Not really a separate world
When Slashdot runs the slightly misleading headline, “Real Nanotechnology Getting Closer, Says Drexler” (with a link to the technology roadmap — lots of downloads!), the Tech Talk blog at IEEE Spectrum quite naturally reports this as “Eric Drexler has just been quoted as saying ‘Real nanotechnology is getting closer’”… and thus inadvertently reinforces the myth that so-called “real nanotechnology” has little connection with what researchers know is the real real nanotechnology, in the lab today — or at least, that Eric Drexler thinks so, and is rude about it, too. Supposedly. It’s a quote, right?
Well, no… But it’s a fine example of how myths take root and obscure reality. (See also magic “nanobots” and diamond-everything.)
Real nanotechnology can’t be getting closer, because we already have 100% real nanotechnology today. And beyond being real and useful, products from across the spectrum of current nanotechnology research will contribute to framework-directed self-assembly, which is emerging as a technology platform for next-generation atomically precise nanosystems.
There’s no technological discontinuity along the paths forward. Early-generation productive nanosystems are coming into reach; they’ll be more like biological ribosomes than like nanofactories, but they’ll be useful, and will take us a rung higher on the ladder of atomically precise fabrication technologies.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I think most of the people who speak along those lines are aware that there’s multiple technologies in daily use today that are undoubtedly both “real” and “nanotechnology”, and that it’s a continous function, not two distinct worlds.
But for better or worse, many people make little distinction between “nanotechnology” which we undoubtedly have today, and atomically precise universal assemblers, which we do not have today. (but which one can perhaps reasonably argue that we’re *closer* to today than at any point in the past)
It’s a silly statement at core though, because *all* future technologies are closer today than they ever where in the past, that’s just a result of us generally making progress all over the map.
There’s no such thing as a universal assembler. In fact, the term (in its singular form) doesn’t even appear in Engines of Creation. It’s another subtle but important misquote. What Drexler meant, if you read closely, seems to be that a sufficiently large collection of assemblers, each doing a different kind of chemistry, could collectively come close to doing any chemistry you might want.
I think the concept you’re looking for is an assembler that can produce everything in a reasonably large and easily-specified design space. For example, an assembler that could make any kind of buckytube up to (30, 30), including steps and junctions, would be quite useful. (IMO, something that general would almost certainly have to be computer-controlled, increasing its flexibility and usefulness.)
I know Drexler likes non-computer-controlled mills better than computer-controlled general-purpose assemblers. I think mills are advanced optimizations – it will be a lot harder to get parts closure with mills than with computer-controlled assemblers. And, as I’ve explained previously, computer control does not require computation for every atom, so it can (at least in theory) be efficient enough to build kg-scale nanofactories with.
Chris
Now if only Slashdot would pick up this clarification…