HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: bsmart@bsmart.tti.com (Bob Smart)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: Snowballing tomk
Date: 27 Aug 92 02:20:27 GMT
Organization: Citicorp+TTI

In article <Aug.21.18.47.08.1992.20617@planchet.rutgers.edu>,
sinster@cse.ucsc.edu (Darren Senn) writes:
> If you can connect 1 trillion (10^12) building blocks every second, then this
> two-story house will need ~6x10^16 years to be built.  In short,
> the Earth will be swallowed by the sun long before this house
> is built.  So I'd wager that a skyscraper is out of the question. :)

I'll take that action.  I hear that whales, which are on the same scale
of mass and volume as a large house or even an apartment building, can
produce new whales molecule by molecule in considerably less time than
6E16 years per unit.  But maybe they don't use union labor?

> Even if you only consider using large
> building-blocks, you'll need an accurate, stable, maintainable,
> very high speed manipulator before mass production is even
> _considered_.

Accurate, yes (but not necessarily perfect, some applications may be
quite tolerant of irregularities in assembly).  Stable, maybe for a
little while, but it might be beneficial for it to degrade into water
vapor and trace impurities after a relatively short duty cycle (makes
construction site cleanup a SNAP!).  Maintainable, only if the required
duty cycle exceeds the MTBF, and you can't or don't want to replace
worn-out units (integrated circuits aren't very maintainable, but they
seem to be useful anyway).  Very high speed, why?  If you have slow
assemblers, but you have them by the bucketload, many arms make for light work.

---------

A fanatic is someone who does what he knows that God would do if God knew the
facts of the case.

Some mailers apparently munge my address; you might have to use
bsmart@bsmart.tti.com -- or if that fails, fall back to
72027.3210@compuserve.com.  Ain't UNIX grand?
From: autodesk!robertj@uunet.uu.net (Rob Jellinghaus)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: Evolution and nanotech
Date: 1 Sep 92 02:57:56 GMT
Organization: Autodesk Inc., Sausalito CA, USA


In article <Aug.31.01.58.27.1992.24363@planchet.rutgers.edu> tomk@netcom.com (Thomas H. Kunich) writes:
>Nanotech must compete economically and effectively with many other
>sciences that are presently at a much higher state of development.
>Chemistry and biotechnology are both much further along the
>development curves and both can presently put stronger claims
>to being able to produce those things that present nanotechnology is
>just beginning to think about.
..
>What my whole point has been is that for nanotechnology to succeed
>it will have to compete. While it certainly is true that we 
>can't now see what nanotechnology will someday become, it is
>also true that if it is out-competed today it will never develop
>into anything.

My perspective on this is somewhat different.  It seems to me that
chemistry and biotechnology are _routes_ to nanotech, and that further
developments in materials science &c will make nanotech _more_ likely,
not less.

What is molecular nanotechnology?  In its broadest definition, it is
"control of the structure of matter at the molecular level."  This is
a goal that biotechnology, materials science, molecular physics,
micromachining, and many other fields are all converging on.  And it
doesn't matter how we get there!  Molecular nanotech is at the center
of these other fields, not a competitor with them.

No one is asserting that anyone can build useful nanomachines today.
But it is clear that they can be built, and that other active research
fields, in the course of their ordinary progression, are producing and
will produce tools that are essential to nanotechnology.

Thus, as these other fields produce more and more impressive results,
their results will make it _more_ likely that extensive nanotechnologies
will arise, because their results are the _prerequisite_ to actually
building nanomachines.

--
Rob Jellinghaus                | "Next time you see a lie being spread or
Autodesk, Inc.                 |  a bad decision being made out of sheer
Internet: robertj@Autodesk.COM |  ignorance, pause, and think of hypertext."
AMIX: RJELLINGHAUS             |    -- K. Eric Drexler, _Engines of Creation_
From: isr@mailbox.syr.edu (Michael S. Schechter - ISR group account)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: Acceptance of the nanotech meme
Date: 27 Aug 92 02:08:09 GMT
Organization: Institute for Sensory Research

In article <Aug.21.18.19.12.1992.20181@planchet.rutgers.edu> ttf@iti.org (Tihamer T. Toth-Fejel) writes:

>Now if it was that difficult for me, a technophile (with a master's
>degree in engineering, for crying out loud), to accept Eric's ideas,
>who difficult will it be for the proverbial man-in-the-street?
>Actually, since all technology is magic to joe sixpack anyway, maybe
>it won't make any difference.  On the other hand, what about the
>captains of industry, who *think* they understand reality (and to a
>large extent they do)?

