In The Age of Spiritual Machines , published last year, Kurzweil envisions a future in which molecular manufacturing helps create a seemingly miraculous 21st century. Other nanotechies are more conservative in their outlook. We will have longer, healthier lives quite possibly much longer. Merkle recently left Xerox PARC to delve directly into such possibilities. Zyvex aims to build molecular assemblers microscopic devices that can build things molecule by molecule.
Microscopic photos show Zyvex scientists bending a nanotube.
Since trillions of the devices are needed to make things on a useful scale, it won t be cost effective to make the bots one by one. So far much of the research into nanotechnology has been centered in universities and government research labs, but private firms are getting into the mix. Besides HP, IBM and Lucent are among the major companies investigating nanotech s prospects. One reason big technology firms may be interested in molecular manufacturing is that it threatens to obliterate current lithography systems when it comes to churning out powerful, cheap computer chips. IBM researchers announced last week a breakthrough in using rings of cobalt atoms to transfer energy.