Английский язык: Аннотирование и реферирование текста

291 ing feral and refueling itself from tree sap. Whether for replicators or cars, to design a machine that could operate in the wild would not be a matter of a flick of the draftsman's pen, but an intense, sustained re- search-and-development effort focused on that objective. Crashes and explosions occur in machinery by accident, but complex new capabili- ties don't. A simple psychological error frequently occurs when someone first hears about nanotechnology, and hears mention of "molecular ma- chines," and "replicators," and "nanocomputers," and "nanomachines that operate in nature." The error is this: The person makes a single new mental pigeonhole for "nanotechnology," throws everything into it, and stirs. After some mental fermentation, the result is the mythical nanomachine that does everything: it's a replicator, it's a supercom- puter, it's a Land-Rover, it slices, it dices – and on reflection, this imaginary nanomachine sounds uncontrolled and dangerous. With enough effort, a do-it-all nanomachine could perhaps be built, but it sounds difficult and there's no good reason to try. There are advantages to making systems of molecular machinery that can use inexpensive, abundant chemicals, and devices that can op- erate in nature, but these machines needn't be replicators. A facility like Desert Rose might be designed to use little but electric power from so- lar panels and molecules from the air, but a setup like this isn't going to slip away. Nanomachines built for cleaning up pollutants and other outdoor tasks could be manufactured in facilities run like Desert Rose and then spread or installed where they're needed. Extraordinary accidents deserve attention, but with a little care they can be completely avoided. The incentive to build anything resem- bling a Star Trek-scenario replicator is negligible, even from a military perspective. Any effort toward building such a thing should be seen not as a use of nanotechnology, but as an abuse. Other abuses seem more likely, however, and are quite bad enough.