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There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it
- tocomment 16y agoWhy don't we have anything that can manipulate objects at the nano-scale? Couldn't we use atomic force microscopes to push some atoms together and at least make some interesting molecules (even if this process couldn't be scaled up)? Also what ever happened to Feynman's idea of building half size remote controlled arms, which we then use to build half sized of that remote controlled arms, all the way down to a very small scale? Has anyone ever tried that?
- asmithmd1 16y agoThat is one of the authors points -- no one has done self replication on a macro scale and nanotech just assumes self replication at the molecular level
- crayz 16y agoThis is really a straw man argument. If you go read Drexler's blog(e.g. this series: http://metamodern.com/2009/12/19/molecular-manufacturing-where%E2%80%99s-the-progress/ http://metamodern.com/2009/12/19/molecular-manufacturing-whe...), he is very explicit that the path forward is studying natural self-assembly from DNA and then tearing that apart, finding how it works, and modularizing/modifying it for our own purposes. None of this appears to be a "crazy idea" or something out of humanity's reach til long after we're all dead, as this author claims Drexler's egotistical to be sure. It doesn't make him wrong
- jacquesm 16y agoThat's the main problem with this piece, it attacks a Drexler that no longer exists, his views have shifted quite a bit from back then.
- abecedarius 16y agoI think it attacks a Drexler that never existed; the chapter in Nanosystems on ways forward outlined similar ideas to that more recent post. Just because the bulk of Nanosystems explores a class of systems that's easier to analyze and currently impossible to build, he wasn't ever saying "Let's try to build this class of systems! Right now!" The OP was a total caricature.
- Symmetry 16y agoThat's not really true, we self-replicate all the time (thanks mom and dad). What we don't know how to do is design things that self-replicate from scratch, but we do already have plenty of existence proofs. Also, self-replication is actually easier at the molecular level because all the parts are perfectly regular.
- plato 16y agoAnd we can think too, and you can see where is AI in that moment. :) And ducks can fly with flexible wings. And the Sun is a thermonuclear reactor. You can find demonstrations of this type of things everywhere, that doesn't means that we can make them work with our materials, techniques and knowledge. Nanotech seems to my like AI, always there, at just two steps... that's the type of problems that smell to vaporware from miles.
- billswift 16y agoSomebody said that the reason there is no progress in AI is that once a problem domain is understood well enough that there are working applications in it, nobody calls it AI any longer.
- JabavuAdams 16y agoYeah, we have nano-forges. They're called wombs. Now if only we could re-program women to make iPhones. The late-night trips to the gas station and gravel store because wife has another petroleum and sand-craving would totally be worth it.
- JoeAltmaier 16y agoSomebody just created artificial DNA, put it in another cell, and it self-replicated. So yes we DO know how to do this now.
- Symmetry 16y agoYeah, but we were reusing the cell's own molecular machinery there. What I was thinking of, though I wasn't clear, was all new machinery.
- pjscott 16y agoSelf-replicating nanotech is only one kind. All you really need to be able to do is build nanomachines; whether they're built by identical nanomachines or by some big contraption doesn't matter to the end result.
- fragmede 16y ago(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_Plenty_of_Room_at_the_Bottom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_Plenty_of_Room_at_the...)
- henrikschroder 16y agoThat's kind of the point of the article, materials do not behave on a nano scale the same way they behave at our macro scale. You absolutely cannot scale down, you have to design from the bottom up instead. The author thinks this is impossible because progress is slow. That's not really an argument, but I'll agree that "just you wait and see!" isn't one either. However, biology shows us that it's not impossible to do self-replicating "machinery" so I think we'll get there one day, but it might probably be a lot more organic and a lot less mechanical than we currently envision when we say nanotech.
- mechanical_fish 16y agoWe do have things that can manipulate objects at the nano-scale. They're called catalysts, and when they're made out of amino acids they're called enzymes, and you and I are built out of them. Yes, you can assemble molecules with AFM. The problem with this idea is that either (a) the molecules don't stick together at temperatures much above absolute zero, or (b) they do, in which case they might be stable at useful temperatures, in which case it's better to figure out how to get them to self-assemble or to find a catalyst/enzyme that helps them self-assemble. Because your nifty molecule just isn't that nifty if it doesn't exist in quantities of order 1 mole, and 1 mole is... a lot. You just won't believe how vastly mind-bogglingly big 10^23 is. All of which boils down to this: This essay is great, but the meat of it really is in the first paragraph. Nanotech is a euphemism for chemistry and biochemistry. It is 100% possible -- indeed, nanotech is older than any human-invented technology by many orders of magnitude, by definition, because humans are built out of "nanotech" -- but it's all just chemistry. The real question is why the word nanotechnology is so much more fashionable in grant-writing circles than the old words.
- nivertech 16y agoWhen I was a child, I read a SciFi story about one guy, who built such an arm. Then using this arm under the microscope he built a set of microscopic tools, etc. Later in the story he fighting with bacteria and viruses, but because of the feedback of his microscopic arm, he was injured and almost killed by these tiny creatures.
- fragmede 16y agoThe name is all about the funding. There are many 'nano'-technology grants, which focus on devices that are tens of thousands, or even millions of nanometers large. Micro-techology, however, doesn't get the same funding from the NSF et al. MEMS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microelectromechanical_systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microelectromechanical_systems) has come a long way in a very short time, and, research-dollars willing, will shrink further, so the author is wrong when he says nanotechnology will take another century.
- paulsb 16y agoVery true. In the life sciences it was 'biotechnology' in 2000, 'nano-technology' in 2005, and now it is 'synthetic biology'; but they're all the same and have changed names to get the funding.
- jacquesm 16y agoI think those terms are in part to indicate a progress of understanding as well. It's not all nonsense, it's just that when everybody else uses the next available buzz-word if you don't follow suit you will be left without funding. The people that write the proposals are going to try to maximize their chances, think of it as marketing. Nano-technology was terribly oversold so it lost it's glamor, but the concept is real, synthetic biology is real as a concept and only just now beginning to make some headway, eventually, long after it has lost it's glamor too it will be a mainstay of industry. Just like the humble transistor is no longer glamorous, it's 'just' technology now. But in 1947 it was a miracle. Buzzwords ideally should lose their power because the tech behind them becomes commonplace, when they're oversold we have a problem (looking at you, AI).
- yummyfajitas 16y agoFor the same reason, it's "machine learning" rather than "non parametric statistics".
- dustrider 16y agolove that! I'm so going to be using that as a jargon buster in the next corporate symantic symposium navel gazing event.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- zeteo 16y ago"We don’t even have micromachines. Mechanical objects on microscales do not exist." That's not exactly true. See, for example http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2005/09/14.html http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2005/09/14.html for a 60 micrometers by 250 micrometers robot from 2005. Of course, that's not nanotechnology, and the article's main point might well be valid. Still, there seems to be a good deal of exaggeration in it.
- AndrewDucker 16y agoSo, viruses don't exist then? Because those seem to operate perfectly happily in a nanoscale environment, manipulating things around them.
- markkat 16y agoYep, and we can make those using bacteria machinery. But, it is actually pretty different when compared to some of the possibilities set out by nanotech folk. Viruses passively work in a system where their structure is intrinsic to the system. Most nano-techs can be better explained as catalysts, surfactants, anti-bodies, etc. Technologies and phenomenon long studied in existing fields.
- Tichy 16y agoI agree that it seems unlikely that we'll achieve nanobots that are more complicated than biological cells. An example of an unrealistic idea would be a remote controlled (or even autonomous) submarine diving through blood vessels, broadcasting what it sees to the outside world in HD quality. Still, lot's of interesting things should be possible...
- russell 16y agoSuch devices are already possible because the scale needed is mm not nano. For example the devices to do angioplasties are pretty big because blood vessels are pretty big. There is also a lot of commercial and research work being done on "remote control" treatment delivery, esp. for cancer treatment. (By remote control I mean externally guided as opposed to joystick control.)
- Symmetry 16y agoI really wish that the author would have, when complaining about "Drexler's Book", been clear about which one he was talking about. Also, "Mechanical objects on microscales do not exist" is gratuitously false, we even have really simple mechanical objects (like cantilevers) on the 100nm scale now.
- zeteo 16y ago"we even have really simple mechanical objects (like cantilevers) on the 100nm scale now." Interesting. Do you have a link or paper name for that?
- krschultz 16y agoMost of this stuff comes out of Sandia, I just googles for some quick MEMS pictures and found this link. http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~database/MEMS/sma_mems/mems.html http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~database/MEMS/sma_mems/mems.h...
- jimbokun 16y agoThese are labeled micro-machines, and seem to be the same things that the author calls "millitech" (both cite tiny accelerometers as an example). So it seems there are some terminology differences to sort out.
