Two VCs comment on nanotech

Venture capitalist Tim Oren quotes Dan Colbert of NGEN Partners, from a guest column in Smalltimes: "We are in the process of gaining increasing control and finesse over the structure of matter at the smallest scale where material properties emerge. This is where the authentic focus of discourse and activity is, and ought to be." Sounds right.
Tim goes on in his own words: "Much-touted generic nanotech — such as nanotubes and even more nanomachinery — lack the viable applications and market scale necessary to ignite a Moore's Law spiral of investment, adoption, and learning." This is true of nanomachinery today, and may well be true on a typical VC timescale of three to five years, but (one hopes) not true longer term.–CP