Foresight adds podcasts to communication prize

The Foresight Nanotech Institute, the think tank that has been thinkin' about nanotech since before you were a brat watching "Barney," young fella, is taking nominations for its annual communication prize. I was the first blogger to win the award back in '04, but blogs are so early '00s and Foresight is nothing if not up on the latest things. So, they've added nanotech podcasts to the mix.

I am not aware of any dedicated nanotech podcast, but I know the subject is being discussed more and more on podcasts ranging from science to business to investing to, of course, SciFi. The way I stay up-to-date on the latest podcasts that even mention nanotechnology is through the Podzinger RSS Alert. Plug this link into your iTunes or podcast application of your choice and you'll get interesting stuff ranging from the latest NPR report on nanotech to author Jack Uldrich giving a nanotech talk to a civic organization in Cleveland.

The Foresight prize is given for nonfiction communication on nanotechnology in any print, electronic, broadcast or other communications medium, including, books, periodicals, internet sites and services, and radio, film and video productions. Send in your nominations through this link.

Backgrounder
Thank you, Foresight
Foresight insight outta-sight
Foresight backtracks to build a bridge
How big is nano?

Escape from my own private Pennsylvania

In this time of transition, I've been thinking a great deal about my brief 1992-'93 stint as assistant news editor for the Wilkes-Barre (Pa.) Times Leader. It was there that I experienced the first major upheaval of my professional life.

I headed for those hills after about four years of work at the now-defunct Haverhill Gazette, a smaller daily in northern Massachusetts. I get sentimental over my 1988-'92 "Gazettte period" because that was where I really began to learn how to be a reporter, working under the guidance of an editor whom I admired and respected. There was a "family" feel to the place -- literally, since I would sometimes take my newborn daughter into the newsroom. (She's now 13 years old. Yikes!) While I did my work, some of the writers and photographers would keep my baby occupied and entertained.

I moved from there to the ruins of Pennsylvania coal country because I felt it was time to make the transition to a larger paper with better pay and more responsibility, since I now had a daughter to support. I was brought in as an "outsider" to take over the copy desk, where it soon became apparent that my arrival was greatly resented. Two of the senior copy editors believed they should have been given my job, but the chief editors wanted to shake things up with some new blood.

Long story short, it was pretty much a nightmare from the beginning. I had to watch my back against the bitter editors I supervised, while trying to show my bosses that I was cracking the whip and making measurable improvements in the copy desk's work. I would stay awake nights, worrying myself sick over how to get my employees to like me, and my supervisors to notice the good work I did.

It was a hopeless situation, and I found myself turning into somebody I did not want to be -- a panting dog so eager for praise and acceptance that I tossed away nearly everything I had learned the previous four years. It was no longer about journalism at all, I lost this driving sense of mission to learn the craft and improve my skills. Now, it was a job. A middle management purgatory. A place that literally made me sick with worry over how everybody was perceiving me. My demeanor in those days was a great deal more "serious" than it is today. I certainly did not go around making wisecracks and emanating irreverence -- especially not to people who had control over my life and my family.

It's been an evolutionary process since then to get me where I am today -- more sure of myself and less likely to really give a damn about what others think of the way I practice my profession or what they perceive to be my attitude. Admittedly, I've probably overcompensated in my willful escape from the sniveling, cowardly kiss-ass I thought I was in danger of becoming.

Today, I'm probably my own worst enemy. But, like I wrote to a friend yesterday, I spent my 20s and early 30s worrying about what my editor or boss thought about my work, or whether I said the wrong thing to the wrong person. At the ripe old age of "pushing 40," I'm done with that. I try to let my work speak for itself. I keep my eyes directly on my core mission as a journalist without bothering to turn my head to the left or right to even listen to how it's being accepted or rejected by others. Some of my personal heroes are the ones who did not take the convenient positions of the moment, but stayed on their own path in the conviction that it will be proven correct in the long run.

