pwh@bradley2.bradley.edu (Pete Hartman) (11/02/90)
In Message-ID: <Oct.25.16.22.40.1990.2918@athos.rutgers.edu> dan-hankins@cup.portal.com writes: [ stuff deleted ] >The Nanotechnology Revolution will bring the means of production themselves >within the reach of _every_ individual. [ more stuff deleted ] I don't really think so, for one simple reason--just because the means of production are simple and require only basic raw materials does NOT mean that they will be easy to get. Looking at the list that you posted (like about drugs), it's quite likely that serious restrictions will be placed on who can or can't own/use such technology, and the actual nanomachines themselves will likely be quite expensive. Even if you make machines that build copies of themselves, do you really think that the person who creates them is going to let them go? S/He could make major bucks instead by tightly controlling the technology.... Never underestimate the stupidity of greed. -- ----- Pete Hartman pwh@bradley.bradley.edu Haazavaa? [There are two very different questions being raised here, first of the availability of production machinery--likely available, but at a price that reflects the money that could be made with it, just as production machinery is available now-- and second of paternalistic government restrictions, which are likely to make things illegal, but hardly unavailable, just as drugs are now. --JoSH]
dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu (Daniel Mocsny) (11/06/90)
>>The Nanotechnology Revolution will bring the means of production themselves >>within the reach of _every_ individual. So far, this statement has prompted objections based on: (1) political barriers, (2) social/psychological barriers, and (3) material/energy barriers to the nanotechnological material independence of Joe Average. But now I will raise another question: the ability of Joe Average to manage complexity. Just now, any number of amazing technological feats are possible. For example, a person of average means (by western standards) may purchase a personal computer, and then download 1 GB of free software, compile it, and run it to advantage. In practice, however, only the tiniest minority of persons of average means are actually doing this. Why? Because it is too hard for most people to do. Thousands of software packages exist, but who can effectively use more than 1--20 of them? Before a technology can become pervasive, it must be completely simplified, standardized, and relatively idiot-proofed. Consider all the popular contemporary consumer products that embed significantly advanced technology: the telephone, the television, the automobile, etc. (I neglect to mention the computer because it isn't quite yet a consumer product in the same class yet, it is more of a specialist tool requiring a major commitment from the user.) Each of these products has (1) a standardized user interface that presents a simplified functional abstraction to the user, (2) protection for its standards in the form of laws and governing bodies, and (3) a huge infrastructure to support and regulate it. The need for these restrictions stems from the very limited human capacity to deal with complexity. Make something slightly more complicated, and you automatically cut off whole segments of the potential user base. So the real barrier to widespread use of nanotechnology will probably not be energy, laws, raw materials, or whatever, but rather, how simple it can be made to use. If the technology requires time, patience, years of training, etc., to exploit, we will still need elaborate division of labor and massive organizations to use it. This will keep it out of the hands of Joe Average more effectively than any other factor. -- Dan Mocsny Snail: Internet: dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu Dept. of Chemical Engng. M.L. 171 dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu University of Cincinnati 513/751-6824 (home) 513/556-2007 (lab) Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0171 [99.9% of the people who drive cars couldn't fix them if they had the tools and parts, much less could they be said to understand the engineering that went into the design. People were reproducing themselves long before Crick and Watson discovered the structure of DNA. There's really no need for people to be able to understand a technology in order to use it. It is simply the responsibility of the designer to build a system that not only works, but that can be used. Any successful technology has by definition accomplished just that. I see no reason why nanotech should be different. --JoSH]
dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (11/06/90)
