Quotes by K. Eric Drexler - Page 1

Any powerful technology can be abused.
K. Eric Drexler / Engineer
Technology
Abuse
Powerful
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Nature draws no line between living and nonliving.
K. Eric Drexler / Engineer
Draws
Lines
Rationality
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Scientists study physical things, then describe them; engineers describe physical things, then build them.
K. Eric Drexler / Engineer
Engineers
Scientist
Study
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In a sense, artificial intelligence will be the ultimate tool because it will help us build all possible tools.
K. Eric Drexler / Engineer
Artificial Intelligence
Helping
Tools
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On the molecular scale, you find it's reasonable to have a machine that does a million steps per second, a mechanical system that works at computer speeds.
K. Eric Drexler / Engineer
Computer
Doe
Machines
Reasonable
Steps
Scale
Per
Mechanical
Molecular
Speeds
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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 / Engineer
Ability
Nanotechnology
Steps
Tools
Use
Way
Depend
Gets
Likewise
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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 / Engineer
Learning
Design
Impressed
Machines
Biological
Molecular
Molecular Machines
Systems
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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 / Engineer
Abundance
Made
Molecules
Basic
Elaborate
Immediately
Parts
Simpler
Start-Up
Supplied
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But while doing that I'd been following a variety of fields in science and technology, including the work in molecular biology, genetic engineering, and so forth.
K. Eric Drexler / Engineer
Biology
Engineering
Fields
Following
Genetic Engineering
Including
Science And Technology
Variety
Work Science Technology
Forth
Genetic
Molecular
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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 / Engineer
Precise
Big Difference
Degree
Detail
Molecular
Tiniest
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My greatest concern is that the emergence of this technology without the appropriate public attention and international controls could lead to an unstable arms race.
K. Eric Drexler / Engineer
Technology
Appropriate
Arms
Arms Race
Attention
Concern
Emergence
International
Race
Unstable
Controls
Lead
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In thinking about nanotechnology today, what's most important is understanding where it leads, what nanotechnology will look like after we reach the assembler breakthrough.
K. Eric Drexler / Engineer
Breakthrough
Important
Nanotechnology
Thinking
Today
Understanding
Leads
Reach
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...Local prohibitions cannot block advances in military and commercial technology... Democratic movements for local restraint can only restrain the world's democracies, not the world as a whole.
K. Eric Drexler / Engineer
Technology
Block
Military
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My work at MIT had focused on what we could build in space once we had inexpensive space transportation and industrial facilities in orbit. And this led to various sorts of work in space development.
K. Eric Drexler / Engineer
Space
Development
Focused
Inexpensive
Mit
Orbit
Transportation
Facilities
Industrial
Led
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You can find academic and industrial groups doing some relevant work, but there isn't a focus on building complex molecular systems. In that respect, Japan is first, Europe is second, and we're third.
K. Eric Drexler / Engineer
Academic
Groups
Japan
Relevant
Complex
Industrial
Molecular
Systems
Third
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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 / Engineer
Familiar
Faster
Forks
Higher
Moving
Moving Parts
Tuning
Pitch
Fork
Large
Million
Million Times
Parts
Produces
Smaller
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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 / Engineer
Atoms
Awful
Machines
Patterns
Realizing
Consequences
Arrange
Awful Lot
Eventually
Followed
Molecular
Molecular Machines
Pattern
Virtually
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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 / Engineer
Technology
Engineering
Issues
Machines
Nanotechnology
Protein
Molecular
Molecular Machines
Raise
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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 / Engineer
Running
Technology
International
Motivated
Race
Relevant
Short Term
Leads
Long Run
Necessarily
Strongly
Technologies
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It's a lot easier to see, at least in some cases, what the long-term limits of the possible will be, because they depend on natural law. But it's much harder to see just what path we will follow in heading toward those limits.
K. Eric Drexler / Engineer
Cases
Easier
Harder
Law
Limits
Long
Long Term
Path
Term Limits
Depend
Heading
Toward
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But if we can manage it so people don't have things forced on them that they don't want, I think there's every reason to believe things can settle out in a situation that is recognizably better than the one we're stuck in today.
K. Eric Drexler / Engineer
Believe
Manage
People
Stuck
Thinking
Forced
Settle
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The other advantage is that in conventional manufacturing processes, it takes a long time for a factory to produce an amount of product equal to its own weight. With molecular machines, the time required would be something more like a minute.
K. Eric Drexler / Engineer
Advantage
Amount
Conventional
Equal
Long Time
Machines
Manufacturing
Produce
Weight
Time Long Long Time
Time Long More
Factory
Minute
Molecular
Molecular Machines
Processes
Product
Required
Takes
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I've encountered a lot of people who sound like critics but very few who have substantive criticisms. There is a lot of skepticism, but it seems to be more a matter of inertia than it is of people having some real reason for thinking something else.
K. Eric Drexler / Engineer
Inertia
People
Real
Skepticism
Thinking
Criticisms
Encountered
Real Reason
Something Else
Substantive
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Today we have big, crude instruments guided by intelligent surgeons, and we have little, stupid molecules of drugs that get dumped into the body, diffuse around and interfere with things as best they can. At present, medicine is unable to heal anything.
K. Eric Drexler / Engineer
Crude
Dumped
Heal
Instruments
Intelligent
Medicine
Molecules
Stupid
Diffuse
Guided
Unable
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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 / Engineer
Effort
Factories
Self
World
Tremendous
Copy
Industrial
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Plants with leaves no more efficient than today's solar cells could out-compete real plants, crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage. Tough omnivorous bacteria could out-compete real bacteria: They could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days. Dangerous replicators could easily be too tough, small, and rapidly spreading to stop - at least if we make no preparation. We have trouble enough controlling viruses and fruit flies.
K. Eric Drexler / Engineer
Cells
Dust
Real
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K. Eric Drexler Quotes - Page 1

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