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Calibrating the Universal Assembler: the computer as genie machineA computer can make anything... almost. If you have AutoCad, 3D Studio Max, and RenderMan, you can design any machine, you can create objects of any kind and animate them, and you can render them to make them look realistic. If you have a printer, you can print pictures of them. You can even make pictures of the computer -- not only pictures of how it looks, but animated diagrams of all its internal workings. Theoretically you could do this at whatever level of detail you want. So a computer can almost make anything, including copies of itself. Of course, you can't make the objects themselves. But you can almost make them. You can do everything except the last step. Now suppose, in addition to your printer, you have another peripheral, which can go ahead and make the object itself. This is the famous "box" -- the desktop manufacturing facility. With the box, the computer can make anything, including copies of itself. The thing is, there is a long learning curve for any program capable of making anything. There are thick books one must read before using AutoCad. It takes a while to get started with such software, even for someone with considerable sophistication. I have been using computers for a long time, but I couldn't just sit down and start using a 3D modeling program. It would probably take me at least a month to reach fluency in 3D Studio Max, and longer for AutoCad. It takes years to learn all the nuances of such programs, even for professionals who use the software every day. This will also be true of a computer with a box attached. Adding that extra peripheral isn't going to make it any easier to use the computer. To make an object with the box, you still have to go through all the steps you went through with 3D Studio Max to make an animated model of it. Plus, there will no doubt be a learning curve for the box itself. If you wanted the box to make a battleship, you couldn't just say "Make me a battleship." You would have to describe it in detail. Imagine using AutoCad to design a battleship, or using 3D Studio Max to make an animated model of it (the whole thing, not just the exterior). The paperwork involved in designing and building a battleship weighs as much as the ship itself. So, even if you had the extra peripheral that could make objects instead of just printing pictures of them, you still wouldn't have a genie machine that would give you whatever you ask for with no effort on your part. Please don't tell me that the box contains a Genie who already knows what a battleship is, and it can read your mind and fill in all the details, and make the exact ship you want, without specific instructions. (Assuming you know exactly what you want, without thinking the problem through.) If you said to your computer, "Make me a 3D animation of a battleship," what would happen? Anything? If the computer by itself can't make an animation of a battleship (the whole thing down to the last detail), then it isn't going to be able to make the ship either. Not unless you tell it how. Let's take a much simpler example. A few years ago, I needed to get into my NeXT Cube for some reason. There is a tool that comes with the computer, but I couldn't find it. It's kind of like a screwdriver, in that it fits into a hole and you turn it, but it's not an ordinary flat-head screwdriver or a Phillips screwdriver. I'm not sure what it's called. I spent most of the afternoon going to hardware stores, and I bought a couple of things, but when I tried to use them, they didn't work. Fortunately I eventually found the original tool at home. If I had a box, this would be the perfect occasion to use it. But I couldn't just say "make me a screwdriver." Part of the problem is that I don't know the exact name for this thing, and even if I did, they probably come in different shapes and sizes. So I would have to use some kind of modeling software to draw it. I would have to crank up a CAD program that I seldom or never use, and draw a pattern for the box to use as a template. But, I don't remember exactly what the tool looks like... Of course, I could eventually find a way to do it. But it would be a huge hassle. And that's just a screwdriver, never mind a battleship. If you look at what would actually be involved in using the box to make something, it turns out that programming a nanosystem amounts to the same thing as programming a computer. There is nothing magical or genie-like about it.
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