The IEEE Spectrums 40th Anniversary edition last month took an interesting survey of the forty leading scientific and technological minds around the world to get a sense from them what will be the most important technology in the next decade.
Of the 40 thinkers they posed the question to only four mentioned nanotechnology. While 10 percent of the respondents mentioning nanotechnology may seem a positive result for nanotechnologys promoters, their high hopes may be somewhat dashed in learning that some of the key scientific leaders in nanotechnology, such as George Whitesides, dont mention nanotechnology as one of the key technologies over the next decade.
The clear winners for the technology of the next decade are wireless, Internet, and biology. Some of the technologies that have been identified could certainly be further enabled by nanotechnology, but when many of the top scientific thinkers still see that technologies such as the integrated circuit and the Internettechnologies with us today–will still have the most dramatic impact on our lives over the next decade, we wonder if it might serve some nanotechnology evangelists to put their visions for nanotechnology into a broader context.