And that's why I naturally float toward The Foresight Institute, a nanotech think tank whose members have always believed in the long-term vision of molecular manufacturing despite the way they've been conveniently marginalized by short-term nanobusiness interests. Oh, I've been critical of them, too, for what I've seen as their refusal to engage in issues of great importance to development of the nanoscale technologies that today call themselves "nanotechnology." Like I told Foresight members when they honored me with the 2004 Prize in Communication: "You need to remember that I am not your friend. It's just a matter of time before I write something that does not please you, if I haven't already. When I do, I hope you'll remember that I am only displaying the kind of independence that you all have encouraged in me."

This little blog is the only publication in existence that's dedicated to objective coverage of nanotechnology. And by "objective," I don't mean refraining from voicing an opinion. This is a blog, and blogs are all about opinions. I mean objective in the sense that I have no personal stake in any of the stuff I write about -- except that I'm fascinated enough by nanotech to want to continue committing random acts of journalism around it. But when all is said and done, I can decide to stop covering nanotechnology, move on to another topic and apply the same kind of standards of objectivity and readability that I have learned and applied throughout my career.

Foresight heard me, believed me and, even more importantly, placed enough of a value on the ideals of independence that its members took action to prevent it from going away. The Foresight Institute, its board of directors and the donors who make the work possible, including Larry Millstein who also sponsors the Communication Award, figured out a way to help me save my house from foreclosure. And it was not an act of charity. I'm going to do some "work-for-hire" writing for them to earn the advance in pay that their board voted to send me.

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds is a Foresight board member, and his support was key not only through the link he provided in his wildly popular blog, but also voting to help me through this crisis. My family and I are immeasurably grateful for Foresight's unsolicited, surprise, 11th-hour offer.

And it's not only the molecular manufacturing crowd that values my work. The head of a nanotech company that is very much into the nanoscale products of today -- in fact, has products on the market, also thought that I was enough of a worthwhile investment to advance me some money to save the ranch in exchange for future work. This, too, seemed to come out of the blue for me, and was unsolicited. The CEO, who wants to remain anonymous, wrote: "I believe that you perform a valuable service to the sector and would like to see that continue (as it benefits nano to have some objective journalism on the Web)."

Nice to get the affirmation from a sector that sometimes falls under my criticism. There are many other nanotech businesspeople and investors who tell me they value my blog because of its independence, and not despite it.

There are many other people to thank, as well -- the concerned readers who wrote to me with much-needed words of encouragement and job tips, the folks within the nanotech world who brainstormed ways to help me out and the family and close friends who were there when I needed them. I am deeply indebted to them all. And I never forget my friends.

Unlike my behavior during my personal "Dark Age" in Pennsylvania, I did not go out of my way to try to impress them or court their support. In some cases, I've been openly critical of them. And that's exactly why they want to see me continue this NanoBot experiment.

My gratitude to you all. Now, back to nanotech ...

A good omen for nano's future

Feynman Distinguished Student Award winner Damian Allis, Ph.D., contemplates the meaning of the extra three letters recently tacked on to the end of his name. Well, for one thing, he can now pack a more powerful academic punch in his bouts with Attobuoy, although I suspect Damian needs no post-Allis alphabet soup to reduce his opponents to incoherent mumbling. Speaking of alphabet soup, here's a pdf of his thesis TOC.

NanoBot Backgrounder
Foresight insight outta-sight

Foresight insight outta-sight

Photo by Adam Keiper

It's been a wild couple of days, and I have a great many stories to tell after the Foresight Institute's First Conference on Advanced Nanotechnology. I spent the entire time gathering material, interviewing people, getting to know more sources and preparing for my own presentation at the conference. It seemed to go well, although I definitely lack the polish of a person who presents at conferences all the time. I'm much more comfortable covering conferences as a newsman, rather being a part of them. A lot of people reacted favorably, though. Also, it sounds as though Foresight is going to engage in the political process a little more, rather than sitting on the sidelines and complaining that they're being excluded. It's a great development, another in a series of developments that make the "nano story" more and more intriguing to tell.

