Sunday, November 1, 2015

Eric Drexler - How Nanotechnology Will Deliver Radical Abundance


For homework this week, we watched the YouTube video “Eric Drexler - How Nanotechnology Will Deliver Radical Abundance”. In this video, Eric Drexler discusses nanotechnology and its future implications. I did not know who Dr. Drexler was prior to watching this video, beyond knowing that he is “the founding father of nanotechnology”. I learned through research that he first coined the term “nanotechnology” in his 1981 paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He is currently an Academic Visitor at Oxford University, and received a PhD in Molecular Nanotechnology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Drexler is very articulate and well spoken in the interview. The material was somewhat dense and difficult for me to understand from my own education. However, Dr. Drexler does an excellent job of bridging the gap between his wealth of knowledge and the viewer’s limitations of understanding. I found a number of his points to be fascinating.

He spoke about a concept he calls “radical abundance”. This idea is of a future where nanotechnology fills a gap that limited resources create. He mentions that metals such as copper are limited and being used in great quantities in manufacturing. His assertion is that in a future fueled by nanotechnology and based in its research, we can use abundant materials, such as carbon, to replace limited materials. This brings costs down and manufacturing potential up.

When he talks about carbon as a replacement for copper, he is reffering to something known as carbon nanotubes. I was aquainted with this concept a few weeks ago in a previous assignment. Carbon nanotubes are defined as “tubular cylinders of carbon atoms that have extraordinary mechanical, electrical, thermal, optical and chemical properties”. These tube-like structures are excellent conductors. Below is a video about how carbon nanotubes are made. A very friendly but somewhat unsettling animated nanotube narrates the video, and does an incredible amount of blinking in the process:

Dr. Drexler also talked about atomically precise manufacturing. At first, I had a very difficult time grasping what this meant. I tried researching the topic, but found the literature online to be even more dense. I found this video, which put a visual to what he was talking about, and made it much easier for me to comprehend:

He also talked about building with DNA. At first, that sounded entirely implausible to me. However, after reading about it and watching the following video produced by Wyss Institute of Harvard, the process seems much more reasonable:

My biggest challenge with understanding this material was a lack of visual. I think if I were to re-watch Dr. Drexler’s talk, I would find it much easier to understand with the knowledge I acquired through researching visuals of the topics being discussed.


Works Cited
"Bio: K. Eric Drexler." Bio: K. Eric Drexler. http://metamodern.com. Web.
"The Foresight Institute » Blog Archive » Atomically Precise Manufacturing as the Future of Nanotechnology." The Foresight Institute » Blog Archive » Atomically Precise Manufacturing as the Future of Nanotechnology. The Foresight Institute, 8 Mar. 2015. Web.
Kusek, Kristen. "Researchers Create Versatile 3D Nanostructures Using DNA "Bricks"" : Wyss Institute at Harvard. Wyss Institute, 29 Nov. 2012. Web.
"Nanocomp Technologies | What Are Carbon Nanotubes?" Nanocomp Technologies | What Are Carbon Nanotubes? Nanocomp Technologies Inc., 2014. Web.
Verhulst, Stefaan. "The Governance Lab @ NYU." The Governance Lab NYU. GovLab Digest, 26 Aug. 2013. Web.

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