From the category archives:

Bloggy-blogging

Darwin portraits on sale, ₤10 — exactly

December 26, 2011

The ₤10 note honors one of Britain’s historic scientists:

There’s a different view of science here.

For more posts with a Darwin theme, see:

Great Science, Great Scientists, and Icons

For Darwin Day: On the Origin of Genetic Information

For Darwin’s sake, reject “Darwin-ism”

And for a view on learning science, see:

How to Learn About Everything

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Video of my talk
at the Moscow Polytechnical Museum

December 23, 2011

A video of my talk at the Moscow Polytechnical Museum is now on YouTube. I gave this talk on advanced nanotechnology prospects to an audience drawn from local technical universities during my recent Moscow visit.

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Moscow Report (II):
Russians embrace a radical vision
of nanotechnology

December 21, 2011

(This is followup to my brief post from Moscow.)
Because I’m primarily known for the concept of an advanced, atomically precise nanotechnology, the enthusiastic welcome I received in Moscow at Rusnanotech 2011 indicates how the idea is received in Russia. With that in mind, here are some markers of Russian interest in the concept:

Dmitry Medvedev speaking [...]

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Video of my Oxford nanotechnology lecture

December 7, 2011

I recently gave the Inaugural Lecture for the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology at the Oxford Martin School, and the lecture video is now available.*
The talk describes the application of physical law and exploratory engineering to studies of the future potential of nanotechnology.
Summary here: News & Research Highlights.

* With thanks to Stuart Armstrong, [...]

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A rich visual display
of quantitative money information

November 25, 2011

Here’s a huge, data-rich visualization of the money dimension of McDonald’s meals, billionaires, the Moon landing, income quintiles, and the like. It’s well done, spans 12 orders of magnitude, and kept my attention for entirely too long.

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A Busy Day in Moscow

October 26, 2011

I am no longer in possession of a Russian secret regarding the lineup of speakers during the opening plenary session of Rusnanotech 2011 this morning.
Rusnanotech is organized by Russia’s state-sponsored nanotechnology investment corporation, Rusnano. My plenary talk followed a speech by Anatoly Chubais, the Chairman of Rusnano and former First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia. [...]

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I’ve moved to Oxford

October 22, 2011

Rosa and I now work at Oxford’s Martin School in the new Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology. (My Oxford Martin School bio here; Rosa’s here.) We plan to be at Oxford while I finish work on my new book, Radical Abundance, to be published by PublicAffairs.
On November 10th I will deliver the inaugural [...]

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My next book: Radical Abundance, 2013

July 21, 2011

I’m now working on a new book, Radical Abundance, scheduled for publication in 2013 by PublicAffairs. The book has a wide scope in both its content and intended audience, addressing scientists, a general reading audience, and thought leaders in the policy arena.
Radical Abundance will integrate and extend several themes that I’ve touched on in Metamodern, [...]

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Looking toward 2050 with Royal Dutch Shell

July 18, 2011

I recently returned from a scenario planning meeting in London with Royal Dutch Shell, where I joined a group exploring technology-driven aspects of global change. Topics ranged from health care, synthetic biology, and geoengineering to artificial intelligence and the future of the internet; I outlined prospects for high-throughput atomically precise manufacturing as force driving broad [...]

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Science and engineering at NIH

May 10, 2011

In response to (yet another) proposal to reorganize and redirect the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Russ Altman writes in Nature that
…it is crucial to separate the engine of discovery from the engine of application. Discovery is stochastic and opportunistic; application is the stuff of engineers. That is why attempts to over-engineer discovery fail and [...]

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Nanosystems for India

May 6, 2011

Wiley India publishes textbooks “catering to the needs of Indian students”, and now offers Nanosystems:  Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation, the book I wrote on the principles and potential components, architectures, and implementation pathways for high-throughput atomically precise manufacturing systems.
Here’s a list of Indian distributors.
Wiley India, a branch of John Wiley & Sons, the original [...]

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I blame a deep flaw
in current software technology

April 12, 2011

Metamodern had vanished at the end of last month while I was traveling, and for a week or so I forwarded it to this stand-in page. As you can see, the blog is now up and running.
The stand-in page outlines a (re)emerging software technology that deserves several orders of magnitude more attention. Current software is [...]

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