ULTIMATE COMPUTING - Quantum Consciousness Studies

NanoTechnology 191
micromanipulators and proposed the construction of “microteleoperators”: remote
controlled nanodevices! Drexler (1981, 1986) has described some advantages and
hypothetical dangers of nanotechnology. Capabilities for atom-by-atom assembly
and nanoengineering could lead to new materials and pathways (Feynman, 1961).
One such material is “diamond-like carbon” films which are “transparent,
insulating, chemically inert, have a high dielectric strength, good adhesion and are
relatively hard” (Aisenberg, 1984). Drexler suggests that rotary hammers a few
molecules long might be used to hit carbon atoms in graphite at just the right
angle and force to create lightweight diamond films and fibers useful in a variety
of material applications. Drexler warns of two Frankenstein aspects to
nanotechnology: nanosensor surveillance, and uncontrolled replication of
nanodevices with consumption of biosphere resources. However, the existing,
dramatic developments in microsensor technology and microelectronics render
worries about nanosensor surveillance superfluous (Schneiker, 1986). Schneiker
also discounts Drexler’s extreme “end of the world” worries about
nanoreplicators, pointing out that the Feynman machine (top-down) approach to
nanotechnology, microreplicators and other factors obviate the problem.
Nonetheless, like genetic engineering, nuclear power, the automobile, and junk
food, nanotechnology may well be a “double edged sword” which demands
responsible management.
Potential benefits from nanotechnology attainable in perhaps a decade or two
might include (Schneiker, 1986):
... vastly faster, much more powerful and numerous computers with
extremely large capacity memories, ultrastrong composite materials,
greatly improved scientific instrumentation, microscopic mobile
robots, and automated flexible manufacturing systems, replicating
systems, and achieving the practical miniaturization limits and
maximum performance in virtually every area of technology.
Despite these lofty hopes and predictions, nanotechnology and molecular
computing have remained mere dreams. Obstacles to their implementation center
on the absence of available Feynman machines. A feasible solution has been
advanced by a present day nanotechnologist whose contributions may eventually
eclipse all others. Conrad Schneiker (1986) may have found the bridge to the
nanoscale. He predicts that atomic level manipulative capabilities embodied in a
1981 invention, the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), can implement
nanoscale Feynman machines (Hansma and Tersoff, 1987). Schneiker had noted
that even without the STM, and before its invention, silicon micromechanics
combined with other technologies could have been used. Not content with two
approaches, he also proposed another route based on augmented machine tool
technology originally developed for single crystal diamond machinery. But STMs
are much more convenient and much less expensive.