In article <Nov.1.20.00.45.1990.7036@athos.rutgers.edu>, pwh@bradley2.bradley.edu (Pete Hartman) writes: >it's quite likely that serious restrictions will be placed on who can or >can't own/use such technology This will be even harder to enforce than current copyright laws on software. Note that the only people who get nailed for this are those who make copies and then sell them to others, not people who just allow their stuff to be copied or who make copies for their own personal use. If something is wanted, people -will- get it. And while the products built by nanotech may be hard to hide, it won't be hard to hide the production machinery itself. Human DNA has more information than in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, but look at the space it fits in. >and the actual nanomachines themselves will likely be quite expensive. Even >if you make machines that build copies of themselves, do you really think >that the person who creates them is going to let them go? S/He could make >major bucks instead by tightly controlling the technology.... What material goods is the creator of the technology going to spend the money on that he can't get just as easily by using the technology itself? How's he going to control it? See remarks re software piracy above. As nanotech is gradually introduced into the economy, the value of material goods decreases. Therefore the value of money to trade for them also decreases. Material goods (i.e. wages, money) provide three basic needs: 1. Survival 2. Trade for survival 3. Accumulation is a measure of one's status; the more competent one is, the more material goods one can get in return for competence. As the means of production gradually shifts to the individual, (1) can be fulfilled by the individual without money, and (2) becomes less necessary. And the status afforded by the accumulation of material goods beyond that needed for survival decreases directly with the decrease in the value of the material goods for trade. Since the creator of the technology can take care of all of the above without ever selling the technology, the remaining thing that he can trade the technology for that he would want is status. The more people use and like his nanotech, the greater his reputation and hence his status in the community. So it is therefore in the best interest of the nanotech creators to spread the technology as widely as possible, in order to reap the greatest possible increase in reputation. When material goods are too cheap to charge for, the main form of wealth becomes competence, and the main form of payment is appreciation and use (i.e. status, reputation). So I think that the more nanotechnology that is created, the cheaper it is likely to get, in material terms. Dan Hankins dan-hankins@cup.portal.com dan-hankins@pro-realm.cts.com Freedom: I won't. [This scenario recalls James Hogan's "Voyage from Yesteryear", which was discussed here just about yesteryear! I do have to inject a note of dissension: There's no limit to the amount of paperwork necessary to accomplish anything, and there are many things that have value outside of production costs (land, for example). --JoSH]
dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu (Daniel Mocsny) (11/07/90)
In article <Nov.5.17.56.16.1990.14250@athos.rutgers.edu> dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu (Daniel Mocsny) writes: >So the real barrier to widespread use of nanotechnology will probably >not be energy, laws, raw materials, or whatever, but rather, how >simple it can be made to use. > >[99.9% of the people who drive cars couldn't fix them if they had > the tools and parts, much less could they be said to understand the > engineering that went into the design. People were reproducing > themselves long before Crick and Watson discovered the structure of > DNA. There's really no need for people to be able to understand > a technology in order to use it. It is simply the responsibility > of the designer to build a system that not only works, but that > can be used. Any successful technology has by definition accomplished > just that. I see no reason why nanotech should be different. > --JoSH] The difference, if one exists, might be the open-endedness of nanotechnology. After all, we are talking about giving the consumer the ability to manufacture every item that (s)he now buys from a whole economy of vendors. It stands to reason, then, that if the nanotechnological "universal fabricator" is going to be as easy to use as, say, a shopping mall (and all the industrial infrastructure that hides behind it), then the fabricator is going to have to embed all the information-processing power that the industrial economy embeds now. Some of this information-processing power is embedded in the physical plant that "decides", by virtue of its design, how to process incoming atoms or raw materials into more valuable materials. The rest of the information-processing power is embedded in the know-how of all the people without whom the economy would collapse. This know-how is only partially available in abstract form (such as books) today. A product like the telephone, the automobile, or even DNA is usable because its functional interface to the user is so highly constrained. Consider how much engineering goes into an automobile, and how many minds and computers participate actively in fabricating it and bringing it to the consumer. Compared to the technology behind the automobile, what you can do with it is nearly trivial. It sells because it does something enough customers want. But it only works because that function itself is *inherently* simple. Nanotechnology, on the other hand, seems to be about removing all constraints. Set the user free of the industrial infrastructure and the division of labor. However, division