Archives

Entries tagged with: Nanotechnology

20 result(s) displayed (1 - 20 of 20):

Living in a Scenario

There's something of a rule-of-thumb among professional futurey-types: scenario elements that sound plausible are almost certainly wrong, while scenario elements that sound utterly implausible are very likely on-target. That's generally true, although it applies more to the disruptive aspects of...

Topsight, May 26, 2009

Because this blog isn't just links to stuff I've done elsewhere. Honest! • The Participatory Panopticon In Action Police Slog Through 40,000 Insipid Party Pics To Find Cause Of Dorm Fire From The Onion, of course. As tongue-in-cheek as this...

Nanobama

Mike Treder, director of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, has offered up an entry to the "Citizen's Briefing Book" section of Obama's Change.org website. In "Advanced Nanotechnology - What, When, Why" Mike argues that an investment in the development of...

Nanopolitics

Two reports out this week hint at a new political alignment in the coming decades. Both reports focus on nanotechnology, but have implications well beyond. Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows a strong correlation between moral doubts about nanotechnology...

Super-Empowered Hopeful Individuals

This is my column for the latest edition of Nanotechnology Now. Mike Treder reposted it over at CRN's blog, so I thought I'd go ahead and repost it here, too. Feedback, as always, is more than welcome. Most discussions of...

Nanoscenarios

The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology today published eight scenarios exploring differing drivers for the advent of molecular manufacturing. This was the "virtual workshop" series I led earlier this year, and the scenarios reflect the work of over 50 people across...

Monday Topsight, October 22, 2007

Because technically it was still Monday when I started this. • Oooh, Spooooky! What's more appropriate for Hallowe'en than Spooky Technology? Except this isn't ghosts and goblins (and Count Floyd!), it's research into communication, sensing and perhaps even weapons technologies...

Molecular Rights Management

I'll have more to say about this soon, but I just want to toss the idea out to the noösphere and make it visible. Molecular Rights Management refers to the panoply of technologies employed to prevent the unrestricted reproduction of...

Wednesday Topsight, January 24, 2007

Let's see, lots of apocaphilia lately... • Five Minutes to Midnight: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has a well-known icon, shown here: the ticking clock, counting down to midnight. Throughout the Cold War, as tensions between the superpowers rose...

RoboFactory

(Cue "Powerhouse," by Raymond Scott) Nanofabbers are on my mind right now. They've shown up in some work I'm doing with IFTF; they're the focus of a project underway with CRN; and they're one of the manifestations of the "software...

End-User License Agreement, StuffStation Deluxe

BY CLICKING "I AGREE" YOU ACCEPT THE PROVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE. I will not use this product (STUFFSTATION DELUXE) to build, repair, or in any way constitute weapons of mass destruction; I will not use this product (STUFFSTATION DELUXE) to...

Nano-Health, Nano-War

Lots of nano-news over the past week or two -- and most of it good! Clean Bill of Health: One of the big questions about nanomaterials arising in recent months concerns the toxicity of nanoparticles, particularly carbon nanotubes. Since carbon...

Irony Can Be Pretty Ironic, Sometimes

John Petersen's Arlington Institute (a Washington, DC think-tank) just posted a copy of the very brief nanospam talk I gave at PopTech. Coincidentally, I'm suddenly being inundated with actual nanospam. Not in the "junk spewing from my desktop fabber" sense,...

The Nightmare Scenario

While reading a story about the "gray goo" attack in Second Life, I was struck by what could well be the nightmare scenario for molecular manufacturing: Spam. Hear me out. We all know the logic behind email spam: the cost...

Tuesday Topsight, October 10, 2006

It's End of the World time at Open the Future Topsight! • MADH -- Mutually Assured Dark Humor: DEFCON proclaims itself to be the "World's First Genocide 'em up," and that bit of ad copy should tell you everything you...

New Position

I'm pleased to announce that the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology has asked me to serve as their Global Futures Strategist, and I have accepted. This is a volunteer position, so I'll still be doing my various other projects as before,...

Devolution

I'm posting this via a computer I haven't used for a few months. My current machine, a 2.0 GHz MacBook, began this morning to exhibit the "random shutdown syndrome" that apparently afflicts most of the units made prior to July...

Abundance, Scarcity and Beta-Testing Tomorrow

I often cite molecular nanotechnology as a transformative technology because of its significant potential implications, especially societal implications. In principle, given inputs of relatively common raw materials (including materials recycled from objects no longer in use), a full-fledged nanofabrication device...

Synthetic Biology

The Synthetic Biology 2.0 conference just ended, and Rob Carlson (of open biology fame) and Oliver Morton (author of the terrific and under-appreciated Mapping Mars) attended and blogged the event. Carlson is working on his book on open biology (Learning...

OtF Core: Open the Future

I wrote nearly 2,000 articles for WorldChanging, and I am very happy to have them there. Nonetheless, some of the pieces I wrote are fundamental parts of my worldview, and it's useful to have them here, too. "Open the Future,"...

Movable Type search results powered by Fast Search