9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Let's imagine a sculptor[br]building a statue,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
just chipping away with his chisel.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Michelangelo had this elegant way[br]of describing it when he said,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"Every block of stone[br]has a statue inside of it,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and it's the task[br]of the sculptor to discover it."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But what if he worked[br]in the opposite direction?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Not from a solid block of stone,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but from a pile of dust,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
somehow gluing millions of these particles[br]together to form a statue.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I know that's an absurd notion --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's probably impossible.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The only way you get a statue from a pile[br]of dust is if the statue built itself --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
if somehow we could compel millions[br]of these particles to come together

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to form the statue.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now, as odd as that sounds,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that is almost exactly the problem[br]I work on in my lab.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I don't build with stone,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I build with nanomaterials.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They're these just impossibly small,[br]fascinating little object.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They're so small that if this controller[br]was a nanoparticle,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a human hair would be the size[br]of this entire room.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And they're at the heart of a field[br]we call nanotechnology,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which I'm sure we've all heard about,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and we've all heard about how[br]it is going to change everything.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You know, when I was a graduate student,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it was one of the most exciting[br]times to be working in nanotechnology.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
There were scientific breakthroughs[br]happening all the time.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The conferences were buzzing,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
there was tons of money[br]pouring in from funding agencies.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And the reason is,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
when objects get really small,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they're governed by a different set[br]of physics that govern ordinary objects,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
like the ones we interact with.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We call this physics quantum mechanics.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And what is tells you is that you[br]can precisely tune their behavior

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
just by making seemingly[br]small changes to them,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
like adding or removing[br]a handful of atoms,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
or twisting the material.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's like this ultimate toolkit.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You really felt empowered;

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you felt like you could make anything.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And we were doing it,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and by we I mean my whole[br]generation of graduate students.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We were trying to make blazing-fast[br]computers using nanomaterials.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We were constructing quantum dots

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that could one day go in your body[br]and find and fight disease.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
There were even groups[br]trying to make and elevator to space

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
using carbon nanotubes.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You can look that up,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it's true.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Anyways, we thought it was[br]going to effect all parts

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of science and technology,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
from computing to medicine.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And I have to admit,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I drank all of the Kool-Aid.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I mean, every last drop.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But that was 15 years ago,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so fantastic science was done,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
really important work.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We've learned a lot.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We were never able to translate[br]that science into new technologies --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
into technologies that could[br]actually impact people.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And the reason is,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
these nanomaterials --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they're like a double-edged sword.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The same thing that makes [br]them so interesting --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they're small size --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
also makes them impossible to work with.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's literally like trying to build[br]a statue out of a pile of dust.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And we just don't have the tools[br]that are small enough to work with them.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But even if we did,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it wouldn't really matter,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because we couldn't one-by-one[br]place millions of particles together

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to build a techonology.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So because of that,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
all of the promise

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and all of the excitement

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
has remained just that:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
promise and excitement.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We don't have any[br]disease-fighting nanobots,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
there's no elevators to space,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the thing that I'm most interested in,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
no new types of computing.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now that last one,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that's a really important one.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We just have come to expect

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the pace of computing advancements[br]to go on indefinitely.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We've built entire economies on this idea.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And this pace exists[br]because of our ability

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to pack more and more devices[br]onto a computer chip.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And as those devices get smaller,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they get faster,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they consume less power

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and they get cheaper.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And it's this convergence that gives us[br]this incredible pace.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
As an example:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
if I took the room-sized computer[br]that sent three men to the moon and back,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and somehow compressed it --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
compressed the world's[br]greatest computer of its day --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so it's the same size as your smartphone,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
your actualy smartphone,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that thing you spent 300 bucks on[br]and just toss out every two years,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
would blow this thing away.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Like, you would not be impressed.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It couldn't do anything[br]that your smartphone does.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it would be slow,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you couldn't put any of your stuff on it,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you could possibly get through[br]the first two minutes

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of a "Walking Dead" episode[br]if you're lucky --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Laughter)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The point is,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the progress is not gradual.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The progress is relentless;

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it's exponential,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it compounds on itself[br]year after year,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to the point where[br]if you compare a technology

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
from one generation to the next,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they're almost unrecognizable.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And we owe it to ourselves[br]to keep this progress going.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We want to say the same thing[br]10, 20, 30 years from now:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
look what we've done[br]over the last 30 years.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Yet we know this progress[br]may not last forever.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In fact, the party's kind of winding down.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's like "last call for alcohol," right?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
If you look under the covers,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
by many metrics like[br]speed and performance,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the progress has already slowed to a halt.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So if we want to keep this party going,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we have to do what we've always[br]been able to do,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and that is to innovate.