I believe it was an American Admiral named Rickover who predicted that nuclear technology would revolutionize the energy industry. Giving the world power that would be to cheap to meter.

That is one example of technologies promise not living up to the reality. Cautious optimism is the attitude we need to foster here. GM foods, GM seeds, are still under a cloud of suspicion. With good reason.

The scientific community is always providing us with a Frankenstein monsters that the public feels obliged to kill before the village is ransacked. I believe multinational corporate interest is the culprit with its rush to market mentality.

The scientific community needs to slow down. Maintain control of their experiments. Don't underestimate the consuming public. Gray goo may be just another example of technology gone wild, that doesn't mean it couldn't happen, or something equally as tragic.

Wake up people.

Look at the Thermodynamics. The order implied by the ability of grey or any other colour goo to dismantle society whilst replicating itself is nonsense. Even viruses with billions of years of evolution can only make minor alterations to complex, ordered social systems.

As for human made nano machine equivalents, it is one thing to make a couple of nano devices, but when you have to mass produce them or design them to replicate in complex evolved environments, you need ENERGY and lots more of it than the societal host being attacked.
There are fundamental limits to nanotechnology based on available energy.

My belief is that the most useful benefits to mankind will have to wait till we establish colonies in Mercury orbit with manufacturing robotics that will sail to within a hair's width of the Sun to extract the energy required.

That is basic thermodynamics. Very basic!

Please do the research, what progress has ever been made when you consider objections from the flat earth mentality. You will never develop fusion reactors or ion propulsion by reading the koran or the bible. We certainly will not achieve anything by allowing civil libertarians air time to expound their lawyer based values. Stem cell research is an example of when religious and humanitarian values stymie what should have been an opportunity to make real medical progress. The research must be done to at least allow us to assess the potential for nanotechnics.

Sillie, you are correct. Religious values are an impediment to technology. So is government a impediment to personal autonomy. The civil libertarians are the watchdog of both. Or in my definition should be.

Sille

Agree with much of what you have to say except about humanitarian values and civil libertarians slowing medical research. The only objections I have heard to stem cell research has come from the religious right.

As a self proclaimed humanitarian my major objection to GE technology is that it is controlled by monopolies such as Monsanto. Any research that has implications for the public good requires regulation not limitation.

Martin Luther King was a civil libertarian - you have problems with people of this calibre?

Back to topic I am all for research into nanotechnology its possibilities are astounding - but should it wind up controlled by corporations whose only agenda is profit?

There is nothing wrong with taking time over research and development, there is everything wrong with trying to exploit technology before we understand all the ramifications.

Scout, well said.