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The Law of Disassembly
An anonymous reader writes "Smalltimes has a story by Douglas Mulhall, author of Our Molecular Future, which discusses molecular nanotechnology (MNT) disassembly, and argues for what he calls the 'Law of Disassembly,' that 'every MNT product must be disassemblable by at least one [of several possible methods].' The article ends with some good suggestions for raising awareness of this important issue. Gratuitous quote: This is disturbingly reminiscent of "nuclear power will give us clean limitless energy, and don't worry, we'll deal with the byproducts later because we'll have the tools by then.""
From the article summary, I thought he meant "disassemble" as in reverse engineer and figure out how the things work, and I was thinking "cool, like open source nanotech."
But in reading the article, I found this is not what he's talking about. Instead he is talking about how to decommission various molecular nanotechnology (MNT) creations, and e.g. the difficulties that are created by shields and shells created around various small scale entities.
I think both of these sides to "disassembly" seem pretty damn important.
and argues for what he calls the 'Law of Disassembly,' that 'every MNT product must be disassemblable by at least one [of several possible methods].' The article ends with some good suggestions for raising awareness of this important issue. Gratuitous quote: This is disturbingly reminiscent of "nuclear power will give us clean limitless energy, and don't worry, we'll deal with the byproducts later because we'll have the tools by then.
This is idiotic. Any reasonable MNT device will be mostly carbon in a form very like diamond. Yes, diamond is cool; it's hard, light weight, etc. But it isn't some SciFi ubermatter. For instance, it burns pretty much the same way coal and graphite do.
As for the products of MNT, it depends a heck of a lot on what is beeing made. Is he seriously suggesting that we shouldn't be allowed to use MNT to produce clean drinking water for third world countries unless we have a way to disassemble it? Or he just techo-fearmongering without bothering to be serious?
I will agree though, it is disturbingly reminiscent of the FUD that was spread about nuclear power by the fossil fuel industry that has done so much for the environment (not to mention world peace).
-- MarkusQ