Well, instead of wondering about multiple experiences and mind storage
and autonomous replicators that will wander thru asteriod belts
building space yachts and launching them to customers, conmcentrate
efforts on trying to hand-build a simple device that isn't
self-replicating but DOES perform some function...

Even if it's not at the atomic level, but is mechanically assembled
micro carbon fibers that were grown normally, make SOMETHING concrete.
(PS. this ib no way is meant as a commentary on ttf or ttf's opinions
as I have no idea what they are, or if ttf has even commented on
any of the above threads i mentioned-Mike)
--
Mike_Schechter@isr.syr.edu | XLII,B,+3dB,Non-Nak | Make Tapes, Not War
From: me@isnext10.msu.edu (My Account)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: Molecular Manufacturing Shortcut Group
Date: 27 Aug 92 02:14:28 GMT
Organization: Michigan State University

In article <Aug.19.20.12.37.1992.28090@planchet.rutgers.edu>  
mckendre@sal-sun61.usc.edu (Thomas Mc Kendree) writes:
[re the  "Molecular Manufacturing Shortcut Group." ]

"   Membership is $12 for one year.  Checks should be payable to MMSG.
" Mail your name, address, email address and phone numbers to:
" 
"                               MMSG Membership
"                               c/o Jocelyn Brown
"                               6401 Deihl #409
" 
" [The message ends here (I checked). I do not suggest sending money to 
"  this address, as the Post Office will simply throw it away.
"  Hopefully a complete address will be forthcoming--it sounds like a good 
"  group.
"  --JoSH]
The MMSG article from the _Foresight Update_ #14 says this:

"For more information on the group, please write to NSS Molecular  
Manufacturing Shortcut Group, c/o Tom McKendree, 12171 Amethyst Circle,  
Garden Grove, CA  92645"

No email address was given in the article.  I hope they can help.

=========SunCat++++     | kamchar@ibm.cl.msu.edu
"There is only one cause of poverty in the modern world:  failure to
 own an adequate supply of capital"
--Louis Kelso
From: shearson!snark!pmetzger@uunet.uu.net (Perry E. Metzger)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: Evolution and nanotech
Date: 29 Aug 92 06:49:15 GMT
Organization: Lehman Brothers

ian@inf.ethz.ch (Ian) writes:
>
>
>>the error correcting mechanisms in living things are fairly poor.
>>Simply using a good mathematically based error correction code in the
>>nanomachine's internal program could reduce the "mutation" rate so low
>>that a mutation event is expected only once every few billion years or
>
>I'd have to see some figures before I accept this.
>

Oh, come now; this is fairly trivial. DNA uses mirrored strands, which
implies at least 1 bit of error correction for every 1 bit of data. If
I used that much redundancy with a modern ECC I'd practically be
guaranteed that it would take a few billion years before I got a
multi-bit error I couldn't detect (small errors are generally
guaranteed detected in such systems). If you really want figures I'll
dig out my information theory books, but this is really well known
stuff; I hardly think what I'm saying is a stunning revelation.

--
Perry Metzger		pmetzger@shearson.com
--
		  Just say "NO!" to death and taxes.
			 Extropian and Proud.
From: lansdon@fractal@infoserv.com (Bob Lansdon)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: new arrival, nano-image exhibit for museum
Date: 27 Aug 92 02:09:13 GMT
Organization: Fractal Design Corp.

Hello,

I am putting together an exhibit of scanning probe microscope images
for The Tech Museum in San Jose, Silicon Valley, CA. Don Eigler at IBM
has contributed some great STM images of manipulated atoms and benzene
rings at 4 Kelvin in UHV. Topometrix (Santa Clara, CA) has donated STM
and AFM images. AFM images of Langmuir-Blodgett monolayers have
resolution sufficient to show the long chains of the molecules on the
substrate.

Any leads on Near-field Optical scanned images for the museum display
would be greatly appreciated.

