Nanotechnology

[From Bruce Gregory (980119.22.08 EST)]

"This would always be a problem for Eric Drexler, one that he'd never solve to
his own satisfaction, much less that of his critics, who'd complain that "he
doesn't publish in the right journals." It marked the beginning of the
paradigm-shift problem that he'd encounter again and again, the hostility of
the old to the new, of the entrenched viewpoint to this radically different
nanotechnological order of things. So much of his work crossed traditional
disciplinary boundaries, ran counter to long-held assumptions, and upset
conventional wisdom that editors of the reigning mainstream journals often
didn't know what to make of it. Sometimes they responded by doing nothing at
all..."

Ed Regis _Nano: The Emerging Science of Nanotechnology_ .

[From Bruce Gregory (980125.1849 EST)]

I find some very interesting parallels between the reception given to PCT and
to nanotechnology in Ed Regis's very readable _Nano: The Emerging Science of
Technology_. The book demonstrates what happens when "experts" confront a
truly paradigm-shifting idea.

Bruce