A well-known Monty Python sketch cruelly satirizes pop science: "Become a doctor, develop a cure for all the world's known diseases, and then you can jolly well show them." Nano, by Ed Regis, tackles the world of nanotech from a similarly skeptical vantage point. The book chronicles the emergence and development of tech of the very, very small, as well as the work of its founder, visionary leader, and all-round shaper of the future: K. Eric Drexler.
The future benefits of nanotechnology appear unimaginably, hugely important: we can use nanomachines to build, well, pretty much anything at all - from a jet engine to a human being. Drexler predicts the invention of a machine akin to a microwave oven that will cook up any desired object from a soup of atoms. In Drexler's nanofuture, there will be no need for manufacturers, since every material object can be produced at home for free (ingeniously eliminating the need for wealth, status, shopping centers, and so forth).
The small (but significant) problem is that no one has so far produced a nanomachine. True, IBM has rendered a very, very small IBM logo in Xenon atoms, and a researcher named Hans was able to hold a single atom (called Astrid) captive in his apparatus for several days at a time, but a working nanomachine - levers, cogs, rods, bearings, and all - so far remains elusive.
In describing all this, Regis's book veers toward the bizarre and often (intentionally) hilarious. Drexler reveals himself to be several atoms short of a molecule.
Regis's ironic sideswipes at nanotechnology (Drexler's followers are "the nano faithful" led by "Captain Future") add to the nascent field's strangeness, as do passages such as "Nobody ever said that nano would solve every problem. It could only solve the easy problems like poverty, aging, and disease."
Drexler's science seems reasonable, but the conclusions (no disease, indefinitely long lifespans, no shopping malls, et cetera) are positively weird. While he may not think of himself as aiming to "cure all the world's known diseases and jolly well show them," most of Drexler's followers seem to believe that's exactly what he's going to do.
Nano: The Emerging Science of Nanotechnology, by Ed Regis: US$23.95. Little, Brown and Co.: +1 (212) 522 8700.
STREET CRED
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Captain Future and the Very, Very Small
