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the Foresight Institute
the Foresight Institute (www.foresight.org) has great Nanotechnology news, photos, videos and more
Friday, Jan 22
Feynman anniversary event to be held at University of South Carolina
h/t Nanowerk In February 1960, the Caltech magazine Engineering & Science published Feynman’s “Plenty of Room”, and it has been re-published ten times since then. This has become one of the best-known papers in the history of nanotechnology. The fiftieth anniversary of the initial...
Saturday, Jan 16
Last day of free webcast of Foresight Conference on nanotech & AI
Today is the last day of the free webcast of the 2010 Foresight Conference being held now in Palo Alto. The bandwidth coming out of the Sheraton is marginal, so the video may be low-res, but we will be posting high-res videos later, funds permitting (feel free to assist with this goal!). Y...
Wednesday, Jan 13
Is gravity an entropic spring?
Two nanoparticles connected by a polymer will tend to be drawn together at finite temperatures (though not at absolute zero) because as the polymer chain explores the states available to it, there are many more tangled and balled up ones than stretched-out straight ones — even though th...
Tuesday, Jan 12
Recent commentary
A round-up of commentary about the state of nanotech research, given the 50th anniversary of Feynman’s talk: Adam Keiper in the WSJ If this dispute over nano-nomenclature only involved some sniping scientists and a few historians watching over a tiny corner of Feynman’s legacy, it wou...
Saturday, Jan 2
Software responsibility as model for nanotech?
Foresight ally Jeff Ubois has a new book out, published by Fondazione Giannino Bassetti, Conversations on Innovation, Power, and Responsibility. Yours truly is quoted. An excerpt: Peterson suggests that a closer look at the software developers might provide some clues about respo...
Monday, Dec 28
J Storrs Hall on FastForward Radio tonight
Tonight on Fast Forward Radio J Storrs Hall, president of Foresight joins FFR to continue their special series leading up Foresight 2010. The conference, January 16-17 in Palo Alto, California, provides a unique opportunity to explore the convergence of nanotechnology and artificia...
Sunday, Dec 27
Life extension: taking those first steps
Longtime readers know that we at Foresight would prefer that our members, and Nanodot readers in general, actually live long enough to experience the benefits of molecular nanotechnology personally. In that vein, we bring to your attention America’s Wellness Challenge, which I am he...
Saturday, Dec 26
Avatar
The first time I met Eric Drexler, I complained to him, “You’ve ruined science fiction for me.” (He replied, “If it’s any consolation, I ruined it for myself.”) The reason, of course, is that understanding nanotech means that the all the classic SF projections become so piddling and simpl...
Tuesday, Dec 22
Robin Hanson and Brian Wang Tonight on Fast Forward Radio
h/t Next Big Future) Tonight on Fast Forward Radio Economist Robin Hanson and futurist Brian Wang join us as we continue our special series leading up Foresight 2010. The conference, January 16-17 in Palo Alto, California, provides a unique opportunity to explore the convergence of nan...
Thursday, Dec 17
Feynman on Climategate
We here at Foresight are not particularly interested in climate change — the effects, even if you take the IPCC projections as gospel, are dwarfed by the capability of nanotech (for good or ill). But we are considerably more concerned about the way science is done, and whether it can relia...
Tuesday, Dec 15
“Nanotechnology” causes global warming
One of the reasons I inveigh so heavily against the use of the word “nanotechnology” to mean merely stuff that’s measured in nanometers, is that while it focuses on the size — “nano” — it tends to ignore the function — the “technology.” Nanotech to me is about high-energy-density, high-fr...
Thursday, Dec 10
Foresight 2010: register now for discounts!
Our conference is coming up January 16-17. Conference page and registration info here. Time is running out for registration and lodging discounts! I put together the slate of speakers for this conference by inviting the speakers I personally wanted to hear, talking about AI and nanotec...
Monday, Dec 7
Nanopants, redux
Dexter Johnson writes, “What Should We Call the (Nano)technology in Your Stain-resistant Pants?” … the competition for ownership of the term “nanotechnology” that seems to persist between the adherents to MNT, as exemplified by the Foresight Institute, and those who use the term to...
Friday, Nov 20
Foresight 2010: the Synergy of Molecular Manufacturing and AGI
This year is the 20th anniversary of the original Foresight Conference on Nanotechnology. The neat, clear vision of nanotechnology we had in 1989 rested on two key aspects that would make it a transformative, rather than merely an evolutionary, technology: The ability to construct and...
Wednesday, Nov 18
Reynolds advocates faster nano/AI R&D for safety reasons
In Popular Mechanics, longtime Foresight friend Prof. Glenn Reynolds looks at the future of nanotech and artificial intelligence, among other things looking at safety issues, including one call that potentially dangerous technologies be relinquished. He takes a counterintuitive...
Wednesday, Nov 11
Moore’s Law Marches On
According to the loose length-scale based definition, nanotechnology has long since conquered the world: feature sizes in microprocessors have been below the 100 nanometer mark for some time, qualifying them, if anyone wanted to, to be called nanoprocessors. The latest reports and p...
Monday, Nov 9
Nanotechnology researchers find reliable, mess-free way to grow graphene
from nanowerk “You can imagine trying to peel a piece of shrink wrap off a dish to put it on a new dish — it’s going to be messy,” said lead researcher Jiwoong Park, Cornell assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology. Inspired by previous work in which [...]
Merkle on nanotech at Singularity University
Ted Greenwald posted yesterday at Wired about Foresight member Ralph Merkle’s presentation on nanotechnology at the Singularity University’s first Executive Program, which has just convened over at NASA Ames here in Silicon Valley: From there he skims through a catalog of progress...
Wednesday, Nov 4
Nanotechnology devices: Molecular machines shift into gear
An atomically precise gear, rotated by pushing the teeth one at a time with a STM tip.
Tuesday, Oct 27
Atomic precision as the goal of nanotechnology
Nanotechnology Enables Real Atomic Precision is the title of a piece by Susan Smith in Desktop Engineering, which includes comments by longtime Foresight Senior Associates Steve Vetter and Tihamer Toth-Fejel: While nanotechology might mean different things to different people, t...
Friday, Oct 16
Don Eigler: Two decades of nanotech – opinion – 14 October 2009 – New Scientist
Don Eigler: Two decades of nanotech - opinion - 14 October 2009 - New Scientist. An interview with Don Eigler of "IBM in 35 xenon atoms" fame. Has nanotechnology trickled down into everyday life yet? To some extent. It's showing up in coatings, cosmetics and sunscreens, and it's starting to s...
Tuesday, Oct 13
Roadmap for Additive Manufacturing
There's an excellent round-up over at Next Big Future on the Roadmap for Additive Manufacturing. This is solid freeform fabrication, 3-D printing, stereolithography, rapid prototyping, and so forth. In the long run, 3-D printing is one of the more straightforward paths to full-fledge...
Tuesday, Oct 6
Foresight Institute Announces Feynman Prize Winners
PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct 06, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The Foresight Institute, a nanotechnology education and public policy think tank based in Palo Alto, has announced the winners of the prestigious 2009 Foresight Institute Feynman Prizes in Nanotechnology. Established in 1993 in honor...
