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Eric Drexler
metamodern.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2008
Eric Drexler, a nanotechnology researcher, writes about molecular nanotech, DNA nanotechnology, how science progresses, and how to learn broadly.
What HN saysHN links his essays on learning about everything and his nanotech posts, with commenters pointing to his realistic near-term topics like DNA assembly lines.
20HN people shared it
9linked it in comments
96stories submitted
435story points
9 years agolast shared
2008people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1How To Learn About Everything4 people · 155 points · first shared 2009 · 11 comments on HN
- 2Eric Drexler: How to Understand Everything (and Why)3 people · 28 points · first shared 2009 · 1 comments on HN
- 3Drexler: cognitive bias causes progress in nanotech to be overlooked3 people · 18 points · first shared 2009 · 1 comments on HN
- 4A Map of Science3 people · 7 points · first shared 2009 · 2 comments on HN
- 5A programmable nanoscale assembly line2 people · 2 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 6A Third Revolution in DNA Nanotechnology2 people · 2 points · first shared 2009 · discussion on HN
- 7Recovering ancient voices from clay pots2 people · 1 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 8A DNA Origami Box2 people · 1 points · first shared 2009 · discussion on HN
- 9How to Study for a Career in Nanotechnology1 people · 26 points · first shared 2010 · 3 comments on HN
- 10Fukushima — where are the Parrots?1 people · 13 points · first shared 2011 · 13 comments on HN
- 11Ribosomes as Productive Nanosystems1 people · 13 points · first shared 2009 · 6 comments on HN
- 12Drexler: Self-Assembly for Nanotechnology1 people · 10 points · first shared 2009 · 2 comments on HN
- 13Toward Advanced Nanosystems: Mechanical engineering meets thermal fluctuations1 people · 9 points · first shared 2009 · 4 comments on HN
- 14Motors, Brownian Motors, and Brownian Mechanosynthesis1 people · 9 points · first shared 2009 · discussion on HN
- 15High-Throughput Nanomanufacturing: Assembling larger products (with videos)1 people · 8 points · first shared 2009 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
MikeCapone · 2010-05-09
I also recommend checking out Eric Drexler's blog:
http://metamodern.com/
abecedarius · 2010-08-25
If you follow Drexler's blog and see what he actually says, you'll see plenty of realistic near-term topics like http://metamodern.com/2010/08/13/progress-in-peptoid-toolkit-developme… http://metamodern.com/2010/05/20/a-programmable-nanoscale-assembly-lin… http://metamodern.com/2010/03/12/the-molecular-approach-to-atomically-… http://metamodern.com/2010/03/01/ribo-q1-genetic-manufacturing-expande…
You can test the OP's picture of Drexler this way considerably more easily than by studying _Nanosystems_ yourself (which is hard).
poppingtonic · 2017-08-25
These two blog posts by K. Eric Drexler explain why this is important. It's related to learning subjects you have no familiarity with.
[1] http://metamodern.com/2009/05/27/how-to-learn-about-everything/
[2] http://metamodern.com/2009/05/17/how-to-understand-everything-and-why/
hga · 2013-05-30
Without touching on the supposed political conservatism of Engines of Creation (I always read him as a liberal who'd been mugged by reality, specifically the total lethality (if you were lucky) of getting it wrong), Drexler himself doesn't agree WRT to Nanosystems ... I couldn't quickly find the specific essay(s) where he clearly laid this out, but for a start look at this one: http://metamodern.com/2010/09/24/out-of-the-memory-hole-a-historian-sp…
ericxb · 2012-08-16
Consuming trehalose (a sugar) may also help.
http://metamodern.com/2010/09/15/trehalose-autophagy-and-brain-repair-…
mhb · 2011-03-29
Why aren't they using these in Fukushima:
http://metamodern.com/2011/03/24/fukushima-%E2%80%94-where-are-the-par…
crayz · 2010-08-24
This is really a straw man argument. If you go read Drexler's blog(e.g. this series: http://metamodern.com/2009/12/19/molecular-manufacturing-where%E2%80%9… he is very explicit that the path forward is studying natural self-assembly from DNA and then tearing that apart, finding how it works, and modularizing/modifying it for our own purposes. None of this appears to be a "crazy idea" or something out of humanity's reach til long after we're all dead, as this author claims
Drexler's egotistical to be sure. It doesn't make him wrong
mnemonicsloth · 2010-03-14
Wait until you see what comes after.
Everyone thinks DNA is just genetic material, but researchers can already build rigid 3D structures with it, or weave it into flat sheets and then address the individual nucleotides like pixels.
The computers we use in 2025 will probably be self-assembled and might not be electronic, but they'll keep getting faster.
http://metamodern.com/2009/05/22/a-third-revolution-in-dna-nanotechnol…
gtani · 2013-08-03
The ACM has a taxonomy
http://www.acm.org/about/class/2012
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This researchers look back (looks like Brooklyn subways
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~navarroe/research/map/
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http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.2681
http://mocs.cs.arizona.edu/
http://people.cs.umass.edu/~mimno/icml100.html
These are clustering by different algos(sounds like SVD in the first, I'll have to read the paper later).
related: extracting FAQs
http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.5188
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and... all of science! http://metamodern.com/2009/05/20/a-map-of-science/