Ralph Merkle Quotes

• 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.

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Molecular, Manufacturing

• 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.

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Molecular, Manufacturing

• Because of technological limits, there is a certain amount of food that we can produce per acre. If we were to have intensive greenhouse agriculture, we could have much higher production.

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Technology, Uncategorized

  Tags in Agriculture, Limit

• 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.

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Technology

  Tags in Revolution

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

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Technology

  Tags in Effectively, Block

• Disease and ill health are caused largely by damage at the molecular and cellular level, yet today’s surgical tools are too large to deal with that kind of problem.

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Health, Uncategorized

  Tags in Disease, Ill

• 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.

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Technology, Uncategorized

  Tags in Quality

• Food is available, but it cannot be shipped into an area, so the people in that area suffer the consequence

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Food

• 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.

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Yield, Temperature

• If you look at the various strategies available for dealing with a new technology, sticking your head in the sand is not the most plausible strategy.

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Technology, Uncategorized

  Tags in Strategic

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

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Technology

• 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.

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Computer

  Tags in Sensors

• Nanotechnology is an idea that most people simply didn’t believe.

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Idea, Believe

• 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.

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Environment, Uncategorized

  Tags in Machines

• Many people in the world today are not starving because there is an inherent inability to produce food, they are starving because they are caught in the middle of political fights and blockades that have been used as weapons.

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Starving

• 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.

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Manufacturing, Facilities

• One of the issues facing us today is that there are countries where there is a serious lack of resources, the standards of living are very low, and this creates a fundamental unease and discomfort in entire population.

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Issues, Countries, Resources

• The first approximation in this future that we’re looking at is that everyone will be physically well off. They will have a great abundance in material goods, and I think that will soften some of the conflicts we see now.

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Future

  Tags in Abundance

• 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.

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Confidence

  Tags in Reduce, 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.

  Ralph Merkle

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Molecular

Ralph Merkle (29)

Birth:	2nd February, 1952
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Researcher

About

Ralph C. Merkle is a researcher in public key cryptography, and more recently a researcher and speaker on molecular nanotechnology and cryonics. Merkle appears in the science fiction novel The Diamond Age, involving nanotechnology.

Related Authors

• Dillon Burroughs
• Eliezer Yudkowsky
• Steve Squyres
• Timothy B. Tyson
• Ralph Merkle
• Mark Caine
• Milton R. Sapirstein
• Tushar Raheja
• E. O. Wilson
• Ann Herendeen

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 30th January

Births

• 1984 - Kid Cudi
• 1912 - Barbara W. Tuchman
• 1951 - Phil Collins
• 1781 - Adelbert von Chamisso
• 1902 - Nikolaus Pevsner

Deaths

• 1926 - W. L. George
• 1948 - Orville Wright
• 2007 - Sidney Sheldon
• 2006 - Wendy Wasserstein