While expanding on the possibility of grey-goo in your article "Risk of Nanotechnology and/or Molecular Development" you stated that, "most technological advances in the world today have been fuelled and motivated by science-fiction". As observant as you are in spotting the parallels in science-fiction and technology, I must, however, tell you that it is the other way around: Science-fiction imitating real life and/or man's intents. Check-out the forwarded "Human or Robot?"
Enjoy the positives of Hi-Tech, but do not be fooled. Young, adventurous, ambitious Drexler had accidentally stepped into a grey-zone and the consensus was: Instead of killing him, let us use him, seeing there are bound to be more such accidents. Drexler was simply an instrument to gain public malleability just as certain personalities are being used today to soften the public on ID implants as a wonderful solution to ID fraud.
Some science fictions are hand-tipping. The most extreme negative of Hi-Tech was exploited as soon as the opportunity presented itself. If you apply my suspect decade - 1940s - of beginning mass experimentations, then the mass crops - human-looking beings without (1). Commonsense (2). Regards to facts and (3). Completely void of reason - are currently in their early sixties(60s) and younger.
While I agree with Dr. Smalley that chemistry is complex and reactions hard to control, universal assemblers are, however, not science fiction. And let us not forget the fact that electronic devices somehow tend to prefer the other mode - Runaway Mode.
Respectfully, L'Afrique