Added: The most relevant things in the book for this post (which I’ve only skimmed):
There’s been lots of progress in molecular-scale engineering and science that isn’t called nanotechnology. This progress has been pretty much along the lines Drexler sketched in his 1981 paper and in the how-can-we-get-there sections of Nanosystems, though. This matches what I saw sitting in on Caltech courses in biomolecular engineering last year. Drexler believes the biggest remaining holdup on the engineering work is how it’s organized: when diverse scientists study nature their work adds up because nature is a whole, but when they work on bits and pieces of technology infrastructure in the same way, their work can’t be expected to coalesce on its own into useful systems.
He gives his latest refinement of the arguments at a lay level.
Which one’s the latest book?
Radical Abundance, came out this past month.
Added: The most relevant things in the book for this post (which I’ve only skimmed):
There’s been lots of progress in molecular-scale engineering and science that isn’t called nanotechnology. This progress has been pretty much along the lines Drexler sketched in his 1981 paper and in the how-can-we-get-there sections of Nanosystems, though. This matches what I saw sitting in on Caltech courses in biomolecular engineering last year. Drexler believes the biggest remaining holdup on the engineering work is how it’s organized: when diverse scientists study nature their work adds up because nature is a whole, but when they work on bits and pieces of technology infrastructure in the same way, their work can’t be expected to coalesce on its own into useful systems.
He gives his latest refinement of the arguments at a lay level.