Culture gives way to technology.

[Ndoki]

Funny how you have yet to show any evidence in favor nor against any points anyone makes, which clearly shows you have nothing to back up anything you say, at least I have well known magazines to cite, you just have yourself.. it's no wonder to real discussions can be carried on between us.  

[DieiNoctis]

First off, both of you need to play nice. This is intended for discussion, not argument. The only difference between the two being that discussion is conducted civily, and arguments are (usually) not.

Ndoki

What you say may be true, but I do beleive that very soon we'll find a way past the greater majority of the size problem. And even if we can only get down to the DNA level within fifty years, that's good enough for me. Once we can alter DNA we can still grant practiacal physical immortality, and once that's achieved time, for the most part, will cease to matter. If one can live forever, whether nanobots come about within days or millenia doesn't matter.

Though to tell the truth, I still hold that the inventions will come much sooner than most people beleive.

Also, neither of you have really touched on the socioculteral ramifications of such an invention.  

[Ndoki]

That's not true at all, we are already manipulating DNA, and have been for a very long time, but we aren't immortal.  

[lurichan]

Ndoki

That's not true at all, we are already manipulating DNA, and have been for a very long time, but we aren't immortal.

That is because most of our DNA manipulations up to this point have taken the form of selective breeding. That is why our cows and dogs have the traits they do after all. Years and years of selective breeding have made domesticated turkeys dumb enough to drown themselves if they are outside when it's raining. In essence, a lot of things have roots farther back than one would initially think if you take a few moments to think about it.
After all, they did find batteries, weak batteries mind you, but batteries non-the-less that dated back centuries ago that were made out of clay jars with acid and a metal rod in the middle. (The details elude me, but I remember the general experiement they did on mythbusters. No, it's not a scientific journal, but razz I still see it as a somewhat valid source of information).
There have been a lot of things in old ruins that just couldn't be figured out as well that may very well have inspired scientists and inventors to try something different that eventually actually worked.

As for the ramifications of hyper-technology implimentation, I don't think society is ready for it, and thus the government is going to regulate it and keep things from the general public for quite some time yet. When you mentioned the pong experiment, that shows just how unprepared our current society is for cyberization of any sort, much less something akin to full cyberization like depicted in Ghost in the Shell. People's minds aren't ready for and can't really handle such a thing. Simple motions aren't words in their minds eye, but actions. Also, the government is most able to benifit from the "faster, stronger, better" solider. "The Million Dollar Man" was an old show based on the partial cyberization of a human being after all, so people have been thinking about doing so for quite some time. However, the main problem lies with how complicated the human body is. To my knowledge, scientists have not even mapped out the entirety of the human DNA strand, so until they can at least understand it, they can not manipulate it no matter how small of an item they manage to build.

Nano-tech is also very popular in the sci-fi genre, but the reality of it is that building something that small that still functions will require them to only really be able to carry out one directive. Anything beyond that point would make them too large. Another thing that I find intersting is that no one seems to ever ask questions like "How do they remove themselves from your system?" or "what if they become stuck in a capillary and cut off the blood flow?" I see nano-tech as always being a risky possibility at best to impliment on the human scale. There are just too many variables.

Overall though, as willing to embrace external technology as our society is, I do not think that people will be as willing to embrace technology that is part of the human body. Pace-makers are becoming more common in order to prolong people's lives, but since it is overall in a low demand, there aren't as many advancements in the technology as something in high demand. Perhaps it is unfair to the people who rely on them to stay alive, but it's the truth.

P.S. ZZ, please don't be so agressive and dismissive about giving citatitons. A lot of what is being discussed is still theoretical.  

[Ndoki]

And for anyone who likes crunching numbers...

So far the smallest motor we have been able to make was 500 nanometers. The smallest platelet in the human body is 1 micrometer. That looks like this:


Motor:
500 nanometers
0.000 000 5

Smallest platelet:
1 to 3.5 um
0.000 001


A single atom
0.1 to 0.5 nanometers

So, the motor alone is half the size of a platelet. In order to access every part of the human body that a platelet could (which it would have to since it basically has to function as a better platelet in terms of healing) it has to be about the same size as a platelet right? Well, you may be suprised, yes, the motor is half the size, but nanobots would take much more than a motor. So even assuming they could make the motor smaller (which they estimated they could in the future by about 1/4 I believe) from a technical standpoint as to what would be needed for a nanobot to function, it would be FAR larger than a platelet, I'd say bare minimum, if they figured a way for it to draw power from the human body (eliminating a power source) it would be about... 4 times the size of a platelet. That's considering that they get smaller in the future. If they fail at that I'd say the nanobot would be about 15 times larger, prohibiting it from accessing many parts of the human body, and risking plugging other parts. That's also assuming it doesn't require any sensors and such.

Also, looking at the size of a single atom, the nanobot would be huge compared to one, it would be like a jumbo jet trying to fold a paper airplane.

Sources:
platelet sizes
atom sizes
Even a list of measurements for simplicity  

[Ndoki]

Also I did a fast picture here

So, see that speck? That single pixel the green arrows are pointing to? That's the size of an atom in proportion to the image (actually it's twice the size, but I can't do a half a pixel, and the picture would be too big, use your imagination). Anyways, you can see the size of the world's smallest motor to the right of it. Notice how massive it is compared? Now, they said they may be able to make it smaller in the future, by up to a fifth (I looked it up). Even so that would still be FAR too large. Now, see the black line as a border? Yeah, that's the comparable size of a human platelet. This illistrates my previous point, considering the motor would be the smallest and simplest part of a nanobot, and it's even far too large.