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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
