>> I suspect [Lyle] shares my hunch that orders of magnitude are being
scamped when someone
>> easily gestures toward replication via atom-by-atom scanning,
> I've never seen atom-by-atom scanning mentioned seriously except in
>science fiction. Do you have a reference?
Perhaps I misunderstood Drexler, but Engines of Creation says:
`A nanomachine able to do this [pull stuff apart], while recording what it
removes layer by layer, is a *disassembler*... [A] nanocomputer system will
be able to direct the disassembly of an object, record its structure, and
then direct the assembly of perfect copies.' (pp. 19-20).
Damien Broderick