Comment by rjf72

It's interesting to consider the parallels between this stuff and the fountain of youth, or alchemists turning lead into gold. Explorers were constantly uncovering unimaginable new things with no real idea of where it might end. Similarly alchemists who were finding that various combinations of compounds created ever more unimaginable results. So they, too, simply extrapolated outward.

I grew up with Drexler as a sort of hero. It's amazing how rapidly nanotech went from the imminent thing to change all things to, 'huh - what's that supposed to be about?' Wonder if 20 years down the line we might look at AI similarly.