The Berkeley professor then threw in his support for the growing list of
nanotech scientists and critics alike who want to see this infant
industrial revolution grow up to benefit "all humanity," and not just
the guys with the top hats and monocles.

And isn't it rather arrogant of we rich people do decide what products
suit the poor?

Very noble no doubt, but isn't it much to early for any such direction
to be applied? Nobody can predict, at this stage, what the end
applications of various lines of development are likely to be.

On 24 Sep 2003 22:30:09 GMT, Howard Lovy <hlovy@earthlink.net> wrote:

The Berkeley professor then threw in his support for the growing list of
nanotech scientists and critics alike who want to see this infant
industrial revolution grow up to benefit "all humanity," and not just
the guys with the top hats and monocles.

Very noble no doubt, but isn't it much to early for any such direction
to be applied? Nobody can predict, at this stage, what the end
applications of various lines of development are likely to be.

And isn't it rather arrogant of we rich people do decide what products
suit the poor?

If the "owners" of
the technology argue that allowing MNT to be used for cheap products
will somehow reduce their ability to make money when selling expensive
products to rich people, then it's quite possible that the
legal/political infrastructure will prevent lifesaving products from
being made at all.

On 25 Sep 2003 22:44:29 GMT, Chris Phoenix <cphoenix@best.com> wrote:

If the "owners" of
the technology argue that allowing MNT to be used for cheap products
will somehow reduce their ability to make money when selling expensive
products to rich people, then it's quite possible that the
legal/political infrastructure will prevent lifesaving products from
being made at all.

I don't see how that argument could be made, but I see the other side,
that if venture capital today doesn't see the prospect of huge initial
profits from MNT then they aren't going to contribute to funding it's
development. That future windfall is necessary to fund development now.

In fact general purpose manufacturing won't come soon. Products will
appear in an order determined by the way in which the technology
develops, rather than what is wanted. First come the novel materials.
Then, almost certainly, chemical and biochemical sensors.

As I've said in other posts, I think it
could develop quite rapidly: small mechanochemistry devices, capable of
fabricating duplicates of their working parts (but not of autonomous
self-replication--the computers would be external for efficiency), is
pretty much all that's needed.

On 29 Sep 2003 02:16:53 GMT, Chris Phoenix <cphoenix@best.com> wrote:

As I've said in other posts, I think it
could develop quite rapidly: small mechanochemistry devices, capable of
fabricating duplicates of their working parts (but not of autonomous
self-replication--the computers would be external for efficiency), is
pretty much all that's needed.

For making _small_ workpieces, maybe (small, meaning maybe hundreds of
molecules). For manufacturing macroscopic objects you really start to
need exponential production.

That's why sensors are likely to be the dominant use of active MNT
for some time. Chemical sensors only need to act on a few molecules
at most.

Of course, bootstrapping the nanofactory does require exponential
production.

On 4 Oct 2003 03:06:01 GMT, Chris Phoenix <cphoenix@best.com> wrote:

Of course, bootstrapping the nanofactory does require exponential
production.

But then, that's the obstacle, isn't it? The first active nanomachines
are likely to be assembled directly by macroscopic devices like AFMs.
Then I'd expect a generation where a small chip of individually
manufuctured nanomachines is mounted on a macroscopic positioning
platform which moves it over the workpiece for a series of operations.

At this point you'll only be able to make them in thousands.

If you can make an atomically precise fabricator that can duplicate its
own structure,