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Amazing! And even more amazing that apparently the technology is near term, they think they can have it in a couple of years.

I agree. Incredible.

Very cool.

The best sci fi novel of the world of nanotechnology is The Diamond Age. With minirobots that you can inject into your muscles and that will twitch them constantly. Like pumping iron 24/7. Or the total redundancy of entire economic structures based on the need to move anything anywhere.

The elimination of every scarcity based problem.

hmm, Borg anyone?

"hmm, Borg anyone? "

---

The Democrats have already been implanted...

100 million dollars last year in nano tech. Projections of 1 trillion within ten years!

Call yer broker.

In ten years you can send me 1% of yer gross fer the advice. A gift, if you will!

Don't forget! Chocolate is a best buy as well! ;)

So who are the major players in nanotech? Can I invest in a nanotech index, like I can with biotech?

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

Not sure if you've read Prey by Michael Chrichton yet. I'm about 100 pages in and it's shaping up to be pretty good. I haven't read Diamond Age yet, but have read Snow Crash and know Stephenson's books to be awesome.

There are scary things about all technology, but where would we be if people weren't brave enough to take the chance?

Skynet.

In ten years you can send me 1% of yer gross fer the advice. A gift, if you will!

And it will be well worth it.
Thanks for the tip.

No major players as yet. I'll have to look it up again. It's been awhile since I looked at that stuff.

I get curious, ya know? Intellectual dillettante. Once my curiosity is satisfied, I move on! :D My head's full of useless junk like that. I did't have the money to invest myself, so I moved on, letting my curiosity take me where it will! LOL. Politics and online activism seem to be my current pursuit...

I'll see what I can pull up for ya! :D

Some things involving nano-tech are years and decades away from fruition, Von Neumann machines (sp), for example, others, like those no-stain pants ( the one where the wine just rolls offa them? )advertised on TV are here now. This technology will change the world in ways that can only be guessed at now. It's realtively new tech and things will be volitile would be my guess, some companies goin' under and others gettin' bought out as it matures. Kinda hard to pick the 'Microsoft'or 'Intel' outta the bunch now, I'd think. Those doin' research for military apps and space apps would be the ones to watch. There's always that college dropout inna garage, however....

Another application to think of is medical. Some researchers say that in a decade or two, ya take a pill full of the nano-tech, no more cancer. Ya take another pill, no more wrinkles. Aging stops when ya take the pill. Life expectancy could, possibly jump to 120-150 years in three to four decades. Just enormous possibilities. Most apps now are looking at consumer, military and medical apps. No one company is out in front at this point, the last I heard.

Another app being worked on is the implantation of computer chips into the brain that will allow acess to any information you want to download. Instant Ph.D's! With a little experience of course. Some success has been noted in experiments with growing nerve cells on computer chips.

Like I said, some tech is here and some is years down the road. Lighting, construction, medical, military, space, computers, security, laws, infrastructure, politics, every aspect of our lives will become changed. The Industrial Revolution will be like a kindergarten picnic compared to what this might do to our society. With this tech, the cotton gin has already been invented and people are trying to build the steam boat and the railroads.

The chocolate thing is for real as well. There seems to be some sort of disease affecting the production of the real thing. No cure for this disease has yet been found. Real chocolate has become an investment, prices will go up, but it's an investment that you'll have to keep an eye on. Fake chocolate, the man-made type, will be around for awhile, but it just ain't the same......therefore the prices for raw chocolate, espec. from Central America and South America are going up. In culinary circles, Mexico is known for it's chocolate.

Do your own research, here. I'm just another jughead and am just throwing this out for your consideration is all. A discussion topic if you will.

Oh, yeah. Some of the Bio-tech companies are already into this stuff. Some are looking at a biological apporoach to nano-tech. I don't really have a clue about all of the bio-tech methods they're lookin' into. Has to do with maniplulating atom by atom, molecule by molecule,m cell by cell the results that they want in their medical applications. Nano-tech machinery built from a biology in a way. Might be a better chance at a 'Von Neumann' machine. (Self replicating tech).

Ya have to look into which companies are doin' this sort of research and maybe investing in the subsidaries or branches that are doin the research or somethin', I reckon.

Here's a start: Might be some companies you recognize.....
Google: nanotech companies

http://www.freep.com/money/tech/newman28_20020228.htm

http://www.larta.org/Nano/

http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2000/07/31/story3.html

From the July 28, 2000 print edition
Zyvex pioneers surging field of nano-tech
Jeff Bounds Staff Writer

RICHARDSON -- When Jim Von Ehr II looks into his crystal ball, he sees amazing possibilities.

