From: Hal Finney (hal@rain.org)
Date: Fri Jul 31 1998 - 15:32:30 MDT
One thing I didn't find on that web site was information about the author.
Who is Robert A. Freitas? What are his credentials? Is he an M.D.?
Biochemist? Engineer?
This book series seems highly speculative to me. It is very early to be
predicting specific nanotech devices for medical purposes, especially in
enough detail to fill a three volume set! I can see making some sketches,
a few general ideas of what would be possible, like Leonardo's visions
of flying machines. But I doubt that we are able today to predict the
specifics of these future machines in the kind of detail that would
justify such a publication.
The last item of his FAQ asks about the benefits of such technology.
After pointing out the obvious, elimination of disease, pain and
suffering he goes on to discuss brain enhancements.
http://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/NanoMedFAQ.html#FAQ19
> Consider that a nanostructured data storage device measuring ~8,000
> micron3, a cubic volume about the size of a single human liver cell and
> smaller than a typical neuron, could store an amount of information
> equivalent to the entire Library of Congress. If implanted somewhere
> in the human brain, together with the appropriate interface mechanisms,
> such a device could allow extremely rapid access to this information.
>
> A single nanocomputer CPU, also having the volume of just one tiny human
> cell, could compute at the rate of 10 teraflops (1013 floating-point
> operations per second), approximately equalling (by many estimates)
> the computational output of the entire human brain. Such a nanocomputer
> might produce only about 0.001 watt of waste heat, as compared to the ~25
> watts of waste heat for the biological brain in which the nanocomputer
> might be embedded.
It's a huge step from fixing broken chromosomes and killing bacteria to
being able to interface to a Library of Congress neuron. Glossing over
the immense difficulty of the "appropriate interface mechanisms" makes
this a highly misleading example, in my opinion. The tiny nanocomputer
is problematical as well. I suspect that "only" .001 watt, when emitted
by a device the size of a cell, would cause significant localized cooling
problems, not to mention the software problems needed to make effective
use of this computer within the framework of the brain.
Overall the book sounds like it may be an interesting piece of speculative
engineering, but I wonder whether it will do much in the long run to
advance nanotechnology.
Hal
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:49:24 MST