So you mean like the Nanomedicine books by Robert Freitas (I haven't yet read them)?
Yes, something along those lines. Getting older seems to have made me more interested in nanotech applications of medicine.
There are two more possible usages for de novo foldamer engineering (foldamer being the most general case) B) as "simple" delivery vessels for drugs C) for bootstrapping advanced APM.
Someone is likely to prove me wrong, but I'm not sure that that foldamer engineering will bootstrap advanced APM. At best I suspect it may be a dispensable tool, much like one can use a screwdriver to pound a nail - though a hammer would be the better tool. On the other hand, there is no easy way to use a hammer as a screwdriver.
The reason I think that Eric Drexler has switched his focus is this video of a somewhat recent talk he gave:
Eric Drexler - A Cambrian Explosion in Deep Learning
Thanks for the video. I watched it (being impatient I played it at 1.5 times normal speed - just fast enough for me to still comprehend what is being said while saving some time.) As an aside, where I work, we have noticed that money and investments are flowing toward cyber security and more people are looking to get into it as a way to make money. Companies that can claim to have cyber security products have higher valuations per unit sales revenue than those that don't. I suspect this motivates a lot of interest in the area rather than a genuine interest in security. But maybe I'm being too cynical.
One issue I have with predictions about AI is one that Eric mentions too briefly in his talk: goals and motivations of AI. All living things have a goal built into them due to the way life evolved: perpetuate oneself and one's offspring. Eric states we wont know or will be unsure of the goals AI will have. I don't see why we wouldn't, since unless we explicitly program goals in, the AI will have intelligence but it wont have any motivation to do anything with it. Without goals it wont have motivation to act for or against anything. Probably a good reason not to program in any goals.
It would certainly be cool to make atoms visible in the livingroom but I gave up on this endeavour because:
# I worked on a professional one (Omicron) and realized how hard it is to scan z steps greater than one or two atomic layers.
# Playing around with structural DNA nanotechnology (and even more so for other stuff) requires a full-blown lab (automatic pipetting system ...)
# I'm not sure whether larger DNA meshes can be scanned electrically with STM. If AFM is necessary it gets harder. DNA is strongly negatively charged due to its phosphate groups. If DNA structures sits dry on a surface I guess some alkali metal atoms (Na) remain on there cancelling the charge but I'm pretty sure they will be immobile.
I think of SPMs as one tool of many that will be needed to bootstrap nanotechnology. That an STM has limitations is no different than other tools. Based on my reading of history, I think progress in nanotechnology will only take off once more "amateurs" can begin work on it.
Lipid Rafts come to mind. I heard that they may not really exist but they are everywhere in the literature.
I don't really see how that applies to advanced APM. There I more see that correct and useful old ideas have been and are still tragically misused to judge possibilities/impossibilities in a very different context where they are not applicable anymore.
My read of history of chemistry suggests that debates like the Drexler/Smalley one have happened more than once and progress was held up by the more notable participant. Though it isn't clear to me (yet) whether history provides any lessons in how to avoid or mitigate such things.
In one of the foresight conference videos there was one person presenting his companies goals to produce ultra cheap STM microscopes in masses to accelerate nanotechnology research by making the tools more widely and easily accessible - sadly I can't find that video anymore. I've also forgotten the name of the presenter. It might be "Saed"?? I'm not sure.
There were discussions in the sci.nanotech newsgroup many years ago about developing a cheap STM. I recall discussing it with Steve Vetter and Jim Rice at a Foresight conference. I believe one issue that got in the way was lack of money or capital - and uncertain demand. While a determined amateur can build a marginally working inexpensive hobby STM, buyers of commercial systems have higher expectations and getting a refined product to market is not cheap. Of course, back then we didn't have Kickstarter, GoFundMe, IndieGoGo, or RocketHub as options to raise capital and establish a seed of potential customers.
