X-Message-Number: 20826
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 13:06:24 -0800
From: Kennita Watson <>
Subject: musing re cryonics and nanotech

Thomas Donaldson wrote:
> For Steve Ritger:
> 
> Will nanotechnology save us? Yes and no. The only current
> example talking about how nanotechnology could reverse the
> damage of freezing (not that we should not work on vitrification
> instead!) badly misunderstands what happens on freezing and
> quite wrongly assumes that we can revive people by simply
> knowing the location of their atoms ... when their freezing
> has disarranged those locations by at least 100 times the
> nanoscale. The author of this "study" is Dr. Ralph Merkle.
> 
> But as for the yes, our repair devices will probably be
> built of nanoscale parts, even if they don't act on a
> nanoscale. We'll probably need very powerful computers,
> and small ones, more powerful that the big IBM machines
> but easily able to fit on a desktop and very inexpensive.
> And don't say they would be smaller than a desktop:
> I'm saying that they would be built with the best of 
> nanotechnology and fitting that power into anything
> smaller would violate physical laws.

This brought to mind a combination of ideas:  I remember
Drexler talking about how each cell in the body could hold
a repair bot that took up about as much room as a washing
machine in a 2-story house.  Not that it's trivial, but once
thisis done, it seems to me the revival problem is solved,
because each bot would simply need to have some sort of
representation of where it was and how it was oriented
relative to other bots, and leave the assembly to the big
computer -- kind of like how a jigsaw puzzle needs a human
brain and hands to put it together.

Just an idea that struck me as cool -- I don't even pretend
to have any rigorous ideas about it.
-- 
May you live long and prosper,
Kennita
--
Kennita Watson          | Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
     |   None but ourselves can free our minds.
http://www.kennita.com  |           -- Bob Marley, "Redemption Song"

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