Here we present a special report from Dave Conz of ASU on Josh Hall’s talk and subsequent panel discussion at the SME nanotech conference. An excerpt: Technoscientific development is difficult to direct and nearly impossible to predict. Because of this – not in spite of it – panel discussions like “How Do We Get There… Continue reading Debate: "How do we get there from here?" at SME nano conference
David Cassel brings our attention to an h+ review of the long-awaited film The Singularity is Near, based on the book by Ray Kurzweil: In documentary style, we have Ray discussing his ideas about the Singularity, with commentators variously supporting or refuting or worrying about his ideas. With Bill McKibben in the role of the… Continue reading The Singularity is Near: the Movie
In Popular Mechanics, longtime Foresight friend Prof. Glenn Reynolds looks at the future of nanotech and artificial intelligence, among other things looking at safety issues, including one call that potentially dangerous technologies be relinquished. He takes a counterintuitive stance, which we’ve discussed here at Foresight over the years: But I wonder if that’s such a… Continue reading Reynolds advocates faster nano/AI R&D for safety reasons
Ted Greenwald posted yesterday at Wired about Foresight member Ralph Merkle’s presentation on nanotechnology at the Singularity University’s first Executive Program, which has just convened over at NASA Ames here in Silicon Valley: From there he skims through a catalog of progress — familiar example of pushing atoms into IBM logos and such on a… Continue reading Merkle on nanotech at Singularity University
Nominations are now open for the Foresight Institute Prizes for 2009, due June 30. Our best-known prizes of course are the two annual Foresight Institute Feynman Prizes in Nanotechnology, one for Experiment and one for Theory: Description Instructions Also open are nominations for the Foresight Prize in Communications: Description Instructions And the Student Prize: Description… Continue reading Feynman Prize nominations now open, also Communications, Student Prizes
A catalyst can be switched on and off using mechanical means.
A piece in The Christian Science Monitor compares Nadrian Seeman, founder of the field of structural DNA nanotechnology and winner of the 1995 Foresight Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, with Henry Ford—implying that his recent accomplishment with his collaborators in creating a two-armed DNA nanorobot could point to a role for DNA nanorobots in future nanotech… Continue reading A DNA nanotechnology road to molecular assembly lines?
Two publications in the current issue of the IOP journal Nanotechnology report techniques that may bring real-time quality control to two different nanotech fabrication methods.
A response to my “Parricide” essay has been seen on IEEE’s Tech Talk blog. Dexter Johnson gives a fair summary of the positions taken to date, and says As the argument seems to go, Drexler popularized the term nanotechnology in his book Engines of Creation, and so when the general public heard that thousands of… Continue reading The nanotechnology we were promised
Once upon a time, or so the story goes, there was a young man who was hauled up before the court on charges that he had killed his father and mother. He readily confessed to the crime, but nevertheless pled for clemency: after all, he pointed out, he was an orphan. Recently on his blog… Continue reading Parricide