My background is in math- dynamical systems (bifurcations and chaos),
and I have given occasional conference talks on applications of
semiclassical and classical dynamical systems theory to the design of
reliable nanocomponents and arrays for computing.

I would greatly appreciate a reply to this message and any leads
on nanoscale images (particularly near-field optical/exciton images).

Regards.

Bob Lansdon
Member of Technical Staff, Fractal Design Corp., Aptos,CA ; (408)688-5300.

-------------------------------------
uAccess Signature goes here...
From: tomk@netcom.com (Thomas H. Kunich)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: Snowballing tomk
Date: 27 Aug 92 01:23:53 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)

In article <Aug.23.19.53.36.1992.4658@planchet.rutgers.edu> ghsvax!hal@uunet.uu.net (Hal Finney) writes:
>Depending on the route taken, there may be many good products
>preceding full nanotech.  Maybe we will go via biotech, creating
>complex protein based structures before we get to full assemblers.
>Permission is granted to freely reproduce this message

Why would someone put tons of money into a nanotech science that
is going to be essentially obsoleted by biotech techniques thaty
use DNA engineering to construct living organisms to do what
nanotech suggests machines for?

Let's face it, mother nature has already developed and tested
far more 'software' than man can ever hope to. Biotech offers a
way to modularly use these slugs of tested 'software' to construct
excruciatingly complex organisms that are self replicating, self
repairing, self powered and self directing.

If you hope to make use of nanotechnology some immediate and 
realistic use xhould be planned for it.

[To quote Eric Drexler's Senate testimony:
  "[This analogy] risks the misunderstanding that molecular
 nanotechnology will be a form of biotechnology.  The differences are
 large: Molecular nanotechnology will use not ribosomes, but robotic
 assembly; not veins, but conveyor belts; not muscles, but motors; not
 genes, but computers; not cells dividing but small factories making
 products--including additional factories.  What molecular
 nanotechnology shares with biology is the use of systems of molecular
 machinery to guide molecular assembly with clean, rapid precision.
  "Another biological analogy seems appropriate: Aircraft and birds
 share some basic principles of flight, and birds inspired the
 development of mechanical flight.  It would have been futile, however,
 to attempt to develop aircraft by applying genetic engineering to
 birds, or by concentrating exclusively on ornithological research.
 The Wright brothers studied birds, but they then set off in a fresh
 direction.  Molecular nanotechnology cannot be achieved by tinkering
 with life, and its products will differ from biological organisms as
 greatly as a jet aircraft differs from an eagle."
 --JoSH]
From: ttf@iti.org (Tihamer T. Toth-Fejel)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Evolution and nanotech
Date: 29 Aug 92 06:34:32 GMT


	ian@inf.ethz.ch writes:	
	
	Perry Metzger writes:
	>Normal living systems are DESIGNED to easily evolve. 
	                           ^^^^^^^^
	Nothing in evolution is designed !  You are probably just
	speaking loosely but I had to mention it as a lot of people
	have strange ideas about evolution.
If I know Perry, I'd say he was speaking loosely, but on the other
hand, take a look at Tipler and Barrow's "The Cosmological Anthropic
Principle", which makes a strong case that this universe was *designed*
so that carbon-based life-forms could evolve in it.  But let's not get
into a religious discussion here.

More pertinant is Doug Lenat's work on AM (which rediscovered prime
numbers) and Eurisko, both of which were very interesting cases of
self-modifying code.

Douglas Lenat, The Role of Heuristics in Learning by
Discovery, Machine Learning, edited by Ryszard Michalski, et. al., Tioga
Publishing, Palo Alto,1983.

Douglas Lenat, The Nature of Heuristics I, II, and III,
Artificial Intelligence, 19 (1982) and 21 (1983).

	>Simply using a good mathematically based error correction code
	>in the nanomachine's internal program could reduce the
	>"mutation" rate so low that a mutation event is expected only
	>once every few billion years or

	I'd have to see some figures before I accept this.

Hey! That is a great idea!  To make it even more interesting, increase
the mutation environment to lethal levels.  Let's start with the
example from the opening scene in "Washer at the Ford" in which the
main character, loaded to the gills with brand-new (untested) nannies,
enters the "hot" portion of a nuclear reactor, forgetting to bring the
more appropriate Heinlein novel.

