In Response to “Plenty of Room at the Bottom” by Richard Feynman
In 1959, Richard Feynman did a lectures that set a scene for future physicist to come, I don’t know physicist in 1950s so I don’t talk about it, but I know he did made a fuss since he already was a highly respected theoretical physicist in his era. In modern era I see a lot of people in the internet still impressed by how imaginative Feynman was by this lecture, let’s just talk bit by bit of what and how he discussed it and I will response him that sent signal to the Valhalla.
First thing I remember in this lecture (as if I’ve been there) is he straightly talking about resizing the whole Encyclopedia Brittanica on the head of the pin, what a wonderful man he was thinking about preservation of the whole humanity. But really he was a shaman(1) because in 2009 Stanford University wrote the letters “S” and “U” (for Stanford University duh) as small as 0.3 nanometers, that is just insane really, other than that there’s actually smallest printed book that measures 0.07mm X 0.10mm, well not quite reaching the wow factors I still think that we just scratched the surface for what we can actually achieve, imagine the archiving possibilities for this, in a world where probably all of documents are digital, this could be revolutionary for a “nuclear proof” writings, it could be use for spying purposes, or even some cool sick twisted puzzle. Still lot of stuff possibilities left undiscovered.
Further down the lecture, we actually see him talking about biological system, I honestly don’t really understand this part, but I do understand him talking about how small things like that can still work together, like a cell in a Biological system. This is quite interesting because even in the 1959 we’ve been putting something in our bodies for the sake of better music(?) I won’t talk about Yellow Submarine but really he was a shaman(2) because in 1990s we got Jurassic Park, Alien Resurection, Star Wars: Attack of the clones, all because of the DNA discoveries. Imagine what we could do when we put something in our body that can just make us like mutants. I don’t know anything about Biology but I know that we will get enhanced soldier with nano-biology reaction someday.
This is probably one of the most impressive thing in his lectures, he was talking about computers and he somehow figured out that someday human might achieve this, because on the next part he was talking about “Miniaturization by evaporation”. Are you kidding me? He was basically talking about Litography and that is why he was a shaman(3). This part is basically one of the best part of his “Nostradamus” lecture, because since then, computers chip skyrocketed and reach and all time lowest transistor size of 3 nm as in 2025, and it said to reach 1 nm at around 2027. It basically allows us to make Neuralink so Elon could control our minds, make a phone call, search for ChatGPT and any other good things. One of the things that I want to see in the future or might be, is the combination of quantum computer and classical computers, basically we would have a pocket AI in the future (just like the movie “Her”). The classical computer would handle and manage the data and the quantum computer would be “brain”. It would probably take a long time yeah, other things in mind for the future that probably wouldn’t happen is multiplayer dream “game”. Think about it, our dream is a “computer generated world” inside our brain, and what if we just you know, connect them?
This is probably the last-ish part of the lecture, now he is talking about lubrication, specifically on a servo motors and how we can possibly make them. Now this part is a little bit weird because I don’t really know the point of making a servo motors smaller, what’s really interesting is the manufacturing process that could happen tho. Tiny hands with a master hands that actually exist in 2025 is MEMS Micro-grippers. I read the google that these hands has a problem that called “stiction” problems, which said that at the micro-scale, gravity is weak and static electricity is king. This is highly similar to his lecture that he said that it has some weird gravity at quantum scale, Van der Waals interactions and such. He really pointed out that even if we achieve such production, God will halt our operation with his rules so we need to come up with better methods. This is probably not the best “came to life” prediction of his, because he could see the flaw right away. I am not sure tho, what if we just not there yet?
What is the conclusion? We need to come up with better prediction, really, just look at this phrase “Each letter represents six or seven ”bits” of information”. Was that six seven? In 1959? Really tho all jokes asides, we need to think innovatively, always and even passed that down to generations, because when science has nothing left to discovered, we forced to create.