Nanotechnology is an relatively new area of science in which extremely tiny machines, ranging from a few to a few hundred nanometers in size, are used to manipulate systems. This manipulation may take place at the cellular level or even the atomic level. A suggested name for these nanomachines is assemblers. Each assembler could function as a nanocomputer with a robotic arm. The computer could be programmed with instructions for placing atoms or molecules. The assemblers could even have the ability to replicate themselves, making production costs relatively cheap.

An example of a naturally occurring assembler is the protein-manufacturing ribosome. Ribosomes manufacture all the proteins existing in living cells and are relatively small, on the same scale as the suggested assembler. They are capable of building almost any protein. Each Ribosome does this by stringing together amino acids in a precise linear sequence. This means that it has...