Following hot on the heels of the cartoon showing that molecular manufacturing is indeed possible, comes the latest work from Robert Freitas, a report showing that molecular manufacturing is, er, indeed possible, entitled Report on a Pathway to Diamond-Based Molecular Manufacturing.
More and more it seems that the Drexlerians see themselves as the rebels and outlaws of the scientific world, a sort of diamondoid Hells Angels.
One of the most common criticisms we hear about nanotech from a commercial point of view is that you need the resources of a university or an IBM to get anywhere, while one of the features of the MNT community is that they wont go within a thousand miles of a university for fear of being persecuted. This fear extends not only to the academic establishment, but the business community and the US Government. Acording to MNT convert Howard Lovy, there is a nanotech “network-in-exile” working on this vision…you simply haven’t heard about them because they’re doing it quietly, without fanfare, with very little government funding and with no media coverage. Most nanoscientists would argue that the media coverage of MNT so far is one of the chief reasons that the general public is scared witless.
Its a shame, and this attitude does the proponents of MNT a disservice. While there may indeed be something in the Drexlerian vision, now twenty years old and still largely untested experimentally, any proof of concept will come as a result of scientific experiment at a university or government lab, not from debating theory in the bars of Palo Alto.