nanotech-related investments

Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Tue, 27 Jan 1998 09:38:44 -0800

jamesr@best.com (James Rogers) writes:
>There are numerous, profitable markets between here and singularity. Don't
>invest in nanotech, invest in a company that creates protein modeling
>software. It is unlikely that we will invent nanotech before we can
>properly model complex organics. As much as we would like to ignore it,

I see no reason to believe this. It is true that solving the protein
folding problem would speed up nanotech development, but the protein
folding problem appears to be at least as hard as producing a crude
molecular assembler. Zyvex appears to have a serious approach to building
an assembler that doesn't involve complex organics, and Bruce Smith and
Markus Krummenacker have some well thought out plans about making an
assembler from protein and dna that doesn't seem to require any software
advances. (A company with good protein modeling software would be a
good investment regardless of nanotech).

>there is a great deal of continuity in technological progress. If you want

People who advocate nanotech without trying to understand the technical
details tend to believe in unrealistic discontinuities. I don't think
the technically minded nanotech enthusiasts make this mistake.

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