Skeptic Project

I don't think the technology is bullshit in general, but there are some fantasy like claims of nanotechnology out there or claims about the technology that isn't feasible right now.

The delay is due to two main issues as far as I can gather, its both technically a difficult technologly to master, we are at the very early stages and also political in that funding and matters of decision making are slow when it comes to research direction and speed of.

I do think though that a well funded and focused team could have progressed much faster in the last few decades.

@Special Ed:

A "long time away" can apply to physically plausible projects which our current civilization can't tackle for economic or thermodynamic reasons, like proposals for re-engineering the solar system to make more human-habitable worlds. Astronomer Fritz Zwicky speculated about this sort of thing circa 1950. He argued that we knew enough physics back then to show how to do it, even if we won't have the ability to start the job for many generations:

http://books.google.com/books?id=PtwDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA65&dq=fritz+zwicky&hl=en&ei=NF-8TOn2F428sAO8062XDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=fritz%20zwicky&f=false

By contrast, I read Drexler's popular book Engines of Creation after it came out in 1986, or literally a generation ago. (Children born that year now have adult jobs and responsibilities, not to mention having started their own families.) Drexler didn't claim that his ideas would require some advanced civilization in several centuries to come to fruition, but rather that we could actually build his nanotech thingies in the careers of people alive at the time of his original writing.

That led to the sense of urgency I noticed in the 1990's in all the wonkish masturbation about the alleged benefits and risks of nanotech as an imminent development. Science writer Ed Regis, who had popularized and followed the hoopla for years, eventually saw the futility of it all by 2001. (MNT means "molecular nanotechnology"):

http://www.nanotech-now.com/ed-regis-interview-122001.htm</p>

1. Considering where you thought we'd be by 2002, how do you evaluate current technological progress?

Actually, not being a fan of prediction-making, I had no expectations at all of where'd be at any given stage in the game. But I am amazed at the rate of technological progress, which has been extremely fast, in my view. The one exception is canonical molecular nanotechnology, where actual progress has been slim to nil.

4. Besides getting themselves informed about MNT, what proactive steps can the general public take to help us steer clear of the potentially dangerous possibilities [such as the Gray Goo or "runaway" scenario]?

My own view is that the general public should forget about these and other nanotechnology scenarios, good or bad, and concern themselves with other things. There has already been more than enough theorizing about MNT and its possible consequences than we need, and than is probably healthy. . .

7. With the advent of mature MNT, where do you see the most drastic changes occurring? How can society and industry prepare for it?

"Advent of mature MNT"? You've got to be joking. The one thing that has most impressed me about MNT since I've been aware of the field, which I guess has been for about 15 years, is the snail's pace of progress toward the goal. We've seen tons of conferences, books, theories, predictions, discussions, workshops, institutes, companies, scenarios, simulations, pictures, articles, initiatives, meetings, study groups, Web sites, magazines, newsletters, matching grants and unmatching grants, etcetera. The one thing we haven't seen is any substantial progress toward MNT.

Because I suspect Drexler's ideas incorporate fundamental misconceptions about physics, I predict that Regis's assessment will make as much sense in 2020 as it does today.