Re: Art, where's the buzz on nanotech saving America today?



On Mon, 27 Mar 2006, BMJ wrote:

rrc wrote:
Art, back during the IT collapse of '01 and '02, nanotechnology was
heralded as the future savior of the nation. Well... where's all the
buzz nowadays?

Well, as far as I'm concerned we really do have very very small cell phones now, thumbnail sized hard drives, iPods and nanopods, RFID chips that are small and cheap, and I've seen these military spy planes that fly a TV camera over enemy teritory and they are the size of model airplanes (one foot wingspans). But robots that go through your blood vessels and chop away the cholesterol plaques....not in my lifetime. Borg implants? not in my lifetime. Other things: check the CIA. But it would be helpful to make a list of subminiature things that are already here and notice the stuff in Popular Science that won't come for years, if ever.

Actually, it's very much alive and well. My alma mater recently built a nice and shiny new building dedicated to it.

But I agree that it doesn't get a lot of attention from the media nowadays. For one thing, it's a field that's awash with money, so it doesn't have to go shilling for it any more. On top of that, the attention span of the general public with respect so such things is five years at best and since nanotech's been around for at least that long, it had its hour upon the stage.

Its a good buzzword. But, I think "The China Price" is a better buzz phrase.


If anything, nano's dead and has been replaced by the hydrogen economy
and other high oil price chicanery cerca late 70s malarkey. What gives?
Have the spin doctors on Charlie Rose lost their will to b.s. till they
drop?

It isn't so much the hydrogen economy but anything to do with climate change and what can be done to reduce its effects. You may have noticed that biofuels

In Brazil, 20% of what goes into gastanks of cars is bio-ethanol. Today. Already. And, just about market priced with gas. No fantasy. All reality.

are presently in fashion as almost every other day, one hears about
ethanol and what can be used as feedstock for it. Hybrid motor vehicles are getting about as much attention as well.


There's a strange silence on the messiah of nanotechnology and it seems
to be prevalent with the current misdirection of energy related stories.


Everyone is preoccupied with Paris Hilton and "Sex In The City".

Typically, when something new comes on the scene or suddenly gets a lot of attention from the media, it's initially portrayed as "new" and "revolutionary". This is followed by promises, often outlandish, that it will herald a bright, shiny tomorrow. (That's nothing new. Look at some old issues of magazines such as "Popular Science" and you'll see how everything from basement nuclear reactors to flying cars

And, atomic powered cars and airplanes, too.

were forecast to be commonplace
by now.) After that, there are whispers that the promises may not be fulfilled according to schedule, if at all, and then the whole issue slowly fades away as public attention is directed to something else.

What's happened to nanotech is hardly new.


I'm sure it will go to some endpoint. They've even got water-cooled CPUs in the big high spec computers now. Its an "excess."

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