Motley Fool has ongoing discussion of nanotech
from the nanonews-everywhere dept.
Senior Associate Brad Hein posts nanonews at his nanosite, e.g.: "The Motley Fool has a discussion board on nanotechnology at http://boards.fool.com/Messages.asp?bid=113628. The Fool is a web site for education and news on investing. Generally, I've found their message boards to be pretty civil with a fairly good signal to noise ration." CP: Read More for an excerpt on the Foresight Conference from the discussion board. GregTrocchia posted on 11/15/00 a fairly long report on the Foresight Conference, with this at the end:
"Most of the researchers believe that the Drexler/Merkle formulation of most forms of matter allowed by physical law, fabricated perfectly (defect rate of less than 1 in 10^15) and cheaply cents per kilogram. Merkle polled the audience to get a consensus about it. While there is some self selection concerning who would deliver a paper to a Foresight Institute Conference, these are not "true believers". something like 2/3rd's of the audience hadn't heard of a broadcast architecture (which is a standard Foresight response to the Gray Goo question). So, while this capability is quite a ways from coming, the tribologists, molecular biologists, chemists, and the like in the audience thought that it was a question of when rather than if."
January 26th, 2001 at 6:31 AM
About the Motley Fool Board
**Senior Associate Brad Hein posts nanonews at his nanosite, e.g.: "The Motley Fool has a discussion board on nanotechnology at http://boards.fool.com/Messages.asp?bid=113628. The Fool is a web site for education and news on investing. Generally, I've found their message boards to be pretty civil with a fairly good signal to noise ration." CP: Read More for an excerpt on the Foresight Conference from the discussion board. GregTrocchia posted on 11/15/00 a fairly long report on the Foresight Conference, with this at the end:**
First of all, I extend an invitation for Nanodot readers to join me on the Nanotechnology board on the Fool referenced in the post, unlike some of the other boards there (some of which have accumulated over 100,000 posts since the Fool started, I believe in 1997), we can use some extra posting traffic and discussion. I think that Brad is spot on when he talks about the Fool as having a good signal to noise ratio, they realize the importance of building community there (I try to do my part on the Nanotech board, among others). I add that this board is located in an area called the "Speaker's Corner", meaning that someone requested the Fool to create the board, and it was not me that requested it, I found the board there.
Since I have said a good deal about the Foresight Institute (as the excerpt of my post suggests), turnabout is fair play, as the saying goes. The low volume on the board not only bespeaks it's somewhat out of the way location, but I think it fair to say that it also suggests that "nanotechnology" has yet to become the buzzword on everyone's lips that I anticipate it will be as we close in on the capability of a mature (or at least maturing) MNT. This is good in that it suggests we have some time left before it becomes difficult to be heard over the buzz. For me, on the Fool (which, BTW, is an excellent source for things financial) that means trying to "keep it real" by keeping the discussion grounded in what we know about MNT to date. I make lots of references to Nanosystems, Nanomedicine, and articles in Update (thanks, guys), to name a few of my more frequently used sources. I also like to run the numbers (Nanomedicine, in addition to everything else, has an excellent Appendix section, I found out), which I believe gives the whole discussion a more tangible quality.
In retrospect, given the financially-centered nature of the Fool, I should not have been surprised when (early on, at least) a good percentage of the posts were asking about "what company can I invest in" type things. I became the self-appointed wet blanket of the board in replying to such questions. It was clear that the crucial differences between a company doing traditional bulk technology stuff with feature sizes in the nanometer range (and "nano" somewhere in its name) and folks that are actually trying to build an assembler or a nanocomputer were not being appreciated. Being the wet blanket, as I saw it, entailed explaining the difference (I gave my take on how the acronym MNT came into being and have since used it habitually) and pointing out that intersection between "pure plays" in MNT and publicly traded firms is (for the moment) the null set. I also told the story of Geostar, some time back (those in the space community may remember this). Geostar was a start-up founded by the late, lamented Gerry O'Niell, which went the way of most start-ups (belly up), illustrating that even a firm with good technology and a visionary at the helm is far from a sure thing. Who knows, perhaps the low post volume is a signal of my success in convincing folks that the time is not ripe to invest in MNT
This suggests to me that when MNT *is* getting ready to go live, we will see a period of hype (and outright fraud as well) that may dwarf what we just experienced concerning the Internet. I say this because of the very potential of MNT can lead to the wrong conclusion: that MNT has no limits, abetted by the pitifully low standard of scientific education for the public at large. In the case of the Internet, many of the hyped to (and fleeced) individuals were already using the Net (including to make "investments" in dubious concerns) and so had at least some feel for its abilities and limitations. Until MNT is up and running, the same will probably not be true of it. I don't know whether the current dichotomy of "nanotechnology", as practiced by the "nanofirms" that are currently public (many of whom, I pointed out, may well have technology with exciting potential of its their own, just bulk technology), and MNT will continue to be a problem going forward, it could be that we will get lucky and this stuff will sort itself out over time without need for intervention. I sincerely hope so, for reaching a consensus and communicating that consensus on real issues will be difficult enough, with no need of further noise.
Again, I invite folks to stop by the Fool and sample our little board, of late I have been doing a series talking about the implications of MNT for space development and (more speculatively) Interstellar Travel, uniting a couple of my favorite topics in technology. I will also probably post a link here to tell them they have been noticed
Greg