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Reading this essay by Peter Thiel, I was struck by an amusing (though almost certainly coincidental) parallel. Thiel mentions three areas in which people interested in freedom may manage to get out from under the thumb of excessive government: cyberspace, seasteading, and outer space. The parallel is to three fronts on which people [...] Google has started a venture-capital unit to fund new technologies, including nanotechnology. Many thanks to the Forbes/Wolfe Emerging Tech Report for permission to reprint the following interview with Steve Jurvetson “Writing the Code of Life”, which appeared in their February 2009 issue. There aren’t many investors as sharp, quick or multi-disciplinary as Steve Jurvetson,Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. His firm is a leading venture capital firm with [...] The Society of Manufacturing Engineers is offering a free webinar on “Today’s Pioneering Nanotechnology Companies: The Race for a Trillion Dollar Market“, presented by Foresight Senior Associate Tihamer “Tee” Toth-Fejel. Today’s Pioneering Nanotechnology Companies: Our favorite nanotechnology VC is Steve Jurvetson, who is interviewed over at LiveMint.com from India, which is affiliated with The Wall Street Journal. An excerpt: A recent article in the Small Business (sic) section of The New York Times reports that nanomaterials-based firms are starting to head toward public offerings: Foresight president Dr. Pearl Chin was interviewed on nanotechnology by Stephen Gordon and PJ Manney on Dec. 16, and the show can now be downloaded for your listening edification. The reinsurance firm Swiss Re is rather farther along on nanotechnology, but Lloyd’s of London is starting to step up to the question of how to insure nanotech. They had a recent conference to launch their new report Nanotechnology: Recent Developments, Risks and Opportunities (PDF). As one would expect, it mainly focuses on [...] Everyone is pursuing private donors for their nanotechnology research, and Israel is very serious about it, matching private nanotech fund donations made from outside the country, as reported in EE Times: Alexander Zaitchik writes at Wired.com a piece titled Russia Pours Billions in Oil Profits Into Nanotech Race. I’m quoted: Registration for Foresight’s Nov. 3-4 Vision Weekend focused on nanotechnology and other advanced technologies — traditionally restricted to Foresight Senior Associates — is being opened to the general public this year as an experiment. Space is limited and participants are advised to register very soon. There’s an arms race between government patent offices and patent filers assisted by private law firms. The folks who work for the former get paid a lot less than the those who work for the latter. This leads to a continual drain away from government review of patent applications toward private generation of [...] Registration is now open to new and renewing Senior Associate members; cost for Senior Associate members to attend the meeting is $65. Space is limited. Join us! —Christine One person whose views on nanotechnology are always worth hearing is VC Steve Jurvetson of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He’ll be speaking at the upcoming Singularity Summit, Sept. 8-9 in San Francisco, but if you can’t get there, you can listen to this ZDNet podcast with Dan Farber in which Steve discusses both nanotech and [...] Here at Foresight we’ve been interested in nanotechnology based on diamondoid since the beginning, so it’s great to see these structures getting more attention. Someday they’ll be manufactured with atomic precision, in large structures, but for now even small structures are looking useful in today’s nanotech. Nanotechnology.com’s August 17 Edigest, sponsored by PurpleGoldMedia, [...] We are very pleased to announce the dates and location of the 2007 Foresight Vision Weekend, to be held November 3-4 in at Yahoo! headquarters here in Silicon Valley. Here in the U.S. we set up nanotechnology corporations all the time. There’s some paperwork involved, and some legal fees. The founders, angel investors, and VCs might sit on the board. The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 in the U.S. gives patent rights for federally-funded research done in universities to the universities themselves, in effect. Many people regard this strategy as a succcess, and many countries around the world are copying it. But is this the best way to handle this publicly-funded intellectual property? [...] Regular readers of Nanodot know that we often disagree with ETC Group — but not always. They have issued a press release condemning a plan by a private firm to seed the ocean with iron particles in an effort to fight global warming. An excerpt: Michael Berger of the useful Nanowerk website has produced a clarification essay on the size of the nanotechnology market, helping to put the hype in perspective. Some excerpts: |
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