Credit for launching the nanotechnology revolution frequently goes to Richard Feynman’s 1959 talk to the American Physical Society, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” And even if you disagree with this credit, I hope you can agree that Feynman’s enthusiasm for “small science” certainly fed the imaginations of scientists, philosophers, and deep thinkers about a future built upon nanotechnologies.
Others, maybe Eric Drexler, or was it Omni Magazine, forecast a darker future for nanotechnology with predictions of self-replicating nanobots gone rogue, consuming nearly all resources, and leaving only a dark, dead, world composed of nothing but useless nanobots forming endless piles of “grey goo,”