Nanotechnology expert lays out a vision of the future

A small but rapt audience in Cape Town had the opportunity to listen to one of the world’s foremost experts in nanotechnology last week. Christine Peterson is the co-founder and president of Foresight Institute, the leading nanotechnology public interest group and she serves on the advisory board of the International Council of Nanotechnology as well as NASA’s Nanotech Briefs. Interestingly, Peterson is also credited with inventing the term “open source” back in 1998 when the term free software was still being used.

Speaking to a group of investors and financial analysts from Cadiz Holdings, she geared her talk very much towards the business of nanotech and how and when one should invest in the “second industrial revolution”.

Nanotechnology is still in its infancy, according to Peterson. It’s “IT before the integrated circuit, or biotech before recombinant DNA”, but the promise that it holds is likely to be immense. It’s so large that even the term “nanotechnology” is a catch-all that is so broad as to be meaningless. She told the audience to beware of anyone who says they are an expert in nanotechnology as that’s just not possible. But you could be an expert in subjects such as nanotubes, fullerenes, nanoparticles, dendrimers or other specific areas.

This type of work, at the nano level will affect almost everything over time. It will be subtle and gradual but its impact will be undeniable. R and D funding is at unprecedented levels right now, and patents are coming in from everywhere. There are industrial giants currently “dipping their toes in the space” – companies like IBM, Intel, HP, GE, Cabot, Dupont, BASF, but there are also plenty of Sillicon Valley startups who are investing everything they have in this ground-breaking space.

If investors are nervous about nanotechnology, then Peterson advises that there is a huge market of tools around nanotech which are likely to be a much less risky investment but not as lucrative. For example, measurement tools for nanotechnology are as close as you can get to a ‘sure thing’.

Peterson explained how, in the short term there are already products making a significant impact in the world, particularly in the medical sphere in areas such as cancer detection, new methods of drug delivery and rapid diagnostics. While time frames are notoriously hard to predict, Peterson expects that, over the next few years, we can expect developments in environmental applications, then around privacy and surveillance, military, terrorism and human enhancement.

Already, military uniforms which incorporate medical dressings, artificial limbs and muscle manufactured from carbon nanotubes, blast and ballistic protection are in development. MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology is pioneering much of the work in this field.

If there is a downside to nanotechnology, it revolves around the question of regulation. Peterson cited the example of a product out of Korea that squirted nanoparticles of silver onto people’s clothes in a washing machine to kill bacteria. It worked really well, but the problem came after the washing when that water, with silver in it, went into the general water system. It carried on killing bacteria when the environment for that was no longer acceptable.

The regulation of nanotechnology is likely to be an increasing focus in the years ahead, as new and revolutionary technologies enter into all our lives.