
The Incredible Shrinking Man (2004) - edward
http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/drexler.html
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dalke
That said, Smalley opposing view was and is correct. Molecular manufacturing,
where the manufacturing systems are also on the molecular scale, just don't
work in the way that Drexler envisioned, and pushing grey goo scenarios when
even the basics don't seem possible, is a sure way to get people turned off on
nanotech - which uses huge fabbers.

In the 1990s I worked on molecular dynamics of biological systems. The
nanotech hype was large, and I looked into the idea of switching fields,
figuring that someone with my background could make some good money at it.
Only to find that all the plans and simulations I saw seemed to be in vacuum,
and assumed the diamond parts were effectively like steel machine parts, with
no van der Waal forces or charges or cruft in the way. I still think those who
propose nanotech fabbers have little understanding of small-scale
physics/chemistry.

A summary of the debate between Drexler and Smalley is at
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drexler%E2%80%93Smalley_debate_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drexler%E2%80%93Smalley_debate_on_molecular_nanotechnology)
.

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tsotha
That's my impression. The world is full of nanotech factories - we call them
bacteria. They assemble molecules as necessary, but they don't do it the way
it's done on the macro scale, because the macro-scale model doesn't transfer
to interaction at the nano scale.

If the grey goo scenario was possible, I suspect it would have evolved as a
life form.

