I’ve known Eric for almost half a century, and Chris for forty years. My colleague Jim Bennett, another founder, is also briefly shown.
I’ve known Eric for almost half a century, and Chris for forty years. My colleague Jim Bennett, another founder, is also briefly shown.
Why don’t we have prizes for molecular nanotechnology? What if there was a prize for MN? Lets say the
prize is for $1 billion.
Would that be a large enough prize, to spur
innovation, into MN?
For second place, a prize of $500 million, and $250 million for third
place. There should be prizes for second, and third place . That will
get more companies investing in MN.
So why not make this happen? Let’s find some billionaire investors that would be willing to put up the prize money.
Anybody on here know any billionaires?
I still have my original copy somewhere. At the time, I found it quite inspirational, and it helped quicken my resolve to start writing again.
In ’86 I asked Eric how far off he thought actual molecular nanotechnology was- “Optimistically 30 years, pessimistically ten,” he joked.
There are a number of nano-scale technologies now, but still nothing remotely like what Eric sketched out 40 years ago. The biggest technological advance since 1986 has, instead, been AI. Could be that putting AI to work on the problem will hasten the day when actual Drexlerian nanotechnology becomes a thing.
Engines of Creation saved me, just as O’Neill’s vision began to fade into far-future oblivion. Both will happen; just not on my preferred schedule, dammit.
We have molecular nanotechnology in the form of enzymes, protein molecules created by living organisms, which can manipulate matter at the molecular level.
Whether we will ever have Drexler Assemblers speaks to the question of the origin of life and whether living things could be based on silicon instead of on carbon? Or whether we can spark an independent origin of life, as it were?
Didn’t Feynman engage in “how much room as there at the bottom” speculation although didn’t get famous for that to the degree of Drexler?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_Plenty_of_Room_at_the_Bottom
Feynman acknowledged, as Feynman naturally would, that as you “scale down”, the relative importance of different forces changes, but he suggested, naively if I may dare applying that label to Feynman, that these were mere engineering challenges.