Re: design complexity of assemblers (was: Ramez Naam: redesigning children)

From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Mon Nov 25 2002 - 16:26:54 MST


> (Robert J. Bradbury <bradbury@aeiveos.com>):
>
> Mez may be mixing a several complex issues here -- (a) designing an
> assembler (~30x100 nm with a few million atoms); (b) designing a car
> with a precise level of atomic detail (which is a *whole* lot of atoms);
> (c) the systems problem of coordinating many (millions-billions) of assemblers
> to assemble the car.

Surely (b) is unnecessary for huge advancement in manufacturing.
If you can design macro-scale materials out of repeated segments of
small numbers of atoms, and use even crudely-positioned disassembly
tools to "carve" them into sub-micron-accurate shapes, and produce
nano-"joinery" mechanisms in a similar way, that alone will be miles
beyond anything we can do with traditional manufacturing but not
require anything as complex as a car to be designed down to the
molecular level.

-- 
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC


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