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Comment by scott-smith_us | Hacker News Reader

Every time I see stuff like this, it reminds me of Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer".

If/when technology switches over to the micro-mechanical, we'll suddenly all be scrambling to re-introduce a generation to this 1800s-era mechanical design stuff...

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Given the recent work to design a 'clockwork' rover for Venus exploration[0] I could see some utility for mechanical circuits in harsh environments like Venus, or helping in the event of a nuclear meltdown like Fukashima Daishi, or other environments particularly antagonistic to electronics.

0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27164195

> If/when technology switches over to the micro-mechanical, we'll suddenly all be scrambling to re-introduce a generation to this 1800s-era mechanical design stuff...

Probably not. Micromechanics is completely different from larger scale mechanics, the kinds of problems you have to solve and the tools you have to solve them are often completely turned on their head.

I'm not sure it will, though, except in specific cases.

For now, it looks like the progress has mostly been:

    mechanical -> electrical -> optical (/RF)

For good reason too: reliability, integration, and energy efficiency. We're a bit stuck on electrical for now as integration is slightly better, electrons being smaller than photons, and it seems to be more suited for power transmission and conversion, at least for now.

Basic principles haven't changed much though, and it's always interesting to understand those. There is just the "field" concept that can be tough to understand.

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