Nanotechnology: Tiny hope or big hype?
Nanotechnology will amount to nanoprofits, they worry as they tick off a list of technologies from artificial intelligence to virtual reality that looked cool in the lab but have foundered commercially.
Such voices were all but drowned out this month at Nanotech 2004, the industry's largest conference.
And why not? The economy is rebounding, investors are interested and last year President Bush signed a bill to invest nearly $3.7 billion for nanotech research in the coming years.
Attendance tripled over last year, organizers said, reflecting a maturing industry. The inaugural conference seven years ago was a small gathering of lab rats; now it's as much a trade show as a science meeting, with real companies setting up booths.
"If you listen to a lot of the VCs (venture capitalists), they'll say (nanotechnology) is still a science project," said Steven Currall, director of a Rice University program that supports business activities by researchers. "A lot of them say it's 10 years in the future. They're nuts. It's not 10 years."
