Most of the text of Drexler's technical reference Nanosystems is now available online as a 30-MB PDF.
In 1988, Eric Drexler taught a class on molecular manufacturing at Stanford (which I took). That class turned into his PhD thesis at MIT (with adviser Marvin Minsky), and the PhD thesis turned into his book Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation.
Although his groundbreaking book Engines of Creation has long been available online in full, and Rob Freitas's encyclopedic works on Nanomedicine (Volume I: Basic Capabilities and Volume IIA: Biocompatibility) and Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines have also been available online from the start, Nanosystems has not.
The dissertation is not identical to the book, but a spot check of several pages shows that much of the text and organization is very similar - a few words changed per paragraph. And the PDF is searchable. Drexler describes the dissertation as "a draft of Nanosystems."
This means that anyone can now read, for free, Drexler's detailed technical analysis of the design, construction, and capabilities of nanomachines based on engineered, mechanically constructed, stiff covalent solids.
Nanotechnology has an amazing potential today. It can be used successful in many domanins, and important ones, like medicine.
Posted by: nanodots | October 03, 2009 at 04:16 AM