Ralph Merkle

“We can grow crops less expensively because molecular manufacturing technology is inherently low cost.”

“One of the concepts essential to molecular manufacturing is that of a self-replicating manufacturing system. That concept has lagged behind in its acceptance.”

“A potato can grow quite easily on a very small plot of land. With molecular manufacturing, we'll be able to have distributed manufacturing, which will permit manufacturing at the site using technologies that are low-cost and easily available.”

“If we attempt to block the development of new technology, we effectively have ensured that the most responsible parties will not develop them.”

“If we can reduce the cost and improve the quality of medical technology through advances in nanotechnology, we can more widely address the medical conditions that are prevalent and reduce the level of human suffering.”

“The laws of physics should allow us to arrange things molecule by molecule and even atom by atom, and at some point it was inevitable that we would develop a technology that would let us do this.”

“Nanotechnology is an idea that most people simply didn't believe.”

“Food is available, but it cannot be shipped into an area, so the people in that area suffer the consequences.”

“There are certain things that are inherently scarce. For example, there is only a certain amount of beachfront property in California. It is going to be scarce, it is going to be expensive.”

“Nanotechnology will let us build computers that are incredibly powerful. We'll have more power in the volume of a sugar cube than exists in the entire world today.”

“It looks as though yields of over 10 times what we can currently grow per acre are feasible if you control the CO2 concentration, the humidity, the temperature, all the various factors that plants depend on to grow rapidly.”

“Manufacturing takes place in very large facilities. If you want to build a computer chip, you need a giant semiconductor fabrication facility. But nature can grow complex molecular machines using nothing more than a plant.”

“A molecular manufacturing technology will let us build molecular surgical tools, and those tools will, for the first time, let us directly address the problems at the very root level.”

“Lighter computers and lighter sensors would let you have more function in a given weight, which is very important if you are launching things into space, and you have to pay by the pound to put things there.”

“As in any technological revolution, there will be winners and losers. On balance, everyone will come out ahead, although there will be particular companies that will not be able to cope with a new environment.”

“We see an entire planet which has many limitations.”

“We are looking at a future where to a first approximation, everyone is wealthy.”

“If you think the technology is infeasible, you don't worry about what it might do and what its potential is.”

“One of the things that we can say with confidence is that we will have much lighter, much stronger materials, and this will reduce the cost of air flight, and the cost of rockets.”

“Machines built by human beings they will function correctly if we provide them with a very specific environment. But if that environment is changed, they won't function at all.”