of labor does not arise because of the need to allocate material. Rather, it arises from the need to allocate scarce information-processing power. Since people take a long time to get good at anything, and are usually very bad at doing things they haven't practiced, the only way we can get rich today is to partition knowledge up into tiny sub-domains and let everyone focus most of their effort at mastering a different slice. Our inability to master all the skills necessary to satisfy our wants is the primary reason we trade. The people who get the most out of a technology are those people who put the most into it. In contrast, a successful consumer product must necessarily reduce the number of options available to the consumer. Bob Moog (the inventor of the Moog electronic music synthesizer) said it best: "What you can control, you MUST control." Products which have the most flexibility and power are nearly always the hardest to use, because they confront you with more choices that you HAVE to make. This is not solely an accident or a symptom of poor product design (although poor product design can certainly aggravate it). Power and ease of use are fundamentally at odds. I have no doubt that nanotechnological products can be packaged in some form(s) usable to the consumer. But this automatically guarantees that not all consumers will be equal. A constrained nanotechnological product will necessarily not do *something* which will be possible for the consumer with more skill, knowledge, patience, etc. For complex technologies that solve a straightforward problem, like the need to move from one place to another, piling on the constraints isn't too intolerable. But for complex technologies without any obvious simple function, developing successful consumer-product abstractions is difficult. A case in point is the computer. Its main strength AND weakness is its generality. By being able to do so many things, it earns its keep, but it also rules out the possibility of being simple to exploit fully. No matter how many layers of makeup you pile on top of it, you still have to keep track of a lot of things, including all the tools you need to keep track of your tools, etc. Nanotechnology is probably going to be more related to the computer than to the automobile, because it isn't starting off with any obvious functional constraint. Automobiles became pretty standardized within about 10 years of the start of mass production. On the other hand, computers are probably becoming less standardized all the time. (The "standards" movement makes certain aspects of computers somewhat more uniform, at least by the time they sink into obsolescence, but computers are not becoming inherently simpler. The minute we rid ourselves of one form of fragmentation, e.g., on the systems level, immediately fragmentation appears on another level, e.g., applications, peripherals, languages, etc.) I suspect we may find that the only way for us to "package" nanotechnology without crippling it will be to increase the level of complexity the consumer can handle. I.e., we will probably need to repackage the consumer! Of course, augmenting human mental powers directly is a possibility often bandied about in this forum. But once we gain the ability to do that, we immediately lose our present frame of reference, which revolves completely around the abilities, desires, motivations, and limitations of our biological brains. Once we can reprogram them, nothing can be predictable any more. We may know what we want to change ourselves into now, but can we know what those people (?) will want to do? (This is not an idle point. If we can change our abilities to satisfy our motivations, why don't we also tinker with our motivations?) -- Dan Mocsny Snail: Internet: dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu Dept. of Chemical Engng. M.L. 171 dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu University of Cincinnati 513/751-6824 (home) 513/556-2007 (lab) Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0171 [This is quite an insightful analysis. I do think it is more applicable to a point of view spanning a few centuries than a few decades; in the short term one can imagine a host of what we might call "single-button black boxes" that could revolutionize society without going beyond the abilities of almost anyone to use: a box that accepts garbage and produces food; one that turns lawn clippings into clothing; self-driving cars; self-repairing houses; trees with a gasoline spigot. Intelligence augmentation has been with us since the invention of writing; it will continue to accelerate--but we have never been able to know where we were going in that sense anyway. --JoSH]
alexis@cmcl2.nyu.edu (Alexis Rosen) (11/07/90)
dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu (Daniel Mocsny) writes: >[quotes from articles, and comments about nanotech's effect on > economic independance.] > ...But now I will raise another question: the ability of Joe >Average to manage complexity. > >Just now, any number of amazing technological feats are possible. >For example, a person of average means (by western standards) may >purchase a personal computer, and then download 1 GB of free software, >compile it, and run it to advantage. > >In practice, however, only the tiniest minority of persons of average >means are actually doing this. Why? Because it is too hard for most >people to do. Thousands of software packages exist, but who can >effectively use more than 1--20 of them? > [ and lots of other good (but not particularly original?) comments ] >So the real barrier to widespread use of nanotechnology will probably >not be energy, laws, raw materials, or whatever, but rather, how >simple it can be made to use. If the technology requires time, patience, >years of training, etc., to exploit, we will still need elaborate >division of labor and massive organizations to use it. This will >keep it out of the hands of Joe Average more effectively than any >other factor. These arguments are not unreasonable but they fail to fully appreciate the rule-shattering nature of the singularity... Yes, in the first few years when we acheive "real" nanotech (a large subset of what Drexler describes, say), this may be an issue. People will always fear technology. But soon enough this won't matter. Joe average will self- evolve into a creature which may or may not have any physical resmblance to modern man. (This has been discussed before in this group.) He will _also_ recreate his own _mind_. I know one of the first things I do (after I fix my eyesight and bad back :-) is grow my brain capacity and speed by at least six orders of magnitude. (Working from rough numbers of what should be possible, based on EoC and what I've read here.) There's too much to learn to stay biologically _stupid_, which is what we all are. Of course, Joe Average may well fear and hate smart people as much as he does technology, but this will surely be the ultimate example of peer pressure... "Gee, I'll have to become another pointy-headed supergenius, because otherwise none of my friends will talk to me anymore..." (Poor choice of words perhaps- I mean, "pointy-headed" might not be just an expression, in the age of nanotech. :-) All of the above notwithstanding, I have two objections to this entire argument. 1) I'm still not convinced we can overcome the graygu problem. I'm also not convinced that anyone understands the subtleties enough to say anything intelligent about this. So it's not worth more than a passing mention. 2) More importantly, I'm guilty myself (in the above paragraphs) of the same thing I accused Daniel of- overly limited vision. Like the graygu problem, though, I don't see how we can even approach this subject intelligently. When you're a million times smarter than you are today, what will be important to you? Will creativity still be a mystery? Will key "human" things, basic things like material and emotional desires, still have meaning? The point is, achieving "real" nanotech means that you've pretty much won the game of life, as we know it. Since I'm not Mr. Spock (I don't even play him on TV :-) I'm not going to hazard any guesses about life as we _don't_ know it. Here's a truly dismal thought: What happens to an organism which has no challenges to overcome? (Couch potatoes need not answer.) --- Alexis Rosen Owner/Sysadmin, PANIX Public Access Unix {cmcl2,apple}!panix!alexis [ "The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveler returns--puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all, And the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action." Remember that "Hamlet" was a tragedy. --JoSH]
Jim_Day.XSIS@xerox.com (11/07/90)
If nanotechnology eventually makes the production of material goods so easy that production costs are essentially nil, will that mean that everything will be free? Not likely. Software can be replicated now for next to nothing, but I haven't noticed the price of commercial software dropping much as a result. Even if material goods were available without cost, people would still have to pay for many other things. There will always be a market for motion pictures, music, sporting events, and other forms of entertainment, and it seems unlikely that public utilities and services will ever be provided free of charge. As the global population continues to increase, we may have to pay substantial amounts for things that now cost little or nothing. For example, if the population of California increases tenfold, as it may, everyone won't be able to go to the beach at once. We may have to pay $100 apiece to spend a day at the beach, and everyone won't be able to camp at Yosemite, Yellowstone, or Lake Tahoe at the same time either, so the cost of admission to popular recreational areas could increase by an order of magnitude. In short, there are countless ways of extracting money from people, and I'm confident that enterprising individuals in the age of nanotechnology will find all of them. [This is quite true but on the other hand if material goods are available without cost, the person from whom the money has been extracted won't be so badly off as he would have been before. I would personally pay $100 to *avoid* spending a day at the beach--it's not a necessity of life. It would be really interesting for people on this newsgroup to design the nanotech gadgets necessary for self-sufficiency or see how close we can come. Unfortunately I'll be away for a month, as I mentioned before, so work the ideas over for a while... --JoSH]
