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

Excellent lineup of speakers again this year for the Open Science Summit, Oct. 22-23, and you can get in for only $100 if you register by this Friday:  http://opensciencesummit.com Hope to see you there!  —Christine Peterson, President, Foresight Institute

Proposed projects to use smartphone networks to gather data and inform authorities are opening discussion of how such data should be used.

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

An energy cell containing a lead zirconate titanate cantilever coated with a carbon nanotube film uses nanotechnology to produce electricity from scavenged light and thermal energy.

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 [...]

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 [...]

Finishing off the week on a fun note, we see that robotic firm Willow Garage — of special interest to Foresight due to their emphasis on open source — has achieved an important milestone in robotics: namely, the ability for a robot to fetch a beer from the fridge and deliver it. It’s worth seeing [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Brian Wang brings to our attention a Daily Mail article: A routine traffic-stop in Switzerland has allegedly thwarted eco-terrorists from blowing up the site of the £55million nano-technology HQ of IBM in Europe… The group describes itself as anarchist and is opposed to all forms of micro-technology as well as nuclear power and weapons… The [...]

Over at Accelerating Future, Michael Anissimov has a post about self-replication in which he seems to find it remarkable that Foresight, among others, can view a world containing mechanical replicators with aplomb: What is remarkable are those that seem to argue, like Ray Kurzweil, the Foresight Institute, and the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, that humanity [...]

In light of the call for open-source sensing arising from nanotech-based environmental monitoring, it is interesting to note this recent progress in building a nanotech-powered biosensor powered by molecular motors.

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 [...]