Everything about K Eric Drexler totally explained
Kim Eric Drexler (born
April 25,
1955 in
Oakland, California) is an
American engineer best known for popularizing the potential of
molecular nanotechnology (MNT), from the 1970s and 1980s.
His 1991 doctoral thesis at
MIT was revised and published as
the book
"Nanosystems Molecular Machinery Manufacturing and Computation
" (1992), which received the Association of American Publishers award for Best Computer Science Book of 1992. He also coined the term
Grey goo.
Life and work
K. Eric Drexler was very strongly influenced by ideas on
Limits to Growth in the early 1970s. His response in his first year at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology was to seek out someone who was working on extraterrestrial resources. He found Dr.
Gerard K. O'Neill of
Princeton University, a physicist famous for strong focusing in
particle accelerators and his landmark work on the concepts of
space colonization. Drexler was involved in
NASA summer studies in 1975 and 1976. Besides working summers for O'Neill building
mass driver prototypes, he delivered papers at the first three Space Manufacturing conferences at Princeton. The 1977 and 1979 papers were co-authored with
Keith Henson, and patents were issued on both subjects, vapor phase fabrication and space radiators.
Drexler participated in NASA summer studies on space colonies in 1975 and 1976. He fabricated metal films a few tens of nanometers thick on a wax support to demonstrate the potentials of high performance
solar sails. He was active in space politics, helping the
L5 Society defeat the
Moon Treaty in 1980.
During the late 1970s, he began to develop ideas about
molecular nanotechnology (MNT). In 1979, Drexler encountered
Richard Feynman's provocative 1959 talk
There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom. The term
nanotechnology was coined by the Tokyo Science University Professor
Norio Taniguchi in 1974 to describe the precision manufacture of materials with nanometer tolerances, and was unknowingly appropriated by Drexler in his 1986 book
Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology to describe what later became known as
molecular nanotechnology (MNT). In that book, he proposed the idea of a nanoscale "assembler" which would be able to build a copy of itself and of other items of arbitrary complexity. He also first published the term "
grey goo" to describe what might happen if a hypothetical self-replicating molecular nanotechnology went out of control.
Drexler holds three degrees from
MIT (External Link). He received his
S.B. in Interdisciplinary Sciences in 1977 and his
S.M. in 1979 in
Astro/Aerospace Engineering with a Master's thesis titled
"Design of a High Performance Solar Sail System,." In 1991 he earned a
Ph.D. under the auspices of the
MIT Media Lab (formally, the Media Arts and Sciences Section, School of Architecture and Planning). His Ph.D. work was the first doctoral degree on the topic of molecular nanotechnology and (after some editing) his thesis,
"Molecular Machinery and Manufacturing with Applications to Computation," was published as "Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing and Computation" (1992), which received the Association of American Publishers award for Best Computer Science Book of 1992.
Drexler and
Christine Peterson, at that time husband and wife, founded the
Foresight Institute in 1986 with the mission of "Preparing for nanotechnology.” Drexler and Peterson ended their 21-year marriage in 2002. Drexler is no longer a member of the Foresight Institute.
In August 2005 Drexler joined
Nanorex, a molecular engineering software company based in
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, to serve as the company's Chief Technical Advisor.
(External Link)(External Link) Nanorex's nanoENGINEER-1 software was reportedly able to simulate a hypothetical differential gear design in "a snap". According to Nanorex's web site, an
open source molecular design program is currently slated for release in Fall 2007.
In 2006, Drexler married
Rosa Wang, a former investment banker who works with on improving the social capital markets.
Controversy
Drexler's work on nanotechnology was criticized as naive by Nobel Prize winner
Richard Smalley in a 2001
Scientific American article. Smalley first argued that "fat fingers" made MNT impossible. He later argued that nanomachines would have to resemble chemical enzymes more than Drexler's assemblers and could only work in water. Drexler maintained that both were
straw man arguments, and in the case of enzymes, Prof. Klibanov wrote in 1994, "...using an enzyme in organic solvents eliminates several obstacles. . . "
(External Link)) Drexler had difficulty in getting Smalley to respond, but in December 2003, Chemical and Engineering news carried a 4 part debate.
(External Link)
One of the barriers to achieving molecular nanotechnology is the lack of an efficient way to create machines on a molecular/atomic scale. One of Drexler's early ideas was an "
assembler," a nanomachine that would comprise an arm and a computer that could be programmed to build more nanomachines. If an assembler could be built, it might then build a copy of itself, and thus potentially be useful for efficient mass production of nanomachines. But the lack of a way to first build an assembler remains the
sine qua non obstacle to achieving this vision.
A second difficulty in reaching molecular nanotechnology is design. Hand design of a gear or bearing at the level of atoms is a gruelling task. While Drexler, Merkle and others have created a few designs of simple parts, no comprehensive design effort for anything approaching the complexity of a
Model T Ford has been attempted.
A third difficulty in achieving molecular technology is separating successful trials from failures, and elucidating the failure mechanisms of the failures. Unlike
Darwinian evolution, which proceeds by random variations in ensembles of organisms combined with deterministic reproduction/extinction as a selection process to achieve great complexity after billions of years (a set of mechanisms that
Richard Dawkins has referred to as a "blind watchmaker"), deliberate design and building of nanoscale mechanisms requires a means other than reproduction/extinction to winnow successes from failures. Such means are difficult to provide (and presently non-existent) for anything other than small assemblages of atoms viewable by an
AFM or
STM.
Thus, even in the latest report
A Matter of Size: Triennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative put out by the National Academies Press in December 2006, (roughly twenty years after
Engines of Creation was published) no clear way forward toward molecular nanotechnology is seen, as per the conclusion on page 108 of that report: "Although theoretical calculations can be made today, the eventually attainable
range of chemical reaction cycles, error rates, speed of operation, and thermodynamic
efficiencies of such bottom-up manufacturing systems can't be reliably
predicted at this time. Thus, the eventually attainable perfection and complexity of
manufactured products, while they can be calculated in theory, can't be predicted
with confidence. Finally, the optimum research paths that might lead to systems
which greatly exceed the thermodynamic efficiencies and other capabilities of
biological systems can't be reliably predicted at this time. Research funding that
is based on the ability of investigators to produce experimental demonstrations
that link to abstract models and guide long-term vision is most appropriate to
achieve this goal."
Books by Eric Drexler
Books and articles about Eric Drexler
Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition by Ed Regis. ISBN 0-201-56751-2
Nano: The Emerging Science of Nanotechnology by Ed Regis. ISBN 0-316-73852-2
"The Creator": Interview with Eric Drexler by Michael Berry
"The Incredible Shrinking World of Eric Drexler": Red Herring Interview by Anthony B. Perkins Augist 1, 1995
"The Incredible Shrinking Man: K. Eric Drexler was the godfather of nanotechnology. But the MIT prodigy who dreamed up molecular machines was shoved aside by big science - and now he's an industry outcast." Ed Regis, Wired Magazine, Issue 12.10, October 2004
In science fiction
Drexler is mentioned in the science fiction book The Diamond Age as one of the heroes of a future world where nanotechnology is ubiquitous.
In the science fiction novel Newton's Wake by Ken Macleod a 'drexler' is a nanotech assembler of pretty much anything that can fit in the volume of the particular machine - socks to starships.
Drexler is also mentioned in the science fiction book Decipher by Stel Pavlou, his book is mentioned as one of the starting points of the nanomachine construction, as well as giving a better understanding of the way carbon 60 was to be applied.
Further Information
Get more info on 'K Eric Drexler'.
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