A large part of our work at Cientifica is spotting technology trends before they become generally apparent. The early bird gets the worm, or in the case of some of our clients the IP, the partnership, the funding or the customers. While that part of our work stays firmly beneath the radar, we dont mind sharing one fast growing and positive trend with you.
A year ago the nanotech blogsphere was full of assorted science fiction freaks, wannabe journalists, boosters, braggarts and other such intellectual flotsam and jetsam. While an oft touted advantage of the blogging revolution is that anyone can have their voice heard, it also meant that anyone who had read a synopsis of Engines of Creation could set themselves up as a nanotech expert. A little knowledge is both a dangerous and a tedious thing.
While there is still a lot of speculative froth out there, we note a growing trend for serious discussion on nanotechnology, led by that most unlikely of revolutionaries, the Great British Scientist. Blogs such as Richard Joness Soft Machines and Martyn Amos Complexity, Nanotechnology and Bio-computing are run by real scientists and contain real discussions of nanotechnology and converging technologies. While the newsgroups being supplanted by blogs attracted more than their fair share of undergraduate bar room babble, along with interminable requests to please send me details of nanotechnology as I have to write a thesis on it by next Wednesday type postings, the new generation of bogs are erudite, informative and authoritative.
While traditionally minded scientists may scoff, not everyone has access to, or can get to grips with the kind of information in Nature or Nanotechnology. Scientists such as Jones and Amos are bailing out of their ivory towers and making real nanotechnology issues accessible to the general public. It’s the kind of revolution we are happy to endorse.