X-Message-Number: 10646
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 09:13:55 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #10641 - #10644

To Peter Merel:
Basically I do not credit the idea that nanotechnology will produce 
a situation without ANY kind of scarcity at all. Nor do I credit the
idea that we will EVER have a universal machine ie. a machine able to
make whatever we want in whatever conditions.

I'd like to go on longer about this, and may do so later. But I got
cut off in the middle of a much longer argument, and now its time
for bed. 

I will say that it is not denigration to say that someone has noticed
a trend going on all around us. Drexler noticed that trend. I think
he took a wrong turn when he decided to emphasize his "molecular
nanotechnology", mainly because he wandered off into theory and
forgot one other major point Feynman made: that we are unlikely to
be able to apply effectively apply principles we have learned about
physics in other scales to the nanoscale. (He didn't mean that our
physics was WRONG, but rather that its consequences on those scales
were far from obvious and probably would have to be found out by
experiment and explained later).

You may have heard of, by now, my newsletter PERIASTRON. I make a
point of reporting developments in nanotechnology of any kind ---
but NOT theory. Only actual working devices... or at the very worst,
devices under construction. There are tons of things going on 
quite independently of Drexler and his coterie. I found his 
nanotechnology book frustrating because it spent far too much time
on simple machines, with no attention to actual experiments or even
building just one such machine out of a large number of simple
parts (the real test of his ideas, and the only test).

But that's only my answer for now. 

			Best and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=10646