More nanotech skepticism
from the nanotech-not-interesting-enough dept.
Sharad Bailur writes "I read David Coutts's review of Matt Ridley's opinion on Nanotech with interest. Coincidentally I also am reading the book [Genome] and have just gone thru the chapter he mentions. I think Ridley's scepticism is shared by many other established scientists. Dr M. Vidyasagar, the former head of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics of the Defence Research and Development Organisation of the Ministry of Defence, here in India, said that while nanotech is feasible it will have to prove itself over time and that he found the concept of reverse logic operations more interesting. There have been similar reactions from others about nanotech, Michio Kaku's being the most famous one which was posted here some days ago. I think a healthy scepticism and an open mind are necessary. Nanotech is not a religion. Nor does it need convinced acolytes." CP: However, a large engineering project does need those who are committed to making feasibility into reality, and it is they who will win the race.
December 15th, 2000 at 1:27 AM
But To Dream…
Your right about nanotech not starting a religion
And we can all agree that skeptics help point out certain areas that may cause trouble along the road,
But to be overly skeptical is just as dangerous as being overly accepting.
Think if there were no dreamers in our history…if the top opinions were always followed.
We wouldn't have things like flight, electricity, america, etc:
Should we dare to dream…and to hammer out the details of the dream even though popular opinion may say its just a dream?
Personally, I think so
December 16th, 2000 at 11:42 AM
All of Nature is Nanotech based Self-replicators
I fail to understand how people can claim we will never be able to build self-assembling, self-replicating machines when the genome projects are handing us the blueprints for so many of them. One major problem is the physicists and chemists talk so little to the biologists and vice versa.
See my more extensive discussion of self-assembly with links here.
If the comment regarding reversible logic is refering to the concept of reversible logic in computer design, it will be useful when we get to the very high energy densities that nanotechology enables. However, it is not without offsetting costs, because you need more logic to keep track of bits that you would otherwise throw away (making the computers larger than would otherwise be the case). Additionally you have to run them slower to avoid generating heat due to the friction of moving parts (in rod-logic computers) or current flow resistance (in electronic computers). It will be interesting to see what concepts can be generated for photonic computing where these problems may be less.
Here is a source for papers by Charles H. Bennet, one of the pioneers in reversible logic.