I’ll be responding at greater length to comments I invited a few days ago, but right now, I’d like to thank everyone who offered thoughts, news, questions, and requests. As some of you suggest, I plan to open most of the posts for comment in the future. I’d like this to be a participatory blog that can bring together a community offering mutual value.
Regarding topics suggested in the comments, a wide range of them are within the scope I have in mind for this blog, but the content here will emphasize concrete science and technology issues, and in particular, research directions leading toward progressively increasing capabilities for nanofabrication. This includes a spectrum that ranges from broad directions leading toward grand-challenge objectives to ideas that could be tried next week with results next month.
Applications at the grand-challenge end of the spectrum will (almost by definition) have large-scale social and economic implications. I’m not sure how much of this vast area should be in scope. Some, but not all. There are other channels for communication. Indeed, over the past 20 years, many millions of words about the –Future of Nanotechnology!– have poured into the internet, and overall, I think these words have generated more heat than light. I want to see more light.
I do plan to pour a few buckets of cold water on misconceptions (devotees of tiny diamond robots may be disappointed), but in criticizing bad ideas, the content will again center on concrete questions of science and technology — and on better ideas, and on implementation.
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I was too late for your contest so I’ll post here since you touch upon the subject I’m interested in, separating the Concrete from the Hype.
I was wondering if you would be interested in putting up a timeline page listing what major applications we can expect to see move from the lab to the real world in the coming years. Possibly with each listing linked to further information about what’s being developed in the labs to lead to these things and whether these applications are going to be expensive and specialized, cheap and ubiquitous, or start expensive but will become cheap.
I think that would be a good way to create some perspective about what we can reasonably expect nanotechnology to do.