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Nanotechnology

Last update: 28 Jul 2026 23:43
First version: 16 March 1995; important modification, March 2004; cleaning of link-rot and general updating, July 2026

Machines the size of molecules, built atom-by-atom --- the way living things are. Only they'd be designed to do what we want them to, not to survive come Hell, high water or drought. They could in principle do anything living things do, and more. (Thus for instance: repair themselves; reproduce themselves; repair people's bodies; turn sunlight into power; grow food; break rocks; build cities; raise cities to the ground; dig tunnels; move rivers; deforest continets; reforest continents; cause disease; prevent disease; wage war; read books aloud; play catch; purr when rubbed behind the ears; design machinery; build rockets; colonize space.) Their arrival will ever-so-slightly turn the world upside down.

Update, 13 March 2004: At some point in the last ten years I've come to no longer believe that.

Some reflections, July 2026

I read Engines of Creation around 1990 and it clicked for me, obviously. But the intervening years were not kind to the vision. Molecular technology exists, and continues to improve, but it has very much not developed along Drexlerian lines, and I do not think that's because people have been too dumb or hide-bound to get it. Even people who were inspired by Drexler have ended up pursuing technological projects which were much more wet, stochastic and dirty --- in a word, chemical --- than the initial vision of molecule-sized rigid machines assembled atom by atom. (I recommend reading the Drexler/Smalley debate from the early 2000s [ungated PDF; surprisingly-balanced Wikipedia summary] to appreciate part of the anti-Drexler case. See also Richard Jones in 2005, and two recent as-of-2026 reflections by Philip Ball.)

I actually do not think this detracts much from the value of Engines. Even if no one ever makes a single diamondoid machine, it was not a crazy idea to pursue, and he provides a model of intellectually serious speculation. There will be powerful molecular-scale technologies, even if it seems likely that they will resemble biology more than clockwork. If it hadn't been for the vision of mechanical nanotechnology, actual nanotechnology would not have happened so soon, or at all. And we should be so lucky that the people who make the technology happen think things through as well.

(I should perhaps say that I have met Drexler and find him to be personally amiable, even admirable.)

Strongly, strongly recommended: K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation

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