from the it-was-right-here-just-a-minute-ago! dept.
WillWare writes "Heise On-Line recently carried this story about what appear to be working quantum dots, made by a couple of chemists in Essen. Translation below rendered by Babelfish with a little help where it made obvious mistakes."
(I think Babelfish means "prize" instead of "price" for the "Förderpreis".)
from the in-a-gattaca-vida dept.
Gina "Nanogirl" Miller writes "Cornell nano-researchers create component for a 'lab on a chip' that cuts DNA separation from a day to a matter of minutes. Researchers have long sought to create a "laboratory on a chip" that could greatly speed up the process of DNA sequencing. That goal has come a step closer with the announcement that Cornell University researchers have built and tested a nanofabricated device that can separate DNA fragments by length. (Cornell press release May 15, 00) link "
from the sky-may-not-in-fact-be-falling dept.
Virginia Postrel, Editor-at-Large for Reason magazine (whom you may have met at last year's Senior Associates Gathering) responds in the most recent issue to Bill Joy's Wired essay calling for "relinquishment" of advanced technologies. Virginia's rebuttal is concise, well-informed, and eloquent; too bad she won't get a tenth of the media coverage Joy has.
from the lots-of-foresight-out-there dept.
Most futurist journals aren't very useful — too short-term, too conservative. Here's a new one that has a chance: foresight® from Camford Publishing — no relation to Foresight Institute. Their board of editors includes at least two who "get it": Clem Bezold and Peter Schwartz. Overall, the publication has a European feel. The email digest is free. For the scope of the journal's topics, see More below.
from the bringing-it-all-back-home dept.
Anyone with notes from the Gathering who would like those notes incorporated into the Senior Associate website should send them to me at [email protected]. Photos are also welcome.
from the reviews-of-reviews-of-the-negligible dept.
Check out this new website on nanotechnology, courtesy of About.com. The author, Steve Lenhert, seems to be using roughly the same definition of the topic as we do. If you explore the site thoroughly, please be sure to comment below.
from the here-come-weird-robots dept.
Work at Brandeis on polymorphic (shape-changing) robots will help us get used to this idea long before they can be implemented with nanotechnology. Sounds like science fiction…
from the identity-crisis dept.
This server needs a name! Preferably one of 1 to 3 syllables that doesn't conflict with something else in our community namespace (and that can also be used as a machine name in the foresight.org domain… "216.240.168.216" does not roll trippingly off the tongue).
A couple of names have already been suggested:
Please append your suggestions as comments to this message. Then we'll pick the one we like best; or if we can't choose, we'll run a poll.
Update: In the interests of making the server available to the widest possible audience as quickly as possible, we picked a name ("foreslash", suggested by Geoff Dale) and went with it. Thanks to all who made suggestions!
Update Again: We may not be able to keep ForeSlash as the name of this server… so please continue adding comments and suggesting names!
Dave
from the who-will-help-me-grind-my-grain? dept.
Got an idea for the improvement of ForeSlash? Attach it as a comment to this message. We'll use how each comment gets moderated as a rough measure of its popularity and proceed accordingly. Specifically solicited suggestions:
from the I-use-qwerty-myself dept.
waynerad writes "Columnist John C Dvorak wrote a humorous column a while back, Bill Joy vs the Robots. Dvorak has made a name for himself by turning people's crackpot ideas into good punchlines. Check it out and see what crackpots he thinks Bill Joy, Ray Kurzweil, and the rest of us are. A preview of things to come, I'm sure." Of all the wrong people out there, the ones who say "Don't worry; it'll never happen" are the ones that worry me the least. Nearly everyone recognizes nowadays that technology is accelerating; even my barber knows about Moore's law (better than Dvorak does, apparently).