Can it be done?  This weekend I'm going to check my nuclear engineering
and human physiology textbooks and check it out.  The error correction
stuff is straightforward:

Check out any introductory textbook, such as MacWilliams and Sloan,
The Theory of Error Correcting Codes 1977 Elsevier

To detect and *correct* single errors in 4 bits, 3 bits are needed;
there is an algebraic approach (parity checks on each position), and a
geometric one (distance, or differences in bits, must be two for single
error detection, three for single error correction, etc.)  An
additional factor to consider is that, your redundancy is going to be
in the trillions, since you have an identical nanny in every cell, so
mathematically, you should be fine.  The engineering problem is getting
them to use each other as "known good units" faster than the
errors occur.  Its not like they can just call each other via a
*cellular* phone :-)

ttf@iti.org     (Tihamer T. Toth-Fejel)
Industrial Technology Institute, P.O. Box 1485, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
office: (313) 769-4248   fax: (313) 769-4064   home: (313) 662-4741
*----*----*----*Think of it as evolution in action*----*----*----*----*

[I can't find the reference, but there is also a paper by Lenat
 entitled "Why AM and Eurisko appear to work" which is must reading.
 --JoSH]
From: tomk@netcom.com (Thomas H. Kunich)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: Evolution and nanotech
Date: 31 Aug 92 05:55:35 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)

In article <Aug.29.01.54.01.1992.13244@planchet.rutgers.edu> srs@oasis.icl.co.uk (Steve Strong) writes:

>Using methods as described above, or better ones, you can set the
>mutation rate to an arbitarily low figure. How about one mutation
>per 10**15 years? What about one per 10**20? You can just keep on
>going. Obviously you trade off a bit of storage space for things
>like this. TANSTAAFL.

Games theory will tell you that you soon reach a point of
diminishing returns. At this point there is as much of a chance
of failure of the error checking mechanism as in the original
program. It is _not_ possible to set error rates at any arbitrarily
low figure.

[There may be some lower limits to reliability, but if you will 
 accept "doing nothing" as an acceptable behavior (i.e. don't 
 reproduce if there is any damage)  you can design pretty close
 to fail-safe, if cost is no object.
 --JoSH]
From: eachus@dr_no.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: Snowballing tomk
Date: 27 Aug 92 02:22:10 GMT
Organization: The Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA.

In article <Aug.23.19.53.36.1992.4658@planchet.rutgers.edu> ghsvax!hal@uunet.uu.net (Hal Finney) writes:

   Assemblers are expected to be extremely complex pieces of machinery.
   Before we are able to make one, we should be able to make less complex
   but nevertheless useful atomic structures.  Virtually any route to
   nanotech will therefore provide the ability to make useful items
   before we have full assemblers.  The STM/AFM route has the problem
   that we may only be able to make a few of each item, but other
   approaches should be able to make useful quantities even in the early
   stages.

     There is an intermediate stage which should be of great interest.
Imagine you have a "macro" device which is not capable of building
true assemblers, but is capable of building nanomachines which
manufacture a useful product.  For example, it might take the "macro"
device an hour to stamp out one insulin generator, and it might take
hundreds of these to treat one diabetic patient.  (I'm assuming that
the nanomachines would be self regulating and work in the body.)  A
patient might require a replacement injection every couple of years to
replace worn out machines, etc. but the cost would probably be worth
it. Similar nanomachines could eliminate blockages in coronary
arteries, etc., etc.  Cheap compared to a coronary bypass operation.

     There are similar opportunities in other fields.  A computer made
of large numbers of (relatively) simple nanoscale building blocks
would be very practical if you have build the intermediate machines
that turn out the components.  Assembling and testing components might
have to be done using micro scale tools, but so what. (Imagine
nanobots that produce the equivalent of MSI logic chips in rod logic.
Design your computer to use only a few different components,
micro-assemble by hand or by robot, and go into the supercomputer
business.)  Even if it cost, say, 5 million dollars to build one
multi-teraFLOP machine, it woud be competitive.  And in the
supercomputer business, if you can outclass the competition, you can
name your price.

     My guess is that such nanomanufacturing will be practical for
years before the first "true" assemblers are built, and may be a
necessary step on the path.

