1990’s visions of molecular assemblers
I’ve been skimming Unbounding the Future, Eric Drexler’s 1991 book on nanotechnology. At the time, nanotech was in he Overton Window, riding the high wave of the hype cycle, while neural networks and AI were still mostly considered a fringe affair (though this is three years after LeCun’s paper on ConvNets).
It is hard to find forecasts that are easy to evaluate but there is a distinct sense of progress “just around the corner” that is very different from what ensued in the nearly 30 years since then. Molecular assemblers in the first decade of he 21st century are mentioned as a distinct possibility, as well as a “revolution within five years”.
I’m not sure whether the fundamental difficulty of the technology was underestimated, but the expectations of how competitive pressures would drive developers to pursue the long-term objectives certainly didn’t pan out — governments didn’t catch on and organize an Apollo-style systems engineering project. (Are they still capable of organizing those?)
Although the forecasts seem overly bullish from today’s standpoint, I’m still much more sympathetic to people making this kind of error than to ignoring well-described, potentially transformative technologies just because they sound like sci-fi.
Below are some highlights from Stewart Brand, Eric Drexler and Autodesk co-founder John Walker.
Stewart Brand’s Foreword
Nanotechnology. The science is good, the engineering is feasible, the paths of approach are many, the consequences are revolutionary-times-revolutionary, and the schedule is: in our lifetimes.
But what?
No one knows but what. That’s why a book like this is crucial before molecular engineering and the routine transformation of matter arrives. The technology will arrive piecemeal and prominently but the consequences will arrive at a larger scale and often invisibly
Continued:
As I’ve learned from the Global Business Network, where I work part-time helping multinational corporations think about their future, all futurists soon discover that correct prediction is impossible. And forcing the future in a desired direction is also impossible. What does that leave forethought to do? One of the most valuable tools has proved to be what is called scenario planning in which dramatic, divergent stories of relevant futures are spun out. Divergent strategies to handle them are proposed, and the scenarios and strategies are played against each other until the scenarios are coherent, plausible, surprising, insightful, and checkable against real events as they unfold. “Robust” (adaptable) strategies are supposed to emerge from the process
Eric Drexler’s Foreword
A short summary of what molecular nanotechnology will mean is thorough and inexpensive control of the structure of matter. Pollution, physical disease, and material poverty all stem from poor control of the structure of matter. Strip mines, clear-cutting, refineries, paper mills, and oil wells are some of the crude, twentieth-century technologies that will be replaced. Dental drills and toxic chemotherapies are others. […]
I’ve made the technical case for the feasibility of molecular nanotechnology elsewhere, and this case has been chewed over by scientists and engineers since the mid-1980s. (The technical bibliography outlines some of the relevant literature.) The idea of molecular nanotechnology is now about as well accepted as was the idea of flying to the Moon in the pre – space age year of 1950, nineteen years before the Apollo 11 landing and seven years before the shock of Sputnik. Those who understand it expect it to happen, but without the cost and uncertainty of a grand national commitment.
John Walker (Autodesk founder):
A counterargument, though, suggests that development will be slow: anyone who has done anything of significance in the real world of technology – doing a scientific experiment, writing a computer program, bringing a new product to market – knows that these goals take longer than expected. Indeed, Hofstadter’s Law states that projects take longer than expected, even when Hofstadter’s Law is taken into account. This principle is a good guide for the short term, and for a single project.
The situation differs, though, when many different approaches are being explored by many different groups over a period of years. Most projects may take longer than expected, but with many teams trying many approaches, one approach may prove faster than expected. The winner of a race is always faster than the average runner. John Walker notes, “The remarkable thing about molecular engineering is that it looks like there are many different ways to get there and, at the moment, rapid progress is being made along every path – all at the same time.”
Continued:
John Walker, whose technological foresight has led Autodesk from start-up to a dominant role in its industry, points out that not long ago, “Many visionaries intimately familiar with the developments of silicon technology still forecast it would take between twenty and fifty years before molecular engineering became a reality. This is well beyond the planning horizon of most companies. But recently, everything has begun to change.” Based on the new developments, Walker places his bet: “Current progress suggests the revolution may happen within this decade, perhaps starting within five years.”
A Nanofactory animation from 2006:
