A delightful afternoon. While New England continues to freeze in this global warming spring, I went with wife family and friends to the home of Emerson and Thoreau, the Concord bookstore, to listen to a lecture by Rodney Brooks, chairperson of MIT's AI lab and author of "Flesh and Machines" a book describing his wicked cool robotics work and speculating about the future of man and machine. Brooks being a smart guy, agrees with my views on nanotech vs the Drexler "assembler" cultists. The real nanotek is big machines manipulating at the atomic level. Great progress. The assembler fantasy is great sci-fi, but that's all. He dissed Bill Joy's naieve Luddite views, correctly prognosticating that we will continue to add the best artificial engancements from today's silicone implants, coclear implants, and pacemakers to the soon to be visual replacements and eventual spinal injury bypasses. Today's kids, linked to the web will see the next gen linked via wireless directly to the cortex. God knows what social changes will follow as a result. We will not be overtaken by robots as we, humans, will continuously enhance our bodies and yes our minds with the best of emergent technology.

-p