I, Nanobot — Bionanotechnology is Coming

Maria Williams writes "Alan H. Goldstein, inventor of the A-PRIZE, and popular science columnist, says: Scientists are on the verge of breaking the carbon barrier — creating artificial life and changing forever what it means to be human. And we're not ready... Nanofabricated animats may be infinitesimally tiny, but their electrons will be exactly the same size as ours — and their effect on human reality will be as immeasurable as the universe. Like an inverted SETI program, humanity must now look inward, constantly scanning technology space for animats, or their progenitors. The first alien life may not come from the stars, but from ourselves." Yes it's an older article, but it's a fairly quiet sunday today.

Comments

Engines of Creation

[Tx]

The author mentions K. Eric Drexler and his book Engines of Creation, but I'm wondering if he actually read it. TFA says "Folks like Ray Kurzweil, Bill Joy and Eric Drexler have raised some alarms, but they are too dazzled by the complexity and power of human cybersystems, devices and networks to see it coming. Well, I took Engines of Creation to be one great big warning almost from start to finish about the same kind of thing this article talks about, so what am I missing? He's invented some new words for stuff, but other than that...

_The Singularity is Near_

[march]

Ray Kurzweil has written YAB (yet another book) on a similar subject. It is quite an interesting read about how evolution in the universe is an exponential curve, and that we are just on the cusp, or knee, of it going up. In there, he has pages and pages of supporting data relating to nanotech and bionanotech. It is a good read.

We are very close to having strong AI, nanotech in our bodies, and greatly enhanced information sharing / intelligence - all the research is well under way with positive results thus far.

http://tinyurl.com/ygmtxw (amazon.com)

Very Poor Science

[YetAnotherBob]

So this guy has a PHD in Biochemestry? Where does he get his facts??

He states that the human body has a potential of thousands of Volts. In reality it seldom reaches 1 volt. (A potential of 1/2 volt over a distance of a 50 angstroms is not a potential of millions of volts, it may be high in terms of Volts per Meter, but over any larger distance, it just dissapears. That's why we can't power pacemakers or laptop computers off your neural energy. Zero power is just zero power, no matter how clever you think your argument is.) He states that there are strong similarities between Carbon and Silicon chemistry. Yes, but there are also energy differences that are profound. Reality, there are very few living creatures that can use Silicon. Most of those that can are bacteria, and they use it only to create a shell or frame.

A little reality here, there are good reasons to believe that the first engineered bio machines will not be too greatly different than the ones we've already been living with. We call them bacteria. Control is a problem. It has been a problem for a very long time.

The article is just an attempt to scare people with little knowlege of the underlying science. The Author appears to be ignorant of basic physics or chemistry. His biology may or may not be suspect. I don't know that area as well. If this is the best that the critics of nanobot research can do, then they should be doomed to failure.

Rank superstition and scary fiction are a very poor way to make technical policy.