Tag Archives: K. Eric Drexler

Likewise nanotechnology will, once it gets under way, depend on the tools we have then and our ability to use them, and not on the steps that got us there. K. Eric Drexler

I had been impressed by the fact that biological systems were based on molecular machines and that we were learning to design and build these sorts of things. K. Eric Drexler

And that because the moving parts are a million times smaller than the ones we're familiar with, they move a million times faster, just as a smaller tuning fork produces a higher pitch than a large one. K. Eric Drexler

After realizing that we would eventually be able to build molecular machines that could arrange atoms to form virtually any pattern that we wanted, I saw that an awful lot of consequences followed from that. K. Eric Drexler

If you take all the factories in the world today, they could make all the parts necessary to build more factories like themselves. So, in a sense, we have a self-replicating industrial system today, but it would take a tremendous effort to copy what we already have. K. Eric Drexler

An international race in the relevant technologies is getting under way at this point, not necessarily with an understanding of where that race leads in the long run, but strongly motivated by the short-term payoffs. K. Eric Drexler

The really big difference is that what you make with a molecular machine can be completely precise, down to the tiniest degree of detail that can exist in the world. K. Eric Drexler

Protein engineering is a technology of molecular machines – of molecular machines that are part of replicators – and so it comes from an area that already raises some of the issues that nanotechnology will raise. K. Eric Drexler

The basic parts, the start-up molecules, can be supplied in abundance and don't have to be made by some elaborate process. That immediately makes things simpler. K. Eric Drexler

Any powerful technology can be abused. K. Eric Drexler