Re: Nano/Bio Dyson etc

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
08 Jan 1999 11:05:35 +0100

Entropyfoe@aol.com writes:

> Both nano- and bio-tech are just ways of making specific piles of atoms, that
> work for us. The two certanly overlap in scale and methodology. Why divide
> them, merge them, us them complimentarily, sequentially, what ever works.
>
> Its like Stirling's 'Shapers vs Mechs' all over again.

It is not really a question about ideology, but engineering. We already have working bionanotech in the world around us, but reverse engineering it is tricky and the resulting systems tend towards the squishy side. Drexlerian "hard" nanotech doesn't exist yet, but would have a lot of desirable properties and can be analysed mathematically. The problem is that these two fields (despite a mutual interest) have little overlap and talk different languages, making cooperation hard.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y