Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization

Nanotechnology burst into public awareness with the publication of the author's  Engines of Creation  in 1986. (The author coined the word “nanotechnology” to denote engineering at the atomic scale, fabricating structures with the atomic precision of molecules. A 1974 Japanese paper had used the term “nano-technology”, but with an entirely different meaning.) Before long, the popular media were full of speculation about nanobots in the bloodstream, self-replicating assemblers terraforming planets or mining the asteroids, and a world economy transformed into one in which scarcity, in the sense we know it today, would be transcended. Those inclined to darker speculation warned of “grey goo”—runaway self-replicators which could devour the biosphere in 24 hours, or nanoengineered super weapons.Those steeped in conventional wisdom scoffed at these “futuristic” notions, likening them to earlier predictions of nuclear power “too cheap to meter” or space colonies, but detractors found it difficult to refute Drexler's arguments that the systems he proposed violated no law of physics and that the chemistry of such structures was well-understood and predicted that, if we figured out how to construct them, they would work. Drexler's argument was reinforced when, in 1992, he published  Nanosystems , a detailed technical examination of molecular engineering based upon his MIT Ph.D. dissertation.As the 1990s progressed, there was an increasing consensus that if nanosystems existed, we would be able to fabricate nanosystems that worked as Drexler envisions, but the path from our present-day crude fabrication technologies to atomic precision on the macroscopic scale was unclear. On the other hand, there were a number of potential pathways which might get there, increasing the probability that one or more might work. The situation is not unlike that in the early days of integrated circuits. It was clear from the laws of physics that were it possible to fabricate a billion transistors on a chip they would work, but it was equally clear that a series of increasingly difficult and expensive to surmount hurdles would have to be cleared in order to fabricate such a structure. Its feasibility then became a question of whether engineers were clever enough to solve all the problems along the way and if the market for each generation of increasingly complex chips would be large enough to fund the development of the next.A number of groups around the world, both academic and commercial, began to pursue potential paths toward nanotechnology, laying the foundation for the next step beyond conventional macromolecular chemical synthesis. It seemed like the major impediment to a rapid take-off of nanotechnology akin to that experienced in the semiconductor field was a lack of funding. But, as Eric Drexler remarked to me in a conversation in the 1990s, most of the foundation of nanotechnology was chemistry and “You can buy a lot of chemistry for a billion dollars.”That billion dollars appeared to be at hand in 2000, when the U.S. created a billion dollar National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). The NNI quickly published an implementation plan which clearly stated that “the essence of nanotechnology is the ability to work at the molecular level, atom by atom, to create large structures with fundamentally new molecular organization”. And then it all went south. As is almost inevitable with government-funded science and technology programs, the usual grantmasters waddled up to the trough, stuck their snouts into the new flow of funds, and diverted it toward their research interests which have nothing to do with the mission statement of the NNI. They even managed to redefine “nanotechnology” for their own purposes to exclude the construction of objects with atomic precision. This is not to say that some of the research NNI funds isn't worthwhile, but it's not nanotechnology in the original sense of the word, and doesn't advance toward the goal of molecular manufacturing. (We often hear about government-funded research and development “picking winners and losers”. In fact, such programs pick only losers, since the winners will already have been funded by the productive sector of the economy based upon their potential return.)In this book Drexler attempts a fundamental reset of the vision he initially presented in Engines of Creation. He concedes the word “nanotechnology” to the hogs at the federal trough and uses “atomically precise manufacturing” (APM) to denote a fabrication technology which, starting from simple molecular feedstocks, can make anything by fabricating and assembling parts in a hierarchical fashion. Just as books, music, and movies have become data files which can be transferred around the globe in seconds, copied at no cost, and accessed by a generic portable device, physical objects will be encoded as fabrication instructions which a generic factory can create as required, constrained only that the size of the factory be large enough to assemble the final product. But the same garage-sized factory can crank out automobiles, motorboats, small aircraft, bicycles, computers, furniture, and anything on that scale or smaller just as your laser printer can print any document whatsoever as long as you have a page description of it.Further, many of these objects can be manufactured using almost exclusively the most abundant elements on Earth, reducing cost and eliminating resource constraints. And atomic precision means that there will be no waste products from the manufacturing process—all intermediate products not present in the final product will be turned back into feedstock. Ponder, for a few moments, the consequences of this for the global economy.In chapter 5 the author introduces a heuristic for visualising the nanoscale. Imagine the world scaled up in size by a factor of ten million, and time slowed down by the same factor. This scaling preserves properties such as velocity, force, and mass, and allows visualising nanoscale machines as the same size and operating speed as those with which we are familiar. At this scale a single transistor on a contemporary microchip would be about as big as an iPad and the entire chip the size of Belgium. Using this viewpoint, the author acquaints the reader with the realities of the nanoscale and demonstrates that analogues of macroscopic machines, when we figure out how to fabricate them, will work and, because they will operate ten million times faster, will be able to process macroscopic quantities of material on a practical time scale.But can we build them? Here, Drexler introduces the concept of “exploratory engineering”: using the known laws of physics and conservative principles of engineering to explore what is possible. Essentially, there is a landscape of feasibility. One portion is what we have already accomplished, another which is ruled out by the laws of physics. The rest is that which we could accomplish if we could figure out how and could afford it. This is a huge domain—given unlimited funds and a few decades to work on the problem, there is little doubt one could build a particle accelerator which circled the Earth's equator. Drexler cites the work of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky as a masterpiece of exploratory engineering highly relevant to atomically precise manufacturing. By 1903, working alone, he had demonstrated the feasibility of achieving Earth orbit by means of a multistage rocket burning liquid hydrogen and oxygen. Now, Tsiolkovsky had no idea how to build the necessary engines, fuel tanks, guidance systems, launch facilities, etc., but from basic principles he was able to show that no physical law ruled out their construction and that known materials would suffice for them to work. We are in much the same position with APM today.The tone of this book is rather curious. Perhaps having been burned by his earlier work being sensationalised, the author is reserved to such an extent that on p. 275 he includes a two pargraph aside urging readers to “curb their enthusiasm”, and much of the text, while discussing what may be the most significant development in human history since the invention of agriculture, often reads like a white paper from the Brookings Institution with half a dozen authors: “Profound changes in national interests will call for a ground-up review of grand strategy. Means and ends, risks and opportunities, the future self-perceived interests of today's strategic competitors—none of these can be taken for granted.” (p. 269)I am also dismayed to see that Drexler appears to have bought in to the whole anthropogenic global warming scam and repeatedly genuflects to the whole “carbon is bad” nonsense. The acknowledgements include a former advisor to the anti-human World Wide Fund for Nature.Despite quibbles, if you've been thinking “Hey, it's the 21st century, where's my nanotechnology?”, this is the book to read. It chronicles steady progress on the foundations of APM and multiple paths through which the intermediate steps toward achieving it may be achieved. It is enlightening and encouraging. Just don't get too enthusiastic.