					Robert I. Eachus

with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
use  STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...
From: radford@cs.toronto.edu (Radford Neal)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: Evolution and nanotech
Date: 31 Aug 92 05:48:27 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto

> JOSH writes:
>
>               One main thrust of Holland's work
> (see "Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems", particularly
> the revised version, MIT Press, 1992) is that evolution is a search
> procedure over the design space.  If there is no sex (or other 
> mechanism to distribute selected variations) the long sequence 
> of cumulative changes must be traceable back along the ultimate
> organism's *single path* lineage.  With sex, the traceback is a
> family tree.  In CS terms, without sex, the search is sequential,
> but with sex, it is parallel, with the parallelism increasing 
> exponentially with the number of generations.


I've come across this argument before, but it seems to me to be
flawed, at least unless one makes some rather strong additional
assumptions.

If we are randomly searching for rare, highly-beneficial mutations,
then it shouldn't matter whether we have sex or not. Once a single
organism is produced with the good mutation, it's descendents should
quickly out-compete the others. The next beneficial mutation will then
occur in an organism that already has the first. Only if a second
mutation occurs in the brief period after the first mutuation occured
but before it became fixed in the population will anything be lost.
This is unlikely to happen unless the mutation occurs at a high rate,
in which case it will likely happen again anyway.

Put another way, parallel search requires only that many paths MAY
become dominant. There's no need for the ones that don't succeed to
continue to propagate.

This argument would not apply if mildly beneficial mutations of many
kinds occur at a high rate. Then there might be a number of such
present in only a subset of the population at any particular time.
Of course, sex has other advantages in any case.

     Radford Neal

[A single "fell swoop" mutation that effected a major change like that
 would be *extremely* rare, and I would tend to disregard them entirely.
 Sexually driven evolution works with events of much higher probability.
 --JoSH]
From: mckendre@sal-sun50.usc.edu (Thomas Mc Kendree)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: Snowballing tomk
Date: 31 Aug 92 19:30:17 GMT

In article <Aug.29.01.41.38.1992.13174@planchet.rutgers.edu> mmcalees@sol.uvic.
ca (Michael McAleese (One of 'Those Dudes')) writes:
>  Heck, all someone has to do [to come up with a commercially successful
>project drawing on nanotechnology] is come up with a nano (or micro) machine
>that will rove around the body killing fat cells.  "The Nano-Tech Diet!
>Lose ALL excess fat with NO dieting, NO exercise, NO WORRY!  Several
>injections of tiny robots cleanse your system of unwanted fat SAFELY!
>EASILY!  But not cheaply..."
>  Making millions would be easy...

Let's not be too hasty.  Your body needs fat cells.  Without ANY, you might
get horribly sick and even die the next time you get the flu (the fat cells
power you to keep going while your digestive system is down.)
While it is fun now to kick around ideas like Michael's, well before 
implementation we will have to look out for unwanted side effects.  Perhaps
what really will be needed is some device that might kill some fat cells, but
that cleans out a lot of the fat in the other cells, and essentially
"retunes" your entire metabolism.  Even so, if you keep the current body
design, and never exercise, you will have to go "back to the shop" a lot
more often to keep in shape.

[Perhaps a constant blood filter that keeps the levels of cholesterol 
 and so forth within certain limits.  No need to have little cell-killing
 machines running loose all over your body...
 --JoSH]
From: hagerman@ece.cmu.edu (John Hagerman)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: Evolution and nanotech
Date: 29 Aug 92 05:52:33 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University

In article <Aug.27.21.32.01.1992.6666@planchet.rutgers.edu> JoSH writes:
>
> [Minor damage to mechanisms happens all the time, and does indeed change
>  their appearance and degrade their functionality.  However you will never
>  find a car that has accumulated enough dings and scratches to convert
>  it into a piano.  Evolution requires a *long* sequence of cumulative
>  changes, and and needs a fairly complex structure in the evolving
>  organism to support it (including sex). ...

Bad example; evolution won't convert a dog into a songbird, either.
But your point is right; evolution is part of the way biology works,
and unless mechanisms are designed into self-replicating devices, run
away evolution will not be a problem.  On the other hand, this may not
be true for the (really) long term; it seems to me that anything that
self-replicates will eventually get the mechanisms needed to evolve.
Someone should come back in a few hundred million years to check...

- John
--
hagerman@ece.cmu.edu