From: cuhes@csv.warwick.ac.uk (Malcolm McMahon)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: The Industirial Egg or Why Nano? (was Surviving)
Date: 23 Jan 93 03:37:13 GMT
Organization: Computing Services, University of Warwick, UK

First  off the "Industrial Egg" idea as presented is actually  a  little 
impracticable  in  a  world  were the nearest source  for  some  of  the 
necessary  raw  materials  might be on another  continent  and  somebody 
else's  property.  Such a machine would need to start life with a  hefty 
bank  balance and a small army of andriod lawyers so we'll  assume,  for 
the  sake  of argument,  that you deliver it's raw materials as  is  the 
intention with nanomachines anyway.

     Building  a  replicator  using  bulk  technology  is  possible   in 
principle,  just  as  it  is possible in principle to  build  a  general 
purpose computer out of electromagnetic relays.  You could probably make 
such  a computer with turn of the century technology (the  last  century 
that  is!)  and  it  could be made to  work.  A  machine  of  complexity 
compatible  with,  say,  an 8 bit games machine would probably be  about 
the size of a house and might reliably manage something of the order  of 
four or five instructions per minute, maybe as high as ten.

     The central point is that,  all other things being equal,  the time 
it takes a device to carry out an action is roughly proportional to  the 
linear  scale of the device.  This means that the reproduction time  for 
your  bulk  technology  replicator would be of the order  of  a  billion 
times  longer than that of a nanomachine.  To put it simply by the  time 
your  first  car  came  off the  production  line  a  nanomachine  could 
probably have covered the land surface of the Earth about ten cars  deep 
(which is the kind of reason that the technology is so dangerous).

     Of  course  a large machine can handle larger  workpieces  but  the 
point with replicators is that the replication speed has an  exponential 
influence  whereas  the  the size of the workpiece  has  only  a  linear 
effect.  This  means  that to the time for nanotechnology  to  build  an 
artifact varies only logarithically with the mass of the  artifact.  Try 
to  do the same thing with large scale technology and not only  will  it 
take  years  to get going you'll rather quickly run out  of  planet  (in 
space it might make more sense).

     Using  evolution  to  develop replicators  is  an  interesting  but 
highly  risky  enterprise.  Frankly it's the kind of  thing  I'd  rather 
watch from a safe distance,  say from Mars.  You'd have to be  extremely 
thorough  about  how you imposed your success criterior or you'd  be  in 
danger  of  finding that the "fittest" replicator turned out to  be  the 
dreaded  "grey  goo",   a  replicator  which  converted  everything   it 
encountered  (including  the experimental containment)  into  copies  of 
itself.  A safer,  and in many ways superior way to try this would be in 
computer simulation.

     On  the subject of the transition from industrial  society;  yes  I 
think it has already started.  Only in Japan is there any recognition of 
this. We aint seen nothing yet!

Malcolm McMahon