Drexler–Smalley debate on molecular nanotechnology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drexler%E2%80%93Smalley_debate_on_molecular_nanotechnology …
-
It's true that of the potentially transformative technologies of the late 20th century, nanotech has been one of the slowest to materialize. But then, one could say the same of nuclear fusion, for which I still hold out high hopes.
None of the diamondoid machines, or even their parts, in *Nanosystems* have been implemented, despite decades of effort. Fusion reactors have actually been built and work it's just not economical.
-
-
Yes, that's an important distinction; it's the chief reason for my continued hope for the progress of the latter.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
Had the debate been about the realistic prospects of mechanosynthesis in the next decades, then perhaps. But Smalley makes a much stronger claim by asserting infeasibility, the jury is still out on that one.
-
In machine learning - which is much easier and cheaper to iterate on - it took 30 years to really get back propagation, and another 20 to figure out deep nets failed because of poorly initialized weights.
-
I'll make a stronger claim: MNT is completely feasible to work on right now, but there are so few people working on it that there's been essentially no serious _attempt_ at progress for over 20 years. The number of people working on it is vastly too small to get anywhere.
-
The complexity of building working MNT is way beyond what a dozen people can accomplish, but, being _generous_, that's how many people are working on the problem.
-
BTW: it's exceptionally annoying when people who haven't actually read and worked through the papers in the field, which address issues like quantum uncertainty, thermal noise, etc., opine endlessly about this stuff. Chapter 5 of Nanosystems is entirely devoted to this.
-
Yes, there's a whole chapter that very carefully goes through both the thermal positional uncertainty and quantum positional uncertainty of such systems. See pages 90-119 of Nanosystems. I've never seen a specific claim of a mistake in any of the calculations.
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
What "effort"? Who has actually done a serious attempt? I can't name such a person. There have been, what, a dozen people at most working on this when we need thousands? And since when does the fact that something hasn't been done to date prove that it can't be done?
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.