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Guest Writer - Gastautor - Gast Schrijver
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Jason Des Forges

plenty of room down there…
nano talk from New Zealand

 

I, Nanokook

I wish I hadn’t got talking about nanotechnology. I wanted the job as communication lecturer very much, and I was both experienced and qualified:

Interviewer: So can you, using words of two syllables or less, explain what nanotechnology is?

Me: Molecular nanotechnology. . .

Interviewer: That’s more than two syllables

Me: Um. . . It’s when we’ll be able to alter matter as easily as we now move data.

Perhaps I should have said “There’s plenty of room at the bottom”.
I didn’t get the job. It may not have been due to my failing to make my words tiny enough.

I think nanotechnology has the potential to transform our world and solve many of our problems, particularly those to do with scarcity of resources. Hey! That’s a lot of the world’s problems. Ever heard the idea that “all wars are about resources”?

I’m pretty well informed and tend to talk about carbon nanotubes rather than tiny robots. At least the nanotubes exist. But the topic still doesn’t go down too well among the city folk of Auckland, New Zealand. I usually proffer a nanosolution to the terribly gloomy scenarios people paint of the future, and come away feeling like some kook selling snake oil.

Nanotechnology still sounds so sci-fi. What’s more it sounds like bad sci-fi, fill of mad scientist inventions such as free energy, space elevators and spray on computers.

Perhaps there just aren’t the results out there for it to seem real to people. I’ve not even come across nanopants or carbon nanotube reinforced tennis racquets. And where are those carbon nanotube big screens? A year ago I read they could be on the market as early as Christmas 2004. Now they look to be a few years away. Michael Criton’s movie version of Prey will be out in plenty of time. Nanoheebeejeebees.

Still, technology marches ahead. I continue to be impressed with computers such as the new G5 imac, and most of the gadgets you’ll find at engadget.com.

Technology has not yet entered the new diamond age, but it’s still pretty shiny.

www.nanokiwi.com


Copyright © 2004 Jason Des Forges

Jason Des Forges

 
 


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