It's just a first impression (I'm still reading), but the discussion seems kind of sad to me. Krugman once wrote an academic paper on interstellar trade, Stros

It's just a first impression (I'm still reading), but the discussion seems kind of sad to me. Krugman once wrote an academic paper on interstellar trade, Stross is famous on his way to notorious for far-out concepts, and they both seem to have this vaguely pessimistic view of the future. Somewhere in the middle of that conversation, Stross mumbles something about "Eric Drexler's pixie dust". I guess that's a cool attitude to cop if you're a science fiction writer. Nanotechnology is so obviously too good to be true that it isn't interesting and so must be hokum. But the actual research that's now getting published -- in Science and Nature, no less -- promises that we'll probably see radical change sooner rather than later. No one in the scientific community talks about it in those terms, of course. That would be... un-serious, and in a research field that was saturated with nutjobs before it formally came into existence, that's a kiss of death. Drexler posts the article citations on his blog, though: Here's a Map of China, assembled from a fabric of interlinked single strands of DNA: http://metamodern.com/2009/08/06/asia-and-the-elements-of-innovation/ http://metamodern.com/2009/08/06/asia-and-the-elements-of-in... DNA Origami for nanoscale 3D structures: http://metamodern.com/2009/05/22/a-third-revolution-in-dna-nanotechnology/ http://metamodern.com/2009/05/22/a-third-revolution-in-dna-n... DNA Origami Box (with locking hinged lid and DNA sequence "key") http://metamodern.com/2009/05/10/a-dna-origami-box/ http://metamodern.com/2009/05/10/a-dna-origami-box/ A big-picture post: http://metamodern.com/2008/11/10/modular-molecular-composite-nanosystems/ http://metamodern.com/2008/11/10/modular-molecular-composite... Software tools for protein design continue to improve: http://www.nanorex.com http://www.nanorex.com etc, etc.