The negative effects that public overexcitement can have

A cautionary tale of history (wiki-TODO: History page needs improvement).

Some multity branch stories came with a quite a bit of incompressible complexity.
This is one such story. So please bear with it and read the whole thing.

The back story in brief sequential summary:

• The book Engines of Creations gets published presenting early ideas of molecular assemblers, exciting visions, and grey goo
• Note that: Most of the excited folks know little to nothing about the technical details but are very loud.
  (they did not read Nanosystems or it was just not released yet)
• public hype and over-excitement ensued amplified by public writers and authors
• – Consequence1: Excitement leads to public awareness and government funding for the label "nanotechnology" ~> eventual founding of the NNI
• – Consequence2: Public writers and SciFi authors both jump on the grey-goo scenario (Why The Future Does Not Need Us; Prey)
• Researchers …
• – fear their mundane work being associated with grey-goo and
• – fear their grey-goo scenarios lead to public outcry against their mundane work (akin to outcries against gene editing, which is a completely different context)
• – fear their funding being culled ultimately
• Researchers trace back => molecular assemblers => Engines of Creation => Eric Drexler
• Researchers only hear the insufficiently or ill-informed overexcited folks not actual technical details =>
  making Eric Drexler a target for intentional discreditation efforts

Meanwhile (overlappingly sequential with the back story):

• Before 2000: Molecular assemblers have become outdated and nanosystems with technical details gets released, not mentioning molecular assemblers once.
• Researcher not aware of that but only of the fantasy of the loud overexcited fanboys. Plus they see the mind-virus of the grey-goo-idea as significant threat. Thus …
• Around 2000 Direct public attack: The infamous Dtexler-Smalley debate. (Richard Smalley being head of the NNI.)
• Active removal of everything and anything mentioning direct manipulation of atoms in the NNI research plans. (there is evidence)
• Attempts to redefine/bend the therm "nanotechnology" further to not include things like mechanochemistry and mechanosynthesis.
• A long winter of no relevant R&D towards advanced atomically precise manufacturing ensued.

Related

• History

External links

See: 1:14:50 in this video where Eric K. Drexler presents/discusses his (back then) new book Radical abundance
Youtube => Oxford Marin School => Radical abundance: how a revolution in nanotechnology will change civilization