Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: "Ron_Fischer.mvenvos"@xerox.com Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: Ye olde matter duplicator Message-ID: Date: 16 Jun 89 02:41:18 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 36 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu >Even with a molecular representation, >possibly compressed much as video images are compressed today, the "program" >to produce the statue should be at least 10 times as massive as the statue itself! A one order of magnitude increase in mass for an encoding would not be troublesome unless one planned the encoding of something "large." A planet perhaps? The possible advantage of the encoding over the actual object is its stability w.r.t. the original. Could you send your assumptions and derivation for the order of magnitude mass increase? >Presumably, our wonderful >nano-engineers can write VERY concise specifications... This was the case I was most concerned with: new engineered objects. As usual, the software engineer has little concern for backward compatibility ;-) >Except that we may want all interfaces between different sub-assemblies to >be specified at the molecular scale... Using your previous statement regarding hierarchical design, I don't think this is an issue, since assemblers operating at the interfaces could use their knowledge of proper construction techniques to do this without an explicit encoding. I agree that some objects will tend to be valuable because of their history, and that at some level of valuation this may not allow encoding. This holds only when encoding is invasive enough to cause perceived risk to the value of the object. In the case of our bodies the argument will (no doubt) continue indefinately. (ron)