Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology

by Eric Drexler

Overview

This brilliant work heralds the new age of nanotechnology, which will give us thorough and inexpensive control of the structure of matter.  Drexler examines the enormous implications of these developments for medicine, the economy, and the environment, and makes astounding yet well-founded projections for the future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385199735
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/16/1987
Series:	Anchor Library of Science
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.74(d)

About the Author

K. Eric Drexler is an American engineer best known as the founding father of nanotechnology. Drexler popularized the potential of molecular nanotechnology during his years of study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned three degrees from MIT; a B.S. in Interdisciplinary Sciences, an M.S. in Astro/Aerospace Engineering, and a Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab. His thesis on molecular nanotechnology, the first doctoral degree on the topic, was published as Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation (1992). The book received the Association of American Publishers award for Best Computer Science Book of 1992. He currently resides in Oxford.

Editorial Reviews

Little Engines That Could

A scientist becomes a perfect superman after injecting himself with self-replicating microscopic machines that continually repair his organs. A man rents a device that sets tiny machines loose in his brain, rewiring it so that he becomes, for a brief time, a different person. A cell-repair nanotech machine -- a "nanny" -- fed with one person's DNA and set to repairing another's cells, begins turning the second person into the first. Infoviruses systematically reprogram human genes, redirecting evolution. Society is reshaped from top to bottom by nanotechnology. Experimental nanomachines escape from the lab and destroy the world.

Mere science fiction, you say? Of course. Specifically, these are the plots of several science fiction stories appearing in Nanotech, a collection of cautionary tales in the subgenre of nanotechnology-based science fiction, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozios (Ace Books, 1998; ISBN 0-441-00585-3). Science fiction writers were profoundly influenced by the publication of Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation. In that book and in the more technical Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation (John Wiley & Sons, 1992; ISBN 0-47-157-518-6), Drexler defined the field of nanotechnology, mapped out its challenges, and articulated its most promising avenues of research. A number of science fiction writers staked out nanotech as their chosen science to fictionalize, and a subgenre was born.

Others besides science fiction writers were influenced by Engines of Creation. Researchers around the world have been exploring the possibilities for nanotechnology since the book's publication. Last fall, Drexler's Foresight Institute brought the leading researchers together to explore the state of the art in nanotechnology today. So far, none of the predictions of nanotech science fiction have come true. So far.
— Dr. Dobb's Electronic Review of Computer Books

Michael Swaine