Applied Materials have become the latest company to jump on the ‘nano’ bandwagon with an ad hoping to rebrand their semiconductor production equipment as “nanomanufacturing” and a new clunky tag line “Nanomanufacturing Technology to Enable Customer Innovation.”
There is an intro to “nanomanufacturing” on their web site which has a nice timeline of nanotechnology, highlighting Feynman (1959), Drexler (1986) and then jumping straight to sub 100nm transistors in 2003.
It is all a bit odd, with many of the applications mentioned being nanohype from the 2002 vintage, and an extended sequence on spider silk without explaining any link with nanotech. The rest of the animation also seems to have fallen through a timewarp, with some amazing predictions that “small computers will be built into TVs” (digital TV?) and that “PDA’s with integrated cell phones become communications platforms” (Blackberry anyone?).
All in all it is a bit peculiar for a technology company to have such a poor understanding of the modern world. Either Applied Materials have been sitting on this material for years or subcontracted it to an organic cooperative PR agency living in a teepee in the woods.