Foresight Update 23.29: Open Questions on Feynman's Path to Nanotech - July 16, 2009
Discuss these news stories at http://foresight.org/nanodot and http://www.opensourcesensing.org/blog.
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Taking Feynman's Path to nanotech, or even studying it seriously, would require finding answers to a number of open questions. These questions, however, are quite important and knowing the answers will be invaluable in understanding the envelope of possibilities for future manufacturing technology…
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From Open Source Sensing:
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I wrote in the Moral Railroads post that the key to trustable systems is that they work right. A recent post at Metblogs points out one reason they may have failed: overregulation because of the demonization of a substance…
So why hasn't the Feynman Path been attempted, or at least studied and analyzed? One possible reason is that there still seems to be a "giggle factor" associated with the notion of a compact, macroscale, self-replicating machine using standard fabrication and assembly techniques. Although studied in the abstract since von Neumann, and in physical systems in biology over roughly the same period, kinematic self-replicating machines remain poorly characterized as a field of engineering…
Another reason the Feynman Path may not have been tried is the perception that a machine-based approach has been tried in the form of MEMS, and that standard machine designs do not work at this scale and below due to stiction…
Surely, you will say, it would have been wonderful if back in 1959 people had taken Feynman seriously and really tried the Feynman path: we'd have the full-fledged paraphernalia of real, live molecular machinery now, with everything ranging from nanofactories to cell-repair machines…
Surely by the time a Feynman Path, started now, could get to molecular scale, the existing efforts, including the pathways described in the Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems, would have succeeded, leaving us with a relatively useless millimeter-sized system with 10-micron sized parts?
No — as the old serials would put it, a thousand times no…
Nice overview of the current status. Nanotech can only help…
There are at least two major parts to a project to implement the Feynman Path. The first is essentially to work out a roadmap for the second. In particular,…
—Nanodot posts by J. Storrs Hall
From Open Source Sensing:
Following up on our "they really will be everywhere" theme, Laurie Sullivan of RFID Journal reports that sensor networks do not even need direct solar energy to operate now…
Steve Omohundro brings to our attention a talk at PARC on a sensing system that pays some attention to "privacy-by-design", apparently…
Prof. Vic Callaghan of University of Essex (UK) brings to our attention a paper addressing issues of privacy and intelligent environments, which includes a number of scenarios that help make vivid what the future is bringing. His email is worth a read…
Alexandra Carmichael, co-founder of the open source health research site CureTogether, brings our attention to a piece in The Economist summarizing *some* of the current work on sensing using mobile phones. It concludes…
Worth reading: h+ Magazine is featuring a piece by well-known wearable computing pioneer Steve Mann on the concept of sousveillance. It begins…
—Open Source Sensing by Christine Peterson
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July 30, 2009
Singularity University
Mountain View, California
Christine Peterson will moderate a panel on time horizons in an accelerating world, for Singularity University participants.
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August 20-22, 2009
Gnomedex: a technology conference of inspiration and influence
Seattle, Washington
Christine Peterson will speak on life extension.
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Advancements in technologies such as nanotech, robotics, and biotech are promising to make major differences in our lives in the not-too-distant future, as the Industrial Revolution did to the agrarian world — to do for the physical world what the computer and Internet have done to the world of information.
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Converging Technologies for 21st Century Security
Organized by the Institute of Nanotechnology
November 25, 2009
The Royal College of Physicians, London, UK
Organised crime, terrorism, civil conflict, and natural disasters are sadly commonplace in global society and have developed increasingly complex dimensions. To counter such threats, civil security and emergency response teams are looking towards new technologies that offer more sensitive, rapid, and accurate detection methods; that provide the means to neutralise or effectively deal with the outcomes of such incidents; and that provide greater protection to personnel.
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