Principles of Change
In this article I will discuss some key points from Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology by K. Eric Drexler. This book comes recommended as a foundation of mindset by Diamandis and continues to amaze me the more I read it. This book was published in 1986 and I am continually astounded at the book’s predictive nature and amazed as I consider the progress these principles have seen in the past 34 years.
This piece is not a part of a “book review” per se, but I will take key quotes which I’ve underlined through my reading and discuss them. My mindset through this discussion will be from the viewpoint, of course, of progressing additive manufacturing/3D Printing. A few other important themes emerge as well.
Note: the first quarter of this chapter takes time to describe the evolutionary process in microbiology (RNA, DNA, ribosomes, etc). These are important parts of evolution to understand and I encourage their study. For the purposes of this piece I won’t discuss them in depth as Drexler has simply because I want to jump straight to the principles.
Chapter 2: The Principles of Change
“Think of the design process as involving first the generation of alternative and then the testing of those alternatives against a whole array of requirements and constraints.” - Herbert A. Simon
The chapter opens with this quote which, to me, describes the quantum nature of design. Possibilities are endless; the right possibilities will only be realized through experimentation and testing. Drexler spends the first bit of the chapter describing the evolutionary process on a micro and then macro scale. To sum this up (underlines mine)…
Evolution attributes patterns of success to the elimination of successful changes… It explains something visible (successful, purposeful, entities) in terms of something invisible (unsuccessful entities that have vanished).
This distinction between the visible and invisible is along the lines of Thomas Edison’s quote about making the lightbulb: he found a thousand ways how it doesn’t work, but only found one in which it does work. The entrepreneur understands this: that success is the product of dozens of failures.
Evolutions proceeds by the variation and selection of replicators.
This sentence in particular stood out to me above everything else in the chapter, so much so that I wrote it down in my own design notebook. Note the grammar: variation and selection of replicators. It is not, then, the replications (objects) which are the end goal; it is new replicators (methods) which are desirable.
This sentence is extremely important to me as it verifies the mission behind AMPEL (the Additive Manufacturing Prototyping and Experimentation Laboratory). This mission is to study the dozens of methods of additive manufacturing and to experiment with the hundreds of applications of AM and to document the thousands of materials capable of use in AM. The goal is to perfect the art of additive manufacturing by testing the variations.
This sentence also speaks to the uniqueness of 3D Printing in particular as a revolutionary method of replication, to the effect that one of the most popular machines in the early 3D printing world is referred to as the RepRap: a mixture of “Rapid Replicator”. Coincidence? I think not.
In engineering, enlightened trial and error, not the planning of flawless intellects, has brought most advances; this is why engineers build prototypes.
This follows on a paragraph where Drexler discusses how many (not all) technological discoveries are “sheer accident”. Again, another encouragement for pushing forward with AMPEL whose purpose is to build, test, document, and improve methods of technology through prototyping.
This is not to say that the design and prototyping will be done in a “purposeless” fashion or by taking shots in the dark. Deliberate testing and design are staples, but much of the experimentation is “going where no man has gone before” and testing methods/materials which are new. The leap of faith and “taking a shot in the dark” mentality is essential to fearless testing.
Not only do engineers accumulate designs that work, they accumulate design methods that work… As Alfred North Whitehead stated, “The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.”
This points us back up to the earlier paragraph about the value not of replications, but of replicators. Value comes from methods, not objects. Documentation is how we preserve the correct methods for others to follow.
…tools can’t become part of your design process if you don’t know what is available and what the various tools do.
I read the word “tools” and I see the term “methods”. A prime example of this is my endeavor to learn any CAD program which I come across. In doing so, I’ve built my own “toolbox” which I can open up and use to solve most any problem which comes my way. Further, as the number of methods at my disposal grows I seem to find more and better problems to solve. It is a self-perpetuating cycle.
This principle is practically applied through AMPEL, as one of the main goals is to document methods of additive manufacture and democratize the knowledge. I believe that this will help accelerate the world of additive manufacturing and thus the future of manufacturing. Since this technology is perhaps the most fantastic form of replication which humans have at their disposal, in theory this will be a significant contributor to human evolution.
In an era when science and technology regularly present facts that are both new and trustworthy, a rigid mental immune system becomes a dangerous handicap.
This sentence comes almost out of the blue in this piece, but Drexler has taken the last couple pages to discuss the idea of memes and memetics. Just as genes allow the transfer of genetic information from creature to creature, memes allow the transfer of memories, or memetic information, from creature to creature. Likened to infective viruses, memes easily sway the opinion and then actions of those with a weak mental immune system.
A rigid mental immune system has been historically valued from an evolutionary standpoint (don’t eat this root until it’s been cooked; stay away from that pond, crocodiles live there), thus the value placed on bards or storytellers in early human societies. The quote above points out the changing times which have accelerated the pace of discovery and documentation. Rejection of the new is no longer the wisest move for survival; tried and true methods, though useful, might leave you in the dust.
Not mentioned, however, is the value of a critical mind, one which is not openly accepting of new ideas but gives them careful evaluation before implementation. Writing this in 2020, where the proliferation of “fake news” is at an all time high, this trait seems especially valuable.
Conclusion
The last quote, I think, took this piece for a drastic turn. I perhaps would have preferred to keep discussing the importance of prototyping and replication in the evolutionary process but the inclusion of memetics is just as important to the selection of ideas.
This chapter has motivated me again to keep building AMPEL as a place where additive manufacturing technology can be studied and improved. Replicators are the engines of evolution and are often much more valuable than the replications which they create (methods > objects). I’ll end this discussion with the questions Drexler uses to close the chapter in order to spur the inquisitive mind:
What are the replicators?
How do they vary?
What determines their success?
How do they defend against invaders?
