Claim: Engines of Creation predicts that the rate of technological advance…

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Claim and evidence

Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnologybears on ↓Fast or hard takeoff

Engines of Creation predicts that the rate of technological advance will quicken to a great upward leap.

Machine-checked, not reviewed by an editorStated in sourceSupported

Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source

Date: 1986 · publication
Wording attested: 1997-07-09. Wording checked in the Foresight Institute’s web edition (© 1986 K. Eric Drexler; published for the web by Russell Whitaker), whose earliest captures are of 1997-07-09; a reader’s message of October 1996 on the site shows the edition was online by then. Not compared with the 1986 printing.
Role: Context
Register (kind of text): Nonfiction
Missing element: A great upward leap "in a brief time" is predicted, without a period for the transition.

Scope and limitsNo transition period is given.

The evidence 01

primary sourceSupports the claim

Engines of Creation, chapter 5: Thinking Machines (web edition)

Foresight Institute (web edition of Engines of Creation) · 1986

Archived copy, captured 1997-07-09: Engines of Creation, chapter 5: Thinking Machines (web edition)

Cite the original source

Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.

Paraphrase

The rate of technological advance will "quicken to a great upward leap: in a brief time, many areas of technology will advance to the limits set by natural law".

Location in source Chapter 5, "Accelerating the Technology Race", final synthesis

Machine-checked · 2026-10-06

Source details and check notes

Authors: K. Eric Drexler
Version: Web edition page as captured by the Internet Archive on 1997-07-09 (timestamp 19970709112142); it carries the notice "Copyright 1986, K. Eric Drexler". Retrieved 2026-10-06.
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-10-06
Language: English (en)
Archive copy: Open archived copy, captured 1997-07-09: Engines of Creation, chapter 5: Thinking Machines (web edition). An archive copy shows only what the archive retrieved on 1997-07-09. It does not prove what the page said earlier, and it can differ from the copy checked on 2026-10-06.
Attribution: K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology (1986), Foresight Institute web edition.
Reuse: All rights reserved, according to the page’s copyright notice.. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution.
Check notes: Checked against the 1997 capture.

Status and meaning

Editorial status. Not reviewed by an editor. An exploratory record that no editor has accepted. This status does not say whether a person has read any linked passage. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.

Relation. A passage of the document bears on the proposition without meeting its criterion; the record names the missing element. It is not an articulation and implies no influence.

Date. Year of the book, as given by its copyright notice; an October 1986 review is recorded in Moravec’s bibliography.

Record ID ts-a4-drexler-1986-context

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