Category: Nanotechnology

Continuing the discussion of nanofactories from here and here: Michael writes: The common definition of “nanofactory” is a desktop, user-friendly system capable of building macroscale products using positional placement of individual atoms. Dr. Hall appears like he may (?) be using the term to describe “any nanomachine that makes another nanomachine”, but reading the writings… Continue reading Limited, expensive nanofactories

Over at Accelerating Future, Michael Anissimov is worried about what we might call a hard nano-takeoff: The first nanofactories will be both impressive (in their exponential qualities and complete automation of manufacturing) and unimpressive (their chemical inflexibility, possible cooling requirements, electricity consumption, limited initial design space, etc.) I predict they will be revolutionary enough that… Continue reading The first nanofactories

A few new futurism resources have come to our attention recently: The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology Version 3.0, a “handbook on methods and tools to explore future possibilities.” The contents include methodologies such as statistical modeling, technology sequence analysis, etc. Detailed Roadmap of the 21st Century, a list of predictions for the twenty-first century,… Continue reading Futurism resources

A paper on arXiv referenced (and nicely explained) in a Technology Review blog: How altruistic behaviour emerges has puzzled evolutionary biologists for decades. From the point of view of survivial of the fittest, the unselfish concern for the welfare of others seems inexplicable. Surely any organism should always act selfishly if it were truly intent… Continue reading Evolving altruism

A recent Newsweek article on Kurzweil seems to have been something of a hack job, judging from this reply: … For example, of the many accurate predictions for the year 2009 that I wrote in my book The Age of Spiritual Machines, written in the late 1990s, only three are listed in the sidebar “Kurzweil’s… Continue reading Kurzweil responds to Newsweek

The greatly anticipated “AI” project recently unveiled, Wolfram Alpha, appears to have flopped, at least insofar as being an AI. Next up looks to be Siri, an app coming to your iPhone this fall. From the San Jose Mercury: Siri, a San Jose company, announced Wednesday that it would offer an “intelligent agent” for Apple’s… Continue reading Steps to AI?

Nanotechnology is, ultimately, a mechanization of the molecular processes of life. One of the most important of those processes is photosynthesis. If we really understood photosynthesis as deeply as we do, say, gear trains, and had the machinery to build whatever molecular machines we designed, we could build trees that produced gasoline from sunlight and… Continue reading Quantum entanglement in photosynthesis?