Mega-Hype, Nano Substance
Apple’s introduction of the new iPod Nano yesterday reminded me that the Nano was my favorite iPod, at least until the iPod touch. It was (and still is) the best-looking iPod and also has the best name (Classic? touch? Boring)
Up til then, “nano” was getting a bit overused, the gimmick in many a sci-fi episode and even some entire series (Jake 2.0, Dark Angel). And lots and lots of business articles. Here’s a review I wrote way back when on a nano-hype book.
Written on Epinions, May 2003
With the recent dot-com collapse and high-tech recession fresh in our minds, a grand title such as “The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology will Change the Future of Your Business” should ring warning bells.
And indeed, the authors and consultants Jack Uldrick and Deb Newberry exhort the possibilities of nanotechnology (basically, engineering applied at molecular, or nanometer, dimensions) with the brazenness of late-night informercial hosts. In the introductory chapter, the authors rhetorically ask if the reader is “skeptical?” about technology and then later, “still skeptical?” Yes, I am.
They proceed to compare the number of times the term “nanotechnology” was listed in professional articles in 2000 to the frequency with which “Internet” was mentioned in the early 1990′s. Comparing a metric from one year against an unspecified number of other years is questionable, but in any case, who cares? There was one year when cold fusion got a lot of press, but where is the cold fusion industry now? And if we just focused on professional scientific and technical papers, I’m sure that you’ll find far more references to “cancer” or “virus” than “nanotechnology”.
Statistics taken out of context persist throughout the book. The authors state that this year venture capitalists will invest in nanotechnology companies twelve times what they invested in 1999. The VC business, like everything else, has gone up and done over the years, so show us a graph of nanotechnology investment over a period of several years, not a comparison of a seemingly arbitrary year with a projection over this upcoming year. Better yet, show us the relationship of nanotechnology funding versus other high-tech funding, so we can see what increasing weight the VC’s are allocating to nanotechnology in their portfolios.
The authors also skimp on the risks of nanotechnology. They cite the advantages of nanotechnology in assisting agricultural production and modifying food, but there is no mention of biological or business risks, despite the number of countries that currently bar import of gene-altered crops, even those comprising humanitarian aid. The peril of self-replicating nanomachines is dismissed initially by arguing those machines are unlikely to be practical, then ignored when stating later they might be feasible. Similarly, government investment budgets in nanotechnology for various nations are listed, but not in the context of the respective nations’ total research funding.
However, the authors do warn of looming obsolescence to existing industries posed by nanotechnology. (after all, it is the next big thing, and it will change the future of your business) After citing the non-competitiveness of the American big steel companies and reminding us that “no industry is safe from the powerful forces of technological innovation”, the authors claim the semiconductor industry will be the first to “feel the pressure”.
I don’t believe the implied analogy between steel and semiconductor industry holds water – as the authors note, Big Steel lost out to foreign competition and the new management and manufacturing processes of the domestic mini-mills that just manufactured the same product more economically. This is not the same as the semiconductor industry being displaced by revolutionary new materials.
And there is the further implication that the semiconductor business will be caught napping if it doesn’t watch out for nanotechnology, the new kid on the block. But there is arguably no faster-moving industry than the chip business – there is intense competition, repeated cycles of heavy capital investment, and cutting-edge research in physics and material science that has brought on-chip transistor widths from a couple of microns just fifteen years ago down to around a tenth of a micron today.
Although at this size, it would seem that current semiconductor technology borders on nanotechnology (0.1 microns is 100 nanometers), the authors say this is not so – nanotechnology consists of materials formed by manipulated molecules or devices consisting of such. However, it seems to me that many of the nanotechnology applications listed in the book, for example the IBM Millipede memory where bits consist of tiny indentations, don’t necessarily fit this definition.
Despite the hype, some of the ideas in the book just aren’t that imaginative. The authors speculate that when nanotechnology increases chip density, and thus processing power, by a hundred thousand, then computer speech recognition will be a snap and the United Nations will save money by not hiring human translators. That’s how “the next big thing” will change my business? I won’t have to type these Epinions reviews – I can dictate them to my computer?
Finally, to add insult injury, the authors pay scant attention to the historical development of nanotechnology and the technologists pioneering this movement, e.g. K. Eric Drexler, who popularized the field in the eighties with his book Engines of Creation. This book does impart some of the exciting potential of nanotechnology in listing numerous possible applications, near-term and far-term, but by omitting any explanation of the scientific and historical background and ignoring potential risks of the technology, the authors have written a disappointing and disingenous work.
