----- Original Message ----- From: "Russell Chapman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Brin-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 8:08 PM Subject: Re: SCOUTED: Science Meets Spirituality, and Wireless Nanotech VR
> Robert Seeberger wrote: > > >I have doubts. > >Its > >not just a matter of strength and dexterity, its also a sense of touch and > >the ability to "feel" what is happening on the other end of a fishtape 100 > >feet away in a pipe. (Yes, I can do that. I can also tell you where the end > >is and which bend it is stopped in usually.) > > > Conversely, a Wireless Nanobot could actually go down the pipe, identify > the problem, determine the best corrective approach and carry it out. Sorry.....no cigar! A wireless nanobot has no connectivity to the outside world inside of a steel pipe, especially if the conductors are hot with AC power. A wireless nanobot cannot pull #12 wire much less 500MCM in order to correct a problem. You might imagine that electrical work is something like messing with PC innards, but it is actually often hard physical labor. Labor that nanobots cannot do. Robots cannot do much of it either, at least not to the degree a human can. You might posit an army of specialists robots to do my job, but where are you going to keep them. I'm cheaper and I dont need even more robots to maintain me. > > But there will always be new jobs - most of us are probably in jobs that > didn't exist when our parents, let alone our grandparents, were leaving > school. (Hell, mine didn't exist when I left school). We have massive > automation and technology replaces so many tasks, but unemployment is > better in the west than it was in the 30s. I'm not especially worried about being replaced. I'll be retired by then. Its the technical obstacles that are being overlooked that I am responding to. Kneem is far too optimistic with his 98% by 2035 prediction. It wont happen anywhere near that soon. xponent Elbow Grease Maru rob
