Project Cyborg 2.0

[Sharp_Kid]

http://www.etcgroup.org/documents/TheBigDown.pdf

Just about everything you could want to know about nanotechnology.
It was this report which inspired Prince Charles' "Grey Goo" fear.

[Ulrikke]

The proposed solution to the Grey Goo is the Blue Goo. I believe science will be sophisticated enough by the time we get a working 'molecular nanotechnology' to be able to prevent history from repeating itself – we already have the information on what can go wrong and how to prevent it.

The future looks amazingly bright for humanity – more than ever before. Of course the alternative is to join Prince Charles on his Grey Goo fear crusade to stop the future…

[Sharp_Kid]

I thought the blue goo thing was out of our control.
Maybe I'm wrong but I honestly thought we had to be sure we weren't over doing it with the grey goo so as not to imbalance the blue goo?
I've probably misinterpreted something along the way, unless we really are all doomed.

[Ulrikke]

Blue Goo: tiny self-replicating police robots that keep the other ones from misbehaving. A device specifically designed to monitor and control other machines to ensure that their replication does not get out of control, if they misbehave they are recognized and disassembled.

Prince Charles has been criticized about his Grey Goo fear crusade to stop the future, because of his lack of understanding on this issue. I think a counter-crusade called Blue Goo wonder is in order to directly oppose that of His Highness…

[Sharp_Kid]

Right. My understanding was that blue goo was the free materials of no use to the nanobots, or something like that. Obviously my error.
I wonder who will police the police nanobots though.
I absolutely love the idea of having tiny wee robots slowly dissolving my disease ridden organs instead of having them surgically removed. Oh the pressures of being an alcoholic.........

[Ulrikke]

Blue Goo are not assemblers, they are devices designed specifically for one purpose. Their replication would be at pre-determined level, offering them no chance of misbehaving – one may call them a self-policed police. They are also part of the worst case scenario – the point of TheBigDown that inspired Prince Charles' fear crusade to stop the future – and if AI precedes 'molecular nanotechnolgy' the possibility of Grey Goo is doomed. Thus, we already are a step ahead – we know what could go wrong and what the possible solutions would be.

From a link previously posted: "To a nanodevice, a cell is a large, complex structure whose parts can be handled and manipulated. Almost all medical problems would become trivial tasks: extinguishing viral and bacterial infections, removing or even repairing cancerous cells, regeneration of missing body parts, the various challenges involved with aging reversal, and so on." So I think one's organs would in fact be reconstructed/ repaired.

And … not to spoil the fun… but bottoms-up fans… should not continue with their practice in the hope that nano is just around the corner to save their livers …

[-Sigurd-]

The possibilities of a well developed nanotechnogy as described in the previous post sound awesome. The difficulties in bringing it about face major practical problems though. But will the advance of AI take the problem out of our hands?

Looking at the available literature,it seems that it is only a matter of time before at least some of these dreams become a working reality. How much time though, we don't know. One thing that seems certain is that Prince Charles is not a reliable guide to the 'dangers' of nanotechnology (or anything else in my view). The grey goo scenario may be doomed by the sheer difficulty of the task of producing tiny self replicating machines that would be capable of bringing about the environmental disaster that he fears. And, as already mentioned, progress in AI may be an easier affair then nanotechnology and so may well take the sting out of the grey goo fear by keeping us many steps ahead. The vast simulations that computers of the near future will be capable of should reduce the risks of unforseen disasters. It is reminiscent of 'Deep Blue'..the IBM chess computer that is now practically unbeatable, being able to calculate vast numbers of possible next moves.I followed a link from the AI site and came across someone called 'Eric Drexler' who seems to be the leading light or poineer of thinking on nanotechnology:

From Drexler's "Engines of Creation":

Eventually, one way or another, automated engineering systems will be able to design things more reliably than any group of human engineers can today .Our challenge will be to design them correctly. We will need human institutions that reliably develop reliable systems.