From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sat Nov 09 2002 - 11:29:34 MST
On Sat, 9 Nov 2002, Avatar Polymorph wrote:
> My own point of view is this: I support dissemination of information about
> mechanisms of production and dissemination of such production itself.
> Self-reproducing assembler technology must be open to all (except perhaps
> those who want to make hydrogen bombs with them!).
Careful -- if you take this to its logical extreme, this means that loony-toons
like the two soon to go on trial in Virginia would be able to assemble really
nasty things rather than simply run around shooting people.
I too once thought that I should have my own macro-assembler and heaven
help anyone who gets in the way of my getting one. The problem with that
is that there are a lot of people out there that I do not trust with the
same "right".
Given your previous points (about wealth distribution), it isn't the
"assembler" that people need to have -- its inexpensive access to the
products produced by the assembler they need to have. My current position
is that I would prefer to see (a) either goods distributed from assemblers
controlled by government institutions; or (b) assemblers designed in such
ways that they cannot be disassembled and will only assemble "certified"
designs.
> Think about this: the software for most goods (i.e. information which can be
> loaded into an assembler) we use will be all finished very very quickly.
You are naive if you think that. A single nanobot design has more than
1000 times as many atoms in it as there are parts in a 767. While
space-filling designs will probably be relatively simple (e.g. car frames).
But sophisticated designs like nanobots will take a significant amount of work
by large engineering teams.
> Then it's available for millions of years without further effort.
True. Provided we avoid the NEOs.
> Also: don't forget Drexlerian molecular supercomputers which can undertake
> engineering problem solving.
They will help -- but you will need powerful normal computers first to design
them. Fortunately supercomputers are relatively regular entities largely built
on repeating subunits of the same design (memory cells, adders, etc.). That
makes them a much smaller design problem than something like a nanobot. But
you should keep in mind that pushing much of our electrical engineering design
capability out of the mind of the engineer and into the computer is a process
that took at least 20 years (~1975-1995). Doing the same for nanotech design
capability may take just as long.
Robert
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