Eric Drexler does the world a favor by clarifying many misconceptions that have arisen over the decades around the notion of Nanotechnology.He clarifies the distinction between engineering and science, and the need to focus on engineering while continuing to work with scientists. The problem as Dr. Drexler points out, is that we need to start working toward real-world working solutions. While scientists are good at filling in the blanks where knowledge is concerned, they don't usually spend much time on how to apply that knowledge. Engineers are need to apply the knowledge learned to actually realize APM (Atomically Precise Manufacturing).What Dr. Drexler does not do, is try and predict all the cool things we could build with this technology. Rather, he leaves that to a future market that will drive demand. In the past, making such statements have only led to problems. When he talked previously about tiny machines, other authors took this concept and envisioned tiny robots, and then suddenly the robots could consume the earth and create a planet of grey goo. Drexler sees a very different vision, not of tiny robots, but of macro goods, big stuff, made an atom at a time with whole new properties. Materials that are much stronger that steel with only a fraction of the weight. Electronic circuits that are built into every device or part to monitor it's state, alter it's own properties when required, or simply enhance it's functionality. He very carefully tries to couch his statements about what this technology could do in a way the does not feed the fertile imagination of science fiction authors who love to blow things up, and thereby derail a technology capable of transforming society. Please, no more grey goo!This book touches on the fact that society will be transformed by a radical abundance of all of our needs, and that we may need to discover new modes within society to account for that shift, but he doesn't get into what kinds of new modes. Manufacturing of goods will become a local endeavor, and probably personal. Eventually we will have atomic replicators in our home much like we do microwave ovens today, that will make any thing we want on command. Only raw materials will need to be shipped.

