Re: Assembler in ten years?


In article <12jg9lml1uduid3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
the.sandwich.king@xxxxxxxxx says...

Could massive funding, perhaps on the scale of the Manhattan project,
or Apollo program, bring us the assembler in a decade or so?

If so, why aren't we doing more to speed up its development?

This one device could end poverty, eliminate all disease and provide
near immortality to all. Why isn't the government taking it seriously?

You would think that with over two decades of research, we'd be there
by now, right?

Phil Huggan gives one very good reason: the multiplicity of Manhattan
Targets.

I'll give another: In my opinion, Manhattan/Apollo level national
efforts should only be kicked off under particular circumstances, those
circumstances being dire need at the national level. Despite my
enthusiasm for nanotechnology and my belief in the magnitude of its
benefits, I see no dire, pressing, national need for the technology to
be developed Right Now.

(I should note, I am speaking from a United States perspective, here.)

In the case of the actual Manhatten Project, there was very arguably a
pressing and immediate need for nuclear weapons. I am not interested in
discussing the history of World War II international politics and
weapons of mass destruction; suffice to say, the need was at least
strongly arguable.

In the case of the Apollo Program, in my opinion, that need was much
more weakly arguable-- but it is strongly arguable that the Apollo
Program's monomanical focus on the specific and narrow goal of a flashy
Moon landing was itself harmful, as the benefits of heading straight for
such a landing may well have been less than the benefits of an
incremental approach toward easier targets.

My claim is this: Manhattan/Apollo level programs by their nature
deform the scientific and industrial research communities. That can't
be any other way. The United States research communities currently take
many, many inputs for direction: governmental inputs at the federal and
state levels (and in some cases, from large municipalities), multiple
inputs from the industrial needs of many companies (which are in turn
driven by the massively multiple inputs of individual consumers) and, of
course, the whims of the researchers themselves. The result of all of
this is a research community whose directions are both broad and deep,
exploring many, many different directions of scientific and
technological research at once.

The Manhattan mindset of research is a direct and willful attempt to
short circuit all those multiple inputs and replace them, in large part
or in whole, with only ONE research target. I have more confidence in
research communities reacting to multiple inputs than I have in research
communities reacting only to a single input, even if that input is mine.
I might be wrong. You might be wrong. Even some presidential panel of
a hundred experts is more likely to be wrong, in my opinion, than the
tens or hundreds of thousands of researchers as a collective, all trying
to solve the problems for which they are individually responsible.
Moreover, the practical result of such programs is often not only the
dictation of a research goal, but of research paths and methods, which
is even more fraught with peril.

The overall effect, in my opinion, is to greatly reduce the vibrancy and
reactivity of the research community that we have built up over the
course of generations.

So again, if the decision were mine to make, even despite my enthusiasm
for nanotechnology, I would not bring that level of research power to
bear on the problem. Rather, I would try to replicate the successes
we've seen over the past few generations in building up computer science
expertise. We've funded computer science, and many different small to
medium (from a national perspective) but never simply charged in and
said, "We want you all to build This One Thing in the next ten years."
The result is the strongest computer science research community in the
world.

--
John S. Novak, III
The Humblest Man On The Net

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