Over on his Metamodern blog, Eric Drexler has been describing how he thinks nanoscale manufacturing should be developed. For example, in a recent post, he makes a case for not using robotic machines to put molecules together, but instead, using special-purpose tools that move more efficiently.
Over the next few weeks, I'll be writing technical commentary on Drexler's recent (and future) posts. As author of the Nanofactory design paper, this is an area that I've thought about quite a bit, and while I appreciate his desire to start with simpler designs, there are a few areas where I think the issues are less hard-edged than his analysis indicates.
For example, Drexler's post alludes to several different reasons why robots may be less suitable than simpler machines. One of these reasons, the high cost of computation, is one of many issues that I analyzed in my paper.
My next blog post will discuss how general-purpose robots can be controlled without excessive amounts of costly computation.
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