M-01
Molecular nanotechnology and atomically precise manufacturing
A think-network for the atomically precise future — and the tools to steer it.
A think-network promoting molecular nanotechnology and other transformative futures, and the tools to steer them safely.
Foresight Institute was founded in 1986 in California by Christine Peterson, K. Eric Drexler, and James C. Bennett as a nonprofit vehicle for a single, audacious proposition: that matter could soon be engineered atom by atom via molecular ‘assemblers,’ and that this coming capability was consequential enough to require deliberate, organized foresight rather than passive discovery.
The institute’s founding coincided with Drexler’s Engines of Creation (1986), which functioned less as a technical treatise than as a founding scripture — laying out both the radical abundance nanotechnology might unlock and the existential ‘gray goo’ risk of runaway self-replication. Foresight’s project was thus double: advocacy for a nascent field before it had institutional legitimacy, and stewardship of the risks that same field implied — conducted through symposia, a newsletter, prizes, and a Bay Area network of engineers, futurists, and space-colonization veterans.
Transformative technologies — above all molecular nanotechnology — are coming; we should accelerate the beneficial ones while building the foresight and safeguards to steer them away from catastrophe.
A think-network around Drexler and Peterson advancing a specific transformative-tech vision through books, conferences, and prizes.
A vivid technological vision plus prizes and conferences organizing a community around steering a transformative future.
Put nanotechnology and the governance of transformative tech on the agenda, shaped transhumanist and existential-risk thinking, and modeled proactive foresight about emerging technology.
Molecular manufacturing remains unrealized, but its foresight-and-safety framing seeded transhumanism, longevity, and x-risk work.