Re: Lyle's Law

From: Damien Broderick (damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Wed Oct 09 1996 - 21:00:21 MDT


At 07:23 PM 10/9/96 -0400, Dan wrote about my line:

>> I suspect [Lyle] shares my hunch that orders of magnitude are being
scamped when someone
>> easily gestures toward replication via atom-by-atom scanning,

> I've never seen atom-by-atom scanning mentioned seriously except in
>science fiction. Do you have a reference?

Perhaps I misunderstood Drexler, but Engines of Creation says:

`A nanomachine able to do this [pull stuff apart], while recording what it
removes layer by layer, is a *disassembler*... [A] nanocomputer system will
be able to direct the disassembly of an object, record its structure, and
then direct the assembly of perfect copies.' (pp. 19-20).

Damien Broderick



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