Kim Eric Drexler (born 25 April 1955) is an American author and engineer, currently Senior Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute.
Drexler is most famous for his pioneering work on atomically precise manufacturing, especially as presented in his books Engines of Creation,[1] a popular introduction to the core ideas, and Nanosystems,[2] a comprehensive graduate-level survey of the field (itself based on his MIT doctoral thesis[3][4]). More recently, Drexler’s research has focused on AI risk, where he has developed an approach he calls Comprehensive AI Services.[5] Drexler has also made original contributions to the Fermi paradox,[6] space colonization,[7] distributed computing,[8] hypertext publishing,[9] and other fields.[10][11]
Further reading
Amato, Ivan (1991) The apostle of nanotechnology, Science, vol. 254, pp. 1310–1311.
A short profile of Drexler, focusing on his early work in nanotechnology.
Bassett, Deborah R. (2010) Drexler, K. Eric, in David Guston (ed.) Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Society, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 168–170.
A brief entry on Drexler, with emphasis on his role in the development of nanotechnology.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (2007) The stealth threat: An interview with K. Eric Drexler, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 63, pp. 55–58.
Drexler, K. Eric (2013) Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization, New York: PublicAffairs.
Edwards, Steven A. (2006) The Nanotech Pioneers: Where Are They Taking Us?, Weinheim: Wiley-VCH.
A short biography of Drexler is found on pp. 18-21.
Regis, Ed (1990) Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition: Science Slightly over the Edge, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Regis, Ed (2004) The incredible shrinking man, Wired, October 1.
A profile of Drexler.
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Drexler, K. Eric (1986) Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, New York: Anchor Books.
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Drexler, K. Eric (1992) Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation, New York: John Wiley & Sons.
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Drexler, K. Eric (1991) Molecular Machinery and Manufacturing with Applications to Computation, PhD thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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See also Drexler, K. Eric (1981) Molecular engineering: An approach to the development of general capabilities for molecular manipulation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 78, pp. 5275–5278.
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Drexler, K. Eric (2019) Reframing superintelligence: Comprehensive AI services as general intelligence, Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford.
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Sandberg, Anders, K. Eric Drexler & Toby Ord (2018) Dissolving the Fermi paradox, arXiv, June 6.
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Drexler, K. Eric & N. J. May (1979) High performance solar sails and related reflecting devices, 4th Conference on Space Manufacturing Facilities Princeton University, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
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Miller, Mark S. & K. Eric Drexler (1988) ‘Markets and computation: Agoric open systems’, in B. A. Huberman (ed.) The Ecology of Computation, Amsterdam: North-Holland, pp. 133–176.
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Drexler (1986) Engines of Creation, ch. 14.
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Drexler, K. Eric (2009) How to understand everything (and why), Metamodern, May 17.
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Drexler, K. Eric (2009) How to learn about everything, Metamodern, May 27.