K. Eric Drexler Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“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.”

“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.”

“My greatest concern is that the emergence of this technology without the appropriate public attention and international controls could lead to an unstable arms race.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”