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Title: Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology
ISBN: 0385199732
Author:
Eric Drexler
Publicate Date: 1987-10-16
Publish: 1987-10-16
List Price: $15.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $6.79
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $1.99
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.85
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Engines of nanotechnology
I was actually expecting that this book would fulfill my expectations, on account of a large number of citations I've seen. It's absolutely prerequisite lecture to anyone who's interested in the nano perspectives.
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2: Watershed book on the transhumanist movement
Engines of Creation describes the foundations of and the issues surrounding humankind's increasing potential for building molecular machines. (Indeed as we stand here on the verge of 2008, notable accomplishments in nanotechnology continue to be made.) Drexler's "starter kit" comprises what he calls "universal assemblers," which are nanomachines designed for a simple task, such as replacing defective genetic links with healthful ones or bonding one cellular structure to another.
...I'm impressed with what the author and his peers have deeply pondered on preventing nanotechnological disasters, either from accident or from conscious intention of some malefactor. When one realizes a technology that can terraform planets can also readily destroy them... and us, one becomes a bit careful in how the technology is handled. The entire Part 3 of Drexler's book, "Engines of Destruction," is devoted to this issue.
...
For my complete review of this book and for other book and movie
reviews, please visit my site [...]
Brian Wright
Copyright 2007
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3: Nano Technology
This book was ordered as a gift. I bought the book years ago and was so impressed with it I've purchased several as gifts.
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4: too bad it's all balderdash
It's been twenty years. Over 50 million bucks have been spent on Nanotechnology, and not a single useful thing has come of it.
Drexler writes really gee-whizzy stuff, but he's basically selling snake oil. Anybody with the basic clue about the law of scale can see most of the nanotech concepts are basically impossible. Meachnical devices can't be scaled down much below the millimeter level-- the basic laws of scale, friction, surface tension, charge, and materials disallows it. So Nanotech guys make microscopic "gears", but no shafts. Shafts, but no gears. "Motors" that can't turn anything. A 5x5 atomic checkerboard, a factor of 100 billion too small to be useful. And so on, and so forth.
It's a clever book, but basically intellectually dishonest. Drexler went on to raise $20 million in venture capital and blew it all. That should give one pause when compared to the "limitless horizons" extolled in this book.
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5: Definitely a provocative read!
I read this book a number of years ago, and it still has a special place in my canon of books on technology and humanity. This is an engaging and lucid look at the future potential, and dangers, of miniturization, nano-scale physics and science meeting together in the form of nanotechnology.
The ideas of molecular construction and deconstruction are truly intriguing and scary. Imagine being disassembled molecule by molecule by a nanoconstructor. Or, the idea of creating a crystal rocket out of pure atoms. This book is full of ideas and potentiality, and the ethical questions are perhaps just the tip of this literary iceberg.
A great read for anyone interested in future technology and how science and technology are fusing on the cutting edge of reality. You don't need to be a quantum physicist or even a PhD to enojy this book. I read it as an undergrad in college and had a good time with it. It even inspired a sci-fi/fantasy book still in progress.
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