Tonight is the tenth anniversary of the end of the world, according to some people. May all your future angst be as groundless … and Happy New Year!

There’s a really nice article at Wired about Kevin Dunbar’s research how science is really done and how often scientists get data they didn’t expect. Dunbar knew that scientists often don’t think the way the textbooks say they are supposed to. He suspected that all those philosophers of science — from Aristotle to Karl Popper [...]

Futurisms – Critiquing the project to reengineer humanity: Happy Birthday, Nanotechnology?. Adam Keiper over at the New Atlantis reminds us it’s the 50th anniversary of Feynman’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom talk.

Tonight on Fast Forward Radio J Storrs Hall, president of Foresight joins FFR to continue their special series leading up Foresight 2010. The conference, January 16-17 in Palo Alto, California, provides a unique opportunity to explore the convergence of nanotechnology and artificial intelligence and to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Foresight [...]

Longtime readers know that we at Foresight would prefer that our members, and Nanodot readers in general, actually live long enough to experience the benefits of molecular nanotechnology personally.  In that vein, we bring to your attention America’s Wellness Challenge, which I am helping as a member of their Social Media Advisory Board. If you [...]

The first time I met Eric Drexler, I complained to him, “You’ve ruined science fiction for me.”  (He replied, “If it’s any consolation, I ruined it for myself.”) The reason, of course, is that understanding nanotech means that the all the classic SF projections become so piddling and simplistic in comparison that any story set [...]

Shane Legg seems to think so:  Tick, tock, tick, tock… BING. Having dealt with computation, now we get to the algorithm side of things. One of the big things influencing me this year has been learning about how much we understand about how the brain works, in particular, how much we know that should be [...]

Over at Overcoming Bias, Robin Hanson wonders whether we should go fast or slow with tech development as we move toward a level of development (solar-system wide or interstellar civilization) where we are reasonably not likely to be wiped out in a single incident. He bases his analysis on how likely we are to stumble (or [...]

Scientists Create World’s First Molecular Transistor. Very nice writeup of the research over at Next Big Future. To my mind what’s new here isn’t the transistor per se — semiconducting and conductive states have been known in CNTs for over a decade, and FET and diode-like arrangements of them have been around for the same. [...]

Historical note: back when I ran sci.nanotech, it was my tradition to post this poem every Christmas, in a spirit of light-hearted fun. We here at Foresight wish all our readers the merriest of seasons greetings, and hope that you all are safe, warm, and enjoying your holidays with family and friends!   A Visit [...]

(h/t Next Big Future) Tonight on Fast Forward Radio Economist Robin Hanson and futurist Brian Wang join us as we continue our special series leading up Foresight 2010. The conference, January 16-17 in Palo Alto, California, provides a unique opportunity to explore the convergence of nanotechnology and artificial intelligence and to celebrate the 20th anniversary [...]

One more comment on the post by Mike Treder that I addressed last time.  Recall he wrote Techno-rapturists among our reading audience might be quick to respond with glib answers about miraculous nanotechnology solutions that are just around the corner … To understand Foresight’s actual point of view on this issue (which is actually a [...]

Mike Treder has a post at IEET that reads like a catechism of the Gaian religion. Now I’m a firm supporter of freedom of religion and Mike has a perfect right to believe what he does and indeed to preach it to whomever will listen. (And besides, Mike is a friend of mine.) But in [...]

Religious creeds are a great obstacle to any full sympathy between the outlook of the scientist and the outlook which religion is so often supposed to require … The spirit of seeking which animates us refuses to regard any kind of creed as its goal. It would be a shock to come across a university [...]

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 [...]

Technology Review: Complex Integrated Circuits Made of Carbon Nanotubes. The first three-dimensional carbon nanotube circuits, made by researchers at Stanford University, could be an important step in making nanotube computers that could be faster and use less power than today’s silicon chips. Such a computer is still at least 10 years off, but the Stanford [...]

There’s an amusing cartoon at XKCD: … which underlines yet again how amazing the technology is beneath the abilities we take for granted everyday (and put to very ordinary uses). Back in this post: The heavily-loaded takeoff I pointed out that that was likely to be the fate of most of the to-us astounding capabilities [...]

The Speculist blog’s FastForwardRadio podcast is featuring speakers from Foresight’s upcoming conference next month (January 16-17 in Palo Alto) for the next few weeks. Tonight: Futurist Michael Anissimov and nanotechnologist Ralph Merkle.  10:00 Eastern/9:00 Central/8:00 Mountain/7:00 Pacific.  

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 [...]

See this article at New Scientist Real red blood cells owe their astonishing agility to their “biconcave” or tyre-like shape. To create synthetic particles with the same agility, Samir Mitragotri of the University of California and his team got their inspiration from the way real red blood cells acquire their final shape in the body. [...]