An article in a special issue of Red Herring Magazine on the "Top Ten Trends 2001" names nanotechnology as one of the developing trends to watch ("Small Worlds: Nanotechnology wins over mainstream venture capitalists", by Stephan Herrera and Lawrence Aragon, 18 December 2001):
"Nanotechnology is coming in from the fringe. Once dismissed as just so much science fiction and Silicon Valley hokum, nanotechnology now represents no less than the next industrial revolution."
The article also quotes Richard Smalley of Rice University: "To the extent that there are solutions to practical problems like disease, feeding the world, and reconciling scarce energy resources with increasing consumption, a remarkable number of them can only be solved through nanotechnology."
