From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Wed Jul 12 2000 - 12:58:45 MDT
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>Another possibility that hasn't been discussed is that nanotech might
>not be entirely automated! It could be that for anything more
>complicated than raw diamond, you'll need a group of nanoengineers
>painstakingly assembling the object and watching for errors, with
>automation of the process coming later in the game.
>
>All things considered, nanomaterials will probably start out at
>thousands or millions of dollars per gram, too expensive for anything
>but nanocomputers, with prices dropping by a factor of ten every year or
>so. This is still much more gradual than "Surprise! Everything is a
>dollar a kilo!" It looks like nanomanufacturing will hit the economy
>gradually, rather than sharply, relatively speaking.
This possibility may not have been discussed here, but it has been
discussed -- it is in fact one of the popular positions among the NSF
nanotech folks.
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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