Any backup can be destroyed. Besides, what will you run it on if the computers blow up? As a program, you would have no physical presence, so you would be completely helpless if a horde of barbarians wanted to raze your computer.

It will matter. As a program you can be backed up – a million fold.

What makes you think bin Laden will be happy about letting you achieve Transhuman existance? There will always be people who want you dead, who want the world re-greened, who want to enslave everybody, who kill for pleasure, etc. It won't matter one bit if you happen to be just a program uploaded into the LA dome.

Two points: 1) Yes, dreams can be realized – i.e., Transhuman dreams. 2) As SOME dreams are realized, other – more human – dreams (such as bin Laden's) will be made irrelevant. You can't separate the power of nanotech from the ultimate effect on human nature – which is where human dreams come from. OTOH, nanotech is the only apparent way to achieve what should be considered objective goals for any sentient entity (human or not). And achieving these goals will destroy many human dreams which are not legitimate goals. In fact, ultimately it will transform life on this planet so that the only thing "human" left will be the historical continuity that humans became Transhuman. Transhumans will NOT be "human" in any sense a current human can recognize (other than being sentient – and sometimes I wonder if humans are sentient).

> people will finally be able to realize their > dreams without living through a life of hardship. I wonder what Osama Bin Laden's dreams might be; or those of Iraqis protesting the U.S. troops presence, or those of Palestinians who are on the wrong side of the wall…

The people in power do not wish for Nanotechnology to be known to the general public. Why? Because this technology will change everything; people will finally be able to realize their dreams without living through a life of hardship. The status quo, and the social hiearchy created by man, will cease to exist altogether, and this has many people, especially those who are set in their ways and do not desire change, running around as if their heads had been cut off.

The enemy isn't just the politicians here though – the majority of the malice towards MNT comes from the scientific community itself, because many of these scientists feel threatened by this idea, and fear that their careers will be in jeapordy – which, in all honesty, they will be. They have every right to be scared – but denial of this technology and Drexler's vision is kind of a stupid way to go about doing things, and is looked down upon.

In a little less than 8 years, we will all see a dawn of a new age. Let us hope that this new age is an age of prosperity, and not an age of chaos.