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Animate Future Reality

At the recent Foresight conference, the presentation "Productive Nanosystems: from Molecules to Superproducts", a collaborative work between John Burch and K. Eric Drexler was well received.

Thanks to Mark Sims, President of the nano-CAD software company, Nanorex, the Foresight Institute has a $10,000 challenge grant running through November 15, 2004 with the aim of expanding on these animation/film efforts. It takes us back to that age old axiom — "a picture is worth a thousand words"…

Here is your opportunity to support the creation of more pictures…

One can either go to this form

… and click on "not a membership, but another donation button" and enter: "Animation Completion" in the purpose of this donation field.

Or if you want to send in your donation by US post or fax print out and send in this form.

Ed. Note… Yes I know this can be viewed as blatant commercial promotion of the Foresight Institute. But on the other side of the coin is the fact that robust MNT will potentially save ~50 million lives a year. There is an old saying — "one must begin by being there". And if it takes animations and simulations to fire the imagination to get us there then I can't imagine a more noble cause deserving our support. My hat is off to Mark for understanding this. Related references:
Slide show: nanofactory Slide Show

Animated clip: Clip (warning its ~39 Mbytes).

2 Responses to “Animate Future Reality”

  1. Anonymous Coward Says:

    Better link

    A better link is http://www.foresight.org/animation_challenge/ which has some discussion of the challenge plus links to the slide show and animation.

    While the film will probably succeed in giving people a better idea of how a nanofactory could work, it may also be open to nitpicking from critics as various details are challenged. It's possible that the film may hurt the nanotech cause by in effect forcing defenders to commit prematurely to a possibly flawed design.

  2. BrettBellmore Says:

    Re:Better link

    At the recent conference, I had a chance to briefly discuss this with Drexler. They'e aware of the problems with the current version of the animation, and intend to address many of them in the new version. As well, I had a chance to talk to a certain heckler, (Attendees will know who I speak of.) and your concerns are valid with respect to him. But I think most people will be able to understand the difference between a concept, and a completed design.

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