What do you think?
Rate this book
Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology
Published in 1987 the book is now 30 years old, as far from our current state of technology as the computers of the 1950s were from the mid-1980s. The book discusses the implications of building machines at the atomic, molecular level. He covers genetic engineering, big data, and other topics in the news today.The introduction is by Marvin Minsky of MIT. From the back cover, he says that the book "is by far the best book I have seen about the consequences of new technologies. It is ambitious and imaginative and , best of all, the thinking is technically sound. He discuss molecular level assemblers that ,can be machines out of atom, hypertext and the expansion of human knowledge.He also discovers the hazards of the appearance some of the problems we see in social media today with the flood of information. The book is long out of print. There was a followup book in 2007 according to Wikipedia.
298 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1986
About the author
K. Eric Drexler
11Ìýbooks107ÌýfollowersK. Eric Drexler, Ph.D., is a researcher and author whose work focuses on advanced nanotechnologies and directions for current research. His 1981 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences established fundamental principles of molecular design, protein engineering, and productive nanosystems. Drexler’s research in this field has been the basis for numerous journal articles and for books including Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology (written for a general audience) and Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation (a quantitative, physics-based analysis). He recently served as Chief Technical Consultant to the Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems, a project of the Battelle Memorial Institute and its participating US National Laboratories. He is currently working in a collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund to explore nanotechnology-based solutions to global problems such as energy and climate change.
Drexler was awarded a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Molecular Nanotechnology (the first degree of its kind; his dissertation was a draft of Nanosystems). Dr. Drexler is currently (2012) an academic visitor at Oxford University. He consults and speaks on how current research can be directed more effectively toward high-payoff objectives, and addresses the implications of emerging technologies for our future, including their use to solve, rather than delay, large-scale problems such as global warming.
Drexler was awarded a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Molecular Nanotechnology (the first degree of its kind; his dissertation was a draft of Nanosystems). Dr. Drexler is currently (2012) an academic visitor at Oxford University. He consults and speaks on how current research can be directed more effectively toward high-payoff objectives, and addresses the implications of emerging technologies for our future, including their use to solve, rather than delay, large-scale problems such as global warming.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
No one has reviewed this book yet.
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.