- jacquesm 16y agoThat's actually huge problem around the whole 'nanotech' sphere. Everybody seems to have a different definition for everything, usually the definitions tend to absurdity depending on whether the person is a skeptic or a 'true believer'. It's very boring because in the end the terminology should be secondary to the goals and how we go about achieving them.
- shabble 16y agoJust skimming through those pictures, but most of the fairly complex mechanical parts, at least the ones which have scales, seem to be of the order of 10-100um. Not sure what would actually constitute nanotech there, but certainly the minimum feature size (spacing of teeth on a gear, etc) is probably <1um, which would count in my book.
- jacquesm 16y agoFor those that are skeptical about nano machinery, google 'ribosome' and be amazed. Nano machinery is real, it exists, it powers the world, it's called biology. The problem is that we seem to have a hard time translating our hard won knowledge of mechanical engineering to the nano scale, I expect some time will pass before the SF visions will become a reality but I think eventually we will get there. Figure another 50 to 100 years or so? As long as we keep thinking in terms of conventional mechanics (wheels, gears, levers, wires and so on) it's going to be slow progress because we are trying to push down the size limit on our macroscopic ingredients without a real appreciation of what you can do with molecules 'as is'. I think at some point the 'genetic synthesis' crowd is going to meet up with the 'nano technology' crowd and that's when we'll see some real action. The first little bits of progress in that direction have already been made.
- bbgm 16y agoI've been accused of being too much of a stickler on this, but while the ribosome and other biological machinery are at the nanoscale, but they are NOT nanotechnology. If you use the Drexlerian definition, nanotech much be engineered, which ribosome is definitely not. We can certainly learn from natural systems, but that doesn't make them nanotech. Also, nanosystems fundamentally are at a scale when quantum properties become important, and classical, mechanical rules start breaking down, which makes things really hard. Having said that, there are some great examples of nanosystems around, from nanoparticles, to polymer drug delivery systems to materials for PET scans and eventually scalable manufacturing of quantum dots etc. The problem is, that breakthrough is always round the corner. Nano's going to be big, but (a) it is not one technology and (b) we need to be patient cause at those scales things are hard.
- jacquesm 16y agoThe ribosome is nano machinery, not nano technology. Subtle difference there, I did not call it nano tech. And if you re-engineered even a simpler version of a ribosome I'd definitely call that nano technology.
- 16y ago
- JohnIdol 16y agowhat a bunch of bull
- castis 16y agohow so?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- DotSauce 16y agoWhat about liquid glass coating? First step. "coating one millionth of a millimetre thick – 500 times thinner than a human hair – can be applied to virtually any surface to protect it against water, dirt, bacteria, heat and UV radiation." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7125556/Liquid-glass-the-spray-on-scientific-revelation.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7125556/Liqu...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Dylan16807 16y agoOther than that being plain old chemistry, the numbers don't line up. 500 times thinner than a hair is 100+ nanometers, not 1 nanometer.
- krschultz 16y agoAlternate view: A bunch of nano machines. http://mems.sandia.gov/gallery/images.html http://mems.sandia.gov/gallery/images.html
- reasonattlm 16y agoRefutation: http://www.zyvex.com http://www.zyvex.com Much longer refutation: http://www.rfreitas.com http://www.rfreitas.com
- wihon 16y agoFlying cars have long been a symbol of the possible technological height of human transportation. But we're not exactly surprised by their absence. Similarly, can't Drexler's '90s idealism be regarded as the possible peak of nanotech? Does the fact we don't have tiny toasters in our bloodstream really negate the acheivement of nanotechnology in medicine and materials science? Personally, I don't think so. This article is too deliberately inflammatory, and doesn't properly look into anything beyond what is now an ancient thesis - as far as fast-moving research areas are concerned. This makes his dismissal of nanotech as sweeping as Drexler's predictions.
- nivertech 16y agoFlying cars are possible today, but not economically viable. I know at least one startup building a flying emergency vehicle for urban areas. But this one just looking like a van, but actually has many things common with helicopters.
- Tichy 16y ago"Imagining self replicating nanobots or nano machines is ridiculous" Aren't biological cells replicating nanobots? Or are they bigger than nano scale?
