Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: psrc@pegasus.ATT.COM (Paul S. R. Chisholm) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Nanotechnology reference Keywords: nanotechnology "Evolution" STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION Message-ID: Date: 6 Oct 89 00:10:25 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 49 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu < BACK TO THE FUTURE PART 2: It's about time. No hoverboarding! > The nanotechnology described in "Evolution" (the third season premier of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION is, um, real speculative science. The most accessible source for laypersons is Eric Drexler's ENGINES OF CREATION. (There's a whole lot of other stuff in there about going beyond the current paradigm, such as science courts. Personally, I stopped or skimmed when it got boring, and still got a lot out of it.) Yes, they're so named because they work on the nanometer (billionths of a meter) level. Yes, they use "mechanical memories". (Anybody play with a Digilog-1? Think of a tiny, sturdier version, with error correction, and *lots* of little rods.) There's also a Netnews group "sci.nanotech" on the subject. Let's be nice folks and keep the STAR TREK-specific stuff out of there, please? (Violators will be forced to read alt.flame for a month.-) That means making sure that follow-ups to this message stay in rec.arts.startrek, as I've tried to ensure with the appropriate header line magic. (You guys in the nanotech group: the STAR TREK story referred to nanomachines as "nannites". Is that from Drexler's vocabulary, or have Rodenberry and Company coined a new word? Send e-mail, I'll summarize.) Yes, "nannites" (or "nanites", but that doesn't look like it's spelled right) could be be programmed to evolve. No, if Wesley did what he said he did, they wouldn't become intelligent. (Heinlein's THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS handled this brilliantly, but he was wrong, and too many SF writers have accepted that novel and TRUE NAMES as their major computer science textbooks.-) Yes, they could be intelligent in some sense, individually or collectively. Yes, they could easily fix the computer's memory that fast. No, I don't think they could have taken over another machine so quickly (and it was a dumb way to give them a voice, IMHO). The major problem with nanotechnology and science fiction, as my friend Dale Skran has pointed out, is that the characters are no longer human. They could fix broken bones with a pill, fly to the moon without a spaceship (or even a spacesuit), and in general act in ways literally beyond our imagination. Read Drexler's book, and we'll talk. Paul S. R. Chisholm, AT&T Bell Laboratories att!pegasus!psrc, psrc@pegasus.att.com, AT&T Mail !psrchisholm I'm not speaking for the company, I'm just speaking my mind. [I for one have never heard or read "nannites". Leafing through EOC, one sees the term "assembler" used fairly consistently. I didn't the episode referred to. Would anyone care to summarize? --JoSH]