Nanotechnology and Aging Science
Mike Treder of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN) let me know that SAGE Crossroads is planning a debate on nanotechnology and aging:
CRN was contacted recently by SAGE Crossroads, "the premier online forum for emerging issues of human aging". They are planning a discussion on nanotechnology and asked for our input.
SAGE Crossroads is a worthy site to have on your favorites list - their webcast debates have been getting better of later, the articles are good, and the new redesign makes the site much more accessible. I'll be interested to see what they do with nanotechnology as a topic. Some background on nanotechnology and healthy life extension from Chris Phoenix, the other CRN founder, can be found at the Longevity Meme. More scientific detail can be found at the Nanomedicine website. I mentioned nanotechnology in general, and nanomedicine in particular, a little while ago as a part of the bootstrapping process envisaged by advocates of radical life extension.
Nanotechnology has been in the news and much discussed of late. This is no doubt due to a rise in venture funding for the first wave of commercial nanotechnology development (most of it fairly mundane advances in materials science, as it happens, although there are a few companies working on the tools needed for interesting nanotechnology), and to a series of high profile personality clashes:
- Eric Drexler versus Richard Smalley
- Eric Drexler versus the nanotech business groups,
- Glenn Reynolds versus the nanotech business groups
Drexler, I should hasten to add, is getting a very raw deal out of all this nonsense - as are you and I. It's the development path laid out by Drexler, Merkle, Freitas and Kurzweil that puts nanomedicine to work in curing disease and extending your healthy life span, not the very mundane materials science development put forward by the PR side of the nanotechnology industry right now.
Of the much touted billions that the US government recently voted to spend on nanotechnology, not one dollar goes towards nanomedicine or the fundamentals that will needed to achieve nanomedicine.