"Plants with leaves no more efficient than today's……" — K. Eric Drexler
"Plants with leaves no more efficient than today's solar cells could out-compete real plants, crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage. Tough omnivorous bacteria could out-compete real bacteria: They could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days. Dangerous replicators could easily be too tough, small, and rapidly spreading to stop - at least if we make no preparation. We have trouble enough controlling viruses and fruit flies."
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K. Eric Drexler
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22 Quotes by K. Eric Drexler
K. Eric Drexler has 22 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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The basic parts, the start-up molecules, can be supplied in abundance and don't have to be made by some elaborate…
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I had been impressed by the fact that biological systems were based on molecular machines and that we were learning…
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Any powerful technology can be abused.
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Today we have big, crude instruments guided by intelligent surgeons, and we have little, stupid molecules of drugs that get…
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If you take all the factories in the world today, they could make all the parts necessary to build more…
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I've encountered a lot of people who sound like critics but very few who have substantive criticisms. There is a…
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After realizing that we would eventually be able to build molecular machines that could arrange atoms to form virtually any…
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It's a lot easier to see, at least in some cases, what the long-term limits of the possible will be,…
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And that because the moving parts are a million times smaller than the ones we're familiar with, they move a…
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An international race in the relevant technologies is getting under way at this point, not necessarily with an understanding of…
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But if we can manage it so people don't have things forced on them that they don't want, I think…
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In thinking about nanotechnology today, what's most important is understanding where it leads, what nanotechnology will look like after we…
See all 22 quotes by K. Eric Drexler »
More Bacteria Quotes
This quote is filed under Bacteria Quotes,
one of 90 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war or there won't be…
— Noam Chomsky
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But however secure and well-regulated civilized life may become, bacteria, Protozoa, viruses, infected fleas, lice, ticks, mosquitoes, and bedbugs will…
— Hans Zinsser
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Intelligence is a valuable thing, but it is not usually the key to survival. Sheer fecundity ... usually counts. The…
— Isaac Asimov
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With one linear centimeter of your lower colon there lives and works more bacteria (about 100 billion) that all humans…
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Most educated people are aware that we're the outcome of nearly 4 billion years of Darwinian selection, but many tend…
— Martin Rees
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... [I]nfectious disease is merely a disagreeable instance of a widely prevalent tendency of all living creatures to save themselves…
— Hans Zinsser
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[Bacteria are the] dark matter of the biological world [with 4 million mostly unknown species in a ton of soil].
— E. O. Wilson
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Without birds to feed on them, the insects would multiply catastrophically. ... The insects, not man or other proud species,…
— H. Bentley Glass
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However, on many occasions, I examined normal blood and normal tissues and there was no possibility of overlooking bacteria or…
— Robert Koch
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It has occurred to me that possibly the white corpuscles may have the office of picking up and digesting bacterial…
— Unknown Author
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It seems now clear that a belief in the functional importance of all enzymes found in bacteria is possible only…
— Marjory Stephenson
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Perhaps bacteria may tentatively be regarded as biochemical experiments; owing to their relatively small size and rapid growth, variations must…
— Marjory Stephenson
See all 90 Bacteria Quotes »