I suppose it is a sign of advancing years, and having lost some close friends to cancer or having been scared by a close relative’s condition that the notion of a cure for the gremlin should weigh on my mind a bit more than it used to. (You are definitely getting old, Ed). I cannot help noticing, when reading Instapundit as I do every day that Glenn Reynolds has been putting up regular links to the growing use of nanotechnology in delivering cancer-busting chemicals to the body with incredible accuracy. Here’s another one. The more accurate the delivery of the drug, so the reasoning goes, the fewer the unpleasant side-effects associated with things like chemo treatments, and the greater chances of beating the cancer. The steady trickle of news items and articles has yet to become a flood, but I have this sense that the flood may be pretty close.
When I read Engines of Creation by Eric Drexler back whenever it was, the idea of tiny nanobots being used to treat cancer was, then, still on the edge of what folk thought might be possible. There is a way to go yet but it is a mark of how certain stories get below the radar of current events that nano-medicine has crept up on us so quickly, rather as the internet did about 20-odd years ago.
Faster please!
a maxwellian demon that can discard the entropy caused by brownian motion
from a civilisation that still can’t figure out why fractional reserve banking doesnt work… yeah thats going to happen.
Criminal, really. Just because we have a half-assed economic system does not mean there are not lots of interesting things going on in science. No doubt misanthropes like you were saying much the same about, say, nuclear physics or whatnot 100 years ago.
Kindly have the manners to address the topics in the posts or clear off.
Maxwells Demon = the concept of Nano Technology
Brownian Motion = The chaotic motion of atoms that makes Nano Technologies theorticly impossible.
These ‘interesting things’ in science that you seem to have passed you by were discovered well over 100 years ago.
Criminal,
One of the early visionaries of nanotech was a guy called Feynman.
Google him. You might discover he was quite good at physics.
criminal, I recall a particularly fuckwitted comment of yours a few days ago in which you said that things such as property rights were pointless because of entropy, or something. I tried to figure out whether you are a troll or just very, very stupid. The debate is not yet settled on that one.
Meanwhile back on the topic…
Three cheers for the Pharmaceutical Industry then?
Brownian motion doesn’t make nanotechnology impossible. For proof, see e.g. biological cells, which are self replicating nano-machines.
Furthermore, in this paper, Eric Drexler describes how Brownian motion is *useful* for self-assembly.
The commenter does not know what he is talking about. Brownian motion is at a scale very far above nanotechnology and the only form that it complicates is the idea of little mechanical robots moving about at that scale. That there are solutions to the problem is, as another commenter pointed out, obvious. There are all sorts of micro-organisms that seem to get around just fine despite brownian motion. Some are known to follow ‘scent trails’ of particular chemicals for ‘long distances’. I put quotes on that because a long distance to a paramecium is not exactly a human scale long trip.
The area where things get dicier is on the quantum level. Things can get squirrelly there, but there are ways to work around it. As an example of a working nanomachine that produces any of thousands of different chemical products on a demand basis, look no further than the mitochondria.
Nanotechnology is moving forwards by leaps and bounds right now and I am still wondering whether Eric will win the long ago (non-monetary!) bet we had. I said the exponential growth would be held back a few decades by externalities. Large companies with sunk costs will try to delay it until they amortize existing capital investments; governments will gum up the works as they are wont to do and delay the advances.
At the moment Eric’s vision seems to be more on track than my more conservative one, which means the stuff is coming on a time line that I do not think is far off from that discussed in Engines, although I’d have to go back and re-read it.
I might add that among the pre-publication reviewers of that book were a number of names of interest. http://www.e-drexler.com/d/06/00/EOC/EOC_Acknowledgments.html
Criminal, to reiterate the point – if brownian motion was such a problem at that scale not one of the steps, each requiring precise placement at the atomic scale, involved in the transcription of DNA to protein would work.
Specifically, have a good look at the operation of ribosomes and then argue the point with God.
We seem to live in a strange, dual track culture.
On the one hand, it is clear that we are on the threshold of some astounding advances in science and high tech, as computers and their applications in such fields as medicine and various forms of commerce come together.
My Grandmother, who was a very big influence on me as a child, died of cancer, so any advances there are felt keenly in my deepest heart.
Conversely, society at large seems to be enamored of a form of “magical thinking” that apparently rests on the belief that ideas that have repeatedly failed will somehow succeed, if only we believe in them hard enough.
The current political catastrophe, disguised by its most obvious symptoms as an economic problem, is a case in point. Both its causations, and the alleged remedies being proffered by the same pols who brought it about, are founded in thoroughly discredited and “magical” beliefs which have never led to anything but failure.
But this time, we are told, they will work, because we just don’t know what else to do.
It reminds me of an old kiddie story, in which the hero was supported by the wishes and beliefs of the audience—“Come on kids, if we really believe very, very hard, then Tinkerbell will live again.”
Wonder what old Tink thinks about the never-never land we all seem to be living in now?
It seems to be true still that our technology has sadly outweighed our common sense or our human ability to judge when or what is “right” or “wrong”… when the true answer is that there is still far more we don’t know than that which we do. Such battles of inane commentary which mask themselves as “making a point” which doesn’t really make one boils down to a war of opinions. That has been the downfall of nations worldwide for centuries — thus why we count history by the wars we participate in on every front, science or otherwise. Only when we learn to admit and accept how much we do *not* know will we truly begin to learn what is *beneficial* to do, not simply what we can do simply because we can.
Criminal unwittingly brought up an interesting point… How indeed does a society that still believes fractional reserve banking works, amongst other idiocies, have the ability to also come up with incredible marvels of technical, economic and functional sophistication? I would say that the simple answer lies with in whose hands one puts things. the banking and credit system, disgracefully, is run by politicians and the business in bed with them. To its shame this is a nice big chunk of the cause of its dysfunctionality. Many of the wonders of the modern world, however, are in the hands of directly interested private parties, thus they do advance, and often at astonishing speeds. Its not a matter of society being stupid or smart, its about how to create incentive towards being careful.
I also it has alot to do with the personalities and motivations of people that drift towards the different fields.
You don’t get many Engineer Grads who decide to become politicians, for example.
An interesting two column list to make is:
Things which the government
has invested much money and
regulated
Things which have developed quickly
and become cheaper and more plentiful
and more capable.
I believe you will find the two lists are for the most part, a disjoint set.
Nanomedicine is the future. How quick will that future arrive, nobody knows, but it’s sure going to turn the world upside down.