Anti-Science and Politics

I’ve mentioned the negative views of science expressed by the ‘green’ movement, but according to the Guardian most politicians feel the same, with hardly any thought given to science other than the usual lip service of creating dynamic knowledge based economies, although unfortunately the result we ended up with was less like the Google campus and more like this: I suppose it says a lot about the …

The Nanotech Taliban Claim “Dexter Johnson is an ignoramus whose ignorance leads him to view optimists with contempt.”

My estwhile colleague Dexter Johnson who also blogs for IEEE Spectrum received a number of plaudits from readers of the Foresight Institutes Nanodot blog after daring to suggest that the sunny optimism of current President J Storrs Hall might be rather displaced and that the assertion nanobots will save us may be rather missing the point. Illustrating the difficullty of …

Credit Crunch or Creative Destruction

In October 2008, I was asked at the World Economic Forum along with other experts to address the main challenges facing nanotechnology. While environmental, health and safety concerns had been the preoccupation of many for 2008, this question posed by the WEF combined with the world economic crisis led me to consider the challenges of funding and commercializing of nanotechnology …

The Big Question?

The Independent, the organ of middle class, slightly left leaning, middle of the road, organic veg munching people with a perpetually concerned expression on their faces (at least the ones I know) distills all the recent fuss into one big question, which it then fails to answer. Should the Government call a moratorium on nanotechnology? Yes… * The risks are …

Attention Seeking Behaviour

Back in 2001 when I was involved with the European Nanobusiness Association, NanoBusiness Alliance and other bodies, the real fear was that a knee jerk reaction by a politician worrying about “gray goo” could kill nanotechnology off before it even got started. The impending publication of Prey by Michael Crichton had people worrying themselves sick over the image of nanotechnologies, …

Fruitful Dialogue?

I took the Circle Line round to Westminster this morning to drop in on the Uk Nanotechnology Showcase event being held at the DTI DBERR conference centre, which was rather interesting for some of the wrong reasons. First up was the Minister of State for Science and Innovation, Ian Pearson, to give a Government view of nanotechnology. The Minister, who …