A recent issue of the useful journal Nanotechnology Law & Business includes a review (pdf) by Daniel Moore of J. Storrs Hall’s book Nanofuture: What’s Next for Nanotechnology. The conclusion:
Nanofuture: What’s Next for Nanotechnology will be of interest to those looking for an introduction to the concepts of nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing. It is comprehensive and broad in its consideration of nanotechnology’s potential impact to society. Although it is not a book on nanotechnology related law, it has many descriptions and ideas that may be of interest to journal readers. However, as a discussion of nanotechnology and how it will impact society (what will be “next for nanotechnology”), it is best used as a jumping-off point rather than a comprehensive text on the subject.
Fair enough. It’s hard to imagine what a comprehensive text on the subject would look like at this point. Eric Drexler wrote the Foreword. Excerpts:
Reading this book, you will learn not only about nanotechnology, but about all technology—and not as a mere collection of gadgets, but as part of the structure of the world. It wasn’t just the power of the steam engine that made the industrial revolution; it was the relationship between what it could do and what needed to be done…
To understand the impact of nanotechnology, we must consider what it makes possible, what needs it fulfills, and how necessity and possibility together have shaped our world before.
You’ll get the whole story here.
Foresight awarded our most recent Foresight Institute Prize in Communications to Hall, so it’s clear we agree with Moore that “The breadth of Dr. Hall’s vision of nanotechnology is staggering.” —Christine
