I'd like to thank Eugene Leitl for pointing out to me the importance of fully
citing the origin of a message when forwarding. The article "Feral Robots" has
been originally sent by Fred Hapgood to the <nsg-d@world.std.com> list, and I
did not write what Ken Clements here attributes to me in his response.
--J. R.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Clements" <Ken@Innovation-On-Demand.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2000 9:31 AM
Subject: Re: Feral Robots
> "J. R. Molloy" wrote:
>
> > [snip] Perhaps the most ambitious application would be designing
> > ecological links as needed, such as a machine for detecting and eating
> > "foreign species" (however that is to be defined), or accelerating
> > nutrient cycles.
> >
>
> I have been thinking about this in the context of these big forest fires we
> have had in the US. The problem is that if you suppress natural fires the
> forest becomes congested with small trees and downed fuel until hot dry
> weather conditions foster a conflagration that cannot be suppressed. People
> want to live in and near these forests, so just letting nature take its
> course is reasonable only in the remote areas. So I was thinking that the
> populated areas could use a army of gastrobots that would go out and "eat"
> the downed fuel and crowded small trees.
>
> However, I realize that this not too practical given the scale of the task,
> and that it is best to wait for nanotechnology. With MNT you could have
> swarms of flying insect like devices that are always out there doing the job
> that fire would do, but also returning clean burning fuel and other cyclic
> materials (hydrocarbons). Just the same, I like the idea of sending
> gastrobots out there as a starting point on the development line (less scary
> to the public than GM carpenter ants or termites).
>
> -Ken
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:37:13 MDT