Friday 23 July 1999

Found Almanac for Win95 on the net today. It is basically the same as good old Almanac for Windows, which I used for its entire evaluation period on my 286 machine. (I never bought it, as I didn't have a VISA at that time, much less a Mastercard.) It's been a while. It's still one of the more goodlooking pieces, in my biased opinion. I guess this is slightly similar to the feeling people have when an old lover moves in. Intriguingly, the machine crashed shortly thereafter, and then again. I guess this is even more similar to the feeling people have a while after an old lover moves in.

Oh, and click on the picture to enter their web site if you think the crashes were just a random fluke and you really want to see their cute software for yourself.

Since you've found your way here, you're obviously a bright and curious person. So you may have heard about nanotechnology. Basically, nanomachines are so small that they can handle single molecules and stuff on that size, or even build new molecules selectively atom by atom. Some people say that within a few decades, intelligent nanomachines (nanobots) will be able to do repair work in our body. They will assist our immune system in eradicating infections and cancer cells; they will repair broken DNA and in that way eventually reverse aging, as all cells in the body will be good as new. Should any minor accident befall us, like a broken leg or a gunshot, the nanomachines will quickly and efficiently restore us without the need of hospitalization.

Among the other benefits of nanotechnology is that it can easily re-arrange the atoms of everyday items, and so your household items will change into whatever you need. Furthermore, since organic materials like food consist of atoms commonly found in air, there will no longer be need of farming and such: The food will materialize out of thin air. Not that we will actually need food: The nanobots can easily synthesize ATP, life's currency unit, from cheap energy beamed from satelites. So there's no real need to eat or breathe or such, though most people will probably appreciate it for their first few hundred years or so.

It may not be readily apparent from the above text that I am mocking the entire concept. I am. Not because it is impossible to manipulate objects at the molecular level. In fact, nanotech has existed on this planet for approximately 3.8 billion years, and perhaps much longer elsewhere. It is more commonly known as life. Organelles in our cells routinely and with impressive speed build various proteins, lipids and starches atom by atom. Other organelles will modify or destruct molecules, literally at the speed of thought: For thought, as we can measure it in the physical world, is performed by the transfer of chemicals in our brains. On a nanotech level. And whenever your muscles move, millions and millions of molecules are created and destroyed in the blink of an eye - again, literally.

Rearranging the world at a molecular level works. The fact that we are here, attests to it. So nanotech must be the way to go, right? Wrong. The current approach to nanotech is colored by the experiences we have at the macroscopic level, with wheels and levers and springs and coils and computers. This kind of stuff do not work at the molecular levels, certainly not in any way similar to what we are used to. You cannot just make a multipurpose submarine and turn a shrinking ray on it before sending it into the blood stream. This makes for great films, but is no more realistic than muttering arcane spells to achieve the same effect.

We've had computers since the end of World War II. We've had personal computers since the early 80es. And it's still not possible to get an office suite that does not crash your computer occasionally. In a macroscopic world where a stray cosmic ray won't make a dent in your equipment. What are you going to do when the nanobots in your bloodstream experience an irrecoverable system failure: Ignore, retry, die screaming?

But such is the human hunger for immortality that one will believe in a project that is in the league of the Perpeetum Mobile, or the Philosophers Stone, or the treasures of lost Atlantis. Whereas one will question the sanity of others, who look at a marvel of nanotechnology, one that consists of billions and billions of entire communities of nanomachines, cooperating seamlessly, instantly, spontaneously, which is not just intelligent but self-aware and creative - look at all this and doubt that it all just happened by chance.

You bet on your horse, and I'll bet on mine.