"Robert J. Bradbury" wrote:
> The only way to deal with this is to move into new industries as
> rapidly as they develop. For example Rob Freitas and I were
> discussing the other day how nanobot programmers are going to
> have to do most of their work in 'assembly' language. That
Heh. Assembly for the assembly.
> means all you JAVA and Python programmers are going to have
Actually you'll might find that a MISC CPU controlling your
nanolithoprinter head with 10 k transistors complexity is
best programmed in Forth, not in assembly. Abstraction gradient
is way higher than in any language I know, and code density
will be ridiculously high (these molecular bits are expensive).
Recent advances in buckytube productions do make me think
of a MEMS desktopsized bucky sorting (you did hear about the new
trick of nuking the metal conductors from the batch by
frying them with a current pulse, did you?), weaving and
point-welding facility. After all these times, we might get
knitted memories again, but not ferrite rings on copper mesh.
A Steward platform with an electrostatically driven linear
bucky actuator/bearing is definitely within design range. Then
you can chuck out the MEMS scaffolding, and go whole hog bucky.
Don't know how to insulate the whole thing. One might embed
the assembly into liquid monomer, and polymerize it.
> to retrain. Now, old folks like me who actually speak half a
> dozen assembly languages, we will be able to name our price... :-)
Where's NanoCAD when you need it? I'm ready to start drawing
a MISC CPU implemented in 3d bucky. I have no clue how you can
assemble it without true mechanosynthesis, but it will be certainly
damn compact, and fast (ballistic electron transport across
the whole assembly, yeah-haw!). Could probably even pump helium through
the bucky pipework, to provide cooling from the inside. Someone
please simulate inasmuch helium flow through inner lumen of bucky
circuitry will degrade their switching behaviour.
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