The First Concept of Nanotechnology
As taken from the wiki site in bold font:
“The first use of the concepts in ‘nano-technology’ (but predating use of that name) was in “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” a talk given by physicist Richard Feynman at an American Physical Society meeting at Caltech on December 29, 1959.”
Two years after I was born there was talk of this new technology, it has however gotten ever so closely to becoming a reality in the 21st century.
“Feynman described a process by which the ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules might be developed, using one set of precise tools to build and operate another proportionally smaller set, so on down to the needed scale.”
As I have said many times before I am not an expert on the science or development of nanotechnology, I am however, someone who is wondering what the big secret is. Sure you can find articles and government bodies on the development but it’s very low level. The futurists have a clearer picture of how these nanomaterials will be used, and thats the problem.
Will we know when and where not to mention how nanotechnology will be used? It will be used to improve our health, it wmay even be used to track a great many things including you and I. I’m not trying fear monger, I am merely talking about what the possibilities are and might be in the next ten to fifteen years. It may take longer but I have a feeling we are much father along than you and I are aware.
If you would like to read more on nanotechnology start at the wiki site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanotechnology
happy reading.
Owen,
Some nobel thoughts on the subject of nanotechnology. I am guilty of the same.
Among my many heroes is Carl Sagan. Yes, he spent a lot of time with his head somewhere out in the Cosmos. That may be what I liked best: his cosmic perspective.
I think we need another exceptional person, maybe a Brian Greene, to bring the discussions into the living room and kitchens.
A strong, competent voice is needed to convey the full impact nanotechnology is having and will through our lifetime.
There are disturbing trends. For instance, it has become unprofitable to generate news content, if we are to believe the many people who are failing in this enterprise. Why is that a bad thing? From my perspective, it seems the institutional news entity lost touch with the consumer many years ago. These companies never understood that the business formula was doomed on the electronic frontier. Instead of embracing the new capabilities of the Internet… well, you know the story.
Another trend: Mistrust of large companies. Healthy skepticism has been exaggerated into a general distrust of any organization that proclaims it champions causes of the average person. It’s not just a liberal agenda that is being buried. Institutions large enough to afford investigative pieces (that require months and years to research), have fallen on hard times. Someone might have become intelligent enough to run an investigative news organ like a well-run, self-aggregating non-profit, but it hasn’t happened — not nearly to the degree it is needed.
But the world is changing. My hope is something better will come along. But we shouldn’t delude ourselves, the fate of the news industry is in peril. Personally, I will feel naked without some of these August enterprises turning out stories.
Here lies the irony. The newspapers were already in serious trouble when nanotechnology began gaining momentum. You can find mention of nanotechnology in popular media, but the average person has no idea of what it is truly involved.
Nanotechnology should scare us. For every person who finds change an annoyance, there should be someone yelling from the rooftop: What the heck is this thing nanotechnology?
There should be examination and testing, standards and even a separate EPA for nanotechnology. By no means should we just trust that corporations will do the right thing. It’s public relations hokum. If you want to see PR at work, just ask a class of communications graduate students to write a PR plan for someone like the Project for Emerging Nanotechnologies. PEN is a non-profit organization that regularly advices the House Committee on Science. It’s stated intent is to encourage a dialogue on nanotechnology.
PR in practice still works at cross purposes with journalists, who are tasked to find the truth. The two disciplines ask many of the same questions. But at the end of the day, the journalist produces a story and the communications professional produces something else, usually a much greater distortion than a person with loyalty to a mythical group of readers.
The irony is the newspapers should have at least attempted stories on nanotechnology that surface the issues and conflicts. But trying to sell a nanotechnology story to anyone other than the New York Times science page is futile. The New York Times has no special expertise. One of its writers maintains that a specialized knowledge is not needed, and in fact, is discouraged. The science writers need to have a layman’s knowledge to competently ask the right questions and write about them.
Forgive me for taking this long route to my point. Meeting the challenges of adopting nanotechnology will require great resources. A great deal of work needs to be done.