they need personally, they are unlikely to charge you anything for their latest fashionable clothes. Medicine will not be used, because our bodies will be redesigned to include a smart AI-based immune system, capable of fixing most problems, except, may be, for being in the epicenter of the thermonuclear explosion. So most things you mention will not be needed and those that still will be needed, will be done by professional volunteers for free.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.