erich@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Erich Stefan Boleyn) (12/05/90)
I haven't followed 'sci.nanotech' too closely, but I have been thinking about similar ideas on my own... (at least ones on this thread) panix!alexis@cmcl2.nyu.edu (Alexis Rosen) writes: >fear technology. But soon enough this won't matter. Joe average will self- >evolve into a creature which may or may not have any physical resmblance to [deleted] >my eyesight and bad back :-) is grow my brain capacity and speed by at least >six orders of magnitude. (Working from rough numbers of what should be >possible, based on EoC and what I've read here.) There's too much to learn >to stay biologically _stupid_, which is what we all are. (Now it gets interesting... ;-) >1) I'm still not convinced we can overcome the graygu problem. I'm also not >convinced that anyone understands the subtleties enough to say anything >intelligent about this. So it's not worth more than a passing mention. I don't know what to do about this problem either... but I've been attacking it from the other end, so I haven't considered it much. >2) More importantly, I'm guilty myself (in the above paragraphs) of the same >thing I accused Daniel of- overly limited vision. Like the graygu problem, >though, I don't see how we can even approach this subject intelligently. When >you're a million times smarter than you are today, what will be important to >you? Will creativity still be a mystery? Will key "human" things, basic >things like material and emotional desires, still have meaning? The point >is, achieving "real" nanotech means that you've pretty much won the game >of life, as we know it. Since I'm not Mr. Spock (I don't even play him on >TV :-) I'm not going to hazard any guesses about life as we _don't_ know it. Well, I think a better question to ask would be how would you "expand" your brain in size? And *why* would you do it? Before you answer me with flames (;-) I'd like to say that as a student of neuroscience and genetics, I've been thinking about this for a while, and the brain is so specifically wired (so are the developmental mechanisms for that matter) that just turning on the (possibly mutated by this time in your life-span) developmental mechanisms would likely be *very* dangerous to your life, not to mention they may not work at all. Giving the nanomachines "programs" for creating new neural tissue may be your answer, but who knows enough to create a "new wiring system" for a human brain? Just adding on tissue would be grossly inefficient and likely stupid. Most of the greatest works in history have been a collecting (usually by a single individual or couple of people) of other work done. That's great so far, but when talking of a project of this magnitude?!? I don't know if even the supposed "super-geniuses" of our time could handle it (even given the information). "Intelligence" as we know it is just one aspect of a "mind", as people have pointed out in this discussion. I don't know if they would be that much different (the basis at least) by *accident*, which is the method that seems to be being used most here for forced increases in intelligence. By design, I say when (and if ;-) we get it in our heads to change our heads, we should carefully think out what we want? Greater learning potential is one thing, but there are other possibilities besides a linear increase in our "intelligence", as some of you have pointed out. The bases for emotion all have functions, and so we should think about what kind of societal/personal role we want this to take. In all of this should be taken into account the ideas of who would get this kind of thing... everyone?... a select few? or what? I have tentatively been working on ideas for life-extension projects for a while now (that's part of the reason for the neuroscience and genetics), and have realized that the idea of improving intelligence would be almost a must (someone would likely get terribly bored otherwise ;-), and that another bodily form might also be necessary, etc. I wish I had better answers to these questions, but I'm glad others are thinking about them too. It is looking like these kind of thoughts in motivated and widely interested people are becoming more common (and for that matter, there seem to be more highly motivated and widely interested people, but I think that's a fallacy, since this medium just allows those of us who have the motivation to communicate common interests to each other). >Here's a truly dismal thought: What happens to an organism which has no >challenges to overcome? You got me... but I think that as a primitive answer (using little of the insights above) look at the olympian gods (if just more intelligence and lifespan, that is). You could create challenges (of understanding), and make that the societal norm, again assuming the same emotional bias. Erich P.S.: I think I am guilty of the limited vision too, but I'm working at it! / Erich Stefan Boleyn Internet E-mail: <erich@cs.pdx.edu> \ >--={ Portland State University Honorary Graduate Student (Math) }=--< \ College of Liberal Arts & Sciences *Mad Genius wanna-be* / "I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it."
