Comment Smalley right, but great stuff still out there (Score 1) 513
I'm a PhD student in biophysics at the University of Michigan. Reading Engines of Creation and Nanosystems a couple of years ago (when I was an undergraduate in physics) inspired me to do what I am doing today. Since then I have learnt a bit about biochemistry and enzymology and exactly how we currently think things work in the protein and RNA nanomachinery that you and I are built out of. Based on what I have learnt, I don't think that Drexler's proposals are feasible. In my opinion Smalley is all the way right and Drexler is all the way wrong in this exchange. Smalley makes a very accurate explanation of why Drexler is wrong, and Drexler's second response sadly goes into my 'hot air and hand-waving' file.
Ask me again if Slashdot is still around in fifty years. By that time, perhaps we will have made some progress on the folding problem and the design problem and the aggregation problem in protein manufacture. Maybe we will have long term simulations (get to work, supercomputer aficionados!) and we will be making awesome custom proteins and doing great things evolution never thought of. Perhaps then we will be able to do some kind of positional control magic that will allow us to make Drexler's end-of-Nanosystems bootstrap from proteins, lipids, and RNA to diamondoid materials. Until that time...well, if Richard Smalley, one of the world's foremost carbon chemists, says it will never happen, and it is his word against non-Nobel-Prize-winning-carbon-chemist K. Eric Drexler's, I will go with Smalley's opinions. (Three years ago I would be appalled at myself for writing all this!)
I will always appreciate Drexler (and Ion Storm and Neal Stephenson) for getting me fired up about investigating what goes on at the nanoscale. Without those wild claims I might not be having the fun I'm having today.
In closing: cheer up, nanofans! You and every other living thing on earth are glorious nanomechanical devices, well worth detailed study and sincere appreciation. In the future we shall hopefully be able to improve upon Nature's wonderful handiwork. For the time being take comfort in the sublime fact that millions of nanomachines all must strive together to do something as seemingly effortless as attaching the period that will now close my post.
Ask me again if Slashdot is still around in fifty years. By that time, perhaps we will have made some progress on the folding problem and the design problem and the aggregation problem in protein manufacture. Maybe we will have long term simulations (get to work, supercomputer aficionados!) and we will be making awesome custom proteins and doing great things evolution never thought of. Perhaps then we will be able to do some kind of positional control magic that will allow us to make Drexler's end-of-Nanosystems bootstrap from proteins, lipids, and RNA to diamondoid materials. Until that time...well, if Richard Smalley, one of the world's foremost carbon chemists, says it will never happen, and it is his word against non-Nobel-Prize-winning-carbon-chemist K. Eric Drexler's, I will go with Smalley's opinions. (Three years ago I would be appalled at myself for writing all this!)
I will always appreciate Drexler (and Ion Storm and Neal Stephenson) for getting me fired up about investigating what goes on at the nanoscale. Without those wild claims I might not be having the fun I'm having today.
In closing: cheer up, nanofans! You and every other living thing on earth are glorious nanomechanical devices, well worth detailed study and sincere appreciation. In the future we shall hopefully be able to improve upon Nature's wonderful handiwork. For the time being take comfort in the sublime fact that millions of nanomachines all must strive together to do something as seemingly effortless as attaching the period that will now close my post.
