K. Eric Drexler Quotes

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.

The really big difference is that what you make with a molecular machine can be completely precise, down to the tiniest degree of detail that can exist in the world.

The other advantage is that in conventional manufacturing processes, it takes a long time for a factory to produce an amount of product equal to its own weight. With molecular machines, the time required would be something more like a minute.

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.

Protein engineering is a technology of molecular machines – of molecular machines that are part of replicators – and so it comes from an area that already raises some of the issues that nanotechnology will raise.

On the molecular scale, you find it’s reasonable to have a machine that does a million steps per second, a mechanical system that works at computer speeds.