I’ll be speaking at the following event. If you miss the early registration rate, you can get 20% off regular registration with the discount code ‘Foresight’: Open Science Summit 2010: Updating the Social Contract for Science 2.0 July 29-31 International House Berkeley http://opensciencesummit.com Ready for a rapid, radical reboot of the global innovation system for [...]

Here we present a special report from Dave Conz of ASU on Josh Hall’s talk and subsequent panel discussion at the SME nanotech conference.  An excerpt: Technoscientific development is difficult to direct and nearly impossible to predict.  Because of this – not in spite of it – panel discussions like “How Do We Get There [...]

Longtime Foresight friend Robert Grudin has a new book Design and Truth, just reviewed by the New York Times.  The review quotes Grudin on designers: “However grand their aspirations, they wait upon the will of people in power,” he writes. “And power, which can ratify the truth of good design, can, conversely, debase design into [...]

David Cassel brings our attention to an h+ review of the long-awaited film The Singularity is Near, based on the book by Ray Kurzweil: In documentary style, we have Ray discussing his ideas about the Singularity, with commentators variously supporting or refuting or worrying about his ideas. With Bill McKibben in the role of the [...]

Longtime Foresight Senior Associate and senior research scientist at Genetic Programming, Inc. has done an interview on memristors over at blog FrogHeart for those of us trying to keep up on this challenging topic.  He concludes: So why are memristors useful? Sticking with our water analogy, I can make the pipe bigger or small depending [...]

The UK-based Institute of Physics (IOP) publishes, among other things, the journal Nanotechnology, one of the leading journals in the field, and has had special issues with papers from Foresight conferences gaoing back to the 90s. It was thus somewhat surprising, yet gratifying, to find them submitting quite a strongly-worded critique of practices in climatology [...]

Foresight ally Jeff Ubois has a new book out, published by Fondazione Giannino Bassetti, Conversations on Innovation, Power, and Responsibility.  Yours truly is quoted.  An excerpt: Peterson suggests that a closer look at the software developers might provide some clues about responsible cultures of innovation. “If you really want to know how to create a sense of responsibility, [...]

We here at Foresight are not particularly interested in climate change — the effects, even if you take the IPCC projections as gospel, are dwarfed by the capability of nanotech (for good or ill).  But we are considerably more concerned about the way science is done, and whether it can reliably find the truth.   So [...]

In Popular Mechanics, longtime Foresight friend Prof. Glenn Reynolds looks at the future of nanotech and artificial intelligence, among other things looking at safety issues, including one call that potentially dangerous technologies be relinquished.  He takes a counterintuitive stance, which we’ve discussed here at Foresight over the years: But I wonder if that’s such a [...]

“It is time we do what’s necessary to make NANO the next national priority.”–U.S. Rep. Michael Honda, D-San Jose

Once upon a time, or so the story goes, there was a young man who was hauled up before the court on charges that he had killed his father and mother. He readily confessed to the crime, but nevertheless pled for clemency: after all, he pointed out, he was an orphan. Recently on his blog [...]

From the February 2009 issue of the “science is culture” publication Seed magazine, not yet online: Hypothesis: Civil Nanotechnology Starting in 2009, nanotech-based sensing will enable a level of environmental monitoring that could help reduce pollution tremendously. Such devices could be of immense benefit to the environment, but unfortunately, without careful attention they will trigger [...]

A while back Senior Associate Stuart Scott let us know that he had been selected to participate in a National Citizen’s Technology Forum process on nanotechnology, sponsored by Arizona State and University of North Carolina, among other schools. Presumably this is funded by the social science budget of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative, via NSF. [...]

We’ve received an invitation to participate in the Center for Nanotechnology in Society’s project to build and critique nanotechnology scenarios. Current topics to edit in the wiki, or you can add your own: * Barless Prisons * Bionic Eyes * Living with a Brain Chip * Disease Detector * Automated Sewer Surveillance * Engineered Tissues

Foresight advisor Glenn Reynolds opines about nanotech in the NY Post for Earth Day: MIT’s Vladimir Bulovic calls nanotech a potentially “disruptive technology” in the solar-energy field, offering a complete shift from today’s fossil-fuel environment… Nanotech offers dramatic improvements on the side of energy consumption, too: As computing and other devices become smaller, they become [...]

Those of you who have heard Peter Thiel speak (at the Singularity Summits and a while back at Foresight’s Senior Associates Gathering) already know that he is quite a visionary. In Hoover’s Feb/Mar 2008 Policy Review, Peter presents The Optimistic Thought Experiment, his thoughts on globalization and technology. Some excerpts: For every account of globalization [...]

Below are comments from nanotechnology experts on yesterday’s release of the Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems, a new roadmap for development of atomically precise manufacturing from Battelle and Foresight: Jim Von Ehr, CEO, Zyvex Labs “For the first time, progress across all key nanoscale disciplines has been brought together into R&D pathways leading to atomically-precise [...]

Nanowerk brings news that the World Economic Forum is both rewarding nanotechnology pioneers and taking a look at potential risks of nanoparticles. Excerpts: Over the past few years, the Global Risk Network team has released an annual report. This years’ report “Global Risks 2008″ (pdf download, 1.6 MB) was published two weeks ago. In it, [...]

Sonia Arrison over at TechNewsWorld takes on the issues of genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and steering innovation toward responsible uses: “When we look at cells as machines, it makes them very straightforward in the future to design them for very unique utilities,” Venter told participants at DLD. Of course, Venter has often referred to the possibility [...]

For many years, Foresight has been pointing out that nanotechnology will be used for surveillance. Now Kevin Mitnick makes a long-term prediction on nanosurveillance. An excerpt: Warrantless Surveillance: The Worst is Yet to Come …Far from censuring the president, most of Congress seems completely unconcerned by the issue of warrantless surveillance. And telecom companies are [...]