We were planning to write a blog entry today about how this article, which is otherwise interesting and useful, makes a confusing usage of the term 'nanofactory'. We were planning to do that, I say, but then our esteemed colleague Michael Anissimov beat us to it:
Artificial cells are not nanofactories! The term "nanofactory" is a desktop manufacturing system! Why does the mainstream constantly steal cutting-edge terminology and water it down?
To be fair, as is made clear in the comments on Michael's article, it is not blogger Roland Piquepaille who made the unfortunate choice to call these proposed medical devices 'nanofactories', but the University of Maryland researchers themselves.
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog
Artificial cells based on synthetic biology will be very useful for many biomedical applications, including gene therapy, stem cell therapy, and reversing the aging process. Thomas Donaldson (who does not believe in "dry" nanotechnology) wrote an article in cryonics magazine 20 years ago, where he postulated that artificial cell-like devices would be able to reanimate people from cryonic suspension.
Artifical cells may not be perfect "dry" nanomachines, but they will prove to be very useful for many "messy" biological applications.
Posted by: Kurt9 | March 22, 2007 at 10:06 AM
It doesn’t strike me as that big of a deal.
“Desktop nanofactory” is not redundant - I don’t think there’s an established scale factor for “nanofactory”. That’s why the “desktop” adjective is needed.
I would think they didn’t choose “nanobot” because robots don’t suggest the most important feature of their device - it’s fabrication facilities.
You’re right, though, that “factory” does carry some scale baggage with it. It says “big”, as in building big. “Desktop factory” is novel because it suggests a smaller package with factory capabilities.
Posted by: Nato Welch | March 22, 2007 at 02:53 PM