Like turning lumps of coal into diamonds. Or building tiny machines that could venture inside the human body to diagnose and cure disease.

Two years ago, Von Ehr started a Richardson company, Zyvex, that was the first in the world to attempt turning that type of science fiction into commercial reality. Doubted at first, Von Ehr today is finding more and more converts to the promising field known as nanotechnology.

"We think that once the technology exists, we can manufacture most objects for the cost of the materials, plus the energy," he says.

Simply put, nanotechnology involves building things atom by atom, rather than using nature's materials like water and carbon as the building blocks, the method used since time immemorial. Researchers say nanotechnology could lead to a host of revolutionary innovations -- from automobiles weighing just 400 pounds to nearly cost-free manufacturing that produces virtually no pollution.

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Nanotechnology could eventually lead to an economy based on solar energy, Von Ehr says. Researchers in St. Louis are now working on a nanotechnology-based power source that blocks the sun's ultra-violet light, for instance. A separate, similarly based effort is under way in Southern California to develop rocket fuel that burns 10 times faster than is currently possible.

Such efforts have produced a quiet surge of interest in nanotechnology in academic, government and corporate circles.

Big companies like Hewlett-Packard and International Business Machines are conducting research in nanotechnology. And Congress is contemplating a request from a consortium of federal agencies, including NASA and the Department of Defense, for a $500 million nanotechnology research budget.

To understand why, consider a research effort at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. There, a team led by Dr. James Baker is building so-called nanodevices that may eventually be used to fight cancer. So small that billions can fit on a single cell, the nanodevices may eventually be able to detect and fight various cancers, Baker believes.

After being injected into the body, the nanodevices would latch onto cancer cells and help kill them. That could be used to avoid heavy-duty anti-cancer treatments like chemotherapy -- or even for early detection. "The real key is to get the tumor and leave the rest of the person alone," Baker says.

Baker plans to begin testing the devices on animals in eight months. Clinical trials, which will probably be focused initially on breast cancer, could begin in a few years, he says.

Computer applications

Overall, it will probably be five years before such practical, cost-effective applications emerge from nanotechnology.

James Tour, a chemistry professor at Rice University, says researchers have already built the two fundamental elements of a computer chip -- switches and memory -- at the molecular level. Switches turn electricity on and off, which in turn produces the the computer's "language."

Since chips are the engines driving computers and most every other electronic device, so-called "molecular computing" could enable electronics to shrink to heretofore unimaginable levels. It could also help provide the chip industry with a potential solution to the physical limitations it has encountered in the ongoing effort to cram more and more computing power into silicon chips.

A larger goal, though, is building so-called nanocomputers, which would be cheaper than machines using current chip technology. Before that happens, however, researchers will have to overcome several technical hurdles.

One roadblock involves sending electricity from one part of a chip to another. Though researchers have developed the means at a molecular level to send electrical impulses, they haven't yet figured out how to amplify that electricity at the molecular level and to keep it moving through the chip.

That's important, because those blasts of electricity are ultimately the means by which chips act as engines for computers.

Another obstacle is how to assemble molecules and keep them in place.

"There's no technology that will organize the molecules and get them in lockstep the way we want them," says James Ellenbogen, principal scientist in the nanosystems group at the Mitre Corp., a nonprofit that does research, mainly for the government. "Rather than push around a trillion molecules, we would like to have some way of designing systems so they just sort of fall into place."

At Zyvex, meanwhile, Von Ehr's 20-person firm is trying to figure out how to build tiny devices to assemble materials at the atomic level. When the company started in 1997, nobody at Zyvex really knew how to make that happen. Now the company is pursuing three research tracks.

One, called the "top-down" approach, involves building devices that can build tinier versions of themselves, which in turn will build still smaller versions. The "bottom-up" group is designing molecular building blocks that can be picked up and stacked in three dimensions. And the advanced technology group is slowing down a bed of atoms on a surface, arranging them in a certain pattern and then showering another atomic layer on top.

Just now Von Ehr is completing an expansion to about 20,000 square feet to accommodate the research effort, and is looking to hire software, electrical, mechanical and other engineers.

Though he doesn't have a true competitor yet, he concedes that big corporations like General Electric could decide abruptly to enter the space.

Or, a researcher somewhere could have a flash of brilliance while sipping coffee and make the next big breakthrough.

"We just have to hope they work for us," Von Ehr says.