hibbert@xanadu.com (Chris Hibbert) (12/05/90)
In reply to JoSH's commentary on Daniel Mocsny's article: >[This is quite an insightful analysis. I do think it is more applicable > to a point of view spanning a few centuries than a few decades; in the > short term one can imagine a host of what we might call "single-button > black boxes" that could revolutionize society without going beyond the > abilities of almost anyone to use: a box that accepts garbage and > produces food; one that turns lawn clippings into clothing; self-driving > cars; self-repairing houses; trees with a gasoline spigot. > Intelligence augmentation has been with us since the invention of > writing; it will continue to accelerate--but we have never been able > to know where we were going in that sense anyway. > --JoSH] You're missing the point, JoSH; In order for a black box that converts garbage to food or clippings to clothing to be useful, the user has to be able to program it. In the case of clothing, the sale clerk might be able to help the user enter his or her various measurements, but consumers still won't buy it unless they get to say what color, style, cut, and material they'll get today in exchange for their offering of grass clippings. In the case of food, it's even more obvious that the user has to be able to handle a task that can't be made simpler than programming the VCR, which I'm told is beyond many of the consumers you'd need to sell to in order to make a reasonable size market. Chris [Alright, here's an interface for a clothing machine: it has an input hopper, an output slot, two dials, a toggle switch, and a button. Both dials are like an old-fashioned TV channel knob, with click-stops and a fine tuning ring. The left dial is for styles, with the stops for major variations like pants, shirts, underwear, etc, and the fine tuning for cuts, colors, and so forth. As you turn the dial an illustration of the item you are selecting appears on a screen. [A typical Land's End catalog seems to have 50 pages with an average of 2 major items per page, for 100 major stops, and 5 to 10 color/cut choices per item, which could be expanded to 100 fine-tuning settings without being hard to handle.] The toggle switch is labelled "male/female" and its setting is also reflected in the illustration on the screen. The right-hand dial is for size and its setting is reflected by a number that appears on the screen. Press the button and the item on the screen comes out the delivery slot. If it's too small, throw it back in the hopper, turn up the size a bit, and press again... I have a 5-year-old nephew who could learn to operate such a machine in 10 seconds flat. Frankly I find it hard to see how anyone could imagine that you *couldn't* design a clothes-making machine that everyone can use--it is a sad commentary that such comments seem to come from people in the software industry. I can well imagine what the current makers of VCR's and shrink-wrapped software would do to the concept of a clothing machine: It would look like the cockpit of a B-52. There's no need for that. The fact that people find modern gadgets hard to use is not evidence that people are stupid; it's evidence that the gadgets were designed incompetently. --JoSH]
lovejoy@alc.com (Alan Lovejoy) (12/05/90)
In article <Nov.6.13.27.49.1990.20797@athos.rutgers.edu> Jim_Day.XSIS@xerox.com writes: >If nanotechnology eventually makes the production of material goods so easy >that production costs are essentially nil, will that mean that everything will >be free? Not likely. Software can be replicated now for next to nothing, but >I haven't noticed the price of commercial software dropping much as a result. > >Even if material goods were available without cost, people would still have to >pay for many other things. There will always be a market for motion pictures, >music, sporting events, and other forms of entertainment, and it seems unlikely >that public utilities and services will ever be provided free of charge. Money is a mechanism for allocation of "scarce" resources (where scarce means "not enough for everbody all the time without rationing or other means of controlling usage and consumption"). Prices will be put on those things that need to be allocated. Everything else will be free. Unfortunately, the need for allocation may be imposed artificially by monopoly power, social custom, statutory decree or even armies, police and weapons. Nanotechnology is a tool whose handle will fit anyone's hand. It can be used both to evade present-day constraints--and to impose new ones. Even today, unemployment, poverty, illiteracy, under-nutrition, hunger and other "social" ills exist more for sociopolitical reasons than for physico-technical ones. Socialism does not fail because it is not in harmony with physics, but rather because it is not in harmony with human psychology. The behavior of individuals in socialist economies sabotages the grand and pure goals of socialist society--regardless of the wealth or technological prowess of the society. Drastic changes in human society depend far more on drastic changes in human psychology than they do on any external changes. Technology may change the types of toys and the number of toys, but it does not change the rules of the game unless it also changes the heads of the players. P.S. Yes, I'm back on the net after a six month absence. (Formerly, alan@pdn.paradyne.com).
dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu (Daniel Mocsny) (12/06/90)
JoSH writes, describing a clothing-making machine with consumer-robust user-interface: > I have a 5-year-old nephew who could learn to operate such a machine > in 10 seconds flat. Frankly I find it hard to see how anyone could > imagine that you *couldn't* design a clothes-making machine that > everyone can use--it is a sad commentary that such comments seem to > come from people in the software industry. > I can well imagine what the current makers of VCR's and shrink-wrapped > software would do to the concept of a clothing machine: It would look > like the cockpit of a B-52. There's no need for that. The fact that > people find modern gadgets hard to use is not evidence that people are > stupid; it's evidence that the gadgets were designed incompetently. > --JoSH] Yes, but... Everything you are saying is perfectly true if consumers will remain content with artificially constrained, inflexible nanogadgets. But this precludes the very thing being discussed earlier in this thread, namely, that nanotechnology will make everyone self-sufficient. Recall the periodically recurring theme in computer science of "automatic programming". Invariably, this is a euphemism for finding ways to automate certain steps that are done manually at present. Then we can proceed to program manually just as tediously as ever, only now it is at a somewhat higher level. The first FORTRAN compiler was touted, I believe, as a form of "automatic programming". That was probably a claim in behalf of assembly languages as well---they automated the laborious task of toggling in those binary machine instructions. Even though assemblers and compilers do reduce the work of programming by an order of magnitude (at least), we still find programming to be a horrendously labor-intensive job. That is because as soon as we solve one programming problem, immediately we want to solve a harder one. Competently-designed nano-gadgets will not render consumers self- sufficient UNLESS those consumers can learn to be COMPETENT DESIGNERS themselves. And even a competent designer can't out-design all the other competent designers in existence. This packaging of nanotechnology will merely shift the consumers' dependence elsewhere. I think it will be a step forward, but it is only a step. What will happen when the consumer wants something that the competent designer decided was not a worthwile function to incorporate? (Remember, what you are calling "competent design" is ultimately a matter of deciding how best to cripple the operation of the device.) Then the consumer will be in the market to buy some additional competent design. And this *will* happen. People don't want to live completely like clones. People have individual wants and needs that require custom design. They want to express themselves as individuals. They get bored with the same old things. No matter how good something is, once you get used to it you just don't notice it any more. (This may be a fundamental consequence of the nature of the human nervous system---to avoid becoming overloaded with irrelevant data, it "tunes out" continuously sustained inputs. For example, until I remind you, you probably aren't aware of the chair you are sitting in.) There is no way to get around the "logical specification problem". I.e., if you want to make something, you or somebody or something else must specify its structure in detail down to the level of available resources. This takes work, it will always take work, and as long as the ability to do that work is maldistributed, trade will occur. In sum, I conclude that consumer-grade nano-gadgetry won't eliminate consumerism and trade. Instead, it will merely shift it to a higher level, e.g., trading in nano-gadgetry and/or nano-gadget specifications, rather than in commodity materials and end-use manufactured goods. -- Dan Mocsny Snail: Internet: dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu Dept. of Chemical Engng. M.L. 171 dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu University of Cincinnati 513/751-6824 (home) 513/556-2007 (lab) Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0171 [I think the best example of getting bored with the same old things is this very message. The original question of physical self- sufficiency--food, clothing, and shelter--has been left far behind. *Of course* people are going to want more