The Foresight Institutes Christine Peterson, usually a voice of calm and reason among the proselytising poohbahs of molecular nanotech, takes a look at how to train more all American nanotechnologists, or Molecule Geeks as they now seem to be called (cue the enraged chemists claiming to have been Molecule Geeks for over a hundred years).
Perhaps the real answer answer, surprisingly, is locked in its bedroom wielding megablocks or a joystick, zapping its way across the universe with nano-enabled weapons on a PC. While educators struggle with selling nanotech to the masses, any games fan already knows about the wonders of nanotech, from role paying games such as Civilization through to Nanosaurs.
What makes people get interested in technology isnt a patronising adult talking down to them, but stuff that’s cool, stuff that is exciting, something that stimulates the imagination. Forty years ago it was the space program, and now Nanotech is cool, and that is something that we can build on. While the debate over the feasibility of molecular manufacturing may continue ad nauseum, just like the colonization of space, the real legacy of the Drexlerians is already in a Play Station of PC game.
If that can be translated into a love of science then the end may justify the (perhaps unintentional) means.