GREY goo is no more. Eric Drexler, the futurist who dreamed up the vision of self-replicating nanomachines spreading across the planet has publicly repudiated his idea.
In his 1986 book Engines of Creation, Drexler suggests that microscopic machines might one day be able to manipulate individual molecules to build any desired structure. If such a machine contained its own blueprint and could scavenge raw materials, it could take over the planet in a chain reaction of self-replication, he warned.
“The self-replicating machine idea has had a profound effect on nanotechnology, or rather its perception – mostly for the bad,” says Mark Welland, editor-in-chief of the journal…