than they have; that's their nature. However, the basic idea in the clothes machine extends fairly straight-forwardly to almost any extent. How do you "operate" the modern-day marketplace, which is capable of producing an immensely bewildering variety of goods? You don't have to know how to design the things you buy; you are presented with choices, and you choose. Human nature being what it is, we are not going to fractionate into billions of separate self-sufficient micro-ecologies. However, the ability to do that on some levels (such as simple physical wherewithal) can open up the other levels to a richer and more rewarding (one hopes!) social intercourse. --JoSH]
mike@everexn.com (Mike Higgins) (12/14/90)
In <Dec.4.22.12.17.1990.24043@athos.rutgers.edu> erich@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Erich Stefan Boleyn) writes: > Well, I think a better question to ask would be how would you "expand" your >brain in size? And *why* would you do it? Before you answer me with flames >(;-) I'd like to say that as a student of neuroscience and genetics, I've been >thinking about this for a while, and the brain is so specifically wired (so I too have been thinking about how to increase intelligence, but I look at individual systems, and assume a gradual improvement. Let's find some engineering tasks we can tackle first, and worry about what 'intelligence' means later. Doing the engineering will force us to learn all the small details that will make the whole picture obvious one day. For example: How about an image processor on the optical nerve? We could design a machine to 'infect' the optic nerve and replace a piece of it with a processor. Normally, the signals would be passed through unchanged, but pictures could be constructed, enhanced, and sent down the nerve like instant replays. You could see in lower light, find edges, detect motion, do Fourier analysis, cubic interpolation zooms, and much more. By growing a few gigabytes of storage you could have a photographic memory. Where do you find space for this processor and memory? Biological systems are often very inefficient: the optic nerve sends constant signals when exposed to a black image! The brighter light you see, the fewer ions the nerves send. You could put an inverter at both ends and run electrons across the middle. This would remove the necessity for all the organelles in the middle that used to support all that black signal current! As time went by, I would want more from my optic nerve processor: Why waste processing power doing cubic interpolation, how about growing up the optic nerve and replacing all the rods with 6 solid-state detectors each! Now I can do a 6 times zoom without degrading the image. The processor on the nerve constantly down-samples the image to feed it to the old visual cortex in the format it is used to. What a waste! So lets grow down the other end of the optic nerve and 'watch' the visual cortex in operation. We won't know how it works when we start, but we sure will by the time we find a way to replace it! How about growing a combination speech_recognition/speech_synthesis/ high_speed_modem/celular_phone in your head? We could almost build that now without nanotechnology! The speech recognition system listens to you sub-vocalizing commands, while the speech synthesis system whispers in your ear. You could call up medical databases, run expert programs on other systems, feed symptoms to it and listen to the diagnosis. (Remember, he's not a REAL doctor ;-). How 'intelligent' is a human that has a photographic memory and can 'recall' any fact stored in any publicly available database? Not to mention doing all the boring calculations localy. For the symbolic integration, you would call up your PC at home and run Derive. (Well, that's how I do it now, that sort of processing will be smaller soon). Of cource some 'native intelligence' (whatever that means) is still necessary to set up the problems. But I think a person equiped with these devices in their head would break the scale on any IQ test currently known to man. These two additions are simple things, and parts of them already fit in your hand or in your lap. I imagine that after a few years of tinkering with systems like this in your head, you would know how the brain used to work. Used to, because it no longer works that way: it's all been replaced with silicon, nanocomputers, quantum computers or whatever. mike@everexn.com