Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: ningluo@acsu.buffalo.edu (Ning Luo) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: What will nanotech-economy mean to the world? Keywords: efficiency, 2nd law, greenhouse effect, space exploration Message-ID: Date: 5 Dec 90 04:17:15 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: SUNY Buffalo Lines: 64 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu One thing we have to watch out in such imaginations about how efficient the nanotechnology would be is the second law of thermodynamics, which places not only an upper bound on the efficiency of any operation involving work, but also an upperbound on the efficiency of any "computation"(i.e. information processing). The ecological consequences of an economy thermodynamically very efficient are also important constraints. Imagine that the whole economy is like a huge heat engine busy in extracting energy from heat or energy sources (the sun, atoms, nuclei, etc.) and outpouring the heat directly and indirectly (i.e. after the work has been used and "useful energy" dissipated) to the only "cold bath" --- the Mother Earth. [Wrong! A much better heat sink, both from thermodynamic and environmental perspectives, is the 3K intergalactic background. It can be accessed from right here on cloudless nights, and from LEO all the time. --JoSH] I think if the quantum leap of the techno-economic revolution is to happen by whichever means (well, nanotech is one of the leading candidates for becoming the driving engine of it), and the human civilization not to be destroyed as the outcome, then man has to go to space. Only in the era of space colonization, the new technologies with too large scale impacts to be "contained" on earth can be safely explored. Space colonization will also make multiple (non-identical) copies of the H. sapien civilization, in case one collapses due to its own carelessness, the evolution lineage of this intelligence will not be terminated. This bring up another thing which bothers me from time to time when I am reading the "grand projections" in this group. Many are talking how nanotech will fundamentally change the social and economic orders. However, the pictures enlisted are usually about how cars, supermarketing, consumer behavior, etc. will be different. It reminds me the story of the White brothers. The motivation for them to invent the airplane was to have a speedy way to transport ice before it melted. They never could have imagined what their invention had meant to the world. But they did invented the plane, so nobody needs to make fun of their original motivation. Good for them. -- Luo, Ning 218 CCC Bldg Roswell Park Memorial Institute Buffalo, NY 14263 | ningluo@sun.acsu.buffalo.edu (APARNET) [Actually, the Wright brothers were simply trying to make a flying machine--that story is quite untrue. There are some good biographies of the Wrights, particularly one entitled "The Bishop's Boys", if you wish to delve further into their motivations. The fact that I am at pains to correct a couple of factual inaccuracies, however, should not be taken as invalidating your main points, which seem to be "Space colonization is desireable in the long run" and "Inventions often outstrip the necessities that mothered them." I agree with both. --JoSH] Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com