End of The World

I stumbled upon a webpage totally and utterly by accident today. I typed in "goo" and hit enter before I could finish typing google :S.

A page popped up. It was a wikipedia page with the title: "Grey goo". It didn't seem interesting at all. It seemed like one of those useless entries you ignore. Out of curiosity I read the first sentence. It caught my attention!. It read: Grey goo "is a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all matter on Earth while building more of themselves — a scenario known as ecophagy ("eating the environment")" :S What the ****!!!??? Visions from the movie, "The Day the Earth Stood Still", started flowing through my mind...

So its a term coined by Eric Drexler in his 1986 book Engines of Creation in which he talks about tiny atom-size machines and the uses of such machines in our lives. Interesting stuff...