Nanosystems
by K. Eric Drexler · first published 1992
30% recommend65% neutral5% critical
Why HN recommends it
A physics-grounded technical treatment of molecular manufacturing, covering feasible nanoscale machine designs such as rod logic, atom-assembly armatures, and filtering for pure elements. For serious engineers.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"Written by a leading researcher in the field and one of its founders, Nanosystems is the first technical introduction to molecular nanotechnology - an emerging field that has sparked increasing interest and controversy. This groundbreaking book describes fundamental physical principles, components and devices, then examines applications including computers of unprecedented power and manufacturing systems able to build such products molecule by molecule.". "Nanosystems presents a comprehensive overview of how molecular manufacturing will make products by using nanoscale (billionths of a meter
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…it's feasible in his book "Engines of Creation". A newly revised version of it is available for free as an eBook: http://www.wowio.com/users/product.asp?BookId=503 A more technically oriented book is "Nanosystems": http://www.amazon.com/Nanosystems-Molecular-Machinery-Manufa...
on “Legos that build legos (vid)” ↗…ago. there's great stuff in there. how to build a computer out of rod logic. how get pure sources of elements by cascading filters... armatures for assembling individual atoms. http://www.amazon.com/Nanosystems-Molecular-Machinery-Manufa... Richard Feynman apparently had recursive ideas, use a lathe to make a tiny lathe, use the tiny lathe to make a really really tiny lathe... all the way down. This is the…
on “Drexler: Self-Assembly for Nanotechnology” ↗FTL and antigravity violate physical law. Drexler’s designs just don’t. Point me to a design in Nanosystems the that is physically impossible to construct. The point of Nanosystems was to explore what technologies are feasible given our current understanding of physics at that scale. It turns out there is…
on “Engines of Creation, by K. Eric Drexler (1986)” ↗…theoretical applied science, a mode of research which aims to describe technological possibilities as constrained not by present-day laboratory and factory techniques, but by physical law." -Eric Drexler, Nanosystems, Appendix A. Dude was very clear about his aims, and it is a shitty kind of strawman argument to dunk on Drexler like Scott Locklin is doing here. Physicists think like this all the time when considering…
on “Nano-nonsense: 25 years of charlatanry (2010)” ↗If someone is interested in real technical description of molecular manufacturing, you may read Eric Drexler's "Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing and Computation". Most parts of this book can be read on the author's website http://e-drexler.com/d/06/00/Nanosystems/toc.html , and if you know how to google you…
on “Nobody’s Talking About Nanotech Anymore” ↗I would say 30 years after he wrote Nanosystems there hasn’t been any progress on the tip of the assembler. I still use that book as a model though for how to talk about advanced automatic manufacturing systems. The example of life shows it is possible…
on “Precise atom manipulation through deep reinforcement learning” ↗…relocalization, etc. If a doctor on Mars needs a synthesizer which can make mRNA, peptide and protein-based drugs for any condition, so does a doctor in Rwanda. Drexler's program in https://www.amazon.com/Nanosystems-P-K-Eric-Drexler/dp/04715... has definitely not progressed. Maybe we can't make a 1kg machine that can make itself and everything else, but could we shrink the manufacturing base such that a population…
on “Ask HN: What is the next big thing?” ↗…an advanced industrial base being supported by 10,000,000 people it would be a game-changer here on Earth. I can see paths there, but it's by no means a bird in the hand. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Nanosystems-P-K-Eric-Drexler/dp/04715... [2] https://latecomermag.com/article/what-happened-to-molecular-...
on “The Shape of a Mars Mission” ↗…interested in using DNA synthesis (using phosphoramidite chemistry) to combinatorially build proteins that lock together in pre-defined shape based on ligand-specific binding affinities between the blocks. The Nanosystems book left out a lot of biology that can be hijacked to help out goals like these. Long-term we might be able to coerce enzymes into creating molecular machines anyway: https://groups.google.com/group/enzymaticsynthesis
on “Nobody’s Talking About Nanotech Anymore” ↗…conservatism of Engines of Creation (I always read him as a liberal who'd been mugged by reality, specifically the total lethality (if you were lucky) of getting it wrong), Drexler himself doesn't agree WRT to Nanosystems ... I couldn't quickly find the specific essay(s) where he clearly laid this out, but for a start look at this one: http://metamodern.com/2010/09/24/out-of-the-memory-hole-a-hi...
on “Who killed the futurist in you? School or you?” ↗Pretty much. See Nanosystems, linked in another comment, for a technical treatment. Its logic design used sliding rods, so friction could be more of an issue, especially if you can't make it atomically precise. (With atomic precision…
on “Mechanical Computing Systems Using Only Links and Rotary Joints” ↗…could also be called brute force. Doing that at a scale comparable to our own evolutionary history may be way out of range for present computers, but not foreseeable ones. (http://e-drexler.com/d/06/00/Nanosystems/ch1/chapter1_1.html) Likely we'll get there sooner in some not-quite-so-brutish way -- I'd hope so for ethical reasons -- but that way is available.
on “Greedy, Brittle, Opaque, and Shallow: The Downsides to Deep Learning” ↗…"what if we're living in a simulation?" People do publish technical details on both MNT and non-MNT... To use an older reference I would bet that if you ran your idea by someone who has read Drexler's Nanosystems they could point something out at some layer that forbids your idea in principle at least insofar as current understanding of physics, chemistry, and biology go. If we (or some other species) can create…
on “'Demonically Clever' Backdoor Hides Inside Computer Chip” ↗…pretty conservative. I don’t think he ever pretended to having technology he didn’t have. I do think Drexler committed the grave sin of writing a book for popular consumption. He should have published Nanosystems first and waited decades before writing Engines of Creation.
on “Engines of Creation, by K. Eric Drexler (1986)” ↗Hey, a fellow mnt (molecular nanotechnology) enthusiast, cool! Yes, I've read EoC and Nanosystems (well, I skimmed Nanosystems; it's not a very easy read, being so informationally dense), and follow the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN, http://crnano.typepad.com) blog regularly. As an entrepreneur,…
on “Legos that build legos (vid)” ↗