From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Wed Jun 06 2001 - 20:37:15 MDT
At 10:14 PM 6/6/01 -0400, Don Klemencic wrote:
>Damien's The Spike is reviewed in the July / August 2001 issue of Analog
>("The Reference Library" feature by Tom Easton. Unfortunately, Easton
>doesn't buy into the concept of nanotechnology and uses the review to spread
>misinformation [...]
>Easton's
>assertion is nonsense. Too bad he didn't do some basic research before
>starting to write.
It's a very common response, alas. Might I suggest to anyone who feels
strongly about this that they write brief letters of comment to
reviewer/commentators such as Norman Spinrad and Tom Easton (both Asimov's
and Analog have web sites, below, so it's probably possible to send a
letter to the editor from yr machine), pointing out the errors, and some
accredited sources of authoritative correct information. (Noting that
bacteria and even viruses work at the scale proposed for nanobots and their
components ought to be the simple existence proof, but somehow this one
skids right past a lot of skeptics.)
I can't really do this myself, because it would appear self-interested and
whiny--as if I'm upset that my book's been given a bad rap. While that
doesn't delight me, of course, I'm much more concerned that this kind of
erroneous analysis is being served up to sf readers, who should be a
natural constituency for transformative thinking.
And if anyone does choose to do so, *please* adopt a reasonable and
preferably amusing tone, don't rant on at great length, and spellcheck your
letter before rushing it to the editor...
Dr Easton's review (which I see points out reprovingly that I refer to an S
curve's `point of inflection' instead of its `inflection point') is at
http://www.analogsf.com/0107/reflib_0107.html
Damien Broderick
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