Nanotechnology is thus far following the curve of capability, and there is every reason to expect it will continue to do so in the future.
May be minorly off-topic: nothing Drexler hypothesised has, as far as I know, even been started. As I understand it, the state of things is still that we still have literally no idea how to get there from here, and what’s called “nanotechnology” is material science or synthetic biology. Do you have details of what you’re describing as following the curve?
A good source of such details is Drexler’s blog, where he has written some good articles about—and seems to consider highly relevant—topics like protein design and DNA origami.
(cough) I’m sure Drexler has much detail on Drexler’s ideas. Assume I’m familiar with the advocates. I’m speaking of third-party sources, such as from the working worlds of physics, chemistry, physical chemistry and material science for example.
As far as I know—and I have looked—there’s little or nothing. No progress to nanobots, no progress to nanofactories. The curve in this case is a flat line at zero. Hence asking you specifically for detail on what you are plotting on your graph.
Well, that’s a bit like saying figuring out how to smelt iron constituted no progress to the Industrial Revolution. These things have to go a step at a time, and my point in referring to Drexler’s blog was that he seems to think e.g. protein design and DNA origami do constitute real progress.
As for things you could plot on a graph, consider the exponentially increasing amount of computing power put into molecular modeling simulations, not just by nanotechnology advocates, but people who actually do e.g. protein design for living today.
May be minorly off-topic: nothing Drexler hypothesised has, as far as I know, even been started. As I understand it, the state of things is still that we still have literally no idea how to get there from here, and what’s called “nanotechnology” is material science or synthetic biology. Do you have details of what you’re describing as following the curve?
Perhaps start here, with his early work on the potential of hypertext ;-)
A good source of such details is Drexler’s blog, where he has written some good articles about—and seems to consider highly relevant—topics like protein design and DNA origami.
(cough) I’m sure Drexler has much detail on Drexler’s ideas. Assume I’m familiar with the advocates. I’m speaking of third-party sources, such as from the working worlds of physics, chemistry, physical chemistry and material science for example.
As far as I know—and I have looked—there’s little or nothing. No progress to nanobots, no progress to nanofactories. The curve in this case is a flat line at zero. Hence asking you specifically for detail on what you are plotting on your graph.
There has been some impressive sounding research done on simulated diamondoid tooltips for this kind of thing. (Admittedly, done by advocates.)
I suspect when these things do arrive, they will tend to have hard vacuum, cryogenic temperatures, and flat surfaces as design constraints.
Well, that’s a bit like saying figuring out how to smelt iron constituted no progress to the Industrial Revolution. These things have to go a step at a time, and my point in referring to Drexler’s blog was that he seems to think e.g. protein design and DNA origami do constitute real progress.
As for things you could plot on a graph, consider the exponentially increasing amount of computing power put into molecular modeling simulations, not just by nanotechnology advocates, but people who actually do e.g. protein design for living today.