Drexlerian nanotech

[Rynn]

I never said that nanotech doesn't work in the first place. I merely noted that the initial ideas were flawed. And as for biology not using progressively larger systems-what do you think digestive organs are for?

Todd didn't say that there was no macroscale assembly/disassembly in nature. There are obvious examples from eating to the construction of insect hives. Just that they both have a place.

And we're nowhere near making wormholes either, yet we know exactly what does and doesn't work. Finally, remember that nanoassembly in air is pretty difficult from a mobility point of view-they don't have little thrusters, after all. And finally: biological cells are a highly controlled environment! Would bionano work outside of them? Has anyone seriously analyzed its feasibility? Don't get me wrong-I really hope it pans out, but I have doubts. After all, all the transhumanists and futurists before us had a bad tendency to get carried away.

Air? Who said anything about air? A fabricator would contain a myriad of chambers with different controlled environments containing different specialised machinery (molecular-macroscale). If you're talking about self replicating technology that can operate in the wild then again you can take a leaf out of nature's book: have cellular constructs with controlled internal environments that alter their external environment as best as possible. "Grey goo" could be a lot like slime mold, but artificial (note that I don't think Grey goo as originally conceived makes sense, a universal eater is orders of magnitude more complicated than a single self replicating breed. Drexler also discussed this after his original publication).

I guess this is pretty far from the original topic by now, but I have a tendency to minirant. Sorry 

It would be good if you could define your terms here. It feels like we're talking about different things and then suddenly moving on with no indication why. We were talking about fabs specifically, now we seem to have moved on to air without noting any of the previous discussion. This would also really help if you're going to start a thread by saying something categorically "doesn't work" without really discussing what you mean.