K. Eric Drexler introduced us to the idea of molecular nanotechnology in his 1986 book, "Engines of Creation". In that book, he invented "nanobots". I just finally had a chance to read his more recent book from 2013, "Radical Abundance". He regrets the nanobot idea and how it was twisted into bullshit by sci-fi writers. He came up with a different name for the technology to try to make that distinction more clear: atomically precise manufacturing (APM). In other words, his vision has always been more about manufacturing techniques than about autonomous little robots. Fair enough. But, of course, if we have APM, we will also have nanobots. I preferred the old non-acronym, molecular nanotechnology, as easier to remember and plenty accurate.
In Radical Abundance, he repeatedly tries to make it clear that APM will be developed very gradually, similarly to how large factories were improved iteratively over the course of the industrial revolution through better steel, better machining, and better tools to build the next generation of tools. And because the improvements will be so gradual, it would be silly to superimpose APM technology directly onto the current world, as they so frequently do in sci-fi to create interesting contrast. We still have a lot of people who think the nanobots are coming within 10 years. Drexler urges us to stay calm. He doesn't give timelines, but when you look at all of the complex intermediate steps, it will clearly be many many decades of excruciatingly slow progress. Predicting how that progress will impact society just gets so hard the farther out you go.
I think there is one big change that Drexler is overlooking. I think the Great Upload Event will start in about 50 years, which is long before we even get close to APM. In fact, most of the things you are familiar with probably won't really change very much within 50 years. The biggest changes will probably be things like better computers, better VR, better AI, and autonomous robots (it's hard to predict how small they will get). If you superimpose those improvements upon our current world, then the Great Upload Event fits right in. We will already have had years of deep interaction with robust intelligent computers, and we will not hesitate to move our own minds to that proven substrate. The current thing holding us back from uploading at this point is mostly just better computers. Our computers will need to be a LOT better to perform the scans as well as to run the emulations, but 50 years is enough time for that to happen with exponential improvements or really even with fairly linear improvements.
This means that all the interesting APM developments will happen after the Great Upload Event. We will be able to fully participate in the APM revolution instead of being sidelined.