In a message dated 5/18/01 12:12:27 PM, bradbury@aeiveos.com writes:
>We do *not* need machine-phase self-replication (by which I'm
>assuming you mean classical diamondoid self-replicating nanobots)
>in order to solve "all our problems". ...
> you have to carefully differentiate between
>"self-replication", "self-assembly", "molecular assembly"
>*and* mechano-synthetic, non-solution phase assembly
>
>The first three (SR, SA & MA) are all properties of normal
>biological organisms. And because you can get the SR times
>of these down to ~20 minutes (at least), you can solve
>"all our problems" because the mass doubling time of organisms
>we can design is much faster than the mass doubling time of our
>humanity.
Organisms with complex macrostructural construction abilities
have rather slow doubling times. If you want to look at a house-
builder, the appropriate model is a tree, with doubling times in
years or decades. Further, we're a very long way from
enigneering trees to grow particular shapes. And think how
long it will take to test it! :-)
>And I'm fairly sure we can design them to build a house, at
>least there is a description of what that would look like in
>my current business plan. Mind you it might take a couple
>of years to grow the house using only local energy sources
>but it does seem feasible.
>
>I'm willing to make $100 bets with people that the
>manufacturing cost of designer bacteria with 1 million+
>base genomes will be under $10.00 by 2010.
You have to define "designer". I can make a bacteria
to do certain things for far less than that, but only
a few particular limited things. If you mean a bacteria
which can build a house, you're on.
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