By J. Storrs Hall, on January 12th, 2010
A round-up of commentary about the state of nanotech research, given the 50th anniversary of Feynman’s talk:
Adam Keiper in the WSJ
If this dispute over nano-nomenclature only involved some sniping scientists and a few historians watching over a tiny corner of Feynman’s legacy, it would be of little consequence. But hundreds of companies and universities are [...]
By Christine Peterson, on January 4th, 2010
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, look [...]
By J. Storrs Hall, on December 15th, 2009
One of the reasons I inveigh so heavily against the use of the word “nanotechnology” to mean merely stuff that’s measured in nanometers, is that while it focuses on the size — “nano” — it tends to ignore the function — the “technology.” Nanotech to me is about high-energy-density, high-frequency, eutactic machinery. To those focused [...]
By J. Storrs Hall, on December 7th, 2009
Dexter Johnson writes, “What Should We Call the (Nano)technology in Your Stain-resistant Pants?”
… the competition for ownership of the term “nanotechnology” that seems to persist between the adherents to MNT, as exemplified by the Foresight Institute, and those who use the term to acknowledge developments in manipulating and exploiting structures that have at least one [...]
By Christine Peterson, on November 19th, 2009
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 good [...]
By Christine Peterson, on November 10th, 2009
Ted Greenwald continues his Singularity University executive program coverage over at Wired:
These days, though, Merkle is setting his sights much higher. Over the past few years he has put together a theoretical system for building diamond, atom by atom. It involves nine molecular tools and methane/hydrogen feedstock on a diamond substrate. He has analyzed all [...]
By Christine Peterson, on November 9th, 2009
Ted Greenwald posted yesterday at Wired about Foresight member Ralph Merkle’s presentation on nanotechnology at the Singularity University’s first Executive Program, which has just convened over at NASA Ames here in Silicon Valley:
From there he skims through a catalog of progress — familiar example of pushing atoms into IBM logos and such on a 2D [...]
By Christine Peterson, on October 27th, 2009
Nanotechnology Enables Real Atomic Precision is the title of a piece by Susan Smith in Desktop Engineering, which includes comments by longtime Foresight Senior Associates Steve Vetter and Tihamer Toth-Fejel:
While nanotechology might mean different things to different people, the term was originally coined to describe the building of things from the bottom up with atomic [...]
By Christine Peterson, on October 23rd, 2009
Here’s a talk happening next Tuesday at UCLA:
NanoSystems Seminar Series
Title: High-speed AFM meets the Holographic Assembler
Mervyn Miles
Physics
Bristol University
Abstract: High-speed AFM is important for following processes occurring on short time scales inaccessible to conventional AFM. We are working on two versions: one is capable of extremely high imaging rates and can image over relatively large [...]
By Christine Peterson, on October 21st, 2009
From The Atlantic:
Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist who accurately forecast the bursting of the housing bubble and the resulting economic contraction, has become famous for his pessimism—he has been the gloomiest of the doomsayers…
“The question is, can the U.S. grow in a non-bubble way?” [Roubini] asked the question rhetorically, so I turned it [...]
By J. Storrs Hall, on October 6th, 2009
Potential leap forward in electron microscopy. from Eurekalert.
Why it matters: A non-invasive electron microscope could shed light on fundamental questions about life and matter, allowing researchers to observe molecules inside a living cell without disturbing them. If successful, such microscopes would surmount what Nobel laureate Dennis Gabor concluded in 1956 was the fundamental limitation of [...]
By J. Storrs Hall, on October 2nd, 2009
20 Years of Moving Atoms, One by One | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.
It’s the 20th anniversary of the famous Eigler “IBM”.
By Christine Peterson, on September 21st, 2009
Josh Hall, on his way to catch a plane, sends us this news from Technology Review’s Katherine Bourzac:
A California company is using silicon ink patterned on top of silicon wafers to boost the efficiency of solar cells. The Sunnyvale, CA, firm Innovalight says that the inkjet process is a cheaper route to more-efficient solar power. Using [...]
By J. Storrs Hall, on September 18th, 2009
Koreans Show Feasibility of Room Temperature Version of IBM Millipede Super High Density Memory.
By J. Storrs Hall, on September 10th, 2009
One of the major problems for micromachines, much less nanomachines, is wear. The phenomenon of stiction combines the two worst aspects of surface-to-surface interaction — a high coefficient of friction and a locally-generated high applied force — to cause enormous problems. At the very smallest scale, once we gain complete control over atomic configuration, superlubricity [...]
By Christine Peterson, on September 2nd, 2009
Here at Foresight our main focus is on longer-term technologies such as molecular manufacturing, but we keep an eye on what’s arriving along the nearer-term pathways as well. In 2007 I attended a workshop on “Nanotechnology for Chemical and Biological Defense” and the proceedings volume of that meeting, with the same name, is now available. [...]
By J. Storrs Hall, on August 21st, 2009
cute video from nokia about what a nanotech phone might be like…
By J. Storrs Hall, on June 30th, 2009
There’s a post on Technology Review’s blog about a paper on arXiv about a theoretical result in magnetic memories.
Current-day magnetic memory is already “nanotechnology” under the loose definition, involving 5-nanometer particles of cobalt (having about 50,000 atoms). The authors have shown that a single molecule consisting of a cobalt dimer sitting on top of [...]
By J. Storrs Hall, on June 29th, 2009
The nominations for Foresight’s 2009 Feynman Prize will be closing soon, so if you know someone who has done outstanding work to advance the goal of molecular nanotechnology, please visit the Instructions Page
to nominate them.
Research areas considered relevant to MNT (e.g., productive nanosystems and molecular machine systems) include but are not limited to:
artificial molecular [...]
By J. Storrs Hall, on June 23rd, 2009
Suppose there were a class of technologies called millitech: science and engineering that could be measured in millimeters, from say about a tenth of a millimeter to 100 millimeters — in any dimension. That includes hairs, paper, pebbles, marbles, anything you can hold in the palm of your hand, anything less than 4 inches [...]
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