Nanodot

Since May of 2000, Nanodot has been Foresight’s blog, commenting on science, world-shaping technology development, and other news relevant to Foresight’s mission to support technological development toward an abundant future. By that time, the importance of developing technology to control the structure of matter at the nanometer scale—nanotechnology—had become widely recognized, leading to substantial research funding. However, the term “nanotechnology” had become appropriated to describe fabrication by already existing technologies of nanostructures with useful functional properties, and the gradual, incremental improvement of such methods. At the same time, many scientists were skeptical that it would be practical to pursue a long-term effort to develop a general purpose method for manufacturing complex, atomically precise structures designed for a very wide range of technological purposes—the ultimate goal Foresight has advocated since its founding. Many of Nanodot’s early posts were focused on this distinction and the debates surrounding it. Others focused on progress with incremental nanotechnology toward meeting urgent, practical needs, in medicine or other fields. Most focused on advances in various molecular sciences and in surface physics that illuminate paths to the ultimate goal of atomically precise manufacturing (APM). With the debates of the early years fading into history, Nanodot continues to focus on paths to APM, while also covering progress in important related technologies, including biotechnology, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and the cognitive sciences. To guide these advances toward an abundant future, we look at synergies among these developments, potential problems to be avoided, risks to be managed, and ways to accelerate progress. To list any given month of Nanodot posts: https://foresight.org/?m=yyyymm provides an archive for any year yyyy and month mm. For example, https://foresight.org/?m=200005 lists Nanodot’s first month of posts.