WEBVTT 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Let's imagine a sculptor building a statue, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 just chipping away with his chisel. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Michelangelo had this elegant way of describing it when he said, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 "Every block of stone has a statue inside of it, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and it's the task of the sculptor to discover it." 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But what if he worked in the opposite direction? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Not from a solid block of stone, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but from a pile of dust, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 somehow gluing millions of these particles together to form a statue. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I know that's an absurd notion -- 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's probably impossible. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The only way you get a statue from a pile of dust is if the statue built itself -- 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 if somehow we could compel millions of these particles to come together 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to form the statue. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now, as odd as that sounds, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that is almost exactly the problem I work on in my lab. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I don't build with stone, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I build with nanomaterials. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They're these just impossibly small, fascinating little object. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They're so small that if this controller was a nanoparticle, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a human hair would be the size of this entire room. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And they're at the heart of a field we call nanotechnology, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 which I'm sure we've all heard about, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and we've all heard about how it is going to change everything. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You know, when I was a graduate student, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it was one of the most exciting times to be working in nanotechnology. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There were scientific breakthroughs happening all the time. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The conferences were buzzing, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 there was tons of money pouring in from funding agencies. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And the reason is, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 when objects get really small, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they're governed by a different set of physics that govern ordinary objects, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 like the ones we interact with. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We call this physics quantum mechanics. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And what is tells you is that you can precisely tune their behavior 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 just by making seemingly small changes to them, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 like adding or removing a handful of atoms, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or twisting the material. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's like this ultimate toolkit. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You really felt empowered; 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you felt like you could make anything. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And we were doing it, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and by we I mean my whole generation of graduate students. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We were trying to make blazing-fast computers using nanomaterials. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We were constructing quantum dots 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that could one day go in your body and find and fight disease. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There were even groups trying to make and elevator to space 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 using carbon nanotubes. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You can look that up, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it's true. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Anyways, we thought it was going to effect all parts 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of science and technology, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 from computing to medicine. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And I have to admit, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I drank all of the Kool-Aid. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I mean, every last drop. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But that was 15 years ago, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and -- 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so fantastic science was done, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 really important work. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We've learned a lot. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We were never able to translate that science into new technologies -- 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 into technologies that could actually impact people. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And the reason is, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 these nanomaterials -- 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they're like a double-edged sword. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The same thing that makes them so interesting -- 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they're small size -- 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 also makes them impossible to work with. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's literally like trying to build a statue out of a pile of dust. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And we just don't have the tools that are small enough to work with them. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But even if we did, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it wouldn't really matter, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because we couldn't one-by-one place millions of particles together 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to build a techonology. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So because of that, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 all of the promise 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and all of the excitement 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 has remained just that: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 promise and excitement. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We don't have any disease-fighting nanobots, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 there's no elevators to space, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and the thing that I'm most interested in, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 no new types of computing. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now that last one, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that's a really important one. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We just have come to expect 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the pace of computing advancements to go on indefinitely. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We've built entire economies on this idea. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And this pace exists because of our ability 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to pack more and more devices onto a computer chip. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And as those devices get smaller, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they get faster, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they consume less power 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and they get cheaper. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And it's this convergence that gives us this incredible pace. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 As an example: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 if I took the room-sized computer that sent three men to the moon and back, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and somehow compressed it -- 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 compressed the world's greatest computer of its day -- 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so it's the same size as your smartphone, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 your actualy smartphone, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that thing you spent 300 bucks on and just toss out every two years, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 would blow this thing away. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Like, you would not be impressed. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It couldn't do anything that your smartphone does. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it would be slow, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you couldn't put any of your stuff on it, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you could possibly get through the first two minutes 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of a "Walking Dead" episode if you're lucky -- 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 (Laughter) 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The point is, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the progress is not gradual. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The progress is relentless; 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it's exponential, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it compounds on itself year after year, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to the point where if you compare a technology 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 from one generation to the next, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they're almost unrecognizable. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And we owe it to ourselves to keep this progress going. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We want to say the same thing 10, 20, 30 years from now: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 look what we've done over the last 30 years. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Yet we know this progress may not last forever. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In fact, the party's kind of winding down. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's like "last call for alcohol," right? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If you look under the covers, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 by many metrics like speed and performance, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the progress has already slowed to a halt. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So if we want to keep this party going, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we have to do what we've always been able to do, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and that is to innovate.