I do apologize to those who might have expected blow-by-blow blogging of every move made, but when I saw that Adam Keiper of The New Atlantis magazine had that covered (and covered very well) in his blog, I let him do all the scrambling around (welcome to my nightmare, Adam), leaving me free to gather information and put some more thought into how I'm going to use it. Boy, this nano story just keeps getting more and more interesting. There's a narrative here involving not only political, technological, scientific and personal clashes among the various players, but some added dimensions that I'm still sifting through. If I wanted to do fiction, I could probably run with what I've got, with very few changes from the true story, and probably have a much-better tale than Michael Crichton's "Prey."

Truth is, however, usually much more interesting than fiction -- yet harder to get. Stay tuned.

The picture above is me interviewing Feynman Distinguished Student Award winner Damian Allis. Damian is what I call "scary smart." A theoretical physicist by day and jazz drummer by night, he is going to contribute greatly to the advancement of nanoscience and world technological progress in general. Really. No exaggeration. Among Damian's many roles, he is an adviser to Nanorex Inc., a nanotech computer aided design company that you probably had not heard of until now. Its founder, Mark Sims, recently gave generously to a new molecular assembler animation put together by Eric Drexler. I'll go more into that later. Sims is pretty much the only entrepreneur working on this kind of computer-aided design, since VCs won't touch it and the government has seemingly determined that the Drexler vision is not possible. In a coincidence that can only be described as Kabbalistic and meant to happen on the subatomic level, his company is based in suburban Detroit and I happened to get a seat next to him on the flight home, where we talked nonstop nano.

As usual, watch this space for more insights on this story that is taking me on a ride further down the rabbit hole and into a deeper understanding of the forces at work inside this bizarre universe of nanopolitics, nanoperception and nanodeception (I told you that I could turn this into a cliche-ridden potboiler, but that would be too easy).

More to come, but meanwhile check out Keiper's coverage of my acceptance speech, my presentation and a video clip of an interview I did with a cryonics client (I haven't seen it, since it only runs on Windows and I'm a Mac cultist).

NanoBot Backgrounder
Thank you, Foresight

Thank you, Foresight

The Foresight Institute honored me tonight with its 2004 Prize in Communication.

Here's the text of my acceptance speech, which was very well-received. Some of the references are inside-nano-baseball jokes. I'll add links if there's time later:

"My fellow Drexlerians … pseudo-pundits … panderers … cranks … crackpots … and other denizens of our moms' basements …

"Thank you very much for honoring me with what my 13-year-old daughter calls the "Dork of the Year" award.

"She, and everybody else, tells me I'm obsessed with nanotechnology. Guilty. But I look at it much differently than most of you in the room. I'm not obsessed with it as a technology, as a science, as a means of saving or destroying the world, or making a quick buck, or gathering government grants, plotting world domination. That's not what I do. Nanotechnology to me is, pure and simple, a … great … story. It's a story that contains, within it, many chapters large and small. My God, it's a story of grinches and greed, it's a story of men and women with vision, it's a story about humankind's relationship with the world around, it's a story mushing molecular objects together like, in the words of a great nanoscientist, "boys and girls in love."

"I'm obsessed with nanotechnology in the same way that I become obsessed with every single facet of any story I cover. It's the only way I know how to write something with true understanding. In a previous journalism life, I wrote about the Mideast peace process. When I had the chance to dive into nanotechnology, I thanked God for the chance to cover science, rather than war and peace – where things are clear-cut, where it either is, or it ain't, and there really can't be much argument over it.

"Boy was I wrong. Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat? They're like those overpolite cartoon chipmunks compared with Drexler and Smalley. My goodness, you are a great story.

"Here's where I ran into trouble, though. As a journalist, I just can't help it. I seek out the minority opinion, those who march on the wrong foot – as I did when I was in the high school marching band – those who say that nanotech is going in the wrong direction, or has been hijacked by other interests. You go where the story takes you. My cranky, old journalism professor – of the old school, with the ink-stained fingers, is always the voice in the back of my mind. "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."

"Or, perhaps my motivation is much less lofty. I don't know. You know. If it bleeds it leads.

