“The New Nanofrontier” in Scientific American
from the our-old-friends-at-SciAm dept.
Robert Trombatore writes "Scientific American has come a long way in the past few years from when they basically took the position that any of the MNT technologies Foresight founder Eric Drexler proposed were improbable at best. While they still aren't ready to leap to defend MNT, the tone of this article is much more positive in comparison. Starting with an overview of recent breakthroughs in nanotech and then going into detail about 3 specific breakthroughs, this piece helps illustrate just how far "mainstream" scientific acceptance of MNT has come. There are a couple of disparaging comments such as "In June, nanotechnologists from the Foresight Institute–a think tank where Drexler is chair–followed suit, issuing their own prophylactic guidelines to stop goo. But other scientists–many of whom air their views in news items that accompany Science's special section–dismiss the grim predictions." This shows that while Scientific American has come a long way, the editors still feel it necessary to make light of some of the issues surrounding nanotech."
December 5th, 2000 at 10:49 AM
From Impossible Dream to Deadly Menace
Well, Scientific American — and even moreso the members of the Foresight community who helped change their minds — deserves credit for its move to take nanotechnology seriously, and given Bill Joy's alarmism I'm not too unhappy to see them dismissing the gray goo issues. But has anyone else noticed how suddenly nanotechnology's critics switched from "it's ridiculous and impossible" to "it's a deadly danger that must be stopped!"?
December 13th, 2000 at 8:31 AM
which critics?
Which critics made this switch? Any names you can think of?
Also, who exactly is saying "it [nanotechnology] is a deadly danger that must be stopped!", regardless of whether or not they were previously saying "it's ridiculous and impossible"?