Bargain Basement Nanotech Book

The other day, I bought a book titled Nanotechnoloy: Science, Innovation and Opportunity for $1.25, exclusive of shipping, on E-bay. It is worth every penny. Printed in December, 2005, and edited by Lynn E. Foster, Director of Emerging Technology for Greenberg Traurig, the book is a compendium of articles written by experts. For instance, venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson talks about commercialization of nanoscale electronics, the late Richard Smalley gives his view of the application of nanotechnology to our energy challenges, Mihail Roco has an article on technology integration, and Meyya Meyyappan discusses the role of federal labs. On the whole, the book has a dry academic feel, but it does give a good overview of the steps necessary to go from the elucidation of nanoscale science in the universities to the commercialization of nanotechnology by business. Certainly, it is not an investment guide, but it identifies a lot of issues that investors might want to be aware of.

I skipped, however, to the last delicious chapter, which is the transcription of a talk by Richard Feynman that I had not heard of previously. Titled Infinitesimal Machinery, it was given by Feyman in February 1983 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He expressly revisits the issues brought up in his classic 1959 talk, There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom. He also gives a general description of how to build microelectromechanical devices (MEMS), although he doesn’t call them by that name. “At the end of it all, I keep getting frustrated in thinking about these small machines,” says Feynman. “I want someone to think of a good use , so that the future will really have these machines in it.” Feynman also gives a prescient description of a workable quantum computer with reversible logic gates that generate essentially no heat.

Feynman was that once-a-generation rarity, a brilliant scientist with common sense. In his down-to-earth conversational style, he manages to make unimaginable advances seem not only realistic, but inevitable.