Assemblers will take years to emerge, but their emergence seems almost inevitable: Though the path to assemblers has many steps, each step will bring the next in reach, and each will bring immediate rewards. The first steps have already been taken, under the names of "genetic engineering" and "biotechnology." Other paths to assemblers seem possible. Barring worldwide destruction or worldwide controls, the technology race will continue whether we wish it or not. And as advances in computer-aided design speed the development of molecular tools, the advance toward assemblers will quicken.

To have any hope of understanding our future, we must understand the consequences of assemblers, disassemblers, and nanocomputers. They promise to bring changes as profound as the industrial revolution, antibiotics, and nuclear weapons all rolled up in one massive breakthrough. To understand a future of such profound change, it makes sense to seek principles of change that have survived the greatest u

A brave new world means new technology, rethinking the old and imagining and inventing the new. This is the only thing I hate about growing older ... I probably won't live to see most of the thing envisioned now come into general use. My children and grandchildren will reap these benefits..

Eric says some of us may be alive when this starts to happen