Human life after advanced nanotechnology has been developed will be fundamentally different from life up until that point.

When can we expect advanced nanomachinery to be commercialized? Will any technologies not be affected in some way by advanced nanotechnology?

A poll of NewScientist readers selected medical nanorobots as the technology that will have the biggest impact on human life in the next 30 years.

David Hanson of Hanson Robotics argues that building humanlike robots will push the boundaries of several scientific and technical disciplines and prevent intelligent machines from becoming dangerous as they achieve true general intelligence.

In a review of physicist and television host Michio Kaku’s latest book, Foresight advisor Glenn Reynolds finds reason for optimism, but also cause for concern in the career choices of today’s brightest minds.

UK scientists use mechanical force to manipulate silicon dimers on a silicon surface as a first step toward automated atomically precise manufacture of three-dimensional nanostructures.

Will proposals to establish criteria for green nanotechnology foster growth of nanotechnology innovation?

Does nanotechnology need more energetic PR, and if so, what kind?

Senior Associate Alvin Steinberg suggests that we portray the nanotech race as in part a security race involving quantum computing.

A list of the “Top 50 Blogs by Scientific Researchers” includes Nanodot among blogs focusing on open source and open access, academia, projects funded by organizations, and news produced by writers who research science.

Video footage of conference focused on “Updating the social contract for Science”

An IEEE Spectrum podcast asks the question, Why Are Terrorists Often Engineers? The blurb: With terrorism back in the news, so, too, is a curious footnote: Of the hundreds of individuals involved in political violence, nearly half of those with degrees have been engineers. This finding, first published in 2008, has been substantiated by two [...]

Longtime Foresight supporter John Gilmore writes: “I noticed a story that reminded me of something Foresight wanted to encourage in society.  Wired reports that the CIA uses decision analysis software ‘Analysis of Competing Hypotheses’, and has funded a rewritten version for shared networked analysis by many people.  But the gov’t contractors got into a hassle [...]

Many of you will recall Bill Joy’s famous article in Wired called Why the future doesn’t need us, where he expressed concern about various technologies including advanced nanotech. Apparently he gave an update of his views on this in his talk for TED, viewable here. An excerpt: So if we can address, use technology, help [...]

The Open Science Summit on July 29-31 in Berkeley is looking better and better. Topics include OpenPCR, DIY biology, open source hardware, brain preservation, synthetic biology, gene patents, open data, open access journals, reputation engines, crowd-funding and microfinance for science, citizen science, biohacking, open source biodefense, cure entrepreneurs, open source drug discovery, patent pools, tech transfer, and [...]

Not able to attend the Open Science Summit on July 29-31 in Berkeley, California? We’ll miss you, but you can watch the conference live at: http://fora.tv/live/open_science/open_science_summit_2010 Put it on your calendar now!  Or we’ll hope to see you in person, especially for the session where I’m speaking: “Safety and Security Concerns, Open Source Biodefense” at [...]

Those of you with a background in organic chemistry will recognize the venerable name of Beilstein, originally a handbook of organic chemistry which evolved into a database, later combined with Gmelin inorganic data to form the Crossfire database. So the Beilstein brand is a powerful one in chemistry.  Nanowerk brings to our attention that Beilstein [...]

The U.S. President’s Council on Advisors on Science and Technology requested public input on a number of manufacturing topics including “molecular-level, atomically precise production.” Foresight joined with our sister organization IMM to produce a statement on Atomically Precise Manufacturing, now posted on the OpenPCAST site, with public voting and commenting still continuing, so join in the [...]

For many of us, it’s our desire to preserve and restore the environment that brought us into the work of pursuing molecular nanotechnology in the first place.  How do we keep going over the decades that this goal is taking to accomplish? One way is to restore our enthusiasm for the goal through films such [...]

The Mark, “Canada’s daily online forum for news, commentary, and debate,” has published a commentary that primarily takes a negative view of the use of nanotech (or any tech) for life extension: Extreme life extension raises other interesting, yet troubling questions. Significant life extension could have serious implications for individual identity; what if we change [...]