- mortenjorck 16y agoI hate to complain about headlines, but I feel this needs saying: Headlines such as the one this author has chosen strike me as unpleasantly Digg-like. Exhortations to "stop talking about it and start laughing at it" are anti-intellectual; it's a call to glib derision rather than reasoned rejection.
- dasil003 16y agoYeah it's just like the whole "Fail" meme. It's indicative of how demanding people are becoming that they no longer can be bothered to write a sentence or even conjugate a verb to express their disgust with some flaw that catches their attention for a microsecond. I think Louis C.K. captured the essence better than anyone (http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1885790,00.html http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1885790,00.html)
- commieneko 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke’s_three_laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke’s_three_laws This seems to cover the topic...
- raquo 16y ago(off topic a bit) I think every Russian HNer laughed out loud when they saw this title. Nanotech here in Russia is a synonym of enormous and inefficient government spending on vaporware since they started considering it a "National project". To be fair, I have no idea how true it is, but it does look very much so, especially with frequent appearance in news but no details about actual results.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- akshayubhat 16y agowow this article is so wrong that I wont even comment about issues with it. Anyone who wants to read good research in nano tech can browse through this journal: http://pubs.acs.org/journal/nalefd http://pubs.acs.org/journal/nalefd This is same as saying to someone working on EINACS and early computers that they are a laughing stock and nothing but huge calculators. Reminds me of an article by Scott Aaronson : "Whats taking so long Mr. Babbage" : http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=446 http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=446
- Eliezer 16y agoIs this guy actually talking about _Nanosystems_? I don't think he read the same book I did. I want my 60 seconds back.
- jacquesm 16y agoQuick reader!
- mchouza 16y agoHe is speaking about Drexler's PhD Thesis, that was the draft of Nanosystems, and it's freely available: http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/27999 http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/27999 But I also want my (120) seconds back.
- abecedarius 16y agoI've read Nanosystems, and had the same reaction to this post.
- geuis 16y ago"Imagining self replicating nanobots or nano machines is ridiculous." The author does not seem to understand that all of cells of life are nano machines. If you insist on a definition of a machine being a collection of gears and bolts, then you must expand your definition.
- ajdecon 16y agoAs someone who's done a fair amount of work in materials science and "nanotechnology", I have to admit there are some valid points in here. Drexler-type nanobots are still just as far away as when he wrote his book, and a large amount of the "nanotechnology" work out there is called such mainly to get funding. But the author here overstates his case quite a bit. "Millitech"? There are many microscale mechanical systems out there, both in the lab and in industrial applications. Accelerometers are one example; the actuated mirrors in DLP projectors are another. If there's no microtechnology out there, I know a lot of MEMS engineers who are going to be surprised to here it. A lot of what's called nanotech now could have been called physical chemistry thirty years ago, especially a lot of the "let's put nanoparticles in it!" projects out there. But there's some pretty real nanotech out there too, even if it doesn't qualify under the self-replicating nanobots definition. One example I can think of is the work being done on nanoscale printing--not lithography, but actual physical printing of materials into nanoscale patterns. And there's some pretty cool controlled nanoparticle engineering work out there too.
- api 16y agoThere sure is nanotech. It's called biology, and it's five billion years old.
- abecedarius 16y agoIf you follow Drexler's blog and see what he actually says, you'll see plenty of realistic near-term topics like http://metamodern.com/2010/08/13/progress-in-peptoid-toolkit-development/ http://metamodern.com/2010/08/13/progress-in-peptoid-toolkit... http://metamodern.com/2010/05/20/a-programmable-nanoscale-assembly-line/ http://metamodern.com/2010/05/20/a-programmable-nanoscale-as... http://metamodern.com/2010/03/12/the-molecular-approach-to-atomically-precise-fabrication/ http://metamodern.com/2010/03/12/the-molecular-approach-to-a... http://metamodern.com/2010/03/01/ribo-q1-genetic-manufacturing-expanded/ http://metamodern.com/2010/03/01/ribo-q1-genetic-manufacturi... You can test the OP's picture of Drexler this way considerably more easily than by studying _Nanosystems_ yourself (which is hard).
- nextbigfuture 16y agoYou did not fund molecular nanotech and let billions of funding go to buying new buildings at universities and for chemistry research. Molecular nanotech has been excluded from funding since the 2003 start of major funding. When you buy your Ford SUV, do you send your complaints about it to Ferrari when you did not buy a race car? http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/09/eric-drexler-ralph-merkle-or-robert.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/09/eric-drexler-ralph-merkle-o...