544K views · Aug 23, 2012 · 1:19:47 · 1 HN recommender · 5 mentions · discussed 2015–2026
A recording of Richard Feynman's talk on the possibilities of manipulating matter at very small scales, widely seen as an early vision of nanotechnology. This is a later version of his 1959 "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" lecture.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN points to it when discussing nanobots and microscale physics, including how things behave at tiny scales.
“there's a good richard feynam video about how things feel when they're that small”HN comment, 2026
“there's a good richard feynam video about how things feel when they're that small”
Explains how things feel at tiny scales
at the scale that it operates, the flagella is more a drill than a propeller there's a good richard feynam video about how things feel when they're that small this video
“Here's a video of him giving a version of the talk in 1984”
Here's a video of him giving a version of the talk in 1984, to an audience of ludicrous californian hippies: this video I think it might be at the infamous esalen institute.
“at small scales water is thick like honey”
This is fantastic, but another approach would be to use the things that are already small and learn how they work, and then maybe reprogram them (i.e. bacteria). Also, as Richard Feynman pointed out ( this video ) at small scales water is thick like honey so it's probably more efficient to use a rotating turbine mechanism (i.e. flagella) for propulsion rather than trying to shrink paddles down to micron sizes. And almost foreign material that you put in your body will eventually be covered in bacterial biofilms. So might as well learn how to program and control the bacteria in the first place.
“Feynman predicted the nanobots a while ago”
2030 seems way too early, but Feynman predicted the nanobots a while ago: this video There are at least two ways to go about this: 1 - keep making computers smaller until they are ingestible and somehow interface with biology 2 - learn enough about existing biology to be able to re-program cells for our purposes However, to me the most exciting type of projects are the ones that merge these approaches, like an ingestible pill shaped device containing a compartment filled with bacteria engineered for particular tasks. In one case the bacteria were made to glow in the presence of heme, and the device contains a light sensor as well as bluetooth transmitter to relay the data to the smartphone in real time. link As Feyman mentioned, this type of device could also be made to capture a biopsy, perform certain micro-surgeries, etc aka Swallow the Doctor. But without even even getting to the super fancy nanorobots, it seems to me there is a lot of low-hanging fruit in simply chemically modifying or repackaging existing drugs for tissue-specific application. This would enable increasing the dosage of existing medication without increasing side effects. That seems like something that could happen by 2030 and it would revolutionize medicine.
The sequential process performance ceiling will be set by physical limits. Photons at high frequenties have too much energy, for example gamma rays. The practical ceiling will be set by manufacturing limitations for the next few decades: can we build structures atom by atom? [1] [1] Richard Feynman "Tiny Machines" Nanotechnology Lecture - aka "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" this video
