

There's plenty of room at the bottom - csl
http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html

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apstuff
Classic Feynman. I read it every year with my CS students. But let's give it
some context.

Von Neumann had delivered his talk "Computers and the Brain" only two years
earlier where he referred to the components of a computer in biological terms
-- "organelles", "the brain", etc.

No CRTs, mice, hard disk drives, or timeshare O/S. Internal memory was
magnetic "core memory."

Kilby and Noyce had invented the integrated circuit a year earlier. The "old
guard" i.e. Ken Olsen, Bob Metcalfe, and others were still in school. Grace
Hopper thought it might be a good idea to "compile" code.

And here comes this guy from CalTech thinking it would be cool to have ants
project manage aphids so The Library of Congress could fit on a credit card.

Am I wrong or could this world use a few more human beings "out there on the
curve."

~~~
jsmcgd
Do you know if the prizes were claimed?

~~~
hugh
Yes, they both were.

From
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There's_Plenty_of_Room_at_the_B...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There's_Plenty_of_Room_at_the_Bottom)

 _Amazingly, his motor challenge was quickly met by a meticulous craftsman
using conventional tools; the motor met the conditions, but did not advance
the art. In 1985, Tom Newman, a Stanford grad student, successfully reduced
the first paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities by 1/25,000, and collected the
second Feynman prize._

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mixmax
This is an absolute classic, and in my opinion it is up there with the the
special theory of relativity and newtons theory of gravity. The reason is that
feynman introduces one of those rare paradigm shifts that turns everything on
its head: build from the bottom and up instead of the crudeness of building
from the top down. The key insight being that atoms are like legos, and that
it should be possible to make identical assemblers, based on the lego
principle, that are able to replicate. Once this step is accomplished almost
anything is possible.

Even now, almost 50 years later, the implications of what he started are only
beginning to be felt - very few people even understand the implications of
what he was proposing. He was so much ahead of his time it's unbelievable.

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kevinelliott
What a classic transcript! I loved reading it. What impresses me most is how
far forward-looking Feynman was. A true visionary. This reminds me to go back
and read those Feynman books again.

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alex_c
Thanks. That's the kind of content that keeps me coming back to news.yc.

