3 ms·

I think nanomachines are still purpose-built for solving small problems, and haven't been particularly useful outside the medical field yet because 'scaling is

I think nanomachines are still purpose-built for solving small problems, and haven't been particularly useful outside the medical field yet because 'scaling is hard', in this case being enough to have noticeable effects. Seeing a household similar to The Jetsons' is still a ways off in my eyes.

awalton 7y ago
Nanomachines are hardly being built at all from what I can tell - I doubt if any have progressed far beyond laboratories. Meanwhile, micro-machines are everywhere these days - MEMS accelerometers and gyros and SAW MEMS microphones are in every cellphone made, every smartwatch has similar features, DLP TVs have actually gone out of style but were micromirror devices, MEMS barometers and altimeters are cheap and commercial drones commonly have one or more, MEMS cell sorters and biochips are actually being used in production medical labs, the list just continues on for ages... (I could go on a long aside about the households comment, but I'll save that rant for another time. Suffice it to say, we're doing jack shit with technology in homes, and that alone is hugely depressing. Innovation in that space seems to be sorely limited to what you can bring in and plug in to a socket, rather than disrupting home designs to better fit what our technology is actually capable of pulling off today - just look at the absolutely pathetic state of residential air conditioning, vs what can be done with passive cooling and occupant-aware HVAC systems.)
- pasabagi 7y ago
  > we're doing jack shit with technology in homes I think the problem there is the churn. If you built a 'smart home' ten years ago, it would be worse than useless now. I do think we're due a shift away from 110v outlets everywhere, but I think a house that's in keeping with the technical possibilities will have to wait until those possibilities have stabilized.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > If you built a 'smart home' ten years ago, it would be worse than useless now. I know this is nitpicking, but still: I disagree. I think that home would be more useful than a smart home built today, because basic sensors and actuators today are very similar to those of 10 years ago, they talk over the same protocol (you screw your LED bulb into the same socket you used to screw an incandescent one into before), and most importantly, none of that was tied up with third-party Internet services. Consumer IoT of today is complete garbage because every vendor wants to be a platform, and doesn't want to interoperate with anything else. Back before IoT was a thing, home automation stuck to standards.

awalton 7y ago

Nanomachines are hardly being built at all from what I can tell - I doubt if any have progressed far beyond laboratories. Meanwhile, micro-machines are everywhere these days - MEMS accelerometers and gyros and SAW MEMS microphones are in every cellphone made, every smartwatch has similar features, DLP TVs have actually gone out of style but were micromirror devices, MEMS barometers and altimeters are cheap and commercial drones commonly have one or more, MEMS cell sorters and biochips are actually being used in production medical labs, the list just continues on for ages... (I could go on a long aside about the households comment, but I'll save that rant for another time. Suffice it to say, we're doing jack shit with technology in homes, and that alone is hugely depressing. Innovation in that space seems to be sorely limited to what you can bring in and plug in to a socket, rather than disrupting home designs to better fit what our technology is actually capable of pulling off today - just look at the absolutely pathetic state of residential air conditioning, vs what can be done with passive cooling and occupant-aware HVAC systems.)

pasabagi 7y ago
> we're doing jack shit with technology in homes I think the problem there is the churn. If you built a 'smart home' ten years ago, it would be worse than useless now. I do think we're due a shift away from 110v outlets everywhere, but I think a house that's in keeping with the technical possibilities will have to wait until those possibilities have stabilized.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > If you built a 'smart home' ten years ago, it would be worse than useless now. I know this is nitpicking, but still: I disagree. I think that home would be more useful than a smart home built today, because basic sensors and actuators today are very similar to those of 10 years ago, they talk over the same protocol (you screw your LED bulb into the same socket you used to screw an incandescent one into before), and most importantly, none of that was tied up with third-party Internet services. Consumer IoT of today is complete garbage because every vendor wants to be a platform, and doesn't want to interoperate with anything else. Back before IoT was a thing, home automation stuck to standards.