Well, damn.

Apparently Perry Metzger couldn't make his appointment with the libertarian talk show last night. I'll keep monitoring that show's website to see if I can catch him on a later appearance.

I would like to have asked Perry about the holdup in Eric Drexler's "nanotechnology," considering that Drexler introduced the idea in his PNAS paper in 1981. Yes, do the math. The mysterious, far future year 2011, now just days away, marks the 30th anniversary of waiting for the Parousia based on Drexler's speculations about "nanoassemblers," though he doesn't use the term in the original paper. I don't see those do-anything devices around us today.

By contrast, in other technological fields, 30 years separate biplanes from the SR-71; 30 years separate the first transistor from the Apple II personal computer; 30 years separate the first laser from lasers' pervasive uses in all kinds of unexpectable areas, including the clinical trials of LASIK eye surgery.

But with Drexler's "nanotechnology"? The real world of technological progress has behaved like it doesn't exist, while appropriating the name for things we used to call "chemistry" and "materials science." It doesn't support "nanotechnology's" case to point to molecular biology as the proof-of-principle for Drexler's fantasies. People have found ways to get molecular biology to do technological things in the past 30 years because the underlying scientific principles work in their favor. Consequently men like Craig Venter have something to show for their careers, while the "nanotechnologists" just have some computer simulations disconnected from reality, even if some academically bright people have created them. As the late Richard Smalley, a real chemist with a Nobel Prize to his name, chastised Eric Drexler, "But, no, you don't get it. You are still in a pretend world where atoms go where you want because your computer program directs them to go there."

Unfortunately for cryonics, survival doesn't happen in the "pretend world" of "nanotechnologists." It happens in what we understand as the "real world," without getting into a philosophical discussion of what that means! The rebooting of cryonics, if it ever happens, will have to include the proverbial "going back to the drawing board" about revival scenarios based on what can really happen technologically, not on what we can fantasize about which ignores the principles of physics. In the meantime, we can make progress in the here-and-now in managing cryoprotectant toxicity and improving brain vitrification, among other challenges.