Download or read book The Visioneers written by W. Patrick McCray and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1969, Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill began looking outward to space colonies as the new frontier for humanity's expansion. A decade later, Eric Drexler, an MIT-trained engineer, turned his attention to the molecular world as the place where society's future needs could be met using self-replicating nanoscale machines. Patrick McCray traces how these visioneers and the communities they fostered blended countercultural ideals with hard science, entrepreneurship, libertarianism and unbridled optimism about the future.