Review of “Radical Abundance” by K. Eric Drexler

K. Eric Drexler, Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology will Change Civilization, New York, PublicAffairs. 2013.

If you don’t know who K Eric Drexler is, you might be fooled by the title into thinking this is some sort of new-agey, self help, fluff.  But this is the real deal, and the prospect is certainly “radical”, and he makes the case for material “abundance”.

Drexler is famous for his 1986 book, Engines of Creation, which was a crucial contribution to  the creation of the field of nanotechnology [1].  The new book is not so much an update on the technology as an effort to correct some of the confusion and nonsense that has accumulated around the topic, as well as misrepresentations of his earlier work.  It’s about half technology and half politics. I admit that I was not expecting this, but it is clear why he felt the need to write it.

First of all, he wants to rescue his original ideas from a terminological hijacking.  Drexler is talking about Atomically Precise Manufacturing (APM), which he described in his earlier work and coined the term nanotechnology to describe it.  In the intervening years, as we have all observed, the word nanotechnology has been applied to all kinds of things other than APM, including paint, textiles, molecular biology, and pretty much anything small [3-5].  In addition, the concept has been identified with a variety of science fiction and fantasy concepts, such as tiny (malevolent) robots and, especially, “grey goo”.

Clearing away the clutter, Drexler wants to focus on his original topic, which is much narrower, and doesn’t involve tiny killer robots.  Some of the book is dedicated to a fairly accessible tutorial on Atomically Precise Manufacturing, which is quite interesting and exciting.

One of his didactic approaches is to show that “nano” machines are similar in many ways to the machines we already know, except scaled down a million times spatially, and sped up a million times.  With this rescaling, he sketches small factories that are not unlike factories we can see in the ordinary world.  Of course, they are extremely precise (manipulating small numbers of atoms or molecules) and fast (because of the scale).  This was one of the best sections of the book for me, he succeeded in helping me visualize these things.

The critical part of his sketch is the way this can be organized to generate macro scale results, via cascades of larger and larger (tiny) machines.

The “abundance” in the title comes from the fact that these techniques are fundamentally a lot more efficient (and cleaner) than macro scale fabrication.  It is difficult to completely predict, but his cautious outline shows thousands of times greater efficiency. Wow!

The technology of interest to Drexler, Atomically Precise Manufacturing, is very specific and constrained, and it is not about DNA, or small particles, or tiny robots. It is about his original vision, small machines which operate on the same principles as macroscopic machines.  They are rigid, to resist and guide thermal rattling, and, like familiar factories, complex operations are built from smaller building blocks.  Notably, such nanomachines are no closer to “grey goo” than an automated truck factory is.

The main point of the book is that this vision is not only plausible, it partly exists already. He believes that it is within reach, but requires a system level engineering approach. He presents a tutorial on what he means by “engineering” versus “science”, and he wants to see a concerted engineering effort.

Thus, he has been quite disappointed with government funding efforts, which originally described such an engineering effort, but diverted into a broad effort in many directions.  There is no denying the facts he is complaining about, whether you agree with his policy prescriptions or not.

I learned a lot from this book.  I now know that I need to be much more refined in my terminology, because the work nanotechnology has a lot of baggage, and may not mean what I want to say.  So, I would still say that bio/nano tech are the next big thing , I would now be careful to include Atomically Precise Manufacturing (or equivalent term) as one of the exciting areas, as per Drexler.

I must say that this book has a lot of golly-gee-whiz, too-cheap-to-meter,  flavor to a lot of this, which I can’t swallow.  I grant you that APM is an awesome concept, and certainly has a spectacular upside potential.  As I back in the 90s, “If you let me manipulate individual atoms, I can perform black magic.”  And who can not like a technology that makes oil, copper, and farms obsolete?

But I have to wonder how these technologies might really play out.  There are an awful lot of factors at play, including deadly serious politics:  the powers that be are unlikely to let us peasants have wealth and power without a big fight about it.  So I will see what happens.

This book is an essential guide, and will help us know what we should be watching.

References

[1]  Drexler, K.E., Engines of creation, Garden City, Anchor Press/Doubleday. 1986.

[2]  Drexler, K.E., Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology will Change Civilization, New York, PublicAffairs. 2013.

[3]  IEEE, IEEE Nanotechnology Magazine, (2013), https://http://www.ieee.org/membership-catalog/productdetail/showProductDetailPage.html?product=PER209-ELE.

[4]  Nano.gov, National Nanotechnology Initiative, (2013), http://www.nano.gov/.

[5]  nature.com, nature nanotechnology, (2013), http://www.nature.com/nnano/index.html.

[6]  Wikipedia, Grey goo, (2013), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo.