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Real Nanotechnology Getting Closer, Says Drexler
destinyland writes "Sun Microsystems has helped fund a 198-page nanotechnology roadmap — but how
close are we to real nanotechnology? A science writer asked four nano pioneers, including
K. Eric Dexler ('progress is accelerating') and Ralph Merkle ('the exponential trends continue to be exponential') Though we don't have Star Trek replicators yet, the article lists some surprising recent nano developments (artificial tissue, nanoparticle sheets, ultrathin diamond nanorods).
And the roadmap's scientists are envisioning targeted cancer therapies, super-efficient solar cells, high-density computer memory chips and even responsive 'smart' materials."
Nanotechnology is like cybernetics: Any application that no longer feels exotic no longer falls under the common use of the term. This is why people with cardiac pacemakers or cochlear implants are generally not considered to be cyborgs, and microchips are not considered to be nanotech.
On the other hand, the goo growing in your bathroom sink, notably without the benefit of a 10+billion dollar fab and cleanroom conditions, is pumping out structures that small more or less continually. Top down is, indeed, beating bottom up in the limited realm of what we know how to do; but bottom up has been kicking ass everywhere else since not so long after the planet cooled a bit.
Bottom-up assembly is certainly a long-term basic research type project(unless you count the sort of temperature and composition control tricks that metallurgists have been using to produce desired crystal structures for centuries, among other things); but it is ultimately a very desirable skill to pick up. As long as we have to fab them top down, nanotech materials are going to be confined to niche applications(Sure, semiconductors are common; but compared to concrete and steel?)
A computer is a billion switches. Even if we turned it into a googolplex switches, it's still nothing more than a googolplex switches.
Our brains are nothing but billions upon billions of neurons, synapses, etc. forming complex interconnections.. yes, any first generation intelligent AI would have to be created by humans, but if we exactly modelled a human brain in software and trained it like any other child (it would probably need the aid of a prosthetic or virtual body to be able to learn), what would really make the resulting AI different from ourselves if it reacted as we do? I know it's a big if, and that there probably isn't much point in creating an AI that has human flaws - but there is nothing in life to indicate that we are anything other than purely physical constructs. Otherwise, why bother with having bodies in the first place - unless perhaps our bodies are as to the soul as cars and aeroplanes are to humans?
which is totally what she said
True, we are already building electronic components at nanometer scales. But when people talk about nanotechnology, they are usually thinking of mechanical devices built from nanometer scale components, or larger structures which exhibit new properties based on manufactured, nanometer scale features.
The industry for these applications has hardly even begun.
The achievements of the lithography industry are absolutely stunning. And if you want to call them a branch of nanotechnology, that's fine too.
But they have not achieved the holy grail of nanotechnology, and the tricks of lithography never will. The holy grail is atomic-level precision; not just in restricted circumstances (e.g. single atomic layers under some constraints), but in the general case. As in, you draw in some CAD program an arbitrary (within physical law) device wherein each atom is specified... and then you get it built. Lithography cannot do this. Synthetic chemistry can do this for a subset of chemical compounds, but can't tackle the general case and certainly can't currently make arbitrary nano-devices with atomic-level precision. You're right that bottom-up approaches like self-assembly also can't currently do this (they are more of a way to assembly precise sub-units into larger assemblies).
This final "true" nanotechnology (Drexler now calls it "molecular nanotechnology" to differentiate it) won't be easy, and may very well require a delicate combination of everything we've learned from of top-down techniques (e.g. lithography) and bottom-up techniques (e.g. synthetic chemistry, self-assembly). Or maybe it require radically new thinking. The point is we don't yet know, so to say that "top down beat bottom up years ago" really misses the point: molecular nanotechnology has not yet been acheived.
In the meantime, our current tricks all have their uses (lithography is great for, e.g. making microchips... whereas self-assembly is great for making, e.g. coatings for pharmaceuticals and fuel-cell membranes).
Science is always changing, always evolving, because we are always learning (some of us anyway). If you expect science to be exactly the same in 10 years, you have a fundamental misconception of how science works. In fact, science not only does change, it must, otherwise it becomes more dogmatic garbage the world has too much of anyway. Don't mistake your lack of comprehension for the fallibility of science.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire