"Who will operate the nanotechnology factories of the future?"
That's the intriguing first sentence of a news release from Georgia Tech University. It describes the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network's effort to develop "educational outreach programs designed to ensure that tomorrow's workers have the right skills for nanotechnology industries–-and that the public will be able to separate nanotechnology fact from fiction."
The rest of the news release doesn't give any indication as to whether they consider desktop nanofactories to be fact or fiction (Hint: They're fiction now, but soon will be fact), nor does it specify whether those "nanotechnology factories of the future" are indeed nanofactories.
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog
"...she’s helping develop educational outreach programs designed to ensure that tomorrow’s workers have the right skills for nanotechnology industries – and that the public will be able to separate nanotechnology fact from fiction."
I don't know about you, but someone who thinks that there will BE jobs in any significant numbers in the "nanotechnology industry" once real nanofactories actually make the scene isn't the kind of person I'd trust to tell me how to "separate fact from fiction".
“There’s a misperception that nanotechnology is really still science fiction,” said Healy ... “People generally don’t know what nanotechnology really is. There’s a risk that their perceptions will be based on popular culture portrayals of it rather than fact.”
We've come a long way since the NNI hijacked the term "nanotechnology" from Drexler, et al, who originally used it to describe MM. Now they're accusing those who coined the term of distorting it! Brillant.
Posted by: Nato Welch | February 26, 2006 at 10:22 PM