K. Eric Drexler Quotes

• I've encountered a lot of people who sound like critics but very few who have substantive criticisms. There is a lot of skepticism, but it seems to be more a matter of inertia than it is of people having some real reason for thinking something else.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Real, Thinking, People

  46 Copy quote

• In thinking about nanotechnology today, what's most important is understanding where it leads, what nanotechnology will look like after we reach the assembler breakthrough.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Thinking, Understanding, Important

  Foresight Institute Interview, www.foresight.org. June 15, 1987.

  102 Copy quote

• In a sense, artificial intelligence will be the ultimate tool because it will help us build all possible tools.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Tools, Helping, Artificial Intelligence

  K. Eric Drexler (1986). “Engines of Creation”, Anchor Books

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Doe, Machines, Steps

  7 Copy quote

• Scientists study physical things, then describe them; engineers describe physical things, then build them.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Study, Scientist, Engineers

  K. Eric Drexler (2013). “Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization”, p.28, PublicAffairs

  6 Copy quote

• Plants with leaves no more efficient than today's solar cells could out-compete real plants, crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage. Tough omnivorous bacteria could out-compete real bacteria: They could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days. Dangerous replicators could easily be too tough, small, and rapidly spreading to stop - at least if we make no preparation. We have trouble enough controlling viruses and fruit flies.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Real, Cells, Dust

  K. Eric Drexler (1986). “Engines of creation”, Anchor Books

  10 Copy quote

• After realizing that we would eventually be able to build molecular machines that could arrange atoms to form virtually any pattern that we wanted, I saw that an awful lot of consequences followed from that.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Atoms, Machines, Patterns

  Foresight Institute Interview, www.foresight.org. June 15, 1987.

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Learning, Design, Machines

  Foresight Institute interview, www.foresight.org.

  7 Copy quote

• Protein engineering is a technology of molecular machines - of molecular machines that are part of replicators - and so it comes from an area that already raises some of the issues that nanotechnology will raise.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Technology, Engineering, Issues

  86 Copy quote

• 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.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Running, Technology, Race

  Foresight Institute Interview, www.foresight.org. June 15, 1987.

  4 Copy quote

• Today we have big, crude instruments guided by intelligent surgeons, and we have little, stupid molecules of drugs that get dumped into the body, diffuse around and interfere with things as best they can. At present, medicine is unable to heal anything.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Stupid, Intelligent, Medicine

  8 Copy quote

• Nature draws no line between living and nonliving.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Lines, Draws, Rationality

  K. Eric Drexler (1986). “Engines of Creation”, Anchor Books

  4 Copy quote

• ...Local prohibitions cannot block advances in military and commercial technology... Democratic movements for local restraint can only restrain the world's democracies, not the world as a whole.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Block, Military, Technology

  K. Eric Drexler (1986). “Engines of creation”, Anchor Books

  4 Copy quote

• And that because the moving parts are a million times smaller than the ones we're familiar with, they move a million times faster, just as a smaller tuning fork produces a higher pitch than a large one.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Moving, Tuning, Forks

  16 Copy quote

• Likewise nanotechnology will, once it gets under way, depend on the tools we have then and our ability to use them, and not on the steps that got us there.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Tools, Use, Way

  Foresight Interview, foresight.org.

  90 Copy quote

• 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.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Law, Long, Term Limits

  Foresight Institute Interview, www.foresight.org. June 15, 1987.

  7 Copy quote

• Any powerful technology can be abused.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Powerful, Technology

  4 Copy quote

• The basic parts, the start-up molecules, can be supplied in abundance and don't have to be made by some elaborate process. That immediately makes things simpler.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Molecules, Abundance, Made

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Space, Orbit, Mit

  Foresight Interview, foresight.org.

  76 Copy quote

• 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.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Believe, Thinking, People

  4 Copy quote

• If you take all the factories in the world today, they could make all the parts necessary to build more factories like themselves. So, in a sense, we have a self-replicating industrial system today, but it would take a tremendous effort to copy what we already have.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Self, Effort, World

  7 Copy quote

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