Manufactured products are made from atoms. The properties of those products depend on how those atoms are arranged. If we rearrange the atoms in coal, we get diamonds. If we rearrange the atoms in sand (and add a pinch of impurities) we get computer chips. If we rearrange the atoms in dirt, water and air we get grass.

Since we first made stone tools and flint knives we have been arranging atoms in great thundering statistical herds by casting, milling, grinding, chipping and the like. We’ve gotten better at it: we can make more things at lower cost and greater precision than ever before. But at the molecular scale we’re still making great ungainly heaps and untidy piles of atoms.

That’s changing. In special cases we can already arrange atoms and molecules exactly as we want. Theoretical analyses make it clear we can do a lot more. Eventually, we should be able to arrange and rearrange atoms and molecules much as we might arrange LEGO blocks. In not too many decades we should have a manufacturing technology able to:

• Build products with almost every atom in the right place.
• Do so inexpensively.
• Make most arrangements of atoms consistent with physical law.

Often called nanotechnology, molecular nanotechnology or molecular manufacturing, it will let us make most products lighter, stronger, smarter, cheaper, cleaner and more precise.