Salon’s interest is not an act of rational argument, but one of incitement. While years have gone by for leaders of the field(s) to discuss rationally, and theorize scenarios to develop safeguards, we have reached the time that “nanotechnology” is in the minds of pop culturists and culture industry.

So now as lesser informed individuals jump on the nanotech knowledge curve, the rise of bombast will occur just because a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.

By the second page, I’m seeing discussions of nanobots where he implies that glucose-powered nanobots must necesarily be assumed to be active in the body as long as the host is alive. This is a rather extraordinary and alarmist claim. Not only does it assume that the devices never break down (and I certainly wish I could design something that never breaks down) it assumes the designers are too short-sighted to have designed a time-limit to their activity, or a de-activation signal.

It’s the stuff of bad science fiction.

He also plays very fast and loose with error rates. The phrase “one in a million” is a figure of speech, not (usually) a literal statement of probabilities. So, when he’s worrying about cancer-targetting bots somehow mutating into sperm-targetting bots, his claim that billions of nanobots would make the one-in-a-million event common is… unpersuasive.

He’s conflating biological mutation rates of viruses or bacteria with ostensibly non-replicative nanobots. Worse, he’s conflating all sorts of biological properties, as he talks about varoius strains of nanobots mingling in the bloodstream and exchanging abilities. This is about as likely as my toaster learning to cook soup because I put it in a box with my crock pot.

Etc.