Nano@Home [was Re: Extropy.org and Folding@Home]

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue May 27 2003 - 23:31:35 MDT

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    On Tue, 27 May 2003, Mike Lorrey wrote:

    > Berkeley has a new project called BOINC, the Berkeley Office of
    > Internet Networking Computation, which will release a general
    > application which will allow users to choose how much of their
    > machine's spare time goes to various different distributed computing
    > projects [snip]...

    Mike, I was unaware of this acronym, but have probably been in
    communication with some of the people behind the project due to
    their interest in Nano@Home [so the information is useful]. The
    authors have indicated to me that things are moving along on
    that project.

    For people unaware of it -- Nano@Home is a project I proposed a
    couple of years ago to promote DC for the sake of accelerating
    nanoscale design. The proposal itself is at:
      http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/Proposals/NanoAtHome.html

    Due to the support of a very energetic individual in Italy
    (Andrea Fois), there has actually been recent progress on the
    project. There is now a web site (http://www.nanoathome.org/)
    and several discussion forums (that can be reached from the
    home page). I'm still getting used to the PHPBB interface
    but it seems like it should be fine to support a Nano@Home
    community.

    Noting Harvey's comments essentially about "what are we really
    *doing*" (other than cheerleading) both Folding@Home and Nano@Home
    *are* something that people can contribute to. People
    who have computers can run DC software, people who program
    can contribute that expertise; people who don't program can
    contribute to writing FAQs documenting their own gradual
    understanding of the DC project and how newbies can get
    involved; people with very visual minds can contribute
    "a picture is worth a thousand words" images of understanding.
    Lots of people can define what they can contribute.

    What is important is understanding what it is all about,
    contributing some small part of your time and energy,
    and sharing the excitement with others.

    For example, most people do not know this, but to design the
    Fine Motion Controller (http://www.imm.org/Parts/Parts2.html)
    only required a couple of months of time on the part
    of Ralph Merkle and Eric Drexler. The FMC contains
    slightly less than 2600 atoms. It is also perhaps one
    of the most brilliant molecular parts known to humanity
    (perhaps up there with DNA & RNA polymerases and the ribosome).

    One of the most complex chemical synthesis ever accomplished
    to date is for Vitamin B-12 which contains 181 atoms. But
    it was accomplished by 2 professors and a few more
    graduate students. So our chemical synthesis
    capabilities are within an order of magnitude
    of being capable of synthesizing what would be
    huge breakthrough in field of nanotechnology with
    a team of perhaps 20-40 individuals. [Once the FMC
    is synthesized then the critics of the feasibility of
    molecular nanotechnology are going to be on the run.]

    The reason Nano@Home is important is to design nanoscale
    parts that are more simple than the FMC [one might like
    to walk before one runs in terms of complex nanoscale
    chemical synthesis].

    So I would urge any of you who want to do more than cheerleading
    (which isn't bad but can be frustrating if done for extended
    periods IMO) to cruise on over to the Nano@Home site, get
    involved in the discussions, read the background materials,
    install the Berkely software when it becomes available (to
    allocate your computer resources to various worthwhile DC
    projects), enroll your friends in the efforts (even if they
    think extropians are a bit strange -- it isn't hard to come
    up with reasons to support Folding@Home or Nano@Home that
    make sense to most reasonable people), etc.

    There *are* things we can do.

    Robert



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