From: tomk@netcom.com (Thomas H. Kunich)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: underground space
Date: 7 Nov 92 04:04:34 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)

In article <Nov.5.23.43.39.1992.16141@planchet.rutgers.edu> brian@brazil.psych.purdue.edu (Brian Berndt) writes:

>	I would not be surprised to hear that most readers of Leonardo
>da Vinci's notes would have thought they were reading wild flights of 
>fantasy.  Hanggliders, helicopters, and many other realizable inventions
>would never had become common machines had we listened to those readers.

I find this interesting. Can you tell me how Leonardo da Vinci had any
effect on the development of hanggliders and helicopters? da Vinci was
an engineer and his engineering work was well known. His private notebooks
were not and had no effect on any of the things you mention.

>	We need everyone's input.  Please continue to post useful
>criticism to ideas that others present.  But I had thought Drexler's
>books were FAQ to this newgroup.  If you haven't even finished his books
>how can you criticize ideas you know nothing about?

Unfortunately Drexler seems to _be_ sci.nanotech. Whatever he has written
is the word according to doG.

In the recent Scientific American there is an article on nanotechnology and
it includes things like a gear measured in microns and an open end wrench
on the same size scale. I sort of suprised that no one has touted them.

Of course it may be because the people doing these things are using plain
ordinary photolithography (or electron beam -- forget which) semiconductor
technology to do it. And of course none of this stuff really will fulfill
Drexler's grand plan unless there are nanoassemblers -- and we have yet
to see any creditable means of that being accomplished.

Yes, I am critical of this conference. For one thing, I think that nanotech
will be a significant player in the future. I don't, however, think that
it will be anything at all like Drexler's view.

Tell me, doesn't anyone get tired of all these new technologies that
will feed the hungry, cure the sick, supply plenty to the needful and
bring peace an prosperity to all? The hungry are still here, the needful
still need and the sick are still sick, though in more complicated ways.

I prefer the theory that you should see what a science will develope
into before you make hopeless prognostications.

[No one talks about micro-machining technology here because that's not
 what the newsgroup is about.  It is about a completely different set
 of techniques, which are sometimes referred to as "molecular nanotechnology"
 to distinguish them from bulk technologies that just happen to deal with
 very small objects.
 It's pretty silly to claim that da Vinci had no effect on the development
 of hang gliders or helicopters.  Da Vinci's plans and inventions had 
 become a part of the general background of engineering knowledge so 
 long ago that they cannot be separated out.
 In the past two centuries, technology has made the difference between
 each farmer feeding 1.1 people, and each farmer feeding 30 people.
 Antibiotics mean that a serious wound doesn't almost always require
 a limb be amputated any more, and doctors no longer saw arms off
 in a frantic hurry because there are anesthetics even when operations
 are necessary.  People still starve because governments (and insurgent
 would-be governments) want them to.  People are still needy and hungry
 because it is politically advantageous for some very powerful factions
 that there be needy and hyngry people.  From a purely technological
 standpoint, hunger, need, and enough of disease to account for the 
 huge majority of mortality were conquered by the middle of this century.
 --JoSH]