3
POPSStudy Says Green Economy Means More US Jobs It makes sense, innovation and new technologies mean new industries and markets. We can move forward with the times or we can take Bush's course and be the world leader in the 21st century equivalent of the buggy whip industry. Seems a pretty easy choice to me.
6
POPSHealing And Protecting The Earth With replicating assemblers, we will even be able to remove the billions of tons of carbon dioxide that our fuel-burning civilization has dumped into the atmosphere. Climatologists project that climbing carbon dioxide levels, by trapping solar energy, will partially melt the polar caps, raising sea levels and flooding coasts sometime in the middle of the next century. Replicating assemblers, though, will make solar power cheap enough to eliminate the need for fossil fuels. Like trees, solar-powered nanomachines will be able to extract carbon dioxide from the air and split off the oxygen. Unlike trees, they will be able to grow deep storage roots and place carbon back in the coal seams and oil fields from which it came.
1
POPSMolecules & Skyscrapers The vat - made of shiny steel, with a glass window for the benefit of visitors - stands taller than a person, since it must hold the completed engine. Pipes and pumps link it to other equipment and to water-cooled heat exchangers. This arrangement lets the operator circulate various fluids through the vat. To begin the process, the operator swings back the top of the vat and lowers into it a base plate on which the engine will be built. The top is then resealed. At the touch of a button, pumps flood the chamber with a thick, milky fluid which submerges the plate and then obscures the window. This fluid flows from another vat in which replicating assemblers have been raised and then reprogrammed by making them copy and spread a new instruction tape (a bit like infecting bacteria with a virus). These new assembler systems, smaller than bacteria, scatter light and make the fluid look milky. Their sheer abundance makes it viscous.
2
POPSENGINES OF CONSTRUCTION
Assemblers will take years to emerge, but their emergence seems almost inevitable: Though the path to assemblers has many steps, each step will bring the next in reach, and each will bring immediate rewards. The first steps have already been taken, under the names of "genetic engineering" and "biotechnology." Other paths to assemblers seem possible. Barring worldwide destruction or worldwide controls, the technology race will continue whether we wish it or not. And as advances in computer-aided design speed the development of molecular tools, the advance toward assemblers will quicken. To have any hope of understanding our future, we must understand the consequences of assemblers, disassemblers, and nanocomputers. They promise to bring changes as profound as the industrial revolution, antibiotics, and nuclear weapons all rolled up in one massive breakthrough. To understand a future of such profound change, it makes sense to seek principles of change that have survived the greatest u
1
POPSEngines of Creation Two Styles Of Technology Molecular Technology Today Existing Protein Machines Designing With Protein Second-Generation Nanotechnology Universal Assemblers Nailing Down Conclusions Nanocomputers Disassemblers The World Made New
5
Pops
Newest Clips
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Print
Save
Turn on live update