X-Message-Number: 12768
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: more still about nanotechnology and biological repairs
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 15:21:41 +1100 (EST)

More about nanotechnology:

The major problem with comments against my posting my discussion of nano-
technology is that it remains very theoretical. When someone actually
comes out with a nanotechnological device, built either using ideas from
biotechnology or other ideas, I will pay close attention to their ideas
about how often such devices might fail. (I too have read Drexler's book
NANOSYSTEMS). 

If I were asked which kind of influence would cause the most error, I'd
suggest external chemical (and other) influences. For some uses, it's
easy to see how to protect our devices: if we use them separately, as
in building our computers at a scale which now is impossible, then we
can protect the whole thing so that it is reasonably well insulated 
against error. But for cell-by-cell repair of human brains, it starts
to be hard to use such a separation.

And yes, what I've said about the need to learn how the system we want
to repair works before we rush out to repair it continues to hold no
matter what kind of devices we use to do that learning. No message in 
this Cryonet really addresses this problem in the detail needed, and
the difficulties come exactly from those details.

Finally, I will say that biological systems have the form they have for
a reason, and that reason may well still hold even if you want to make
similar systems using different materials. A lot of the structure some
posters seem to deplore (extra material in enzymes, the absence of any
highly complex machine and the use of many more less complex machines
ie. enzymes in solution) works specifically to prevent any external
interference from stopping the desired reactions from happening. It's
important to understand that when we build a computer and when we build
devices to repair damaged biological systems we are NOT dealing with
the same problems.

			Best and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson

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