Meeting notice: The 03.May.06 meeting will be held at 7:30 P.M. 
at the Royal East (782 Main St., Cambridge), a block down from 
the corner of Main St. and Mass Ave.  If you're new and can't 
recognize us, ask the manager. He'll probably know where we are. 
More details below.

Suggested topic: How to critique NT   

The critique of NT that works for me is pitched not on the level 
of physics but significance.  It's easy to imagine our moving 
into a world in which the manipulation of real atoms (aside from 
medical apps) will be much less important than it is now.    

It is less easy to figure out just how probable such a world 
really is.  On the one hand, both the videoconferencing and 
immersive worlds sectors are working away at a long list of 
improvements whose solution *might* trigger significant increases 
in usage: software cameras (programs that process camera output 
so as to generate any desired virtual camera angle),  high-
definition videowalls, free- standing holograms (ie if you 
covered the walls and ceilings of a display room with 
programmable light emitters to a very high density that room 
would be able to generate what appeared to be free- standing 
holograms), ultra-broadband, and so on.   

In theory, even the sensations that at present are hard to send 
through a wire,  like how it feels to lie naked on a beach in the 
sun, might be dealt with via neural implants or patches.

Add these innovations to the possibilities that physical contact 
might become increasingly scary, and that the demands of fashion 
might grow so exorbitant that they can only be solved on the 
level of the avatar (for instance, if it becomes "in" to be a 
hundred feet tall) and you have at least a case. 

If and when a technology like this really does take hold our need 
for NT - - and for much else that today defines the GDP -- will 
shrink drastically.  However I find it very hard to construct a 
convincing argument either way or for any specific date, other 
than the very short term, where it seems certain that significant 
virtualization is not going to happen.

One suggestion is to look at the example of the relation of live 
performances to recorded music. Does that work?

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In twenty years half the population of Europe will have visited the moon.

				-- Jules Verne, 1865

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Announcement Archive: http://www.pobox.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage.html.

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Legend:

"NSG" expands to Nanotechnology Study Group.  The Group meets on the first and 
third Tuesdays of each month at the above address, which refers to a restaurant 
located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  

The NSG mailing list carries announcements of these meetings and little else. 
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