Slashdot Mirror
Nano Body Building
Roland Piquepaille writes "In this article from Backbone Magazine, Douglas Mulhall, author of 'Our Molecular Future' tells us about the future of nanomedicine. He thinks that medical diagnosis will be the first successful steps, involving nanorobots which will raise alerts when they detect pre-cancerous cells. And twenty years from now, researchers envision that nanomedicine will be a trillion dollar industry. Around 2025, you'll pay $1,000 a year for a nanopill that will extend your life by suppressing heart attacks, diabetes and other diseases. Other scientists say that nanotechnology will be used to build synthetic bone and tissue, an opinion shared by Scientific American, which warns that growing replacement organs is still at least another 10 to 20 years in front of us. More details and references are available in this overview focused on how nanomedicine is going to totally take over healthcare in the 21st century. [Additional note: Slashdot described Mulhall's Law of Disassembly last February.]"
As long as you're going to have little nano robots carry out your body's natural functions, why not go all the way, i.e. brain in a vat?
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
One issue I've not read in the articles posted here is the one concerning the toxicity of nano materials, such as buckyballs.
Also, right now on wbur is a BBC documentary on nanotech.
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
According to Robert Malthus... His hypothesised that (unchecked) population growth always exceeds the growth of means of subsistence. Actual (checked) population growth is kept in line with food supply growth by "positive checks" (starvation, disease and the like, elevating the death rate) and "preventive checks" (i.e. postponement of marriage, etc. that keep down the birthrate), both of which are characterized by "misery and vice". Malthus's hypothesis implied that actual population always has a tendency to push above the food supply. Because of this tendency, any attempt to ameliorate the condition of the lower classes by increasing their incomes or improving agricultural productivity would be fruitless, as the extra means of subsistence would be completely absorbed by an induced boost in population. As long as this tendency remains, Malthus argued, the "perfectibility" of society will always be out of reach. Can we really deal with a population that lives to be 150? 200? If the earth's populatoin is just over 6Billion... would we sustain a population of 7-8 Billion? I live in the sanjose area and they are buildings/houses on every hill in the area, of which 5 years ago the hills were still covered in grass. And the higher the population, the quicker we consume resources...
Well, I guess they were right. . .
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Do you have an economics degree? Malthus was shown to be wrong about his conjecture that population would be limited by available land mass...accoring to him we shouldn't even have been able to make it to 1 billion...
You did read the actual text describing this advance, did you not? He's talking not about personal computers, but about computer technologies.. In this case, the first steps done in opto computing. He didn't mention there was also quantum computing demonstrated.
Quantum computing has the potential to make all our current speed measuring methods completely obsolete, where optical computing is simply better (faster, potentially not as power hungry, etc...), quantum computing simply behaves in totally new ways, able to find solutions nearly instantaneously whatever the number of potential results.
Claude Angers
Kim Robinson deals with issue in his "Mars" trilogy. The solution he envisages is sort of like a mental housecleaning, and the description of it working sounds like a psychedlic drug episode.
I'm more than willing to risk the eventual craziness to live longer.
evanchik.net
Remember, those "target weight for a given height" charts assume an "average" body. If you have a small frame and no muscle then they will read high. If you are perfectly healthy and have a muscular physique, you will appear to be "obese" on one of these charts.
Finkployd