A nice quote by Sir Andre Geim, Nobel Prize winning co-discoverer of graphene in this morning’s Times headlined “Twitter is no substitute for proper science, laments Nobel laureate.” However, Sir Andre said that he had been “bemused” by the clamour to exploit graphene. “I’m not interested in going into industry or property development or creating ‘graphene valley’ as the Government would …
How Materials, Not IT, Are Disrupting The Construction Industry
We’ve been having some lively debate about whether there are any more industries for IT to disrupt – after all there are only a limited number of things you can do online. The counter argument is that boundaries between the virtual and real worlds are blurring, and that as this happens IT will become ever more pervasive. But a recent …
Big Data, Nanotechnology, Magic and Random Acts of God (or Eric Schmidt)
Two of my interests, Big Data and Nanotechnology seems to be colliding this week and that’s a bad sign? Why? Well nanotechnology is seen as a Deus Ex Machina that performs the magic step that enables or justifies other technologies, which usually means that someone hasn’t got much of a clue how to get to their imagined version of the …
Technology – so much more than social media!
Discussing “emerging technologies” is always a challenge as it means different things to different people. We had a go at defining it a few years ago, and Jason Pontin at MIT Technology Review justifies their shift from “emerging” to using the phrase “breakthrough technologies” in this month’s edition. Is this equally meaningless? The real problem is the word “technology” which …
Troubleshooting Emerging Technology Companies
One of the problems of being asked for advice is that the recipients don’t always like what they are told. This was memorably illustrated by one of the first ever reality TV shows, Troubleshooter, featuring former ICI chairman Sir John Harvey Jones. Never afraid to give blunt advice, Harvey-Jones’ solutions to struggling businesses ranged from developing turn around plans to …
Top Ten Emerging Technologies 2013 from the World Economic Forum
Every year I sit down with my colleagues on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies (WEF GAC-ET for short!!!!) and have a spirited discussion about what the top ten emerging technologies in the world will be. Here then, in no particular order, is our annual expert view (or as a slideshow at the Washington Post) on what …
The Future of Nanotechnology – From A Molecular Point of View
An interesting interview with Christine Peterson at the Foresight Institute. For those unfamiliar with Foresight, they were early proponents of nanotechnologies, but following Eric Drexler’s Nanosystems vision of small machines getting ever smaller and ignoring the laws of physics. As a result they got into all kinds of pointless fights with people from Nobel Laureate Richard Smalley to Dexter Johnson, …
It’s Snowing Graphene
I woke up this morning to find graphene was ubiquitous, even displacing snow as the main topic of conversation. I’m getting emails from sports stores and even the BBC breakfast news was full of it, although tempering the hype with the question ‘Is graphene really a wonder-material?’ before concluding “The miracle material will soak up a lot of money …
Graphene – This Years Secret Weapon for Maria Sharapova and Novak Djokovic?
There’s not much innovation in the world of marketing, as demonstrated by tennis rival Head’s announcement of its new graphene racquets as used by Novak Djokovic and Maria Sharapova. A series of videos extol the benefits of this new wonder material. It’s almost ten years since French racquet manufacturer Babolat jumped on the nanotech bandwagon with the world’s first tennis …
Good and Bad News About Global Risks
The World Economic Forum publishes its Global Risks Report 2013 today, and my opinion is buried in there somewhere among the other thousand experts. It’s always a fascinating document, although it is a survey of opinion, hence nanotechnology being defined as a high likelihood high impact risk eight years ago! That said, the first paragraph of the report flags carbon nanotubes …