Nanotechnology,
for Better or for Worse
Mike Treder
AI
56
Feb 2009
bIo enhAnCeD nAno neURo hUMoR FoReVeR YoUng
W
hen K. eric Drexler popularized the word
'nanotechnology' in the 1980s, he was
describing what we now call molecular
manufacturing: building machines on the scale of molecules,
a few nanometers wide — motors, robot arms, and even
whole computers — far smaller than a cell. Drexler spent
the next ten years describing and analyzing these projected
advances, and responding to accusations that his ideas were
science fi ction.
Meanwhile, chemists and biotechnologists were
developing the ability to build simple structures on a
molecular scale. As nanotechnology became an accepted
(and well-funded) concept, the meaning of the word
broadened to encompass these simpler kinds of nanometer-
scale technologies.
Most of the current work that carries the label
'nanotechnology' is not nanotechnology in the original
meaning. It is, instead, a set of related fi elds making use
of properties unique to the nanoscale, so that factories can
