Some Self-assembly Required

I've been reading Accelerando by Charles Stross, a downloadable version of which he has generously published online for free personal use (er, um, a downloadable version of the book, I mean :P -- check out http://www.accelerando.org ). The ratio of interesting ideas per chapter is sky high. Awesomely great read. Highly recommended. Anyways, one of the pillars that his version of the singularity is built on is nanotech self-assembly - you know, Eric Drexler's engines of creation. There was recently an interesting dialog between Drexler and Richard Smalley, the Nobel Prize winning discoverer of Buckminster Fullerene, the atomic geodesic sphere that led to the creation of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), the same stuff that is poised to revolutionize everything from batteries to solar cells to display technology to nanoelectronics. It turns out that Smalley has some issues with the hand-waving around the concept of molecular nano-assembly. DNA uses water as a key medium to do it's version of self-assembly, a universal solvent which has some amazing properties that are fundamental to being able to build organic molecular structures, and also presents big problems when trying to build things that include metal in them. Check out the debate: Nanotechnology: the case for and against 'molecular assemblers' and Raymond Kurzweil's commentary which provides some great background info.