Eine Pflichtlektüre für jeden der kein unvollständiges Bild der Zukunft haben will.(Zur zeit leider nur englisch verfügbar daher halte ich auch die Beschreibung in englisch.)A must read for anyone who don't want to have an incomplete picture of the future.Since E. Drexler introduced the world to the term "nanotechnology" in his first non technical Book (Engines of Creation) the term has strongly changed in meaning. So much in fact that it's now widely used in exclusion of the original idea.Around the year 2000 massive funding missed pretty much entirely its intended target and the confusion led even to the stigmatization of the original field. In this book he tries to clear up the confusion and reconstructs as best to his ability what exactly happened. He introduces the term "atomically precise manufacturing" (APM) for the targeted technology to clear up existing confusion and prevent further one.The related technical book to this one is:"Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation".With the here reviewed complementary book "Radical Abundance" he tries to direct the view away from some virulent memes (partly spawned by his first non technical book) to the real meat of our path to a fully fledged atomically precise manufacturing (APM) technology. To avoid misunderstandings he tries to use more precise terms this leads to abbreviations like APM.Due to the nature of the subjects with pretty interwoven subtopics the book can be a bit repetitive. Especially in the later chapters. But I think it's very well structured for the common reader who is new to the topic of APM. The repetition is present since the same aspects are treated twice or thrice in different contexts to prevent readers from falling into the many known trapdoors and misassociations.Things which where barely tackled and I missed a bit where:*) More details about recycling.*) An explanation for the choice for doing convergent assembly all the way up to the macroscopic level.(I think I figured it out - It's likely for quick and efficient big scale reconfiguration of pre-produced products without the need to disassemble them down to the micro-blocks)*) More details about why he regards AFM (atoic force microscopy) mainly as distraction. Especially probing tool improvement and MEMS AFMs / MEMS grippers which could potentially be a lot faster than AFMs are not mentioned at all.(From other of his writings I guess It's that he thinks top down technology just comes in later in the game for managing bottom up pre-produced stuff - and that was it was targeted way to early.)In this Book E.Drexler uses the term "microblock" which I think might not have been ideal since it again points to size only (block is generic).Just like with "nano" which caused the mess that prompted him to write this book.Personally I'd have chosen a term like cyclecomponents since this name contains their main characterization features: re-composability and recyclability. I'd guess making "microblocks" smaller (a bit smaller than one micron - E.Drexler mentions design freedom here) greatly increases their generality and reusability. The price is a bit more coupling mechanism volume per product volume and thus less functionality per volume.I especially enjoyed:1) That the book book also contains a tiny bit of the personal story of K. Eric Drexler.2) Appendix I & II where he gives a bit of new details for how he thinks high throughput APM level technologies can be reached.Interesting extensions to the Appendix would have been:*) Some ideas/plans/engineering questions for introduction of stereotactic control.*) His thoughts on bio-minerals (second milestone in outlined incremental pathway)All in all I highly recommend reading this.Well written.

Sin entrar en demasiados detalles técnicos tiene suficiente densidad argumentativa para interesar a un lector que se aproxime crítica y analíticamente a los fundamentos básicos de la posible revolución nanotecnológica.

A little bit hard to read, it took me a while to finish it, but really interesting. It puts our future in a new and interesting perspective

It changes prevailing perception about lack of resources as well as enormity of challenges in current scenario .Must read for planers and im

I enjoyed it however it's an applied and still very theoretical. It's the best book available for the current cutting edge info on nanotechnology.