On 5/31/05, Warren Ockrassa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On May 31, 2005, at 5:20 PM, Leonard Matusik wrote: > > > Ah yes.... Never mind then. sorry.... > > I shall look for another list to bother with those things. > > Now now, don't take personal offense where none was intended. There'll > be plenty of opportunity for that later. What kinds of futurist > scenarios were you looking for? > > F'rinstance you mentioned nanotech. My personal feeling on that is it's > limited. I mean, what we'll be able to do with it is limited. I have a > pretty strong hunch that the future really lies in biological > engineering.
I agree with that, right now the applications I see for nanotech are filters, computing and communications. Everything else will probably be easier to do with bioengineering. At small scales life is nanotech evolved through millions of years of evolution. > > The characters I write in one future universe, for instance, live in a > time when infectious diseases are all virtually wiped out by -- get > this -- a modified version of an HIV-like virus. It lives in the body > and augments the immune system rather than destroying it. > > Fast-moving cancers are still a problem, though -- because of course > they don't track as an infection. Slower cancers can be diagnosed and > treated. > > And you don't get IVs out of bottles. You get a *slug* on your arm > instead, one that determines what's wrong with you based on how your > blood tastes to it, and synthesizes necessary compounds, feeding them > into your system directly. (Shock, pain treatments, etc.) Too complicated - good technology is simple. Run the blood over a molecular diagnostic filter - nanotech - and then inject with the correct self-reproducing bugs that produce the needed drugs or eat the bad stuff. > > Of course we're not talking the next few decades here... Well, for high but specialized IQ leeches armed with diagnostic and production tools you might have to wait quite a while. -- Gary Denton Easter Lemming Blogs http://elemming.blogspot.com http://elemming2.blogspot.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