"So, I led … and I bled. And I have … no … regrets.

"I want to thank everybody at the Foresight Institute for this great honor, But, and I hope you will take this in the spirit with which you have given me this honor, you need to remember that I am not your friend. It's just a matter of time before I write something that does not please you, if I haven't already. When I do, I hope you'll remember that I am only displaying the kind of independence that you all have encouraged in me by honoring me with this prestigious communications award.

"Thank you."

Drexler on 'Drexlerians'

Here are excerpts from a couple of e-mails I recently exchanged with Eric Drexler, the author who first popularized nano, yet now finds himself persona nano non grata among the businesspeople and politicians who have taken the nano name.

Eric Drexler: Regarding the following on your blog:

"I have not taken any kind of scientific poll, but judging from the conversations I've had with many of the people here, I can safely confirm for the MNT believers something they likely already knew: They are indeed being marginalized by those who speak for the nanotech business community, and proudly so. I used the term "believers" on purpose because one source told me that arguing with a Drexlerian is akin to debating a Creationist: There's simply no winning, since they take their beliefs on faith. I countered that most Creationists do not desire or seek proof -- the very definition of faith -- whereas MNT proponents are actively pursuing proof."

Indeed, it would seem that the other side, which can cite no refereed papers, no defensible scientific arguments, more closely resembles the creationists. Indeed, for them, "There's simply no winning," but because they have no sound arguments for their position.

On a related, point, why does everyone call this work "Drexlerian"? To do so ignores the work of Merkle, Freitas and others, and needlessly personalizes what should be a question of scientific and technical analysis. Indeed, I'd love to see an extended critical discussion of molecular manufacturing that made no reference to "Drexler" or "nanobots", just to see whether the critics have anything coherent to say that does not depend on attacking their habitual, scientifically irrelevant targets.

Me: I think you probably already know the answer to your question on why they pick on those poor little hypothetical nanobots: Because it's done with a kind of wink to the current nanotech business community whose goals are to bring existing nanotechnology to market. They want to distance themselves as far as possible from the idea of "nanobots" because their brand of nanotechnology is finally emerging as a legitimate industry with products to sell. They fear that association with sci-fi-sounding "nanobots" would place loosen their foothold on legitimacy in the business and investment communities.

Drexler: I think I understand their strategy, but it is profoundly misguided. By equating molecular manufacturing with "nanobots" and making false claims about the impossibility of both, they amplify confusion and undercut their own credibility. As a basis for claims of safety, this just won't work. The nanotech business community would do better to embrace the modern understanding of the subject, which includes a simple fact -- that developing and using molecular manufacturing simply doesn't require building scary little self-replicating robots.

Indeed, in the Chemical & Engineering News exchange, I use the term "nanobot" only once -- to reject Prof. Smalley's characterization -- stating that molecular manufacturing will use "no swarms of roaming, replicating nanobots." Prof. Smalley ignores this and continues to confuse molecular manufacturing with "nanobots", using the term a dozen times. I began the exchange by stating that "I have written this open letter to correct your public misrepresentation of my work." The misrepresentation continues.

Me: Interesting comments on the term, "Drexlerian." I've been guilty of using it a few times, too, without even thinking of asking Drexler himself whether he wants to become an adjective. But the word is out there in the culture and has taken on a life of its own in the debate. Its meaning can be either derogatory (Drexlerian = Raelian?) or imply foresight and vision, depending on who is using it.

Like it or not, the name of "Drexler" is no longer your own. Its use does not negate the efforts of others because it's come to describe and symbolize much more than your work, but also that of Merkle, Frietas and probably many others who will come after you. The challenge for you, though, is to draw attention not only to scientists who disagree with you, but also to the many who not only agree but are beginning to prove and demonstrate your theories. That, I think, is the only way to counter any impression that this is about Drexler vs. the rest of the world.

Drexler: I cannot control what people say, but I can urge that they speak more constructively. When critics use my name as a label, they evade the real issues -- of science, technology, and policy -- and lower the discussion to the level of personalities.

Discuss