Nano?
A nano is simply a unit of measurement -- one billionth. An atom is
approximately one-tenth of a nanometer. In order to understand where Drexler's
coming from, the term "nanotechnology" is clarified by Regis in
Nano. It has been used in basically three ways:
- to describe miniature etching operations such as processes used
in computer chips
- to describe the effort of building micromachines - better described
as microtechnology
- to describe molecular nanotechnology which deals with nanometers instead
of microns
What Drexler describes is molecular nanotechnology.
The Little Black Box
And how would this new technological labor force of the world accomplish
this? Drexler envisions what he calls "exemplar manufacturing-system
architecture." Drexler's description of this system which would take
raw materials and reconstruct them into physical objects. This system is
laid out in his text "some four hundred pages of chemical, physical,
and computational analysis" and written for scientists and researchers.
It is entitled Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and
Computation. For the layman, Regis quotes Drexler's simplified description
of "the box". This box would be available
to everyone in the world, because the box could reproduce itself as easily
as it could produce any other physical object.
